They’re scared :lenin-laugh:
Also this is just a list of countries where the US killed indiscriminately to end socialism (not Cambodia)
“ Whereas the “Father of the Constitution”, President James Madison, wrote that it “is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest”; and
Whereas the United States of America was founded on the belief in the sanctity of the individual, to which the collectivistic system of socialism in all of its forms is fundamentally and necessarily opposed: Now, therefore, be it resolved that Congress denounces socialism”
Lemme just cite a slaver on the violation of one class of citizens for the benefit of another
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The ouroboros that was unknowingly begun by red scare reactionaries is mildly funny to look back on; after many years of the conservatives using 'socialism' as a cudgel against liberals for decades out of shameless opportunism, a significant contingent of conservatives now actually believes the liberals are socialists
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Do they know it's not? I can deprogram chud family members fairly regularly and with almost no real issue when I'm there, but the very next night of Tucker Carlson undoes all of that. With that in mind, I struggle to find any explanation for it besides that on some level, they literally do not know how to put together a cohesive world view. So maybe everything they say is real to them because they have no prior education that allows them to form a cohesive understanding of the world around them, even under a liberal framework?
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Okay but now I'm clueless about who is "they"? There are normal people that are conservatives just because they literally don't know anything. Like literal calcified rock-brains that are byproducts of a horribly inefficient and counterproductive education system. Those people are definitely not excused from having shit takes, and when they get in the way, I promise I won't have any qualms about which of them goes against the wall, but I think it's a massive stretch to assume they are consciously nefarious agents, when they are so clearly dullard in everything they know. This is especially the case when we consider that we can clearly deprogram 90% of these people when we use language that doesn't offend their sensibilities. The only reason I'm under the impression these "ordinary chuds" are the "they" of conversation, is because your general reflection back to "the conservative mind" after you make your point about their political leaders.
If we're discussing "they" as in, the political leaders of conservatism, then to that I entirely agree, on both your psychological analysis and the dialectical one premised in the first part of your comment.
My limited but direct experience with capitalists and Congressional politicians is that their socioeconomic understanding is right around the median for all college-educated Americans, which means they basically have zero understanding at all. I'm talking even just bourgeois, pro-capitalist knowledge; much less a real materialist understanding.
Michael Hudson talks about how his single largest book buy of Superimperialism was from the CIA, who saw it as a how-to manual. Reading between the lines, I bet what Hudson wrote was news even to most folks in the CIA.
That's a dangerous assumption. I do agree that many of them do and always have, but there are also more than a few who knew very well how to weaponize it (Cheney, Kissinger, Nixon, even Mitch McConnell to a degree, etc).
That said, the vanguard of clever conservative bastards seems to be dwindling; DeSantis is considered the 'brilliant' evil to be running, and while he is better able to leverage his power than some he still comes across as incapable of the sort of insidious nastiness the aforementioned types were
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I guess we're getting into semantics here vis a vis liars believing their own lies or not; I agree wholeheartedly that people can absolutely buy their own lies while trying to peddle them (and not necessarily just be idiots while doing so), but I just am extremely skeptical of the idea that figures like the ones I mentioned bought into their own lies. Maybe I do give some of them a bit too much credence.
it's not quite the point I was trying to make though; I was more asserting that conservatives can be brilliant and dangerous in much the same vein as some libs, though the numbers seem to be declining (mercifully), apologies if it came off differently
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Agreed
:left-unity-3:
What’s strange sometimes reading candid quotes from US “cold warriors” is they often have some basic understanding of theory. Comes as a shock when you’re used to the brain worms.
I think it also made liberals a lot more comfortable with "socialism" and gave us a lot of ground.