Westerners deciding who's doing real socialism or not. Westerners expressing their most vile sentiment for foreign countries rather than their own imperialism. Westerners praising the words of their own imperialist intelligence agencies. Westerners unironically praising their own nations for civil liberties like the freedom of fascists to assemble, freedom of racists to express themselves, freedom of parents to own their children, and freedom of school districts to continue racial segregation. Westerners praising imperialist nations like Norway as socialist while using bold language like fascism to describe places under that same exact threat of imperialism, like Cuba and Vietnam.
Westerners claiming foreign governments are merely pretending to be socialist, while claiming unorganized misinformed chauvinistic westerners are the true heirs to socialism, despite all they do is post online and complain about foreign nations.
Westerners praising anarchist movements from 100 years ago despite having no common cause with those movements, no connection to the circumstances within them, and probably no actual admiration of them. Westerners praising a bastardized, sectarian, perverse form of anarchism rather than attempting unity with organizations in their areas. Westerners refusing to speak with actual anarchists in their area, who by and large don't give a shit and just want to hand out food or help at shelters. If Buenaventura Durruti were alive today he'd be regarded with scorn by western chauvinists.
Westerners continuing to bring up Trotsky of all people, who wasn't relevant to world affairs for the last 15 years of his life and certainly not the past 80 years. Westerners not reading a single word of Trotsky's work, westerners focusing entirely on Trotsky's feud with Stalin, westerners not knowing that Trotsky was a literal military commander. Westerners calling themselves Trotskyists in 2023 for some reason. Westerners deciding they have a feud with Joseph Stalin, a man who died in 1953.
Westerners attempting to praise their own socialist leadership, who happen to be a scattered group of imperialist-aligned social democrats, Twitch streamers, and actual antisemitic grifters such as in the case of Caleb Maupin.
We got told to cool it with the emojis on other instances, because there's a Lemmy bug that makes our emojis look giant when we're not on Hexbear. A lot of us think it's funny though that our pig shit image takes up the whole screen. I want it to be larger.
I honestly have never seen a pleasant conversation with a hexbear. I am looking forward to when hexbear and all chapotraphouse leninistas are purged from these forums so you guys can fester in your own bile. Im crossing my fingers.
Because you walk into threads about issues you barely understand and say stupid shit. If you were less ignorant maybe you'd get the convos about backyard farming and cats
It's ok if the joke goes over your head, comerade. The Lubyanka administration doesn't give you enough resources to comprehend Western sarcasm. One day
I dont want to be a victim of hexbear road rage thanks. You guys just vomit out material in hopes that you can string it together to form a cogent argument. Then you come back smug as ever asking why i didnt respond to the 10k talking points as if I was a human encyclopedia.
How would I distinguish you, based only on your reply, from someone who took one look at two whole paragraphs and decided you weren't going to read that but had to keep arguing no matter what and spewed out some sour grape nonsense?
How should we frame our arguments in response to a meme that paints every single prominent socialist and socialist country as fascist without addressing each one?
Really the burden of proof should be on the one making the claim, shouldn't it?
We don't ignore it when a socialist country takes security measures, we say they're an unfortunate reality of steps a country has to take in order to defend itself against external and internal aggression. Having your country go socialist earns you a lot of enemies and having a lot of enemies means you have to build up things like intelligence agencies, military apparatuses, and centralized agencies for combating sabotage and spying. These are things every country does, but western nations like to paint the security measures that socialist nations take as purely authoritarian, or needlessly tyrannical, or whatever other word gets thrown around. The nations yelling at socialist countries to change their domestic policies are usually the most imperialist and have the most to gain from socialist states being dismantled.
When your enemies are the global capitalists who operate global finance and industry, you should probably build up something to defend against it. Nukes tend to work as a deterrent, but they only go so far when you've also got an internal population that can present a security problem.
China's taken the smartest strategy of all honestly. They've intertwined their economy with the imperial powers to the point it's impossible to disentangle. The west can't take violent action against China, since that's where the industry is.
Also, so called authoritarian measures against our enemies are a good thing. It's good when fascists, racists, and imperialists lose civil liberties like the freedom to express themselves, organize, fund politicians, or operate businesses.
Do you think that we will see true communism ever arise from authoritarianism? I don't think that is possible.
