I'm not saying I'm definitely right. And sure, the libs deserve the dunking. I look back to when I was a lib and I cringe at the shit I used to say. I'm certainly not thinking "oh why were they mean to me when I said something totally sexist", and honestly fuck anyone that puts their short term feelings above the oppression of a marginalised group.
That said, I think that some Hexbear peeps might be enjoying the now long-lost experience of dunking on libs. I get it, it's fine, I would too. I'm just wondering if we can tone down the insults and PPB, especially in other instances. I would really stick to informed discussion if possible. I'm not reading comments in too much detail, so maybe I'm wrong. I'm seeing a lot of people here put in a ton of genuine effort, and those posters get a 
from me.
I have seen Lemmygrad posters complain (nicely) about the level of PPB and shitposting in non shitposting communities. Frankly I think the deserve a bit of respect in their communities. Their culture isn't the same as ours. I love you guys, but PPB is really only funny in Hexbear.
I sorta feel like a mass defederation is just a matter of time regardless of what we do. Maybe I'm just being hopeful that we can make this thing work. Dunno, you don't have to fully agree with me. But for me personally, I would post a lot more carefully with non Hexbear users.
Edit: let me reiterate that the libs do deserve the dunking
I guess it's because of all the suffering that Western imperialism has caused the world. If one assumes that Western power structures are inherently fair and ok, that person is washing the crimes of the West by just a little bit. If one assumes that capitalism works and is somehow fair, one neglects all the overseas exploitation that makes it happen.
If you're a socdem lib, you're still to the left of my early days, so me personally, I'm not gonna treat you like a demon.
I think the other answer is that a lot of us see a lot of genuine bullshit irl, and "dunking on a lib" is a small way to vent about all the unfair shit we're exposed to. I'm sorry if it's stressful in the short term, but try to remember that people are really hurting right now. I've definitely been dunked on by a marginalised person before, I've even been wrong. But I try to take the grown-up road and realise my privilege.
Edit, I forgot to add that liberals are complete dicks to us online when they are in the majority, like on Reddit.
I do not support imperialism, neither do I assume any system of power (political or economic) to be inherently fair. I do however prefer democracy (flawed it may be) to a more authoritarian system when it comes to changing systems for the better. Whatever "better" looks like for the systems in question.
So... tribalism? That is understandable i guess.
I'm not saying that you support imperialism explicitly. But if you ignore the last 5 centuries of colonialisation, and take a pro-Western stance, then you're implicitly ignoring and whitewashing said events.
Do you have any control at your workplace? Do you have any say in whether you're fired or not? Billionaires with huge egos like Musk running everything because of only their whim, is this democracy? Can you vote to stop ExxonMobile from drilling more oil wells? If you really believe that choosing between two pro-business parties is "democracy", you've been progandised
I kinda shocked that people aren't more mad. You are aware that our planet is dying, and that we have maybe a decade before complete climate collapse happens. I'm sorry that people are mean to you, but please make the effort to have a bit of humanity for their stress.
I personally probably can't stop Exxon from drilling more oil wells, but I am confident that if a significant portion U.S. population suddenly decided to not drive cars anymore and lobbied the government for more investment into clean energy and walkable cities, that Exxon might have to slow its operations significantly... this is all to say I do believe the US has a democracy, if the majority really wants something, they don't need to fear retaliation by an authoritarian government, they can call their representative, or vote for one that reflects their perspective. Sure, democracy is slow, and vulnerable to political "superstructures" (non-codified systems like parties or coalitions) which cause distortions (i.e. the 2-party system in the U.S.). But I'd rather have a system that at least allows for grassroots change than a system that is scared of its own populace.
People are mad, I'm mad at the way things are too! I think some people don't express it much because being mad all the time is tiring and many feel helpless to try to change things which is a miserable feeling. Even so, words and ideas are cheap, convincing others to act using those words, or acting yourself, that is what changes the world.
