I suggest Rosa Luxemburg's Reform or Revolution to break people out first, less scary than Lenin, and a I think a "woman's touch" does a thing for peoples minds under patriarchal norms, with the assumption that they're somehow less capable of all of the things they're afraid of. It was critical in my political education when I was starting off grabbing from everywhere to see what gripped the road I saw us flying down (Conquest of Bread sucked, never read more 'kum-ba-ya' utopian idealist tripe in my life, and I could tell that having barely even read much Marx at that point); and Reform or Revolution is more focused on dismantling the single topic. From there, once the reader are forced to mull on that reform will never save us, haunted by their discomfort and spurred by the sprouting seeds of their discontent the only logical next step is to try to find out "okay, well then what is to be done?"

But you have to give a background lesson first if the book/site of it you send them doesn't explain in the preface, the whole thing that in the context of her book "Social-democrat" meant socialists in general; both revolutionary and the Bernstien-type 'voting in socialism through reform' revisonists; because this was in like 1900, before the failure of the second international and resultant split of the communists. It's only after all of that and the 3rd international and the betrayal of Rosa and the communist KPD by the reformists that that the "social democrats" came to be understood as we know them today, reformist welfare liberals (which, incidentally, thoroughly and undeniably vindicates Luxemburg, Lenin and the Bolsheviks, et al and their criticisms of reformism).

Marx has been blunted and made tame and by those who haven’t read him.

You might say they have "Turned Marx Into A Common Liberal"

at the same time as ever more nuclear brinksmanship against Russia at the expense of who knows how many hundred thousands people on and between both 'sides' of the shitshow in Ukraine. THIS is the "damage control" candidate in the US?

lmfao I'm voting PSL fuck all of these people. Democrats going around congress twice to shovel as many guns and bombs as they can hoping Israel finishes off Gaza before the elections, Trump only being different in that he's open about the same; Palestinians have said both candidates and parties are the same for them, and they've been the same for us.

well except all the Nazis in Germany that were brought directly back into:

• Official posts within the federal government and its ministerial cabinets
• into the upper judiciary and magistrates
• into local governance
• elevated and hired into immense wealth in industry and finance, or just kept where they already were in industry and finance
• hired into forming the Nazi core of the West German intelligence and secret police agencies (which would become today's German agencies) under the protective auspices of the OSS/CIA; who made extensive use of their networks of executioners and collaborators to prop up US-backed dictatorships and cartels and use as anti-communist stay-behind guerilla terrorists by the CIA and NATO (and brought into the CIA and FBI themselves, and into MI6 and Mossad)
• into German academia and universities as faculty and professors,
• to write western history books at the behest and with support of the US Army and OSS/CIA to sanitize themselves
• all those hired into NATO and into the EU
• into positions of power in West Germany (and all the NATO countries, helping in and helped by Gladio violently purging the communists) in such saturation and such impunity that it caused the formation of left wing militant groups that would assassinate and kidnap them.

but other than all of that though!

(And that's not even mentioning the Nazis and collaborators which made up the origins of Radio Free Europe/Liberty, the "Victims of Communism Foundation" which grew out of the fascist-filled anti-Soviet "Captive Nations Lobby" headed by OUN-B Nazis from Ukraine, and all the Operation Aerodynamic, Operation Paperclip, Operation Sunrise, Operation Beladonna, Operation Lynx, etc etc.)

Shitty billionaire

ah but you repeat yourself

Sees the USA doing what it's always done, which we've known since COINTELPRO and Snowden's whistleblowing

"THIS IS LIKE CHINA!!!"

it's notable how you "your side" is allowed to be a wide system of dispassionate material interests and power structures involved in seeking to overcome contradictions against its interests in callous yet rational competition; while the "other side" is a single cartoon comic book villain singlehandedly doing 'all the bad things' on an irrational whim for reasons of 'vanity and cruelty' I guess. And its people and their interests and opinions from the rural poor to the college liberal to the oligarch capitalist to the Prime Minister are only relevant to pity or otherwise also one-dimensionally criticize. I hope you analyze the ways in which you are conditioned toward orientalism and myopic essentializing that serves your own "side's" imperialism by not recognizing and erasing the realities of other nations as just as complex and multifaceted as yours.

You're carrying a colonial outlook to distill such a huge and diverse country with a massive population of its 150 different ethnic/national people groups and 20+ autonomous republics and all its various economic interests and players and political trends and history as in Russia to an idealist child's comic book picture of one man's "megalomania". As the west not-so-coincidentally concocts this exact image for every country it tries to overthrow or attack, distilling them to 'one crazy irrational madman dictator who only knows force' and erasing the material existence and interests of the nation and its constituent classes and peoples and the history and context from which these things all arose as they exist. Which is very convenient then for "your side" to make it into whatever it wants.

Do you know what the Duma's structure and role is, its party and factional makeup is and has been, what their members' stances has been on topics like Ukraine since 2014, and what actions Putin has taken in accordance or against what they've been pushing for? Do you think its existence is just for show? You'll be surprised on some points and maybe dig deeper. To really have true understanding of a country you'd have to also dig into the historical, social, political, and economic realities, trends, and topics in the country

and the contradictions, struggles, and syntheses between them over the years; and go past just 2014 to root these trends in their relevant circumstances experiences, struggles, transition periods, etc. from which they all arrived in their present form, on both a structural and people level. Optimally bolstered by some culture studies and language.