I think that authoritarianism is a lot more palatable to the imperialists than actual communism would be, I worry that, quite apart from it being wrong to curtail civil rights, by being authoritarian a socialist state is simply dancing to the tune of the imperialists.
I don't think I'm comfortable with a central power having the authority to decide that certain groups don't have rights, that power is too often abused widely.
Personally I don't believe the term authoritarianism is a useful description of anything. It's too vague. I've seen one definition that's like "a system that rejects the involvement of certain groups or interests from the political process." Well that would be all socialist nations by default, since socialist countries by definition have denied political representation for the capitalist class in some way.
A better question is: How is a socialist country supposed to defend itself? It may not be possible for a country to achieve what Marx called upper-phase communism. It may not be possible for money, states, and all property to be abolished. That's a question for the future. But when a country tries to curtail the power of capitalists, even attempts to create what's known as true communism, they find themselves on the receiving end of an entire world against them. Sanctions, invasions, sabotage, spying. The shape that a socialist country will take is the result of its conditions. We're living in a world dominated by capital and socialist countries represent a resistance against capital. If socialist movements are threatened, they either defend themselves or collapse.
You're right that countries are dancing to the imperialists, because the imperialists hold the most power right now. That's why an anti-imperialist movement is important, why a multi-polar world is important. Once the threat of imperialism subsides or is defeated, then I'm going to guess socialist countries will begin to express their policies differently.
I don't think I'm comfortable with a central power having the authority to decide that certain groups don't have rights, that power is too often abused widely.
Is there any society that isn't this? A central authority deciding how to distribute rights is a governing body.
Socialism is a movement about denying the right of property to capitalists. That's the entire purpose of the movement, to elevate working class people to the point of dominating society and to restrain or abolish the capitalist class. Landlords and capitalists shouldn't be able to exercise the same rights they have in a liberal capitalist nation. Fascists, racists, transphobes, imperialists, etc shouldn't have any civil liberties and should be subject to arrest, reeducation, or worse.
Thanks for sharing, believe it or not I am a communist myself and I agree with most of what the video said. I just don't see how communism can ever emerge from authoritarianism, because if the defence against imperialism is authoritarianism are we not still dancing to the imperialist tune?
Comunism can only emerge from authoritarianism, by definition, because every single class society is authoritarian, and thus every state is. And as Engels noticed, revolution is the most authoritarian thing that is.
Imperialism is not the same as authoritarianism. To know what we mean by "imperialism" read Lenin's "Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism".
And you might noticed how authoritarianism in my first sentence is used incredibly wide, it's not a mistake, it's one of those terms that have no useful meaning, it wasn't even useful to start with, and especially not when it went through the liberal media and social media mill which had tendency to either purposefully or acidentally (or both) twist definitions to the point they are unrecognizable. Therefore to broadly talk about "authoritarianism" is meaningless, that word is unhelpful as definition and can be used at most as the cliche to deflect discussion (and note it's been used in this thread in this characer extensively by liberals who sure as hell aren't opposing it because they support authoritarian societies as well).
OP didn't need to compare every socialist movement to fascists but they did, we didn't need to reply to most of them, but we did. But we're supposed to tailor our arguments to you, someone admits to not actually caring about any of it? No thank you
Said no one. Except you. You either know what a Gish gallop is, or you don't. A long comment is not necessarily a Gish gallop. In this case the charge is entirely accurate.
As if it's somehow impossible to make a long comment in support of a single argument? As if Gish galloping comments don't actually exist? Do I follow your logic properly? What part about this do I not understand?
Their argument was that so called Western socialists are mostly just Western chauvinists who make their determination on what movements are "real socialists" based on how closely they align, racially and culturally, to the West.
That it's fun to do and informative to others. It might be fun for them too.
The reason I was asking morality yesterday was because that was the main question of the post. America bad and Russia bad are moral questions, so I was asking them as such.
But is your fun the morally justifiable kind? I'm trying to get to the bottom of this in a truely high-level idea discussion with the morality understander
It's actually axiomatic. I can't really prove or justify why one should be good or bad, or why they should be good or bad to one another. But that good is good and to be strived for is the staring point of the philosophy.
I don't define axioms. It is the general definition commonly used, as recorded (but not decided) by the dictionary. Do you in fact have a different definition?
