dasfoo
2mo ago
Or, two, he's comparing the totalitarian endpoints of each ideology. Communism verus fascism.
The picture on the right, however, is not the endpoint of Communism, but a waypoint. In the endpoint, most of the people in the picture on the right are dead or in prison, because it was never going to turn out the way they thought it would and it's always worst for the non-conformists. Honestly, the endpoints of Fascism and Communism look pretty much the same: A corrupt political hierarchy eating each other for power while stealing from the people and murdering as many witnesses as possible.
Point to actually existing government. "Do you really want Joe Biden/Donald Trump deciding how much toilet paper you're allotted or what books are worthy of being published?"
Yes, I like to say, "Never support giving the government any power you wouldn't want your least favorite politician to possess." It's remarkably unpersuasive, because the notion that the means of government is more important than the ends is completely lost on post-1960s liberalism.
EDIT: IMO this is why it's so easy for the right to assume that the left supports electoral fraud: it would be insane to want an all-powerful government and also support literally Hitler having a shot at winning. Of course, you would fix an election to prevent that from happening.
dasfoo
2mo ago
it was perceived as the alternative to Western capitalism and liberal democracy. If you don't like the current system and want something else... it's there.
The cruel irony is that rather than being an alternative to the potential failures of capitalism, Communism merely fortifies all of those failure modesand traps them into a single funnel that's certain to fail. You don't like being exploited by any number of employers? Now there's only one employer who will treat you even worse, and you can never quit your job!
dasfoo
2mo ago
So, how do we figure out the fair way to make sure everyone in the intersection gets proper priority? We could have everyone get out of their car and have a little discussion about where they're going and why and then implement some group decision-making procedure in order to allocate priority fairly. Then repeat at the next intersection, and the next intersection, and the next intersection, all the way to work. Even normies can realize that this would be ridiculous.
The reality is, it wont really matter who needs to go first. The person who will get to go first is whoever is most in-favor with the boss in charge of that intersection. And best way to ensure that you get to go first is to be a toady to that boss and spread lies about how the other people at the intersection hate that boss. And even then, the boss will let the dipshit nephew of his boss go first, because he's also a toady. And soon it turns out that no one in charge of intersections is actually good at running intersections, they're just the better ass-kissers.
dasfoo
2mo ago
I think I know the kind of normies you are referencing here. There are roughly two stripes of normies -- people who don't think deeply / interrogate concepts -- that don't think "Communism is bad:"
- The normies who buy into the general media narrative that right-wingers are mean to minorities so anything to the left of them is kind, and that the right uses "Communism" to scare people into being mean, so it must be OK.
- The normies who think free stuff has no costs, because they aren't direct costs. (I had a conversation once with a guy from Latin America who was self-declared "pro-freedom," but to him freedom meant freedom from hunger + freedom from poverty).
I wouldn't try to get into a philosophical discussion with someone who doesn't think philosophically. I think you have to take a practical approach, like:
What should happen to people who don't want to participate? What if the government tells you your job is to dig ditches all day every day, and you would rather knit or fix cars or answer phones? Or, worse, start your own business? They say no, you will dig ditches. What should happen to you? What if you accept being forced to dig ditches, but want to talk to your fellow ditch-diggers about how you don't like digging ditches? The government (your boss) tells you to stop talking about that. What should happen to you if you keep talking about it? What if you think of a better, more efficient way to get the ditch dug, that requires less effort on your part, and your boss doesn't care? Communism isn't creative; it doesn't allow for individual initiative/enterprise (except for political climbers, but watch out for the other political climbers!). Every person is a cog in a machine and if you are not a cog in the machine you are a problem. It doesn't matter if the machine is efficient or even operable, you are there to do what you're told, or you're a problem. This is why Communuist countries do not allow their citizens to leave and invariably turn into prisons/death camps.
The Marxist argument against capitalism is that there are a lot of real problems with capitalism, and it presents itself as an idealized solution to the problems of capitalism. The problem with this is that people are imperfect and any system run by people will be imperfect, including Communism. There is no Utopia. All of the same human failings that Communism wants to eliminate will be present inside Communism. There will always be problems. In a centralized system, the problems created by that system are distributed throughout the entire system. One important person makes a mistake or does something evil, and everyone downstream of that important person has to confront the consequences and has no recourse to fix the mistake -- you may not even be able to acknowledge the mistake without consequences!
