Objection

Objection , 13 days ago to 196 in Be rule do warcrimes

Yeah, it's very stupid. Lots of reactionaries will talk about the concept of queer people being "imported" from Western culture, while at the same time importing their own talking points from the Western far-right media sphere. Obviously, there's plenty of queer history to be found all around the world, and in many cases homophobia was historically imported through Christian colonizers, but reactionaries aren't exactly known for their historical literacy.

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Imagine being THIS into apologia for homophobia.

Wait, now I'm confused. Did I misinterpret your comment as interpreting my comment correctly?

Are you saying "imagine believing this" in response to people being homophobic, or in response to me acknowledging that homophobic people exist?

Objection , 13 days ago to 196 in Be rule do warcrimes

Oh, people associate queer people with drone strikes, alright. Not as much in the US but there are people around the world (global south, etc) who will take stuff like this at face value and hate queer people because they associate us with the US military. It generally doesn't work out well for the queer people living there.

Objection , 13 days ago to 196 in Be rule do warcrimes

Lockheed doesn’t get to say who they sell to.

Yes, you've identified the problem.

Objection , 16 days ago to Political Memes in "Genocide is good if an Anti-Imperialist Country(tm) is doing it!"

Good talk.

Objection , 16 days ago to Political Memes in "Genocide is good if an Anti-Imperialist Country(tm) is doing it!"

How are the USSR's actions relevant to the Russian Federation?

Objection , 16 days ago to Political Memes in The debate gets interesting sometimes

Specifically, he was appointed chancellor by the guy the SDP backed. How anyone can look at that and blame the KPD for running the only anti-Hitler candidate is baffling.

Objection , 17 days ago to Political Memes in "Genocide is good if an Anti-Imperialist Country(tm) is doing it!"

Except for the part where he didn’t actually believe in a communist revolution until his later years

He... what? Sorry, but when exactly, by your estimation, did Marx become a communist?

Objection , 17 days ago (edited 17 days ago) to Political Memes in The debate gets interesting sometimes

I used to wonder if there was any line that people wouldn't cross with lesser-evilism, but now that I've seen all these takes just openly being like, "Yes, we're doing genocide, and if you break ranks over that, not only are you a bad person, but your behavior is only possibly explainable by you being a foreign agent or a conservative in disguise," and honestly it's pretty validating to know that yes, I was right all along that accepting that line of reasoning would lead to complete insanity with no limit on how extreme it could get. Like I've never voted for a major party presidential candidate because of that sort of thing but even I never expected the discourse to reach this level, and now that I've seen it play out I'm very glad I decided to distance myself from it. This is what zero principles does to a mfer.

Objection , 17 days ago to Political Memes in "Genocide is good if an Anti-Imperialist Country(tm) is doing it!"

Fool or not, he was, pretty indisputably, a communist who believed in using a state to achieve his goals.

Objection , 17 days ago to Political Memes in It's funny how many "Anti-Imperialists" decided "Might makes right" when Russia invaded Ukraine

Yes, but the libs thousands of miles away are determined to fight to the last Ukrainian, no matter how many die, because it was never about them in the first place. Their priority is furthering the geopolitical interests of the ruling class, which they have confused with the interests of themselves and the Ukrainian people.

The laws and living conditions aren't substantially better in one than the other. None of this was ever worth fighting a war over, for any side. It's hardly surprising that ordinary people would rather give up some land than get conscripted. It's not as if the people saying not to give up an inch are lining up to put their own lives on the line.

Objection , 17 days ago (edited 17 days ago) to Political Memes in "Genocide is good if an Anti-Imperialist Country(tm) is doing it!"

Every time you people equate the Russian Federation with the USSR, you're telling on yourselves. The government completely changed, the current one destroyed the old one, and the only continuity is the location and the people. So if you equate the two, then it sounds to me what you're really saying is that Russian skull shape or whatever makes them inherently inclined towards violence regardless what form of government they adopt. Which begs the question, what is your ultimate, you know, final solution for this apparently genetically inferior race?

Objection , 17 days ago to Political Memes in "Genocide is good if an Anti-Imperialist Country(tm) is doing it!"

What a ridiculous and reductionist thing to say. Marx and Engles strongly and frequently criticized anarchists, instead taking the position that after the revolution, the state would need to be maintained under a "dictatorship of the proletariat" at least until the social conditions that created it had been changed, at which point it would gradually "wither away." Of course the end goal is a stateless society, but it's plain as day in his writings and his opposition to anarchists that he believed it was necessary to use the state to achieve the necessary conditions for that end goal. Regardless of what you think of it, that's just a historical fact.

Objection , 18 days ago to Political Memes in There are few things fascists hate as much as antifascist coalitions

I actually do agree with you on a lot of that analysis, but my conclusion is the opposite of yours. Allow me to explain my perspective and worldview, in that context.

Nobody becomes a major geopolitical power without some skeletons in their closet. The USSR and PRC do not represent my ideal systems of government. I don't care much for "The Great Game" or getting the whole world to adopt one or another ideology.

But what I do care about is allowing countries, especially developing countries, to chart their own path ideologically, and to decolonize and assert control over their own resources. And the question that's always in the back of my mind is, what can allow that to happen? And the answer I've arrived at is, "Having multiple options for trading partners." And the country that is presenting a second option for these countries is China.

