"Sorry to ruin your "fun" commies"
I already posted it only ten days ago, but it just keeps being applicable
“During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. "
-M. Parenti, emphasis mine
I already posted it only ten days ago, but it just keeps being applicable
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Never apologize for posting Parenti.
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Great quotes are called copypasta for a reason, you're supposed to post them all the time!
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More and more, the China discourse in mainstream media just reminds me of the bitter nerd I used to be, looking at other people just doing things and being happy and thinking "What's this asshole's angle? What are they planning?"
Turns out I was just coming up with baroque excuses to continue ignoring my own shortcomings while projecting my insecurity onto others.
Turns out I was just coming up with baroque excuses to continue ignoring my own shortcomings while projecting my insecurity onto others.
Literally the american way of life. Like my dad, right, he blames his shitty life on black people and thinks if we kicked them out we'd return back to the Camelot years of JFK.
We need to get them all to watch the scene in Run Hide Fight where the fat sad kid with the tiny penis gets called out for being an asshole.
Probably. It's the school shooting movie released by the Daily Wire.
I watched it before the chapo episode and it's mostly just mediocre. I think Chapo pretty much got it right, it's an exploitation film that's too afraid to really go for it.
it uses squibs and matt is right about squibs.
Fucking hell, this literally reads like parody.
It reminds me of the British chef/food critic Rick Stein doing an episode on Vietnam and saying "When you see people happy and shopping in markets, you can almost forget this is a Communist country" as if the core tenent of Ho Chi Minh was being miserable and having nowhere to get groceries.
:uncle-ho-2: :uncle-ho-2: :uncle-ho-2:
"why does this country forged in part by a renowned pastry chef have such good food, despite all the red flags around the market?!? Why yes, I am being paid handsomely for this analysis and foreign travel"
Haha, exactly! I always forget he was a pastry chef, that rules :uncle-ho-2:
He was one of the first people in the world to make a Boston Creme Pie, as he worked at the hotel that invented it.
Also, he worked there at the same time that Malcolm X was a bellhop for the hotel.
Also, he worked there at the same time that Malcolm X was a bellhop for the hotel.
Holy shit. That perfectly encapsulates the Maoist influence on the Panthers.
I don't know about any interactions they had, but to me that fact always made me wistful that there was no strong union movement active at the time...
Imagine if Malcolm X and Uncle Ho had been able to have an influence on each other's paths, and what could have gone differently in that kind of dynamic.
Organize your workplaces, reach out to everyone!
EVERY TIME I LEARN SOMETHING NEW ABOUT BAC HO I JUST LOVE HIM MORE
right?
I once had a vietnamese lady come over for a date and while cooking she found my copy of the little red book on the table and asked what it was about. I wasn't sure about her family's leanings given they left Vietnam, so I glossed over the Mao by mentioning that Ho was a wonderful pastry chef, and she got super happy and went on a long thing about how badass he was.
We now send each other communist memes every now and then. She says her family is apolitical and not anticommunist, that they just left because their area got fucked in the war, but otherwise they hate the USA.
Its amazing how little jump off points like talking of Ho's pastries, or Stalin and Mao's poetry end up making it really easy to broach the subject of communism with libs... just yesterday I started speaking positively about Mao with someone by pointing out a quote about taking care of your skin(we'd been talking about skincare routines), lol. Now that person is already talking about how she wishes Mao was alive again.
:uncle-ho-2: :mao-shining: :stalin-joking:
That's really cool, it's definitely a great feeling when you can connect with someone over leftist politics unexpectedly. Found out a few coworkers were surprisingly based/open to leftist ideas that way.
Yeah, it was when X was still doing crime and hooking up hotel patrons with drugs and sex workers and whatever, before going into prison.
I forget who said this (might've been Lenin) but this is a good case for the saying "Every cook a minister, every minister a cook".
Didn't see it happen but I was in the ER ward where someone died from covid on Wednesday. Very fucking cool!
Soooo good. Nothing like detoxing off alcohol, feeling suicidal, then hearing the code blue or whatever for a dying patient. Neat!