Capitalism is decentralized, so it's a bunch of people making their own mistakes, and these mistakes have a smaller impact because those downstream are fewer and may be able to navigate their own mitigation strategies. Of course, these people might not make a mistake but do something good that will have good effects on anyone downstream from them. Communism essentially precludes the possibility of the good thing happening and instead locks everyone into the shared mistake path.
As a sort of libertarian, I've been accused of favoring my own Utopian ideal, but really it's the opposite: an anti-utopian ideal. People will do things badly and hurt themselves, and the best way to minimize the effects of this is to keep power limited and allow people the flexibility to fix their own mistakes or mold their circumstances to avoid the worst effects of others' mistakes. Meanwhile, we can share in the benefits from people who do the good things by choosing to trade with them and work on our own good things that give us purpose.
dasfoo
2mo ago
Another reason why the left currently worries me more is that their delusions are deeper than the right's delusions.
Yes: The left is smart and understands the system and has been re-engineering it for decades. I am far more wary of smart people who know how to accomplish bad things than dumb people who might accidentally break some stuff but don't know how to permanently damage the structure of it. It's a grim choice, and I can't endorse either one, but I know which one is more frightening.
dasfoo
2mo ago
In some countries, they refer to this as a "coup".
No, it isn't.
First, a party can nominate whoever it wants; it doesn't have to go through a "democratic" primary process, and the Democrats only did that in the most disingenuous way possible for this election.
Second, it's absurd for people on the right to try to claim that, both, A. Biden is mentally unfit; and B. It's a "coup" to replace him. If A, then B must happen in the name of civic responsibility.
I'll grant that a lot of Democratic Party shenanigans stink to high heaven, and this whole election process makes them look like the most cynical operators. But it's rich for people, most of whom don't even think Biden was legitimately elected in the first place, to try to claim that switching out nominees in this case is somehow deeply illegitmate.
dasfoo
2mo ago
but the category error made is thinking that the consensus shifts mainly through some actor above the grassroots
A good example of this is the split between Trump and his base on the Covid vaccine's Operation Warp Speed. He could brag about that non-stop and it would convince none of them. But within an hour all loyal Democrats will replace their Twitter profile pics with Ukraine flags and make jokes about couches. It's an open question whether the centralized media/messaging on the left and the decentralized media/messaging on the right is reflective or formative of the respective groups and their information heirarchies.
dasfoo
2mo ago
Instead every comment that goes against the left wing hive mind is a bot
More specifically, a "Russian bot."
dasfoo
2mo ago
There was no mystery as to the identity of the shooter
Officially, maybe, but speculation about Maxwell Yearick is still circulating on social media.
dasfoo
2mo ago
Why is she gunning for debates with mics on, now? It’s clear her team think she can say nothing for an hour while interrupting Trump and looking ‘strong’.
Trump defeats himself when he can't stop talking, which is why his 2020 debate with Biden went so poorly for him due to his constant interruptions, but in the 2024 debate Biden had several uninterrupted moments of looking old and weak. A closed mic helps Trump even though/because it goes against's Trump's nature.
dasfoo
2mo ago
The difference is that nothing positive can break for Kamala.
What if Biden is declared unfit in early October and a new wave of enthusiasm for the First Woman President gives her a 5% boost to carry her through the election a week or two after she assumes office?
dasfoo
2mo ago
I think about that a lot, for what it’s worth. Asking Pence not to certify the election seems like a bright line though.
If not for the 2020 election shenanigans I’d probably agree that he’s just like the prior republican candidates and we’ll see him as tame in ten years compared to the New Threat.
I struggle with this, too. I am anti-Trump for many reasons -- mainly that he's civically corrosive and ignorant of how to operate as president -- and I certainly think that he handled the aftermath of the 2020 election poorly. And I'm glad Pence stood up for order over chaos. However, I don't think that Trump (and the circle of hucksters that he attracts) being typically dumb in his reaction to a very fishy election negates that there was a lot of very fishy stuff going on with that election. IMO everything Trump did made it worse and not better, but the legitimacy of the gripe is still mostly unexamined and very concerning.
dasfoo
2mo ago
Saint McConnell saw the necessity of this 30 years ago and went all in on his career to get the courts where they are today.