In a world dominated by one superpower, if you're a small country going against the interests of that superpower, how can you have any hope? But when there's two great powers, you can play them off each other, you can say, "the Chinese are offering me this, what can you offer?" and turn around and say, "the IMF just beat your offer, can you beat theirs?" And if they move against you, whether through invasion, assassination, or sanctions and seizing funds, then other countries in your position will take note and move towards your competitor.

China often offers fairly lucrative deals to these countries, and is also flexible regarding their domestic policies compared to the World Bank or IMF. A big part of that is simply that they're trying to break into the market. But another part of it is that China's own development was very messy and they don't really see it as something for other countries to follow and emulate.

My dream is not a world dominated by China rather than the US. My dream is rather that some random developing country will have the freedom to experiment and will hit on the right formula to flourish, and will both grow themselves and provide a model for growth for similar countries. China is primarily a means to that end. At the same time, they did make massive strides in economic development and life expectancy, both compared to before the revolution and compared to before the economic reforms post-Mao.

I believe that, at least for now, China is doing more good than harm for developing nations, which are at the center of my concern in terms of geopolitics. There may come a time when China supplants the US as global hegemon, and it certainly looks to me like they're on that path. When and if that happens, I'll have to reassess my positions. But we're still a good ways off from that.

In the meantime, I believe that the best way for the US to remain competitive in the long term is to refocus domestically. There are so many crises here at home that desperately need to be addressed, and those things are fueling America's decline, and yet the only thing that gets substantial funding is the military, because of the perverse incentives in the military-industrial complex. And every time the US tries to throw it's weight around, doing things like seizing Venezuela's assets, for example, more and more non-aligned countries start to wonder if they're going to be the next ones on America's shitlist and if China might be a more reliable trading partner.

Frankly though, I don't have much hope for the US. In fact, I'm terrified by the fact that the US spends more on the military than the next 9 countries combined, while China has focused so much on economic production. I consider it a real possibility that, at some point in the future, China is going to emerge as the global economic hegemon, and the US will be desperate to maintain their place and will recognize that the only weapon in their arsenal is, well, the weapons in their arsenal. Pretty much the only thing I still have hope for is that this doesn't happen.

Now, the American ruling class doesn't want a war with China, but they do want to line their pockets and there's no better way to do that than military spending. In order to justify that, they're more than happy to saber-rattle and get people fired up against China, and especially with COVID, they were happy to blame China to deflect from their own mishandling of the situation. But doing this is playing with fire. In the short term, it just means more wasteful spending and a rise in hate crimes against Asian-Americans, which are bad enough, but they are also creating people who actually crazy enough that they do want to start WWIII. And they're just gambling that they can rile up these frenzied warmongerers enough that they won't mind when they cut education to buy more bombs but not so much that they're actually able to take power and end all human existence. But this gamble is creating the conditions for someone to come to power who doesn't know or care that the saber-rattling is supposed to be an act, and as long as it keeps working out for them, they will keep raising the stakes higher and higher until they lose control. I have no idea whether that loss of control will come in the form of a rabid, frothing nationalist, or in the form of a well-meaning liberal who's simply bought into too much of their own propaganda, like, for instance, the psychos I've seen talking about a "limited nuclear exchange" with Russia being an acceptable outcome.

There's a certain point of recklessness where the only responsible thing to do is to refuse to be a party to it. Frankly, too much attention goes to voting choices in the US presidential election, but I believe there are strategic arguments to vote third party and I'm not motivated solely from frustration or spite, though there are plenty of other reasons why I hate his guts, and it's a longshot that a vote will matter at all regardless.

If you disagree with me, or see me as misguided, stubborn, or whatever else, that's all fine. But whatever I may be, I am a person and not a bot or a foreign agent or a conservative in disguise, and these are my real beliefs and concerns. If you've made it through this long comment, I'm grateful.

Objection , 18 days ago (edited 18 days ago) to Political Memes in There are few things fascists hate as much as antifascist coalitions

On the other hand, I also do think it’s relevant that the countries run by the same people (ideologically) who were backing Thälmann turned into totalitarian nightmares, where people were risking death to flee from in order to get to places run by people like Hindenburg, in the decades after the war, when all the Hitler issues were in the past. If we’re going to analyze the viewpoint that the KPD was on the right side of history and the SPD should have dropped everything and unified with them, then I think that’s a relevant data point.

And if we're going to bring that up, I think it's a relevant data point that most of the countries you mention that were run by people like Hindenburg, where those people were fleeing to, were countries that had lots of wealth which had been built on centuries of slavery, exploitation, and colonialism, while most of the countries run by people like Thalmann were starting from a pre-industrial level and actively opposed, economically, militarily, and through assassinations, by the wealthy countries controlled by the people like Hindenburg. I would also point out the many, many cases of countries trying to enact policies that would benefit their people, without taking precautions against foreign subversion, who were murdered by the people like Hindenburg, and replaced by the people like Hitler.

Objection , 18 days ago (edited 18 days ago) to Political Memes in Just a reminder

If the US ever tried evacuating Iraqi orphans into the US adoption system, the right would start race riots over it. We didn't even let our collaborators in.

No, instead, the children were left in the war zone where countless numbers were killed.