It's not like the automotive and oil companies didn't actively make the unwalkable cities that we know today. Heaps of surveys show that most Americans opposed new fossil fuel drilling, yet their opinions do not matter. Arguably the fossil fuel industry is the largest lobbying sector. The war in Iraq and the conflict in Iran is pushed by the petrol industry. Are you honestly gonna say that a working class person and their vote has anywhere near the electoral power of some oil exec???
I'm an old man, and people have been fighting the fossil fuel industry since well before I was born. If we keep believing that the US is some sort of democracy, and the course runs like this for a few more years, it's climate game over.
What do you mean?
Just saying... Wouldn't it be better if the economic system was democratic as well? Like if we were able to vote on what companies do?
the issue is strictly this part of your ideology. "authoritarian" as it refers to liberal geopolitics is a completely frivolous word with absolutely no useful meaning. "authoritarianism" as a whole was invented to conflate nazi germany with the socialists they were attempting to genocide, while putting "non-authoritarian" US and UK on the other side of the scale. The US who's policy of manifest destiny provided inspiration to Hitler to do the same thing to the Soviet Union, and the UK - who at the time of 20 million+ soviets dying to end the nazis in 1943 - was creating the conditions for the Bengal Famine and doing nothing about it as "[Indians breed] like rabbits".
if you are really interested look into the system of soviets (worker committees) and soviet democracy worked. look into how the democracy of China works. look into how the democracy of Cuba works. in all of these countries the "authority" of the state is subject to a complex system of democracy in order to implement policies to the benefit of the poor and working masses.
interestingly enough, State And Revolution is an incredibly insightful reading on the historical development and understanding of the state, and was developed at the historical juncture where the contradictions and failures of social democracy were coming to the forefront of the discussion. its a really great read that I highly recommend regardless of political inclination, where any discussion on the nature of what the state is, where does it come from, and what is its purpose is inarguably incomplete without having read it first.
I wrote some comments below, but before you respond to that if you don't mind, could you write a comment with your answer to the question: Would you prefer that the president of the United States not be elected by a direct popular election, and if so, what would you prefer instead?
Now that you've answered that. Here are my replies to your comments:
For the purposes of this conversation, my definition of the word is as follows:
"a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting."
I don't believe communism or socialism are inherently authoritarian ideas, but I believe they have had notable examples of authoritarian implementations. Technically most "liberal democracies" today do some socialist things (depending on which definition you choose): e.g. the welfare state and public management of infrastructure.
I have, and if wikipedia is to trusted, I don't like what I see. For a democracy to work, decisions should reflect the approximate desire of an informed populace. This requires the freedom of speech and press which neither the governments of China or Cuba allow. Cuba has elections, but they are a formality since no one else but the ruling party can actually run for any given seat. I didn't see much about the
I tried to start reading it, but the terminology is unfamiliar and I don't think I could comprehend it properly (or at least not as well as I'd like to). Do you perhaps know if there is a more modern resource that conveys the same ideas but with simpler language? (Perhaps a recently written summary with pertinent examples for how the ideas might apply to modern situations like how this book review comments on Henry George's book Progress and Poverty)
Whatever leadership of the United States exists should be determined by a balance of popular democracy and informed public opinion. This both communists and liberals nominally agree on, but liberalism can never fully fulfill on its promise of. Communism itself is birthed by the failures of liberalism to fulfill its own promises, where - despite being a progressive break from feudalism - it is shackled by its mandate of class society: a form of society where classes with antagonistic and irreconcilable interests will ultimately have to sublimate into what is typically referred to at this point as "socialism or barbarism".
First, I would probably need to convince you that "liberal democracy" is and always has only ever truly protected the interests of the propertied ruling class. I could start from the inception point of liberalism - the French Revolution - but I think it is inarguably obvious except to only the most blind, sheltered and ideologically committed that even the current day shining example of liberal democracy only exists for the interests of the propertied ruling class to maintain the status quo of normalized superexploitation of the working masses.
https://pnhp.org/news/gilens-and-page-average-citizens-have-little-impact-on-public-policy/ There's this study where:
since the first official collaboration between the Democrats and Republicans in the 1960s to crush Black Reconstruction and Northern unions, both parties in our so-called "pluralist" democracy have only ever sought to: reconcile the antagonistic contradictions of class society and enrich themselves in the process. There is literally "little to no" popular democracy in the United States, where typical of liberalism only the propertied and those designated by the state as "people" get any "popular" say.