And who is ironically hated by MAGA as a swamp creature when his ability to navigate the swamp gave them Dobbs. I'm fairly certain that he made a deal with Trump in 2016: We GOP holdouts in the Senate will support you if you let us pick all the judges. It's emblematic of Trump's know-nothing approach to government and the blind cult of personality in his followers that McConnell is so despised by the new right.
dasfoo
3mo ago
Logan's Run
Also: Soylent Green & Midsommar
Lots of movie options that really sell mandatory euthanasia in a positive light!
dasfoo
3mo ago
Or "a" Somali flag rather than "the" Somali flag: https://www.sportskeeda.com/pop-culture/news-the-united-states-losing-identity-new-minnesota-state-flag-s-resemblance-jubaland-somalia-sparks-controversy-online
dasfoo
3mo ago
What does this mean?
Here she is recalling indulging in the smell of burning tires as an evocation of our times: https://x.com/JessicoBowman/status/1820975378485100928
There's another one of her hoping the riots / looting last as long as they need to. I'll post it when I find it.
dasfoo
3mo ago
There's now a counter-attack to the couch meme forming on X with a false rumor that Waltz has admitted to drinking horse semen. This kind of low-blow falsehood becoming a tit-for-tat escalation is both not good and easily foreseeable.
dasfoo
3mo ago
The fear of being too pro Israel isn't so much about votes as a first order effect
It is about votes if you need to win Michigan.
dasfoo
3mo ago
the "Vance is weird" thing REALLY got under GOP's skin
I've seen this claim a lot on Reddit, along with the celebration of Waltz's dig at the Vance couch rumors. I think it's either a disingenuous interpretation or a case of the Democrats getting high on their own supply. Here's how I interpret the Right's indignance at both of these attacks:
They are both completely manufactured by the powerful coordination of Democrat politicians, the media, and big tech. The individual claims are a trifle, but it's the ease by which both were able to propagate into culturally pervasive conventional wisdom in hours is pretty frightening. They're also completely transparent in their engineering, which goes like this: 1. Make some oddball claim that is either opinion or invented from whole cloth. 2. Follow quickly with a barrage stories about how wounding this claim has been to Republicans. It's dizzying. I would be that most Republicans hadn't even heard of these attacks until after the round of stories came out claiming how devastating these attacks have been.
It's also notable how inauthentic these two claims are in that the attacks therein are virtues within liberalism, where weirdness and sexual noncoformity are supposedly sacred. So it also exposes a deep hipocrisy within Democrats who will apparently say anything to win (I'm not exempting the GOP/Trumpism from this, BTW, just pointing out that the lack of concern for principles is rarely this brazen and happy to be this brazen).
I'm surrounded by Republicans who don't care about these attacks. They're laughable, absurd even. Except for how powerfully they've been executed.
dasfoo
3mo ago
Name-calling and “vibes” were also the strategy in 2016. Racist/Sexist/Orange/Fascist have literally always been the plan of attack against Trump.
Trump is nothing new in substance, only in style. He's the ugly reflection of politics-as-usual who doesn't feign civility while throwing the same knives.
dasfoo
3mo ago
Any minnesotans got any cool stories about him?
Some of the stuff coming out about him includes:
- Claims that he quit his National Guard post when they were called up to Iraq but has continued to play it up in his bio, including citing a retroactively invalidated rank
- Was once arrested for DUI going nearly 100mph in a 55 zone
- While he allowed Minneapolis to burn in 2020 his wife found romance in the smell of the fiery destruction
- Presided over the redesign of the MN state flag to resemble the Somali flag
- "Tampon Tim"
Can't vouch for the truthiness of any of these. Interesting how #1 & #2 strongly echo attacks on Geroge W Bush in 2000 and 2004.
dasfoo
3mo ago
Basically a bunch of people who had reason to dislike him came forward and badmouthed his claims about his military service. I have no idea what the truth is or the specifics of the claims.
Their claim was that he was a rich kid who wanted military "experience" for his future political career and didn't do anything as soldier. IIRC they even suggested his Silver Star was earned via an intentionally-inflicted minor wound that also got his tour cut short.
I don't agree that Trump is lying is most cases like this. Almost worse, it's that he doesn't care to know if it's the truth. It sounds good to him to say, and the truth of it is irrelevant.
How many things does Trump say during debates and his speeches that are merely poorly remembered memes he saw on X or Truth?
IMO, it should behoove a leader to care to make the best case for their argument, and that includes understanding and optimizing for the biases in the medium through which the argument is presented. If Trump knows he is going to be mercilessly fact-checked, it's on him to make life tougher not easier for the fact-checkers. He makes valid arguments sound like lies because he doesn't bother to make them sound as true as possible, and that's unforgiveable.
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