justineie_bobeanie

It's been just a few months since I quit weed, but it feels like a completely different life. I had quit drinking a few months prior because of the obvious harms it was causing me, but I kept using weed. The harm with weed was not so obvious as with alcohol, but I wasn't living up to my idea of what I wanted from myself.

I think with alcohol it beats you up and knocks you down hard. With weed, it's more subtle. The harm is slower and more accumulated. It keeps you down, makes you slower, less ambitious, comfortable in your position, whatever that is. Even when I quit drinking I was still stuck in a pit and I didn't notice—or didnt care—that the walls were slowly getting higher and the bottom deeper.

I was a heavy user going through some 3–4 cartridges a week plus some joints on top of that. I was constantly stoned from morning to night, at work, at home, while driving, just always. My attention and memory were shot. I finally had enough. I picked a date and quit. Easy. I had one more occasion to use after that which I already planned. That one day turned into several before I got the wherewithal to quit again. The experience sealed it for me and I've been clean since!

Life is not perfect. I quit my job without a backup and I've been kind of stuck jobless. I've been living on a friend's couch since leaving an unhealthy domestic situation. The relationship didn't survive sobriety when our mutual drug use seemed to be the only significant connection between us. I'm grateful for my friend, who appreciates the homecooked meals I make (I'm paying my way with the money he's saving not ordering delivery! lol) I've been reading a lot more now that I have the attention span to do so, and I have progressed much faster in learning how to play music.

It gets easier. Good luck to you on your journey!

Eighty years since the first Moscow Trial

When the first Moscow Trial began, Trotsky was under virtual house arrest in Norway. Under pressure from the Soviet Union, the Norwegian Labor Party was attempting to muzzle Trotsky and prevent him from answering the slanders of the trial. A new voice soon emerged, however; Lev Sedov, Trotsky’s son, published in the Bulletin of the Opposition what was to become The Red Book on the Moscow Trial. Sedov meticulously examined the details of the trial and exposed them as a fraudulent attack on genuine revolutionaries.

By April 1937, Trotsky had organized a counter-trial in the form of the Dewey Commission in Mexico, where Trotsky was now located after expulsion from Norway. The voluminous refutation of the first two Moscow show trials (a second occurred in January 1937) is presented in the book Not Guilty. The two concluding points state: (22) “We therefore find the Moscow trials to be frame-ups. (23) We therefore find Trotsky and Sedov not guilty.”

In carrying out these trials, Joseph Stalin was launching an assault on the legacy and the actual leaders of the first successful socialist revolution. As the Bonapartist leader of an increasingly counterrevolutionary social layer, the Soviet bureaucracy, it was not enough for Stalin to expel these Old Bolsheviks from the party and persecute them with exile or imprisonment.

For the middle-class organizers of these protests, who lack a serious political perspective, the protest is their victory. They have no concept of the independent organization of the masses doing anything, besides protesting and calling it a day. They believe and promote the belief that mass rallies will be sufficient to pressure the Democratic Party, some Republicans, and the trade union bureaucracies to oppose Trump more vigorously. They will not.

It can be difficult to imagine the possibility of general strike when we haven't seen a real organized mass movement in at least two generations. It's not enough for isolated individuals convinced of the necessity to simply strike of their own initiative. That would be a recipe for disaster, with the participants facing certain reprisal and victimization. The movement must be prepared, starting with the most advanced sections of the working class organizing the leadership.

The protests express a broadly felt desire for action, but that cannot spontaneously generate the necessary movement. It will take the input of people like you, talking to your neighbors and coworkers, organizing action committees in your neighborhoods and workplaces, reaching out to people from other neighborhoods and workplaces, and organizing in preparation for a struggle. The protests provide a prime opportunity to do just that.

For what it's worth, in case you're interested, this is the statement we distributed at No Kings: Mobilize the working class against Trump’s dictatorship!

I'll also recommend this perspective following the protest: The mass protests against dictatorship in the US and the way forward in the fight against Trump’s coup.

If you read something in there that strikes a chord, I would suggest reaching out through the contact form.

These "humanitarian pauses" merely serve to provide the barest cover for the deliberate mass starvation of the Palestinian people. The images of emaciated skeletal figures have aggravated the mass revulsion and anger felt among the populations of Israel's imperialist allies, and increasingly among the Israeli population itself. Such "pauses" in the livestreamed genocide are intended to provide the governments of the respective countries with sufficient justification to continue arming Israel and supporting the slaughter.

The protests by themselves are certainly inadequate, despite the impressive turnout. What makes the difference is what we do with them. Last time I went out, I distributed statements, made contacts and even received some donations. People are seeking out fighting perspectives. They need organization and leadership.

I think this sort of pessimism is hopelessly self defeating. People are looking for meaningful ways to fight back. What they lack is organization and leadership. What are you doing to develop this?

June "No Kings" saw the largest single day protests in US history. This is a healthy response by the population. We do absolutely need to move beyond the limits of street protests, and onto the development of a mass strike movement; however, the fact that masses of people are willing to go out and protest on a largely spontaneous basis is significant. What is needed is clear revolutionary political perspective. When this understanding grips the masses, particularly the working class, the movement will take on an explosivly historic significance.

You must be some kind of troll. Music literally transforms the structure of your brain, strengthens neural connections, and makes you smarter in every way. If you knew anything about either music or mathematics, you would know the two are fundamentally linked. There are many problems with our society, but too much access to arts and culture definitely is not one of them. Do they even teach music in schools anymore? States have been cutting the curricula to the bone, and the arts have suffered the most.

Music is far and away the more worthy subject.

Education at all levels should be freely available to everyone who wants it. While billionaire oligarchs hoard unfathomable sums of our social wealth, they limit and ration our opportunities for education on certain arbitrary bases. Expropriate capital and make the former capitalist live at an equal level to the rest of society.

You must be the only real person on the internet!

Get a grip lmao.

Ah, makes sense, I guess, since "flawless" writing is a known hallmark. I assure you that I do my own writing.

What about my writing suggests that it is AI generated? And to what end?