The Political Lone Wolf

History is rhyming, isn't it?

Here's some fact and analysis for you

In the US, rents have quadrupled just since 2005. While the minimum wage has increased just 25%, from $5.50 to $7.25 in 2009.

In a broader context, wages, when adjusted for inflation and if one excludes the top 1%, wages have not only been stagnant, but have dropped markedly since the 1970's. Perhaps the most important expense, rent, had gone up MORE THAN 1'000% since 1980!!!

Meanwhile, prices of essential commodities like milk, eggs and gasoline have more than quadrupled since 1986.

To summarize, since the 1970's wages have been stagnant or in decline while the cost of living has absolutely SKYROCKETED.

Economists hide this through slight of hand when they add things like the decline in the cost technology and electronics generally to the equation, supposedly "offsetting" the explosion in the cost of essential commodities and rent when calculating inflation. As though the cheaper cost of non-essential goods makes up for the unprecedented rise in the cost of living itself.

And one more increasingly essential commodity, higher education, who's costs have risen without exaggeration, 20 to 40 fold over last few decades.

And while all this was occuring throughout the Neoliberal era, the Neocons in Congress and the Pentagon never relented for even a moment.

The US Defense Budget, or at least what we see of it, has done quite well at keeping up with inflation, with the official budget rising over 591% in just over four decades, from $143.69 Billion in 1980 to nearly $850 Billion today.

And none of the endless billions spent on prisons and jails have made a bit of difference, with voilent crime in most American cities thoroughly out of control.

So it becomes easy to see where our ruler's priorities lie when you start looking at the grand scheme of things.

Were this kind of drop in quality of life to occur in a few months rather than a few decades, our rulers would be looking at straight REVOLT

It's time for CHANGE

It's time for REVOLUTION

It's time for SOCIALISM!

Sad, but true:

The people destroying the world have names, addresses and faces.

Punch one today!

whoever the fuck i saw saying “i can’t stand english bitching because they’re so complacent” and whoever else thinks we’re not doing enough i’d like to invite you to DO SOME FUCKING RESEARCH.

a law was recently passed that deemed any kind of protesting as disruptive and able to be punished by the police, alongside giving the police more power.

we all watched the police storm the PEACEFUL VIGIL for sarah everard - a woman raped and murdered by a police officer.

PEOPLE ARE CURRENTLY BEING ARRESTED FOR OUTWARDLY EXPRESSING ANY SORT OF DISPLEASURE WITH THE MONARCHY.

A WOMAN WAS ARRESTED FOR HOLDING UP A SIGN. JUST HOLDING IT.

PEOPLE WERE ARRESTED FOR BOOING.

everything in britain has been put to a standstill. hospital appointments have been cancelled. funerals have been cancelled. we can’t do anything about it.

many of us will be unable to pay our energy bills this winter. we will freeze. we will starve.

it has been demonstrated to us time and time and time again that protests simply make people talk about how we were protesting and never why. and now the police has increased power to punish us for any public opinion that they don’t like.

we have been under tory rule for 12 years. 12 years of the same people - hey americans, can you imagine that?

we are tired, no, we are exhausted. we are struggling. we are scared. and it has been made clear to us that our government does not care.

so fucking forgive us if we’re putting our own survival over the opinions of americans (and other non-brits but americans are the worst) online who expect us to learn everything about their politics and their country and don’t put in an ounce of effort to learn about ours.

Also want to point out that Tory policies have already killed a huge number of people in the past 12 years, and that the UN condemned them for many violations of human rights.

And they tone policed the report, said they didn’t like the way it was written, ignored it and carried on killing us.

Right before Liz Truss was named our new PM, the other finalist overtly stated that disadvantaged areas have had too much money invested in us and he wanted to take that away from us and invest it in areas that are already doing well. This is how they approach us. People are dying, we have been dying, and their policies invariably aim to make that worse.

This is a fucked up time to victim blame.

Other funerals have been canceled?

I thought this was my hometown for a second

So this has actually been cited by academics as part of the major draw to online spaces is the fact that just existing in public is reacted to with hostility and punishment. Gretchen McCulloch discussed this is in her book Because Internet, citing research that shows teens and young adults want to be outside! We want to spend time in social places, it’s just that there aren’t any places to exist in public without being charged for it.

When I was homeless as a kid my little brother and I loved to go to the library. We would keep warm in there reading good books all day long. Until residents of the town complained about us “loitering” at the library each day. The library staff then told us we were no longer allowed to stay more than an hour at a time. Imagine seeing two homeless children spending their entire days quietly reading just to keep out of the cold and having a damn problem with it.

the fuck, it’s a public service, that’s YOUR HOUSE like I know people say that about the White House (“the people’s house!”) but the library really is quite literally yours to read in. Like that’s what it’s literally fucking for. Only an hour at a time, eat my god damn ass I have a shirt that says “librarians are not cops” but sadly some are

like where were the children’s librarians???? that’s like a hot specialty now

When I worked in public libraries we often got complaints about any homeless people who happened to be in there, and God forbid they actually dared to *sleep*… As library staff we were quite happy to point out to said people that the homeless had as much right to be there as anyone else and unless they were actively breaking a bylaw of some description then then they were welcome to stay. We *didn’t* tell the person complaining that if they didn’t like it they were welcome to go somewhere else, because unlike the homeless person, they actually *had* somewhere else to be - but we really really wanted to…