They have the actual meaning that the majority or community gives them. But that isn't necessarily static. But you've shown no evidence that it's changed in this case. That's what I've always been saying.
What do you mean settled? Do words meaning change? Absolutely. Quick examples from Google are awesome, egregious, awful, terrific, smeart->smart, nice, wicked, presently, etc
So if someone told you that you were using a word or words incorrectly, because the agreed upon usage of that term was decided, you would accept it and wouldn't pedantically argue that point instead?
dude just shut the fuck up and never post again. You had all of hexbear trying to explain things plainly to you, but were too fucking ignorant and stupid to just read shit.
Indeed. Simping for Russia and China (and even North Korea, wow) have greatly determental effects to democracy, public discourse, and policy. So I was hoping to change your minds or at least figure out how you think.
Because there's been change in the past, and there is gradual positive change generally happening.
But also because throwing out the system entirely very often leads to power hungry authoritarian groups or people taking advantage of the power vacuum. And they're not as easily dislodged.
I count authoritarian mostly as little to no way for the citizens to effect policy changes. Plus their very heavy handed on controlling their population.
Functional liberal democracies are pretty far from that, since people have feedback, and because of that, the population isn't ruthlessly controlled.
so, say, a place like Cuba where citizens do effect policy changes (like when they recently voted on the new constitution that now enshrines lgbtq rights) are not authoritarian, right?
But most people have no effect on policy and almost all of society, including every necessary resource, is monopolized by the owning class enforcing its will through state violence and deprivation
Yes, because engaging with hexbears is a waste of time. They are not here in good faith. Either that or they don't know any better, which in practice amounts to the same thing.
That's a fair question and in all honesty the answer is no, because based on what I can easily see and understand of hexbears, they aren't intellectually serious people and to the contrary are more akin to a kind of 4-chan trolling community than anything worth actual intellectual engagement.
I could be wrong, but so far I have yet to see any evidence as such.
That's precisely the point. These guys have a toolbox of fallacious arguments and techniques that they regularly trot out. The Gish gallop is one of them. Another, that you see being put to wide use in this thread, is redefining words and terms to fit their narrative.
The people who hate America the most are probably Iraqis with dead children, or American indigenous people kept in poverty.
I know there are westerners who have a better conception of socialism and are more amenable to international working class efforts. I know a lot of them. I'm from Texas lol. I don't like it when westerners, like fellow Americans, look down their nose at other countries. Calling a nation fascist because it doesn't meet your western ideas of what socialist utopia is supposed to be? It's bizarre to me. It always seems racist.
Westerners have a strong tendency towards national chauvinism and it's rare to meet someone more internationally minded unless you go looking for them. You can probably agree with that.
I dont think you could find someone who hates America more than an American
If your hypothetical American had a button that would sink the entire country to the bottom of the ocean, would they press it without a moment's hesitation?
If not, then they do not hate America more than me.
That is a wild take. People have seen there kids burned to death in an American drone strike. Or had their family executed in front of them by special forces death squads.
Westerners deciding who's doing real socialism or not. Westerners expressing their most vile sentiment for foreign countries rather than their own imperialism. Westerners praising the words of their own imperialist intelligence agencies. Westerners unironically praising their own nations for civil liberties like the freedom of fascists to assemble, freedom of racists to express themselves, freedom of parents to own their children, and freedom of school districts to continue racial segregation. Westerners praising imperialist nations like Norway as socialist while using bold language like fascism to describe places under that same exact threat of imperialism, like Cuba and Vietnam.
Westerners claiming foreign governments are merely pretending to be socialist, while claiming unorganized misinformed chauvinistic westerners are the true heirs to socialism, despite all they do is post online and complain about foreign nations.
Westerners praising anarchist movements from 100 years ago despite having no common cause with those movements, no connection to the circumstances within them, and probably no actual admiration of them. Westerners praising a bastardized, sectarian, perverse form of anarchism rather than attempting unity with organizations in their areas. Westerners refusing to speak with actual anarchists in their area, who by and large don't give a shit and just want to hand out food or help at shelters. If Buenaventura Durruti were alive today he'd be regarded with scorn by western chauvinists.
Westerners continuing to bring up Trotsky of all people, who wasn't relevant to world affairs for the last 15 years of his life and certainly not the past 80 years. Westerners not reading a single word of Trotsky's work, westerners focusing entirely on Trotsky's feud with Stalin, westerners not knowing that Trotsky was a literal military commander. Westerners calling themselves Trotskyists in 2023 for some reason. Westerners deciding they have a feud with Joseph Stalin, a man who died in 1953.