But learning about the RF's federal governmental structure, and the Duma, and then the differences between the statements and actions of the Duma vs the Russian President's statements and actions since 2014 is a starting point to start chipping away at this cartoon caricature notion you have, which is not rooted in reality. For any country on the planet. And you know this about your own country, but don't extend the same humanity and respect toward other countries. It's a very US American thing. Maybe if you don't have the language skills you can also machine translate some stuff that they say themselves in their statements and speeches and congresses rather than dubbed 8 second snippets followed by 10 minutes of punditry on CNN too. And that's just politics

history and economy is important too. And never forget about the people on the ground. In who they actually are, not who you've decided they are, or your media has told you they are.

to this day I still occasionally mutter "it never ends, this shit..."

honorable mention to New Marijuana Study Confirms Everyone Knows You're High And You Will Be Stoned Forever

because when this was originally uploaded on their website it would play a slightly different version every time you opened the page. So you'd laugh and show your friends, so then even if your (allegedly) stoner ass hadn't gotten tripped out the first time, while they're watching it and laughing you'd start sweating.

Second honorable mention to "Is The Government Spying on Schizophrenics Enough?" But I'm honestly still not sure that one's totally okay, even if I still laugh every single time I watch it. I'm not that type of mentally ill but have had people close to me who struggle enough with it and the very nature of the disorder is such that even though I laugh I've always at the same time felt it treads very much on the line.

Prague's Kafka International Named Most Alienating Airport

And a 'from-16-years-back' broadside at the US approaching November:

'No Values Voters' Search For Most Evil Candidate

1. That's not what entryism is. Entryism isn't "voting democrat candidates who support xyz in primaries." Entryism is infiltrating an organization's membership with communists(or what have you), with the intent to change the basic proportional makeup of its membership ranks, and so change its interior political composition, and so its exterior action.

2. Entryism is explicitly and categorically denounced by every serious ML as having proven historically and politically ineffective at best, and actively counterproductive and opportunist at worst and most common by far; and has been in explicit terms criticized as such for a century. Saying "Surely you've heard of entryism?" to Marxists is like saying "Surely you've heard of filling masks with lavender to keep away the miasma?" to an epidemiologist.

3. The point mentioned in #2 is by a factor of 100 extra true for an organization like the democratic party, which is (just like the Republican party) a monstrous behemoth of leagues of multi-generational dynastic establishment careerist ghouls, thieves, racketeers, and murderers from multi-billionaire elite university family empires; whose entire operations are financed, advised, organized, and run by and for the richest imperialists in the world, with uncountable streams of both open channel money and dark money from private billionaires, banks, industrial monopolies (fossil fuels, pharma, agribusiness, etc.), arms dealers, conglomerate Super PACS, shady Think-tanks and "NGOs," and the Israel lobby. Obama's cabinet was hand-picked by Citigroup. Biden has appointed all the most heinous neocons and war criminals he could find, even bringing back convicted massacrists like Elliot Abrams; and hiring the most corrupt people he could find, such as a Chevron lawyer who defended the destruction of the Amazon and poisoning of Indigenous people to head his Environmental executive. All while outflanking the Republicans on the right of many issues including immigration.

**

The Democrats actively benefit just like the Republicans from hyper-restricted 2-corporate-party system, proven by them, currently as we speak, sending out leagues of dark-money Super-PAC-financed lawyers to every state they can to try to purge 3rd parties off the ballots; actively killing democracy. This is their goal and interest, because it is the goal and interest of their donors. They have no interest in a different or better world and never will. Even someone as milquetoast as Bernie ran into endless smears and obstruction and undermining and got nowhere and has capitulated more and more to the right wing by hitching his boat to this circus. The liberal darlings "the squad" have each capitulated or even become active careerists and attack-dogs for the establishment imperialists against alternatives and progressives, barring Ilhan Omar who has faced endless shit and isolation even from the rest of that coward group of "progressive" dems, to say nothing of the establishment that actually runs the show with their army of equally-careerist factory-stamped liberal interns at their beck and call, pipelined from upscale colleges with PoliSci degrees to do whatever bidding they want.

The Democrats are not going to change for anyone but their donors and have proven it for decades; and they are structurally incapable of being budged internally toward anything remotely resembling democracy or socialism. Entryism to the democratic party is beyond a dead end. It would It would be more effective and principled to vote third party and continually elevate a working class party (Like the PSL) and visibly starve the democrats of votes for their failures and betrayals and making it known that is the reason; which would force a political reorientation of the democrats if they ever want power again. This necessary reorientation is impossible within the Democratic party structures, so the ruling class would have to figure out to desperately float a reformist "labor party" or "progressive party" to capture people being funneled to the PSL socialists, and this reformist party would receive an influx of the less-far-right careerist liberals from the Democrats fleeing to the new party "like rats from a sinking ship;" while the Republicans and remaining establishment Democrats proper inevitably join together in a coalition like David Lloyd George's Conservative-Liberal coalition, or like Macron's doing with the fascists in France. It's not even much of a leap for them compared to the existent state of things

they've already been converging for decades and most of us have already come to feel the effects of it.

And this way by elevating the PSL, a real working class party who have a broader picture for revolutionary change than limiting to parliamentary dog-and-pony shows against the richest most evil people on the planet, you're actually helping the ground-up elevation of meaningful on-the-ground working class politics which speak to the 35-50% who are so disillusioned and disenfranchised by the lies and corruption and bloodthirst of the corporate-imperialist duopoly-of-exploiters that they don't even vote

and activating them into actual meaningful political movement-building and action with a revolutionary long-term perspective, while forcing the establishment's hand to intercede how it can, highlighting the contradictions and failures of the system. Instead of finding new ways to capitulate to it (which are actually the same ways people have been capitulating to it for a century).