Re: Communism, I'm in favor of Socialism, not full-blown Communism, but we need to add some significant context to the discussion. The Communist endeavors in South America were severely sabotaged by the US and the CIA. Communism isn't inherently authoritarian; it's an economic model. Just because the USSR/Russia twisted it into an abomination doesn't mean that the general principle is utopian and doesn't work. At the end of the day it's about who owns the means of production. I've seen smaller corporations that have incorporated a communist hierarchy, where each worker has their basic needs met and owns the worth and value that they are producing. And while they are still trying to operate in a capitalist system, since you can't divorce yourself from your country's economic system, they are succeeding. There's no reason why this shouldn't be scalable to larger models.
Before we start with the "but human greed, corruption, yadda yadda yadda", we are already experiencing these very same things under capitalism. The biggest corporations are owning the majority of brands we come into contact with on a daily basis. They exploit, not only the lower classes in the West, but also entire nations world wide. They use child slavery so that we can get cheap phones or chocolate. People are forced into poverty, are starving, are dying due to weak or even corrupt healthcare systems. There's a reason why the murdered insurance CEO was such a big story; across the political spectrum people were actually happy and united. It says a lot about the type of work you do, when instead of sympathies people rejoice in your death.
The CEOs are getting paychecks in the millions-range, while the workers are dreaming about becoming a millionaire, at the same time as they are becoming poorer and poorer.
And that's just what is actively happening to humans. The constant striving for endless growth is destroying our planet. We are consuming resources at a rate that cannot be replenished, even though there's absolutely no reason to do that except for corporate greed. Scientists have been warning us for decades, but the mega corporations are spending money to smear climate activists and spread misinformation about climate change. We are barreling towards certain doom in the name of short-term profits, but hey, at least the CEOs can become even richer. So, if we want to throw all possible criticisms at communism, we need to do the same with capitalims, and at some point we need to talk about the seemingly inevitable drift into fascism that can be observed in late stage capitalism.
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So much for that topic, the whole Epstein thing is clearly rattling Trump. It's apparently the only thing that actually bothers him. Other stuff, like his Russia connections, were always used as talking points by him at his rallies and campaigns. The Epstein stuff he'd rather ignore or have it disappear somehow. I'm glad, that for once, the media are managing to properly keep this story in the news, instead of focusing on his deflections.
