Comraragi [none/use name]

Can we please not quote the head of a feudal slave society Tibet until 1951, I don't think the Dalai Lama was very interested in the inner workings of Marxism while he enjoyed the company of his serfs.

If you want to rehabilitate the current Pope because he says nice things that is ok, do it at your own risk of credibility. Words are cheap, actions are what matters and the Catholic Church is the definition of inaction and criminal activity.

Don't quote mine the Bible, it is one of the most hateful books in existence. A handful of vaguely leftist statements don't erase nice little gems like this "how you get to keep the wife and children of male slaves for yourself". Exodus like the rest Old Testament is a human disgrace.

If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out by himself. Exodus 21:4

I recommend you go through the Skeptics Annotated Bible. The Old and New testament each have their own flaws are have more than enough bigotry in either one.

I am very supportive of Christian and other religious socialists/communists in any community, and I believe we can continue to support any religious person who wants to become or is already a leftist and a socialist by upholding our own human decency principles and not trying to rehabilitate religions with scriptures full of hate crimes and bigotry.

God may be a communist, he certainly almost never acted like one.

"Western Europe" nationalism is curbed because nationalism is a threat to the neoliberal EU project which is itself too big too fail. Looking at the issues of Spain/Italy/Greece you'll see specially how Greece was forced to accept the German led negotiation(the Troika) of their deals or suffer severe consequences. You can read that Varoufakis writings where he basically admit the "socialist" option(or really any anti-imperialist arrangement) like leaving the EU, abandoning the Euro, defaulting, becoming socialist was not an option period.

It is not about "liberals" fighting nationalism out of good will lol as much as neoliberals having to maintain a heavy grip on the nations part of/close to the imperial core. Is that something to applaud them for? I mean this is a thread for lib takes so maybe. But from an actual leftist point of view not at all.

Then you compare that to the former USSR countries and you can see the clear differences. While the entire western capitalist countries conspired with and supported nationalist anti-USSR/right wing movements in order to de-stabilize the region, the same policy can't be applied back at home. Germans for example have no reason to be extremely nationalist when Germany is already at the heart and control of the EU. The same goes for France. Both are changing though e.g the migrant crisis.

But as I said as soon as you look at the edges like the UK/Spain/Greece/Italy you'll see neoliberalism is not able to contain this threat any better than other countries.

How the fuck does someone reach the conclusion that associating yourself with a fly is a good thing to anchor a propaganda piece around?

What is next substitute your leader with a garbage bin filled with MAGA insects?

Bin Laden’s siblings were at the white house the day of 9/11.

Meh they could have visited the WH anytime in a 6 month period before or after 9/11 and people would make this connection... You only need a good history book to understand US ties with Bin Laden not an inside job conspiracy.

Have no idea what episode you are talking about without googling it. If it is a S1 or S2 episode I probably haven't seen it. One word: Episode guides. Skip S1-2, maybe watch the handful of good episodes of both seasons each and move on to S3. You wont miss anything trust me.

In general I'd say yes of course Star Trek has fairly liberal takes of course because Gene only ever got as far as creating a mix of the most basic understanding of socialism e.g no money, no "jobs" in exchange for survival, nobody owns the "economy", absolute equality of race/gender and framed it squarely on his own American biased liberal ideology e.g worshiping of "Freedom" in a very abstract sense, "individualism", explorers aka entrepreneurship etc.

But DS9 gets better, I think S3-6 are the best seasons. I wont spoil it but there is definitely more maturity and attempts at tackling real world issues related to war, exploitation, psychological consequences etc... You'll even find a few timely episodes for our climate and excellent examples of good time travel episodes. The problem with DS9 is consistency and some very heavy handed elements(the whole religion thing), so when DS9 goes off the rails it really goes off like a freight train.

But when they manage to find a topic and execute it well it is one of the best science fiction TV ever.

I could understand this attitude with a Bernie presidency even if we accept his inevitable failure to govern.

But a Biden presidency is not even a consolation prize. It is like the Titanic movie when the ship breaks in half and the rear side drops down to the water level again. For a moment things would look fine, except you know, half your ship is missing, everything is flooded/destroyed, 2/3 of the passengers already died or escaped etc etc... That is pretty apt description of the US currently actually.

Well there is a massive difference between musical genres. I do think there is some level of ability that must be acknowledged, to me it is undeniable that classical musicians are incredibly talented artists in general. You may not like classical, I don't enjoy some of it either.

But when you compare [insert generic pop artist here] to Rachmaninoff or Beethoven, I mean you must acknowledge the massive level in skill and dedication required to reach those levels. Being a concert pianist, let alone a composer is literally a lifetime endeavor.

Being a pop musician? Make sure you have a good voice, auto-tune, have someone else perform all the instruments/compose/do all the mixing for you. Done. The modern music industry is certainly easier to get into, it is not a bad thing necessarily.

So I guess yes you could say certain genres and/or artists are massively overrated mostly due to their popularity and/or being novel artists, the right song at the right time.

But then some genres and artists don't get enough recognition, I don't particularly care about Rock but the pioneering in electric guitar techniques back then should be acknowledged. Again Jimmy Hendrix isn't Liszt, but he deserves all the recognition he got.

