Class-Centric News
The chasm of difference between your coverage and cable news coverage of the withdrawal from Afghanistan blew my mind. And Something occurred to me that I thought I should ask. Is news media class-centric? By that, I mean, does cable news only cater to the upper-class perspective on things? I feel like the upper class is happy to continue the war in Afghanistan mainly because of A. They financially benefit from it the most, and B. None of their kids are ever there doing the fighting and the dying. Your coverage exposed how tilted the news media is. A bunch of billionaires paying a bunch of millionaires to convey a message that only ever bolsters the upper class in this country. Thank you for what you do!
Guests on your show?
Y'all are getting a little boring with your uppity noses. Are you ever going to get some down to earth guests to balance you out? BTW: If you pay workers $15/hr everything will cost more, (hurting fixed income people) OR employers will hire less people in order to keep a decent bottom line and job openings will decrease, (think artificial intellegence or the kiosks at McDonalds) so you are absolutely wrong about min wage. In addition, undocumented workers will accept the lower wages so all you will see at service industries will be illegal aliens, and the people you are trying to help will be unemployed,... again.
Afghanistan Experience
I served in Afghanistan in 2010, 11, 12, and 13 in Helmand Province in intelligence with the Marines. When I left in 2013 the Afghan army was prepared and the taliban was hiding in Quetta Pakistan. I was confident that there was not much more we could do at that time to help them transition to governing themselves. When I compare what happened the past few weeks to how the communist government held its ground after the soviet withdrawal for 3 years I cannot help but question our economic and political system. The communist soldiers fought for three years because they believed in socialism. The taliban and the mujahideen fought because they believe in fundamental Islam. We never gave our Afghan partners something to believe in beyond receiving money. The corporate capitalist system we have is not something that anyone is willing to fight and die for. Our Afghan partners were only our partners because we were paying them. I remember asking my Commanding Officer what our long term plan was since it seemed like we were simply paying people to not shoot at us. The cooperation we received was just because the Afghan partners could make money. As soon as that flow of cash stopped our partners disappeared in a few weeks because we never gave them something to believe in. I myself have lost complete faith and trust in our government and economic system over the last 2 years. My question is this: if our corrupt corporatocracy is something that we no longer believe in, is a collapse, similar to what we’re witnessing in Afghanistan, imminent here once the artificial flow of money dries up? If we are on the precipice of loosing faith in our corrupt system what ideology will replace the ‘capitalist’ one that will be jettisoned? How do we prevent that ideology from being worse than what we currently have?
Gen X leftists
I'm a gen X leftist who was politicized during Desert Storm as an undergrad and more radically during the start of the Iraq war. I feel like there is a lot of Gen X bashing by the left, despite there being many of us who are on the forefront of the (anti-perpetual war, climate crisis, working class struggle) fight. How can we build cross generational solidarity when the media is always pitting us against each other?