• DirtyPair [they/them]
    hexbear
    78
    2 months ago

    struggling to accept that this is a real picture of china. it literally looks like those ridiculous sci-fi city concept artworks... but it's just China.

    photoshop some flying cars in and we're set.

  • Goadstool [he/him, comrade/them]
    hexbear
    63
    2 months ago

    What blows my mind the most about Americans gobbling down the anti-China goop being fed to them is the fact that just about every single fucking person I've ever met in America absolutely hates our government, and for one reason or another we all openly agree and joke about what a farce it is. So, why are all these same people so eager to tear down the CPC, just to replace it with the exact same type of system they all fucking hate? I suppose because then the news would stop telling them how bad and wrong China is all the time, and they can just go back to never thinking about it at all.

    • Teekeeus [comrade/them]
      hexbear
      37
      2 months ago

      They still think that other systems must necessarily be worse than their own because westerners are aryan ubermensch

      • @Pandantic@midwest.social
        hexbear
        36
        2 months ago

        Or like my SO still thinks, capitalism “is the only system that has worked.”

        And I gesture widely and say “Has it?”

          • AcidLeaves [he/him, he/him]
            hexagon
            hexbear
            21
            2 months ago

            I'm sure limiting your dating pool to literally 0.000001% of the population is a realistic strategy to have

            • imogen_underscore [it/its, she/her]
              hexbear
              7
              2 months ago

              this is generally a fair point but I personally would not date someone who still has any faith in capitalism. lib brained twitter socialist is like the bare minimum if we're talking long term relationship, and where I live young people are largely anti capitalist in some form or other, unless they are rich.

        • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
          hexbear
          12
          2 months ago

          People talk about the failures of socialism, but what has capitalism done for Latin America, Africa, and Asia?

          fidel-balling

    • emizeko [they/them]
      hexbear
      30
      2 months ago

      Many westerners come to socialism not out of necessity, but out of disillusionment. We are raised with the idea that Liberal Democracy is the best system of political expression humanity has devised. When confronted with the reality of its shortcomings, rather than narrowly discard liberalism or electoralism, the western anti-capitalist tends to draw sweeping conclusions about the inadequacy of all existing systems. Curiously, though it would at first seem that such denunciations are more principled and severe, they are in fact more compatible with existing and widespread beliefs about the supremacy of the western system. That is to say, when a Marxist-Leninist asserts the superiority of existing socialist experiments, they are directly challenging the idea that westerners are at the forefront of political development. By contrast, the assertions from anarchists and social democrats that we need to build a more utopian future out of our current apex are compatible not only with each other, as discussed earlier, but also do not really offend bourgeois society at large. They in fact end up not sounding too different from the arch-imperialist Winston Churchill holding forth on how ours is the worst system, except for all the others which have been tried. Western chauvinists, consciously or unconsciously, struggle with the idea that they should study and humbly take lessons from the imperial periphery. [15] It is much easier for the chauvinist, psychologically, to position oneself as at the very front of a new vanguard.

      from https://redsails.org/why-marxism/

    • star_wraith [he/him]
      hexbear
      27
      2 months ago

      The typical American probably thinks that, outside of Hong Kong, everyone lives in extreme poverty in shacks. Or at best, in very small apartments in massive plain concrete buildings that look like prisons.

      Just last week, I was talking with a coworker who didn’t realize South Africa had paved roads.

      • WideningGyro [any]
        hexbear
        6
        2 months ago

        Saw a TV show the other day where a Cuban refugee is sick and someone goes "They had to flee. No way to get treatment in Cuba." and I'm just like, Cuba? The country with one of the world's best healthcare systems? The one that educates the most doctors per capita? That Cuba?

        But sure, flee to the US, where penniless immigrants tend to have access to excellent care, I'm sure.

    • @Sons_of_Ferrix
      hexbear
      20
      2 months ago

      They specifically hate the domestic, internal bureaucracies that nag them, they don't like paying taxes or not being able to dump toxic slug down their sewer drain. It's narcissistic individualism, they want to be able to do what they want while also having a Big-Other to protect them from the consequences of their actions. Americans love the State when it comes to enforcing global dollar hegemony.

      CHUDs hate the metropolitan, snotty, arty elite and their henchmen the spooky Three-Letter-Boys, but they love the beef eating, beer drinking, good ol' boys military and cops who protect the Church and local petty-bourg, cuz it ain't really about freedom it's about a social order that lets you marry your 13 year old niece, so she can join your 2nd cousin wife in the kitchen. Can't let any of them woke ass socialism countries with their female emancipation get too popular.

    • 420blazeit69 [he/him]
      hexbear
      10
      2 months ago

      every single fucking person I've ever met in America absolutely hates our government

      Unfortunately, nationalism is fully compatible with hating who's in charge.

    • quarrk [he/him]
      hexbear
      4
      2 months ago

      Americans hate individuals in government, believing that if it weren’t for [Specific Partisan] the US government would finally align with their dreams and everything would be way better than China ever could be. But it’s just because the wrong people are in power — the power structure itself is not to be questioned.

      This is the same issue with the Harry Potter books, as Shaun points out in his video. Rowling is herself a major neoliberal, so she can’t write realistic villains (Voldemort) nor solve the systemic evils of the fucked up, racist, and discriminatory Wizarding World. Her solutions are all to remove the problematic individuals and stop short of systemic change. Harry decides near the end that

      spoiler

      he wants to be an auror

      lmao.

  • Des [she/her, they/them]
    hexbear
    30
    2 months ago

    wojak-nooo all those buildings will just fall down in a year no safety standards aarrruuughh blaaruurrghh