Westerners attempting to praise their own socialist leadership, who happen to be a scattered group of imperialist-aligned social democrats, Twitch streamers, and actual antisemitic grifters such as in the case of Caleb Maupin.
Its hard to challenge your opinions when you gish gallup 500 talking points
You gish galloped, you ad homin-ed, you no true scotsman-ed, you one true scotsman-ed, and then you mot and bailey-ed.
Checkmate sir
Its ok to say you dont know what any of those mean. You dont have to make an ass out of yourself in the process
I believe you just engaged in a masked man fallacy taken to the ad absurdum.
Checkmate
I believe you just engaged in ligma balls fallacy with a terminally online spin.
Checkmate
Hey, that one was decent actually! Good job!
"I know why the Hexbear ppbs"
Someone learned something here!
What happened to PPB? I haven't seen it in a while despite a ton of PPB worthy posts
We got told to cool it with the emojis on other instances, because there's a Lemmy bug that makes our emojis look giant when we're not on Hexbear. A lot of us think it's funny though that our pig shit image takes up the whole screen. I want it to be larger.
The normal PPB like the one below is small, but the pink stylized one is always fuckhueg for some reason.
I think we agreed to use it less for diplomatic reasons or something
I dont know what ppbs stands for
I looked through your post history and this is actually the best thing you've posted. Unironically good post.
I looked through your post history and fell asleep 😴
JK I didnt look through your post history because i don't care about you at all
Eh this one's a lot weaker. Keep working on posting, you've got potential to be a Hexbear shitposter
I honestly have never seen a pleasant conversation with a hexbear. I am looking forward to when hexbear and all chapotraphouse leninistas are purged from these forums so you guys can fester in your own bile. Im crossing my fingers.
Because you walk into threads about issues you barely understand and say stupid shit. If you were less ignorant maybe you'd get the convos about backyard farming and cats
When everyone you meet is an asshole, guess what? You're the asshole.
Sorry can you dumb that down for me please
that would be impossible to dumb it down that far
Removed by mod
excuse me, this is fan site for the podcast Citations Needed, get your facts straight.
also lmao, when you end up calling anarchists leninists you are proving us right -- you do need to be educated about the definitions of basic terms.
Sorry can you dumb that down for me please?
This burn doesn't work because we already know that libs are too lazy to read.
Good post!
I don't know what any debate words mean and I refuse to learn.
90% of them boil down to one person saying "You're uneducated on this subject, demonstrated by the fact that you're wrong"
And the other says "You're saying that because I'm uneducated I'm wrong! Haha! Ad-hom!"
But what they really said was "You're wrong, additionally, as a side note, you're uneducated and should feel bad about that"
OK, hecking epic sexist edgelord username haver.
My name is a hero from a tower defence game called bloons.
https://bloons.fandom.com/wiki/Pat_Fusty
Then why didn’t you spell it right?
Because the real name I wanted was Fussy Pat, but that would have been easily misconstrued
Why didn’t you spell the name you wanted right either? Is “fusty” a slur that gets filtered out on your instance?
It's ok if the joke goes over your head, comerade. The Lubyanka administration doesn't give you enough resources to comprehend Western sarcasm. One day
May we meet again Xxthrowaway#267NoScopeKittySlayerxX
Where's the T
This must be the version of Pat Fusty from the Harry Potter universe. Simply drop the T.
paT fussy
It's okay to sat you don't understand proper logic and rely on a crutch of cutesy little checklist items
👍 5pm down by the dock. Ill debate you so hard
dude why wouldn't we just shoot you and let the waves be your new home
Because i know deep down you know this might be the highlight of your life
500 talking points and you couldn't find a single thing to call into question
I dont want to be a victim of hexbear road rage thanks. You guys just vomit out material in hopes that you can string it together to form a cogent argument. Then you come back smug as ever asking why i didnt respond to the 10k talking points as if I was a human encyclopedia.
How would I distinguish you, based only on your reply, from someone who took one look at two whole paragraphs and decided you weren't going to read that but had to keep arguing no matter what and spewed out some sour grape nonsense?
