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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   2822 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 9, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I click the twitter link and half of it seems to be people shitting on Trump for some reason (his truth social stuff being less coherent than usual?), accusing him of being an Adderall addict, of somehow being responsible for the shortage. I live in a very different twitter bubble to these people, clearly.

I feel like we've trained a generation of morons that if they want social approval all they have to do is say something mean about Trump. It's all so tiresome.

Was it ever this bad before? Like, even in Nazi Germany, did people in casual conversation just say "of course the Jews are to blame" every other sentence. Somehow I doubt it. Trump is the word that kills all intelligent thought in at least half the population. It's especially disappointing when it's people who should know better.

Was it ever this bad before?

Worse, if accounts from Mao's China are to be believed. People were bookending their verbal interactions with quotations from Mao, even for things like ordering from a shop. If you haven't read the account of Mao's mangoes, you really ought to.

On 5 August 1968, Mao received the Pakistani foreign minister Mian Arshad Hussain, who brought with him a basket of golden mangoes as gifts for the Chairman. Instead of eating the mangoes, Mao decided to give them to the Capital Worker and Peasant Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Team … that had earlier been sent to the Qinghua University in Beijing to rein in the rival Red Guard gangs. Two days later, on 7 August, the People’s Daily, the official news organ of the Communist Party-state, carried a report on the mango gift that included the following extra-long headline in extra-large font: ‘The greatest concern, the greatest trust, the greatest support, the greatest encouragement; our great leader Chairman Mao’s heart is always linked with the hearts of the masses; Chairman Mao gave the precious gifts given by a foreign friend to the Capital Worker and Peasant Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Team’.

Yuet Chau then quotes an eyewitness:

Mao gave the mangoes to Wang Dongxing, who divided them up, distributing one mango each to a number of leading factories in Beijing, including Beijing Textile Factory, where I was then living. The workers at the factory held a huge ceremony, rich in the recitation of Mao’s words, to welcome the arrival of the mango, then sealed the fruit in wax, hoping to preserve it for posterity. The mangoes became sacred relics, objects of veneration. The wax-covered fruit was placed on an altar in the factory auditorium, and workers lined up to file past it, solemnly bowing as they walked by. No one had thought to sterilize the mango before sealing it, however, and after a few days on display, it began to show signs of rot. The revolutionary committee of the factory retrieved the rotting mango, peeled it, then boiled the flesh in a huge pot of water. Mao again was greatly venerated, and the gift of the mango was lauded as evidence of the Chairman's deep concern for the workers. Then everyone in the factory filed by and each worker drank a spoonful of the water in which the sacred mango had been boiled. After that, the revolutionary committee ordered a wax model of the original mango. The replica was duly made and placed on the altar to replace the real fruit, and workers continued to file by, their veneration for the sacred object in no apparent way diminished.

...via this classic post.

Your post reminded me of the time that Trump supporters staged a violent coup in the Capital. Except the opposite. Because I thought your post was top notch. Unlike the time that Trump said he wanted to kill all the Muslims and gays.

Now you're just repeating your theme in a low-effort way.

I was riffing off the parent's comment that routine interactions were sandwiched between salutes to Mao. Also, this is small-question Sunday. Hard to figure out where it's allowed to be funny here (or attempt to be at least).

To be fair, before Trump there were a ton of people who blamed Obama for every single thing under the sun. It wasn't quite as bad as the Trump situation but it was pretty damn close. This isn't a new phenomenon for our society, unfortunately.

Yeah, there's a reason "Thanks, Obama" became a meme.

Quite possibly. I guess I'm just not exposed to those people, not having any working class friends or family. I also don't need to care about what they think as they have virtually no influence over my life.

It was more ‘conservatives’ than ‘working class people’ who blamed Obama for everything. Granted that Obama presided over the white working class near-continually shifting right, but these are not quite the same things and the most intense partisanship is usually a college educated game.

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