So so you know? I'm on prozac now to supplement my meds so we'll see how that goes. I'm trying to get my mom into some treatment for her alcoholism and mental problems.
"Yeah?? well what about the freedom to fucking hate my life and myself to the point of killing myself, I bet you commies don't support that either huh??"
The problem with happiness is that eventually you run out of other people’s smiles.
Okay say it ain’t “benevolent” — SO WHAT? I thought lib wonks of all people would jerk off to a rATioNAL system where the outcome would still be general happiness even when those in charge care only about staying in power.
Fucking sour grapes.
The most forward-thinking neolibs are going to be Dengists in twenty years. They already consider the PRC's economic growth a success story for global capitalism.
If you ever are sad in China, the PLA breaks into your house and gives you government mandated hot chocolate
I found it here: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/03/life-inside-chinas-social-credit-laboratory/
"to the extent that people believe they can benefit socially and economically from the Communist Party staying in power, the system is working" :michael-laugh:
The dastardly CCP maintaining an iron grip on power by MAKING PEOPLE'S LIVES MATERIALLY BETTER!
It's so funny because like under neoliberal capitalism the default for the bottom 99% is a life that's so miserable that suicide seems like a good option, and this is just accepted as the norm. So when they see the CCP actually enriching working people's lives it's obviously "authoritarian". The USA is such a failed state it's almost like a bad running joke at this point.
Amerikkka be like "Ask not what your government can do for you"
Oh really dumbfuck? If the government doesn't do anything for the people then why the hell do we have one? :kropotkin-shining:
If the government doesn’t do anything for the people then why the hell do we have one?
To bail out carnival cruise lines and wage wars to grab resources, especially water in the future.
Literally my parents have changed from "the government is here to make sure people are safe" to "the government is here only to regulate business, but also we need deregulation and the govt to stay out of business"
Wielding power is bad actually. Being a limpdick """opposition""" party to fascism is the pinnacle of righteousness.
"It doesn't mean it's benevolent"
WHOOOOOO CAREEEEEEEES if it's benevolent or not. We all know that EU's comprehensive welfare state was to sway people away from socialism, doesn't mean that it's totally bad.
"Making sure people live happy, fulfilling lives is the highest form of totalitarianism."
"I-It's not like I WANT to improve the lives of the working people according to their wishes b-baka!"
Tbh this illustrates a thing I've run into a few times when talking to people.
There's a fundamental disconnect between the way we view what the purpose of government is.
Myself and likely a majority of my comrades would agree that the function of government is to provide for its citizens and improve their lives in whatever way is possible.
Conservatives, whether they consciously realize it or not, view the function of government as upholding and reinforcing systems of hierarchy.The conservative understanding of the state is much more accurate. :lenin-shining:
Maybe of right-wing governments? Unless you're the kind of person who thinks having a monopoly on violence necessarily means oppressing your citizenry.
The function of a workers' state is to crush the capitalist class, inverting the worker-capitalist hierarchy as a necessary transitional step before abolishing the class hierarchy is possible.
Right, but that still abolishes class hierarchy. I'm not tryna be obtuse or a jerk or anything, I just really don't see where you're getting "upholding hierarchies" from "abolishing class hierarchy"
Abolition of class hierarchy happens at the same time a mature socialist state has outlived its usefulness and finishes withering away.
Comrade, I think you are more optimistic than I about the necessity of a state. Maybe it's just doomerism from living in the USA, but I can't imagine a socialist state "outliving its usefulness". IMO unless you have something (a state) actively stopping people from reinstating capitalism/fascism/whatever, they'll crop back up and doom any utopian project because all it takes is not being able to stop one sufficiently motivated asshole.
If revolution happens within our lifetimes, there's no way a socialist state outlives its usefulness on that timescale, in the best case scenario where nothing goes wrong and capitalism is extinguished everywhere. The dissolution of the class distinctions and withering away of the state would have to happen over the course of many generations. It's not until the revolutionary generation is long-dead that the nonexistence of "sufficiently motivated assholes" is ensured.
