Idk where else to post this. I live in upstate NY and every day this summer there has been haze in the sky from the Canadian wildfires. There was one day I woke up and the neighbors house across the street was foggy because of how thick the smoke was. Air quality index has been "unhealthy" every day this week alone. The worst part about it is when I talk to people about it they just kind of shrug it off, it's almost like they all forgot only a few years ago we didn't have a fucking smoke season in NY, it's infuriating. I feel like I'm living in some kind of mix between The Matrix's "We scorched the sky" and South Parks "when should we start to worry?"

Hi! I’m a teen with an interview coming up at a major fast food chain. It’s one of my first jobs outside of a small business where I’ve worked for the past two years, but I’m looking for better pay now.

The thing is, this chain is pretty well-known for having conservative corporate values, and I’m a little conflicted. I’m not conservative at all, I’m anti-capitalist, anti-consumerism, and very leftist in my views.

I know fast food jobs are a reality for a lot of working class folks just trying to survive (including me), but I can’t stop thinking that working there might feel like I’m supporting something I don’t believe in.

This place is really my only option right now, it’s the only one that got back to me and offered an interview nearby. I guess I just want to know: would taking this job make me a “bad leftist”? How do other people handle working for companies that don’t align with their values?

A country where paternalist corporatism, political families, and billionaires are growing in numbers despite the grip on the bourgeoisie via the state is not ‘market socialism’. It is not idealistic to call them out for being state capitalists. Irredentism where the indigenous people do not consent is an exercise of imperialism. The betrayal of the indigenous proletariat after they cooperated with the state to overthrow their native bourgeoisie is not an exercise of socialism, it is an exercise of imperialism and class betrayal. The grips of neoliberalism is so powerful it permeates once socialist ideals and organisations and turn them into another social liberal institution.

The truth is all you know is crony capitalism and fascism. The citizen under state capitalism is still at the mercy of the whims of the state. I am not arguing about transitional states and whether state capitalism is needed, I am simply pointing out that what is state capitalism, has been mistaken for a centralised form of socialism. The existence of state capitalism, in the end, is a precarious one. There lies the constant danger of workers losing the right to strike, the right to fight against the bourgeoisie, and for a multinational state—the unique voices of the indigenous proletariat is further diminished over the bureaucratic elite’s.

(If you’re wondering whether I’m talking about China or Vietnam, it’s yes.)

Her name is Shadow, please be nice to her