And how they had people in clean suits spraying down entire streets with disinfectant.
It's a good thing the West picked up on the queen that it might be a good idea to prepare for a virus. Imagine if they decided instead to do nothing, but then blame China for the virus and claim that they created it in a lab and hid the virus from the world.
Just imagine if the West did nothing and instead decided to let it rip through their countries.
Still decolonizing my brain, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about China overall, but:
The level of double think on display in social media, reddit especially, going from: how overblown and absurd China's response to "basically sars" was, to how inadequate our response was, to how China didn't respond fast enough actually, to how we should be skeptical of their positive numbers but ours our totally legit despite the actions of the whitehouse, has left me genuinely fucking terrified.
Edit: actually I'm not done...Like seriously: its revealed to me a level of propaganda that's making me actively question how much of what I believe to be valid criticisms of China I believe for reasons that are complete bullshit. The hive mind litterally cannot tolerate china being correct on something.
Edit: actually I’m not done…Like seriously: its revealed to me a level of propaganda that’s making me actively question how much of what I believe to be valid criticisms of China I believe for reasons that are complete bullshit.
Everything you learn is anglo, western, and above all WHITE propaganda. Not just about China.
China had the best response. The US hid it for far longer on its navy ships, military bases, etc
POC are routinely not awarded credit for their discoveries/inventions. Look up Shibasaburo and Yersinia pestis.
Or just think about the Indian numerals you use, the first iron metallurgy being in Africa, etc.Rhinos, elephants, and other African/Indian megafauna experienced 90% of their decline under white rule.
US white settlers were calling themselves "Native Americans" in the 1800s, to foster a sense of nativity. Thus "American Indian" is actually an old racial slur that has simply reached such normative levels that the originally oppressed have just come to accept it.
Similar stories with other redefined racial terms like "Caucasian" and "Aryan", redefined to assuage white insecurity.Vikings are just a meme because the Swedes were butthurt about losing Finland. The meme started 2 years after they lost the Finnish war.
The American bison went basically extinct because US whites shot them all to starve the Plains Americans. Even today, all bison are mixed with cattle genes.
Europe is not a continent. It's just Northwest Asia.
White people are mixed race. (Yamnaya, Early farmers from Anatolia, Uralics etc)
Light skin, and also Brown eyes, are a Middle Eastern feature.
etc.
It's literally every single thing that you are ever taught, and I can't overemphasize how NON-hyperbolic I'm being right now. Everything you hear, be it from a history book or just people chatting, is laced with lies, spins, and omissions to look a certain way, and even the well-meaning people will repeat these lies because there are so fucking many of them, they're like bacteria. You won't learn reality unless you go looking for it yourself.
I was taught in school that bison went extinct because of excessive hunting.. I really live in a society.
article about genocide that talks about this and I think draws some great points out of it:
Buffalo Skulls by Aaron Bady
In 1807, Sweden owned the entire country of Finland.
In 1809, Sweden had lost the entire country of Finland.In 1811, the Vikingen poem was published.
Why did a poem about random looters from 800 years ago COINCIDENTALLY become popular at that time? And subsequently go on to establish itself among other northern Euros as a mythical race of ubermensch?
Because it was cope from losing to Finland, of course. Same as how after 9/11 there was a huge resurgence of "muh american exceptionalism"
There were various tribes of looters/rapists/pillagers everywhere throughout history, they happen as a rule when an empire grows weak. The fact that the vikings are so popular, despite having basically zero impact on anything (contrast to the Arabs for example, who were a huge deal by spreading the entire religion of Islam), is a function of 1) general white romantic cope but also 2) specifically Swedish cope that enabled the meme to even begin in the first place
ahh i see, you are talking about Viking romanticism. Carry on.
The super smart and talented bankers who bankrupted Iceland were referred to as vikings in the media when they were buying stuff overseas, they owned most of the media too of course. Turns out they were just idiots with easy access to loans.
I don't think I've ever seen the word "viking" be used in passing speech without making big cringe
It's "vikings" when they bankrupt Iceland and then again it's "vikings" fighting back against invaders when the Icelandic gov tries to hold them accountable
scandiboos are 100x worse than weeaboos ever were.
There is a myth here in Iceland of Icelanders being rugged and self-reliant, our forefathers having braved the extreme conditions. Nothing is better to disabuse you of that notion than reading Indendent People by Halldór Laxness.
