Me explaining to my roommate last night that idrc about the protestors at the Capitol getting charged/arrested because fundamentally, most of them are just ignorant boomers who have felt like there is something fundamentally wrong with this country for years (imperialism/forever wars/capitalism/etc take your pick) but have merely fallen into the QAnon/Trump cult because they're typically not products of a great education system and have had this country stab them in the back time & time again in various ways.
That's discounting the large number of petit-bourgoise present at the Capitol, but I'm not saying a lot of them probably aren't genuinely racist/fascist - but unlike my roommate who initiated the discussion with her wild ass comments - I don't think the 'way forward' (lol imagine thinking there is a way forward) for the country is to "line them up and shoot them all". I'll agree that it would probably be an overall net positive for the
countryworld as a whole, but I don't think its gonna strike at the heart of why Trump/QAnon freaks exist.Libs believe reactionaries are permanent features of humanity. You can't get rid of them. There simply must be some delusional, racist, backwards part of any given society because they're just stupid and have freely chosen a path of ignorance because it was easier. That's the only diagnosis a liberal can give. Everything is the product of personal affectation and if you have the incorrect affect, you're simply a lower form of human who should be regarded and treated as such. At best you can give reactionaries positive media portrayals of the people they despise, you can do hare brained lectures about Judith Butler at them, or you try to shame them into changing.
Also personal affectation is completely independent of class, material interest, historical context, or anything like that. There are bad people and good people and those are their primary qualities.
That’s a discussion that at least entered an explicit prescription phase, which is further than I usually get with libs.
“But they’re racist”
“Yes. So what are we going to do about it”
“How can they live with themselves? They are a disgrace”
“ok so.... I’m hearing your prescription is labeling and shaming, while making no real attempt at anything other than the most superficial possible root cause? That may.... have some issues”
And then the same libs claim to care about “muh nuance” and “my intellectualism” after the high water mark of their analysis depth on this couldn’t sustain an amoeba.
/rant
(Hence my username, re: “but they’re racist”)
imperialism/forever wars/capitalism
Don't the Qanon types support those things?
Yes. I didn't mean they were realizing those were the things fundamentally wrong with the country, but instead have fallen into the QAnon/Trump Cult because of their mislabeled feeling of something being wrong with the way this country operates.
Someone oughta make a version with a T-34 instead of an M1 Abrams
They look similar, but the turret on the Abrams looks like it's almost the same length as the body and the body is a little boxier. I'm not an expert or anything, just looking at the two tanks side by side. I think it's a type 90 in the meme.
In fact, I think the drawing was traced off of this pic from the type 90 wiki page.
Its one of the evolutions of the old "big brain wojack" images, the most famous is him with glasses sitting on his brain like an armchair. Basically the forerunner to the modern "galaxy brain" memes.
Was super surprised when I saw you were a moderator on the gtaonline sub lol.
I'm basically an internet landlord :sad-boi: you may kill me when the digital revolution comes
-7DeadlyFetishes
Fight the battles where they are, not where you'd like them to be. - Napoleon or someshit.
And now that the removal of downvotes has been orchestrated, I can finally defeat it without being "owned".
Can someone comment on my understanding of dialectical materialism? As I understand it, it is the analysis of societal issues based on examining the conflict between the ruling class and the lower class. Is that right?
Also, from what I just read, one of the components of dialectical materialism proposed by Engels is that as population grows and technology advances, this inevitably results in social change. This is due to conditions worsening for the lower class, or for the lower class obtaining a higher level of class consciousness and demanding better conditions. Is that close?
And the point of dialectical materialism is to examine social upheavals and evolution throughout history, and using that to diagnose or understand our current social issues to posit what path we’re heading down. Right?
it is the analysis of societal issues based on examining the conflict between the ruling class and the lower class
Conflict is borne out of the contradictions inherent in material conditions/economic structure (thesis v. antithesis) and change happens because of that conflict - giving birth to a new system (synthesis). Idk play Fallout: NV and listen to Caesar or something (don't do this).
I am only a beginning dialectician, but this is what I've figured out.
Dialectical materialism is a description of how systems change. There are three principles.
The first is that quality changes are the result of quantity changes. This reflects that the state of the system changes due to a change in the amount of something. It can be quantities of materials or quantities of more abstract things, for example ice changes state into water due to change in temperature, which is the quantity of energy in the molecules.
The second is that a system is made of components which interact and influence each other and are influenced by each other. This is the law of contradiction.
Finally, the third is the negation of the negation. I think this is the materialist analog to the thesis/antithesis/synthesis triad. A system with parts in contradiction eventually negates a contradiction and produces a new state with new behavior.
Now, how does this apply to America in 2021? Seriously, this is not a rhetorical question. How does this apply to America in 2021?
Now, how does this apply to America in 2021? Seriously, this is not a rhetorical question. How does this apply to America in 2021?
Ugh I dropped out of college why are you giving me homework??? /s
I guess my intuitive answer to that question is something along the lines of "we are watching the misguided negation of years of american domestic policy failures/imperialism/capitalism" but in the sense that - harking back to my comment earlier on this post - most QAnon/MAGA followers do think there's something wrong with the system but are mislabeling the crucial components (capitalism, etc) as whatever they perceive as the bogeyman other. Whether that is 'the mainstream media', 'antifa', or 'socialist liberals' varies based on each individual's experience inside the system - but collectively they are negating the idea of how the United States (and the world to an extent) has operated and governed the last few decades. But like I said, they're mislabeling the crucial components that are in contradiction to each-other.
I dunno; I definitely need to read more theory and my brain is already fried from the last six hours of work but I hope that made some sort of sense.
in Marx's time, the primary view of history was that its unraveling was guided by the decisive actions of "great men" who stepped up to the task when the times called for it. Dialectical Materialism says that its actually the material conditions of the world, specifically focusing on the conflict between the ruling class and the working class, and that whatever individuals happen to be the ones who lead are actually mostly irrelevant. In reality, both ideas are wrong though, since the system which decides what we'd consider "global human history" is incredibly complex, and from a bunch of research we've done since the 60s or so, its become clear that it doesn't make sense to talk in terms of 'cause' and 'effect' for these sorts of systems, because as the famous example goes, "changing something as insignificant as when a butterfly flaps its wings can ultimately end up deciding whether or not a hurricane occurs", and certainly nobody would suggest the butterfly has the ability to cause hurricanes. There's much more useful ways to look at these sorts of things, and methodologies I wish the left would adopt but I mostly feel like I'm yelling at a wall in vein
I'm down with multifaceted web-based causality polylectics