Secondly, I'd like to bring your attention to Cuba. Just in the past year they passed a popular referendum to pass an amendment to the Family Code of the constitution to make Cuba the most progressive country in the planet on LGBTQ and familial rights, far surpassing even the most progressive liberal countries on LGBTQ rights in particular. This referendum (which is just honestly so inspiring to me) was passed through the development and efforts of the Cuban people to reckon with and educate the populace of a majority Catholic and historically homophobic country and with both civilian activist and governmental organizations were able to educate the people to decide for themselves on the correct position to take.
When the referendum was introduced in 2019, Cuba carried out nationwide education and outreach; nearly 6.5 million Cubans took part in more than 79,000 meetings facilitated by community orgs to shape the amendment democratically. In regards to participatory democracy: over 400,000 proposals were offered by the people resulting in the 25th version of the Code for the referendum vote – which was approved by a 66-33% vote.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220928125838/https://en.granma.cu/cuba/2022-09-22/love-also-generates-kinship from Granma the official newspaper of the PCC
-Maria Castro Espín, Director CENESEX (National Sex Education Center founded in 1989)
This is democracy. Not Mitch McConnell being the 6th richest person in the entire state of Kentucky. And I think this is where State and Revolutions concepts really come into play. What we have in the United States is a 2-party *Dictatorship of the Bourgeoisie. There is no democracy for the proletariat (working class). Democracy is an ideal that we have to do our best to approximate: it will require experimentation and scientific trial and error in order to ultimately birth a system completely unimaginable to us with the outcomes of "democracy", and revolutionizing the current system to a truly democratic path is really only the beginning.
Also it's important to note that liberal media (media controlled by capitalists that espouse the values of liberalism: individualism, capitalism, and maintenance of the status quo) will always try to portray its own system as superior using completely arbitrary values that - to those of us who grow up in a liberal society - will also always try to portray themselves as invisible, or ubiquitous, or unbiased.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/
China and Cuba, despite having different forms of democracy than liberal "multipluralism", have a significantly stronger popular mandate than the United States. And anybody can run for local positions, both China and Cuba have a plurality of political parties in their congresses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_People%27s_Congress even on wikipedia you can literally see that little rainbow of different parties.
The reason why Marxist-Leninist countries need to be able to "enforce a political majority" (which again we already have covered that the United States does a thousand-fold) is because capitalism has a need to constantly expand into newer markets, and looks at the interior and non-privatized industries of communist countries as assets begging to privatized and subsumed into the market. The concept of the "shock doctrine" outlines this, where the fall of the soviet union in 1991 - regardless of your opinion on them - lead to a crushing and disastrous humanitarian disaster where corporations were consuming the entire nationalized interior and leaving the people to die in hospitals that could no longer supply running water. Even now capitalism looks at every single "new market" interior with malice and is currently looking to dismantle and liberalize any resistance to this process.
and here's some resources that i think may be helpful if you are seeking to understand my position:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQfibsxYg8E
I recommend every single Michael Parenti lecture you can find on youtube. He is a really great communicator and has a very sharp understanding of marxism. This lecture will help explain shock doctrine and my last paragraph for you. I would highly highly highly recommend his book Blackshirts and Reds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhxYqxm_TPE
here's a podcast i really like that discusses State and Revolution and will probably be an easier gateway into the concepts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4glOA3MGuw
this is a nice tight video explaining in short form the contradictions within capitalism and so called social democracy.
there is no democracy , there is only oligarchy ... Democracy with a Kreditor and Landholderclass is not viable , it has failed where ever it has been tried.
How do you define "failure" in this context? What makes one country more of a failure than another?