Its information overload aka gish gallup
Why did you bother learning the phrase "gish gallop" but not how to respond to it. Isn't that the whole point of studying this shit?
I didnt learn i just parrot things I have heard before
Genuinely surprising honesty.
How should we frame our arguments in response to a meme that paints every single prominent socialist and socialist country as fascist without addressing each one?
Really the burden of proof should be on the one making the claim, shouldn't it?
People confuse facism and authoritarianism all the time, and people respond to this as if they've never figured this out.
So instead of anything productive these threads churn out:
Vs
What is authoritarian exactly? Is that when you steppy snek just for fun?
🐍
Because I'm all about that shit.
We don't ignore it when a socialist country takes security measures, we say they're an unfortunate reality of steps a country has to take in order to defend itself against external and internal aggression. Having your country go socialist earns you a lot of enemies and having a lot of enemies means you have to build up things like intelligence agencies, military apparatuses, and centralized agencies for combating sabotage and spying. These are things every country does, but western nations like to paint the security measures that socialist nations take as purely authoritarian, or needlessly tyrannical, or whatever other word gets thrown around. The nations yelling at socialist countries to change their domestic policies are usually the most imperialist and have the most to gain from socialist states being dismantled.
When your enemies are the global capitalists who operate global finance and industry, you should probably build up something to defend against it. Nukes tend to work as a deterrent, but they only go so far when you've also got an internal population that can present a security problem.
China's taken the smartest strategy of all honestly. They've intertwined their economy with the imperial powers to the point it's impossible to disentangle. The west can't take violent action against China, since that's where the industry is.
Also, so called authoritarian measures against our enemies are a good thing. It's good when fascists, racists, and imperialists lose civil liberties like the freedom to express themselves, organize, fund politicians, or operate businesses.
Do you think that we will see true communism ever arise from authoritarianism? I don't think that is possible.
I think that authoritarianism is a lot more palatable to the imperialists than actual communism would be, I worry that, quite apart from it being wrong to curtail civil rights, by being authoritarian a socialist state is simply dancing to the tune of the imperialists.
I don't think I'm comfortable with a central power having the authority to decide that certain groups don't have rights, that power is too often abused widely.
Personally I don't believe the term authoritarianism is a useful description of anything. It's too vague. I've seen one definition that's like "a system that rejects the involvement of certain groups or interests from the political process." Well that would be all socialist nations by default, since socialist countries by definition have denied political representation for the capitalist class in some way.
A better question is: How is a socialist country supposed to defend itself? It may not be possible for a country to achieve what Marx called upper-phase communism. It may not be possible for money, states, and all property to be abolished. That's a question for the future. But when a country tries to curtail the power of capitalists, even attempts to create what's known as true communism, they find themselves on the receiving end of an entire world against them. Sanctions, invasions, sabotage, spying. The shape that a socialist country will take is the result of its conditions. We're living in a world dominated by capital and socialist countries represent a resistance against capital. If socialist movements are threatened, they either defend themselves or collapse.
You're right that countries are dancing to the imperialists, because the imperialists hold the most power right now. That's why an anti-imperialist movement is important, why a multi-polar world is important. Once the threat of imperialism subsides or is defeated, then I'm going to guess socialist countries will begin to express their policies differently.
Is there any society that isn't this? A central authority deciding how to distribute rights is a governing body.
Socialism is a movement about denying the right of property to capitalists. That's the entire purpose of the movement, to elevate working class people to the point of dominating society and to restrain or abolish the capitalist class. Landlords and capitalists shouldn't be able to exercise the same rights they have in a liberal capitalist nation. Fascists, racists, transphobes, imperialists, etc shouldn't have any civil liberties and should be subject to arrest, reeducation, or worse.
You at least don't seem vitriolic so I'm gonna link you a 2 minute music video that addresses exactly this concern
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/uThpIDlfcBQ?si=XBRX7zsMlUJ7M4uT
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Thanks for sharing, believe it or not I am a communist myself and I agree with most of what the video said. I just don't see how communism can ever emerge from authoritarianism, because if the defence against imperialism is authoritarianism are we not still dancing to the imperialist tune?
Comunism can only emerge from authoritarianism, by definition, because every single class society is authoritarian, and thus every state is. And as Engels noticed, revolution is the most authoritarian thing that is.
