I can understand that perspective, but I’m looking at things from more of a class based and realpolitik perspective. The international order, I would say even now, but especially at that time of peak colonialism, was pretty much like this.

The Allied powers dominated the world, and they achieved that through force, brazen, unapologetic aggression. Germany didn’t have a problem with that, except for the part where they weren’t the ones on top, that they didn’t have colonies to exploit like everyone else.

From my perspective, the real problem is that socialists at the time didn’t follow through on the Basel declaration of 1912 where socialists of every country promised to oppose the coming war. When the war actually broke out, everyone rallied around their respective flags, the British and French socialists talked about Germany invading neutral countries and not being as democratic, but the German socialists justified it by talking about serfdom in Russia and the colonialism of Britain and France, and at the end of the day, tons of regular people got drafted to go die in the trenches over these power games.

Admittedly, I’ve never really considered it from a Belgian perspective before, but I think the bigger nations were all more motivated by power than by a genuine commitment to upholding neutrality and national sovereignty.

Love Blackadder, especially that season ❤️

Pretty sure nobody was fighting before the Germans attacked Eben emael with gliders.

That’s the wrong war. Fort Eben Emael wasn’t even constructed yet, and there were no paratroopers on any side.

Franz Ferdinand was assassinated on June 28th, 1914. On July 28th, Austria-Hungary began shelling Belgrade, in the first shots of the war. Germany occupied Luxembourg August 2nd and invaded Belgium August 4th.

But regardless, the European powers were always going to end up fighting each other after running out of places to colonize, building up enormous militaries, and forming a bunch of secret alliances. No nation was the “good guys” in WWI, they were a bunch of imperialist colonial states jockeying for power, and sending ordinary people into awful conditions to die for no good reason.

Eh, if Israel did not exist, the United States would just invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.

Germans were no more responsible for WWI than the British, French, etc.

Relevant sketch

We can’t condemn the Nazis because if we condemn the Nazis people will think we’re Nazis. When people see that we won’t condemn the Nazis, that’s how they’ll know we aren’t Nazis.

Non sequitor. Not what I said and not a Republican.

Campaigns are about winning swing states, those are just the rules of the game. Kamala lost that game worse than any Democrat in nearly 40 years. Maybe the rules we have aren’t fair, and if they were different, she would’ve lost by a smaller margin. But then, both campaigns would’ve been run completely differently, the same candidates might not have even been the nominees, etc.

By the actual rules of the actual game, Kamala lost extremely badly.

This was literally the worst electoral map for the Democrats since 1988 when Republicans won Illinois and California.

I’m confused, when you talk about voting “Democrat,” do you mean, for the Democratic-Republicans? I was thinking of voting Federalist, personally.

Since our system makes it impossible to change from the two currently existing parties, it follows that the two parties we have now must be the ones we started with.

But regardless, this is typical shortsighted liberal (i.e. capitalist) analysis that only looks at the immediate outcome and only at electoral politics. If a significant portion of the electorate can make a credible threat to sit out if their demands are not met, then they can leverage that threat to get what they want. The right is much more willing to do this because they put their values above reason, and it works - many Republican candidates understand that if they look soft on things like abortion or guns, a sizable portion of their base will defect, even if it means voting for a crank and throwing the election. Democratic voters are much more committed to being “reasonable” and so refuse to set any red lines anywhere, and the results are clear: the right successfully shifts the Republicans to be more extreme, the Democrats follow, and the left falls in line and accepts it. We are desperately overdue to start learning from their successful tactics and from our own failures, setting down red lines, and thinking beyond the current cycle. And we can debate where exactly red lines should be set, but if genocide doesn’t deserve one, nothing does.

Moreover, the facts of physical reality, the material conditions, and the myriad of crises we’re facing demand radical changes beyond what we are told are possible in the existing system. But those things are physical, natural, immutable facts, while our political system is, on a fundamental level, manmade. We do not have to abide by its rules and what it tells us is and isn’t possible - but we do have to do that regarding the laws of nature, which tell us about things like climate change. Monarchy had no mechanism built into the system to transform into liberal democracy, and yet, here we are. That’s because there are fundamental mechanisms for change that exist within every political system, whether the system wants them to or not, and I don’t just mean revolutions, but demonstrations, strikes, etc. And so, the party I voted for, PSL, participates in electoral politics for the express purpose of building organization beyond electoral politics. Helping a candidate who I see as fundamentally unacceptable win an election is less important that helping to promote that sort of organizing.