The normal everyday mundane bullshit just continues if you’re in the middle class, you just might narrowly avoid being bombed on the subway one day and the next day step over a dozen bodies on your way into the office

Very well put and I'd say the US was already there 20 years ago with the whole school shooting episodes, the frequency in how they repeated and the collective inability of 300million people to give enough of a damn about their own children being turned into swiss cheese at school was already a sign of collapse 20 years ago. One of like 3 dozen or so bright neon signs anyway.

We are seeing it again and it is accelerating, now almost the entire collective pretends it is fine if their children catches a deadly virus because statistics or something.

Of course there is always the giant elephant in the room of police violence against minorities then and now, but you could reasonably explain away as nothing new, a country built on slavery etc...

Bronze Age Collapse style disruption of the international order to pwn the libs

What the fuck is this shit tier take?

"Hey guys we can't make the US fall in disorder and chaos because basically everyone else would go right back to being caveman with sticks without the big western man to keep things in order".

Like fuck off this is shit reddit level take I wouldn't expect to see here.

Here is something you may not have realized: The world will go on just fine without the big red line going up. Heck some places may actually see a tiny little bit of peace and prosperity without the sight of a predator drone on top of their heads.

Marx was a capitalist. He even wrote a book about it.

Some billionaire.

Ah yes the classic version of the enemy is simultaneously omnipotent and capable of enforcing every decision and winning every conflict while simultaneously being incompetent enough to lose repeatedly and being forced to let someone take their job.

Someone should remind him that Bernie Sanders is a two time primary loser.

The thing is Trump can easily be manipulated by both sides of an issue, by mainstream conservative/imperialist politics standards of course.

Yes he was pushed to war with Iran, but he was also very easily manipulated by the media and general public opinion against it. He doesn't really care about geopolitics at all.

I think the prevailing theory that is most likely to be correct is that Trump is definitely better(for leftist organization ambitions) than any competent fascist/neoliberal. Hillary can't be manipulated as easily and she is far more competent with actual experience working for the empire.

That doesn't mean Trump is outright better, as I said we only managed to dodge a bullet with Iran because his ego wasn't convinced it would benefit him personally, but we also only got close to war with Iran because he is so easily influenced by these same neoliberals/warhawks. It goes both ways.

Hillary would definitely be trying to keep things going BAU and she would have been competent about it. We are the frog inside the slowly boiling water. Hillary would be far more effective at stopping organized leftist movements. She would be fueling literally all "leftist" discontent straight into a void because everyone would just argue "well would you rather have Trump as president?".

Biden is a problem, for many obvious reasons, one of them being we will have 4 years of "at least he isn't Trump".

Seriously?

Lack of dexterity as you get older makes it easier to just send the message with one key than to keep worrying about pagination, punctuation etc. Also temporary memory loss and lack of self awareness is common among the elderly, they simply don't realize or care about how a task is supposed to be done.

Don't burn yourself out, I used to do a lot of communism "explaining" on reddit but sometimes you have to go from such absurd starting points that it is too much and not worth it anymore.

Exhibit #1

Wanting to win implicitly means doing the most/best you can. If you think Joe Biden is the best democratic presidential candidate available to beat Trump back in March then be my guest. There is an obvious reason we have this walking corpse as a candidate.

Don't overanalyze it. Liberal democracy is a show, for libs it is about playing the game, look at all the vote shaming. Remember the primaries Biden didn't even campaign and still managed to win, what you spend, your actual effort is irrelevant.

They want to put a candidate, they want to appear as if they are fighting. If the goal was to actualy remove Trump we would have a different nominee, Biden wasn't even the best candidate other than Bernie even shitty Warren would destroy Trump here.

Democrats want to win

(X) Doubt.

Can't kill what was already dead.

So basically the plot of House M.D but the MC is a geriatric patient trying to stay relevant as a failed politician and he gets his own team of lackeys to order around and keep him entertained(read: barely conscious).

• Trump says he lead the greatest economic growth ever.

• Best stock market ever.

• China is afraid/losing.

• Trump insists the "trade war" is successful because he forced China to negotiate.

• Trump praises DPRK leadership.

• Trump says Democrats support Cuba.

• Biden denies he is a socialist at least 3 times.

• Both promises to go to war with Iran.

• Both promise to support Saudi Arabia.

• Praise to greatest middle east "ally"(Israel/SA)

• "We need to more troops in the ME".

• Trump praises Chinese "vErY SmART" businessman.

• Germany doing bad because Merkel bad.

• Trump promises to be tough on new "trade deals^" with Europe/Canada/Mexico.

• More promises to finish building the wall.

• Trump promises to deal with the Immigrant "crisis".

• Trump calls the wall the "greatest infrastructure project ever".

• Both candidates say riots are bad more than once.

• Both candidates say both sides bad more than once.

• Trump compares Hillary's e-mails to Hunter Biden/Ukraine.

• Biden calls Trump a bad businessman.

• Trump mocks Biden's intellect.

• Biden makes at least one pronunciation gaffe.

• Biden jokes about "make them pay for it".

Porential free:

• "Russian interference" over half a dozen times.
• Antifa mentioned over a dozen times.
• Trump praises himself for handling COVID,
• Trump calls Biden socialist.