Me: I think I'm going to listen to some relaxing country music today

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Goddamnit, I guess that's what I get for listening to David Allan Coe.

the emojis on this site will forever amaze me, we've really thought of everything

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I think because I grew up in Calvinist/Reformed churches, I've almost turned the Protestant work ethic around on communism and I have an obsession with work that's more similar to boomer conservatives. Sometimes it feels like the fully automated luxury gay space communism meme has convinced people that one day we will not have to work, which like, maybe, but we don't live under FALGSC and we have to work if we're ever going to get there. In college we once had a old Young Lords member come in, who in response to a question (I forget what the question was) pretty much criticized a lot of younger leftists who's end goal was to become a professional activist, or who thought they could do leftist work on the side of their full time job or school. Her and many of her comrades dropped out of school or quit their jobs and completely devoted their lives to the revolution, and that's the commitment that is necessary to achieve communism in this country.

Now obviously I think that's a bit much at the current moment. There's nothing remotely similar to the Black Panthers/Young Lords in the current landscape, and I would not recommend anyone drop out of school or quit their jobs to devote their lives to like, their local DSA chapter, which is likely the largest leftist org in your area. But the general sentiment of her response I do share, and I think the right has sort of monopolized rhetoric surrounding work, and leftists for a number of reasons have become antiwork. Antiwork is good with regard to capitalist work, but with regards to work building towards communism, I think there needs to be emphasis on work and the difficulty that lies ahead if we are ever going to achieve a communist future. Its not going to be easy, but as the boomers have said to us so many times growing up, sometimes you just need to put your head down and put in the work.

that's interesting, I did not even know about this day. Yeah, looking back it's pretty interesting they included a propaganda poster praising Stalin in an American history textbook

and they were never going to remove the emperor from power. Most of the military leadership supported leaving the emperor in place. Afaik, there was never any real chance of the emperor being removed from power, at least by the US (could be wrong on that though). Just an insane push for unconditional surrender by Truman and Byrnes. Truly :amerikkka:

I haven't fully read this yet, but Tsuyoshi Hasegawa makes the point that once the Soviets invaded, suddenly surrender to the US looked a lot more inviting because of the Japanese leadership's fear of communism sweeping away the imperial institution. They thought the Americans would be much more likely to allow them to keep the emperor in place.

Truman and Byrnes were also extremely worried about public opinion. Most Americans at the time wanted the emperor removed from power in some way (executed or imprisoned, etc) and Byrnes thought Truman would be "crucified" if he was seen as going back on unconditional surrender.

I had the opposite experience, I saw this photo in some history textbook in like 8th grade, and I didn't really know anything about Stalin except for a vague idea he was a bad guy. But then I saw his name as one of three people who "saved the world" and was like, damn I guess he was actually okay. Then all the anticommunist propaganda became much heavier in high school, but I think because my first real exposure to Stalin was as a man who saved the world, it never had the desired effect of me. I was willing to accept that Stalin became a bad guy later, but in the back of my head I was like "yeah but he saved the world."

Japan was chosen as a target in 1943. The reasoning given was that the Germans would be more likely to gain information from a failed bombing and possibly then develop their own bombs, but yeah, racism has to play a role in that decision.

I guess my own initial response to my question is no though, because even Truman understood that once the Soviets invaded, Japan would likely surrender. The difference though is that Truman didn't want the Soviets to invade if he could avoid it, since him and Byrnes were so anti-Soviet, whereas FDR and Stettinius might be more willing to end the war with the help of the Soviets. FDR might've also included the Soviets on the Potsdam Declaration, ending the war sooner without the bomb.

I do agree FDR probably would've wanted to drop the bomb on Japan rather than Germany, but I think also FDR could've ended the war without dropping the bomb at all.

they all had green hair and worked at coffeeshops while studying gender studies at their wide awake universities

I can't wait to stand in the ruins of the old world, soil completely degraded to the point it won't grow anything, all water sources polluting, wildfires choke the air, our fascist government starting nuclear war China, bodies piling up in the street and my neighbors unable to tie their shoes from contracting covid like 50 times at that point, and say "ha, told you guys you should've worn a mask"

I'm in the same place. Last summer, everyone I knew was a little more tolerant of my desire to stay masked and not do risky events, even though they didn't understand it. But this summer they're getting more and more restless about trying to force me to these risky events and stuff. Yeah, definitely feel like I have no friends rn, or at least no friends who respect my desire to stay safe during a pandemic.

Its getting really bad and literally no one cares I feel like I'm going crazy

I use um a lot, not sure if its a verbal tic or what. I usually use it as a response to a bad take like "hold up" or "stop what you're saying" or something. Also I used to work with kids and would use it when they were misbehaving in the same manner.

millions of dead cops

my sister is a "hillary is light itself" lib, very globe brained, but for some reason she's excited about all this sinn fein news? Which is super cool, but I was absolutely not expecting that from her. I guess all my talk about irish republicanism finally got to her lol

Only time I sorta did this was in high school and I was running with the cross-country team around the track. Then the anthem comes on over the loudspeaker since they were about to start a football game, and the coach makes us stop and face the flag, put our hands over our hearts, etc. I wasn't super anti-American at that point, but I hated the performative anthem/pledge shit. I thought it was stupid to stop running for some shitty song so I didn't put my hand over my heart. Then some big wrestler dude on the team notices and gets all up in my face about his brother in the military, but his rant went so long the song ended before he could bully me into putting my hand on my heart.

I wouldn't do this in public though, especially not at a sports game. And especially not a baseball or football game. I'd just do it, it's all performative anyway, no one's going to become an anti-imperialist socialist because they saw you sit down during the anthem, and you're not going to suddenly become a fascist just because you took off your hat during God Bless America

Really weird to see people defending the bombing of Dresden in this thread, especially in the same breath as recommending Shaun’s Hiroshima video. In that video, Shaun discusses how the strategy of strategic bombing was pretty useless and that the bombing of Dresden was unjustified. Winston Churchill even ended up calling strategic bombing a pretty useless strategy that didn’t contribute much to the war effort, and there was that dude (I think someone quoted him in this thread) who said if the allies hadn’t won the war these things would absolutely be war crimes. This is also what they will tell you if you ever visit Dresden. I met some guy who gave me a tour of some of the ww2 sites in Dresden, was very nostalgic for East Germany, but he also said yeah the allies shouldn’t bombed Dresden in the way they did.

Even worse is people defending Hiroshima. Both were absolutely unjustified. People are defending these things bc the countries were fascist, which like, yeah, but the actual levers of power of fascism are not being bombed, just a bunch of civilians. Meanwhile these things did very little to actually end the war, so not much damage is actually being done to these fascist countries.

Idk too much about Cambodia and Laos to compare, but the bombings of Hiroshima and Dresden both were absolutely unjustified, contributed very little to the war effort, and were absolutely war crimes. No one here should be defending them

I’m like half asleep and lieing in bed so might try to flesh this answer out once I get up

who tf is goatee jeff