Imperialism is not the same as authoritarianism. To know what we mean by "imperialism" read Lenin's "Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism".
And you might noticed how authoritarianism in my first sentence is used incredibly wide, it's not a mistake, it's one of those terms that have no useful meaning, it wasn't even useful to start with, and especially not when it went through the liberal media and social media mill which had tendency to either purposefully or acidentally (or both) twist definitions to the point they are unrecognizable. Therefore to broadly talk about "authoritarianism" is meaningless, that word is unhelpful as definition and can be used at most as the cliche to deflect discussion (and note it's been used in this thread in this characer extensively by liberals who sure as hell aren't opposing it because they support authoritarian societies as well).
You dont need to address each one. Pick one. I dont need proof to see that its too much information
No one is forcing you to respond to anything, let alone everything. Why don't you pick one?
For hahas
OP didn't need to compare every socialist movement to fascists but they did, we didn't need to reply to most of them, but we did. But we're supposed to tailor our arguments to you, someone admits to not actually caring about any of it? No thank you
How do you feel about essays and books in general?
Their comment was 337 words long. According to google the average reader can do 238 words in a minute. 90 seconds.
Removed by mod
Okay. So go do that.
It's hard to challenge my opinions because I'm cool as hell and I exude a pleasant aroma
If their post is short, accuse them of not engaging properly.
If their post is long, accuse them of gish gallop.
Did i say they didnt engage properly? Lol what are you even saying
No, because their post wasn't short.
deleted by creator
Yup, every time. Reddit libs have a pithy thought terminating cliche for any disagreement: Sealioning, gish gallop, whataboutism, etc.
Huh?
Xd
Said no one. Except you. You either know what a Gish gallop is, or you don't. A long comment is not necessarily a Gish gallop. In this case the charge is entirely accurate.
Oh spare me, we both know full well that there was no long comment they could have posted that wouldn't have been called gish gallop.
As if it's somehow impossible to make a long comment in support of a single argument? As if Gish galloping comments don't actually exist? Do I follow your logic properly? What part about this do I not understand?
Accusations of gish gallop are almost always just a bad faith way of dismissing an argument without bothering to address it.
What argument? 20+ arguments were made. Which one am I meant to address?
If I focus on one you'll jump on me for not addressing the 19 others, which is why it's a bullshit tactic.
Their argument was that so called Western socialists are mostly just Western chauvinists who make their determination on what movements are "real socialists" based on how closely they align, racially and culturally, to the West.
There, that's their argument.
We're talking about 6 countries and at least 5 people in the first place, and that's only the ones named. Sorry, reality is complicated like that.
Google "line breaks". Google "paragraphs". Thank me later
Nobody's interested in becoming an anti-communist. It's you who must change your opinions because they are wrong
Warning: this is a hexbear user
Warning: 🚨 ⚠️ Hexbearian detected! Everyone, into the posting bunkers!
But is warning morally justified?
Yes
What is your moral justification for posting?
That it's fun to do and informative to others. It might be fun for them too.
The reason I was asking morality yesterday was because that was the main question of the post. America bad and Russia bad are moral questions, so I was asking them as such.
I will admit that I am having fun posting.
But is your fun the morally justifiable kind? I'm trying to get to the bottom of this in a truely high-level idea discussion with the morality understander
As a Hexbear poster, I have abandoned my morality and kneel at the altar of the Russo-Sino Satanist.
Is fun moral?
Not always but in this case
What makes it morally justifiable in this case but not others?
That it is benefiting those involved instead of being to their determent.
Is benefiting others morally justifiable?
Yes
What is the moral justification for your answer?
It's actually axiomatic. I can't really prove or justify why one should be good or bad, or why they should be good or bad to one another. But that good is good and to be strived for is the staring point of the philosophy.
This is an appeal to the one true scotsman fallacy
Look up axioms. You'll see they are the staring points of logical arguments.
Why do you get to define axioms to exclude my definition?
I don't define axioms. It is the general definition commonly used, as recorded (but not decided) by the dictionary. Do you in fact have a different definition?
Words have the meaning we give them, not always just the original meaning
Exactly. And the general meaning is the one I just gave.
But general definition is not stable it changes. You're just saying this in a way to negate my definition. Why do you get to define it?
The majority/community defines it has hasn't changed it yet.
So you're trying to say words have actual meanings?
