@AJBayatpour@MSpicuzzaMJS@TheAthletic In other words, in Classical Athens, what we call "legislators," they called, citizens, and what we call "citizens," they called, slaves, or metics, AKA legal aliens.
@AJBayatpour@MSpicuzzaMJS@TheAthletic What we call "slaves," Classical Athenians called, human captives, which they accurately understood to be a byproduct of war.
@AJBayatpour@MSpicuzzaMJS@TheAthletic So World Capital, and by extension, the United States went to war with African-Americans. It often still feels that way.
@AJBayatpour@MSpicuzzaMJS@TheAthletic Why was Classical Athens ringed with legal aliens, AKA slaves, or metics? It was kinder to them than the rest of Eurasia.
@AJBayatpour@MSpicuzzaMJS@TheAthletic Aristotle, by the way, was NOT an Athenian citizen, AKA "legislator," yet he spoke fairly of them, and they fashioned schools after him.
@AJBayatpour@MSpicuzzaMJS@TheAthletic There are numerous accounts of Athenian citizens choosing poverty and the rights of citizenship over the opulence of servitude to a rich man. The real philosopher understands wage-labor for what it is: a form of slavery.
@AJBayatpour@MSpicuzzaMJS@TheAthletic There are also accounts of a budding communism in Classical Athens. Classical Cynicism more than qualifies. It was an imperfect democracy. They should have abdicated the ancestral and genealogical continuation of citizens' rights.
@AJBayatpour@MSpicuzzaMJS@TheAthletic The most salient examples of democracy I've found are in small indigenous communities . . . but I'm a stickler for words.
@AJBayatpour@MSpicuzzaMJS@TheAthletic "Demos" is probably best translated as, "The Indebted," because their children were sold into a form of human captivity to settle debts levied on them by a distant, aloof council of oligarchs lead by a tyrant named, "Draco." Then the Demos revolted.
And if you push me some bullshit about "getting tough on crime," I will verbally slap you upside the head so hard, you won't remember your fucking name.
A benumbing sound that plays in the background of life. It's been there always. I hid it in the floorboards, suffocated it with insulation and alcohol just to cope with the insanity of growing up in and stubbornly refusing to abandon this war zone, my childhood home.
@royalpratt When they closed the bars in our neighborhood, it destroyed the economy. I believe this happened in the late seventies and early eighties, around the time I was born.
@royalpratt That, in combination with systemic racism in a commodified housing market and disinvestment from the city, forced Brighton Park into a devastating economic quagmire that it struggles with to this day.
@royalpratt If @LoriLightfoot is making it more difficult for mom and pop liquor shops to survive, it's because she wants to replace them with Binny's, or nothing at all.
@Thom_Hartmann@FrankLuntz is outnumbered. It's patently obvious the riches and power of a manipulative, narcissistic and callous set of families is ill-gotten and illegitimate. Capitalism has a clear history that's intertwined with human captivity, genocide and widespread deceit.
@Thom_Hartmann@FrankLuntz Roughly a third of Americans, @FrankLuntz, identify as Capitalists, and also, roughly a third of Americans believe COVID is a hoax, Trump is still @POTUS, and the January 6th coup attempt was an elaborate walking tour of the Capitol.
@Thom_Hartmann@FrankLuntz@POTUS However, @FrankLuntz, roughly two-thirds of Americans believe you're full of shit, and we're pissed. You're not going to smooth that over with clever wordplay. You could coordinate to kill us all, but that would make you a fascist, and besides: you're outnumbered.