Oh yeah, the other myth I forgot to mention is that Europe is cold. For some reason chuds are addicted to "muh cold climate strongman"
Europe's not cold. White people aren't "cold adapted". Iceland has winters like Manhattan. If you want cold adapted people, you might try looking at Siberians/Inuit or even Sami (who have about 40% East Asian admixture despite living in Scandinavia)
Asia and America are cold, Europe has climate that resembles Beijing and Virginia. The only parts of Europe that actually get cold are the ones that are transitioning into Asia (Russia, Belarus)
It's actually obscene how EASY the european climate is, the winters never drop below freezing, the summers never exceed 70F, and it has the most fertile soil on the earth excepting the US midwest
its revealed to me a level of propaganda that’s making me actively question how much of what I believe to be valid criticisms of China I believe for reasons that are complete bullshit. The hive mind litterally cannot tolerate china being correct on something.
You may be interested in this Michael Parenti article on Tibet.
Always makes me a bit sad to remember that people in Vietnam, New Zealand, and some parts of China have lived mostly-normal lives this year, but we can't have the same because we need to throw bodies onto the fire to make sure the economy can do its best impression of "functioning" to keep the ultra-wealthy from being slightly inconvenienced for a month.
Ok but we created a lot of value for this country's share holders
Given the media and lib response from January to March, I am 100% convinced that our COVID deaths would be about the same if Hillary was President, maybe a few less because of mask encouragement but not comparable to any other ostensibly rich country.
Possibly even worse, because the Republicans would probably have the House along with the Senate. They would have steadfastly refused any kind of stimulus aside from writing checks directly to the Kochs.
100%. This was laid bare to me the moment the liberal establishments response to the shutdown was "open the healthcare exchanges".
Remember when Pelosi's first inclination with a stimulus was tax credits and everyone was correctly worried someone in the GOP might be smart enough to flank her on the left?
De Blasio was insisting that NYC schools stay open even as cases were surging and Cuomo was ordering everything to close. Dem leadership did fuckall with news that Covid was bad in February, despite controlling one part of Congress. They absolutely dropped the ball as well.
In addition to that Western media would much rather report on the success of Western or Western-aligned nations like NZ and Taiwan rather than Vietnam's massive success.
If Cuba develops the first Covid vaccine the vocel police are going to need backup because I'll be shootin' ropes like Spiderman
It's now literally completely illegal for me to see my girlfriend for the foreseeable future, but she is literally forced to go into a lab with 35 other people to do some pipetting, and my brothers are legally obligated to sardine themselves into hallways much too small for them. Same for people at work.
Basically, our measures here in Canada are just as severe, for everything except the purpose of extracting surplus value from your human capital stock.
Guess we're in the same shitty boat. Hope you're holding up alright.
I think one of the things i never expected about becoming a leftist is how differently I would politically evaluate the notions of authoritarianism and dictatorship.
for me it was a huge moment when I understood what Marx was getting at about how all states are the domination of one class by another. the concept of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie finally articulated my sense of the futility in liberal democracy due to the massive asymmetry of power and interest
Exactly it’s a real eye opener to honestly reckon with the ways in which the U.S. is an authoritarian state domestically and internationally. And more importantly whose interest that authority serves.
Yeah but it’s nice too because it helps me better contextualize the actions of our own countries leadership
Remember when Wuhan got hit with a second wave of like less than 100 infections in June and tested 11,000,000 in less than a week?
BUT MUHH AUTHORITARIANNNISMM :xi-shining:
It was fucking authoritarian when I found out my relatives were free to fuck off and chill in China, and we were nowhere near the end of a "lockdown".
Imagine killing two hundred thousand people through negligence. Fucking negligence. And pretending that doesn't imply you live in a godawful state of powerlessness. Which you might, if you were so inclined, equate to some kind of "totalitarian authority" hmmm remind me if there's a word for that.
Yeah holy fuck, imagine if China really DID want to release a viral chemical weapon on America. Half of our country would literally walk through a cloud of lab designed flesh eating bacteria to get a haircut. We'd stand no chance.
All the sick man of Asia and China is now done articles from the western journalists came back like a boomerang. The real sick man was us all along...
Gordon Chang to be remembered as China's most accomplished double agent
the op-eds about Chinese lockdown being authoritarian was January
Pretty sure I remember covid in china being on the front page of reddit in December
Listen here a Western country didn't discover it so who gives a fuck
I can't believe it's literally been a year since we have known about covid...
Remembering back that far feels like trying to remember what I had for lunch March 12th 2003