They have the actual meaning that the majority or community gives them. But that isn't necessarily static. But you've shown no evidence that it's changed in this case. That's what I've always been saying.
So words have settled meanings when you say they do?
What do you mean settled? Do words meaning change? Absolutely. Quick examples from Google are awesome, egregious, awful, terrific, smeart->smart, nice, wicked, presently, etc
I mean you feel confindent saying that a word has a meaning that is agreed upon
Yes? Sometimes multiple in the case of homophones.
So if someone told you that you were using a word or words incorrectly, because the agreed upon usage of that term was decided, you would accept it and wouldn't pedantically argue that point instead?
dude just shut the fuck up and never post again. You had all of hexbear trying to explain things plainly to you, but were too fucking ignorant and stupid to just read shit.
I disagreed with all of hexbear and was trying to explain things plainly to them.
But was your disagreement morally justified?
Indeed. Simping for Russia and China (and even North Korea, wow) have greatly determental effects to democracy, public discourse, and policy. So I was hoping to change your minds or at least figure out how you think.
Is liberal democracy moral?
I think it is the most effective system yet devised at minimizing the immorality of the system.
Current examples are however far from ideal.
Actually existing liberal democracies aren't perfect but you still support them? How do you morally justify that position?
Because they're the best we've got, and they have the capability to improve.
So despite the many flaws and problems with these systems, you support them because you think they can improve? Why do you think they can improve?
Because there's been change in the past, and there is gradual positive change generally happening.
But also because throwing out the system entirely very often leads to power hungry authoritarian groups or people taking advantage of the power vacuum. And they're not as easily dislodged.
Is liberal democracy authoritarian? If not then why?
I count authoritarian mostly as little to no way for the citizens to effect policy changes. Plus their very heavy handed on controlling their population.
Functional liberal democracies are pretty far from that, since people have feedback, and because of that, the population isn't ruthlessly controlled.
so, say, a place like Cuba where citizens do effect policy changes (like when they recently voted on the new constitution that now enshrines lgbtq rights) are not authoritarian, right?
But most people have no effect on policy and almost all of society, including every necessary resource, is monopolized by the owning class enforcing its will through state violence and deprivation
What do mean by controlling their population? Since thst seems to be the key factor here
Yes, because engaging with hexbears is a waste of time. They are not here in good faith. Either that or they don't know any better, which in practice amounts to the same thing.
My post was an inside joke based on that users previous posts on our instance.
Have you engaged with a hexbear in good faith?
That's a fair question and in all honesty the answer is no, because based on what I can easily see and understand of hexbears, they aren't intellectually serious people and to the contrary are more akin to a kind of 4-chan trolling community than anything worth actual intellectual engagement.
I could be wrong, but so far I have yet to see any evidence as such.
So you wouldn't engage with any of us in good faith, because you've decided that we aren't capable of that
Yes. That's correct.
I choose not to waste my time. What do you do when dealing with bad-faith actors?
I just think it's strange to think that people you've never engaged in good faith aren't capable of it.
That's precisely the point. These guys have a toolbox of fallacious arguments and techniques that they regularly trot out. The Gish gallop is one of them. Another, that you see being put to wide use in this thread, is redefining words and terms to fit their narrative.
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The people who hate America the most are probably Iraqis with dead children, or American indigenous people kept in poverty.
I know there are westerners who have a better conception of socialism and are more amenable to international working class efforts. I know a lot of them. I'm from Texas lol. I don't like it when westerners, like fellow Americans, look down their nose at other countries. Calling a nation fascist because it doesn't meet your western ideas of what socialist utopia is supposed to be? It's bizarre to me. It always seems racist.
Westerners have a strong tendency towards national chauvinism and it's rare to meet someone more internationally minded unless you go looking for them. You can probably agree with that.
If your hypothetical American had a button that would sink the entire country to the bottom of the ocean, would they press it without a moment's hesitation?
If not, then they do not hate America more than me.
If everything suddenly started sinking into the ocean I would immediately understand and be fine with it
👏 give 👏 tankiedesantski 👏 the 👏 button 👏
If I was the hypothetical American I'd do it
I bet the people who had their families killed by American death squads probably hate the country more.
That is a wild take. People have seen there kids burned to death in an American drone strike. Or had their family executed in front of them by special forces death squads.