It’s very frustrating and the thread I linked made me feel like I was losing my mind. I try to seek out perspectives I disagree with but a lot of times I just end up concluding, “Damn, these people are even worse than I thought.”

What gets me is how wildly people in the thread blew it out of proportion. You had someone quoting “first they came for” as if lifting sanctions on a leader we installed is comparable to the Holocaust.

It’s like everyone needs everyone to agree that every time Trump sneezes, it’s the literal worst thing that has ever happened, and if you push back on anything ever you’re the enemy. These same people fantasize that they can win elections by appealing to moderates.

But the thing that really grinds my gears is how they all default to hostile intervention in foreign countries despite knowing absolutely nothing about their situation. The “null” position should be leaving everyone alone, but instead, it’s whatever the government or media tell them. Or in this case, whatever a random tweet from a crypto grifter tells them. And they will try to bring down the hammer of social condemnation and use things like this as a way to equate communists to fascists and kick us out of spaces, even when they aren’t actually at all invested in the issue.

Buncha clowns.

My apologies. I tried to control-F and apparently that doesn’t work on usernames.

In any case, my take is essentially just, “Hands off Syria.” I didn’t think we should arm him, I don’t think we should sanction him, etc. I don’t really think that’s a shit take, but it’s certainly drawn some criticism over the years.

Cool, so then, why did 1500 people just upvote a picture of a tweet calling him a terrorist, and criticizing the lifting of sanctions against him? Why did only like 40 people downvote it? That’s what I’m calling out.

Where were you when in that thread, by the way? Why are you criticizing my take and not that one? Don’t tell me you only saw the thread sitting at 7 upvotes and missed the one with 1500. My bad.

Imo classical economists were generally more clear-sighted and honest than modern ones. Of course they had their biases and perspective based on their class (and their audience), but at that point economics was so poorly understood that theorists were legitimately trying to figure stuff out, moreso than trying to produce propaganda. Of course, the industrial proletariat and threat of socialism wasn’t really present yet either, so the class conflict was more about new money bourgeois vs old money aristocrats and landlords.

Marx and Smith are a lot more similar than most people think, because Marx was writing in the context of various economic assumptions that come from Smith, such as the labor theory of value, which is usually attributed to Marx but actually comes from Smith.

The thing about Smith though is that his writing style was very dry and repetitive so nobody actually reads him, at best, they might read abridged versions which cut out any inconvenient parts like that. So he just kinda became known as the capitalism guy and is thrown in the same category as Ayn Rand.

Bulls on Parade (Hell Yeah Cover)

Weapons not food, not homes, not shoes (Hell yeah!)

Not need, just feed the war cannibal animal (Hell yeah!)

I walk the corner to the rubble that used to be a library (Hell yeah!)

Line up to the mind cemetery now (Hell yeah!)

What they don’t know keeps the contracts alive and movin’ (Hell yeah!)

We don’t gotta burn the books we just remove 'em (Hell yeah!)

While arms warehouses fill as quick as the cells (Hell yeah!)

Rally 'round the family, pockets full of shells (Hell yeah!)

Well, if it didn’t, then perhaps there’s no way to get them to do what we want and in that case it is imperative that they be replaced as soon as possible, a goal that is also furthered by voting third party.

The thing to fight for is ranked choice voting, or some other method without a spoiler effect. Until you have that

No. The thing is for candidates to endorse ranked choice voting and implement it, and until they do that, they are going to have to deal with the spoiler effect.

This shit is so stupid. “You have to fall in line unconditionally forever, until, out of the kindness of their hearts and against their own interests, the party decides to let you out of that situation.” That’s just saying we have to fall in line unconditionally forever. They’re never going to just give us systemic change, it’s designed this way on purpose and is working exactly the way they want it to.

The only way to actually apply pressure towards getting necessary policies is through setting conditions on your vote based on those policies. This ideology of “lesser-evilism” is completely illogical and incoherent, and the whole reason we’re here is because it’s such an egregious failure. There is no incentive for politicians to implement RCV if they know they’ll have your vote either way. It’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.

I’ve considered it, but I might have to go back to school to get the qualifications. I’m also trans and nervous about what that future might look like.

And yeah, there’s also the issue of just training people to work for defense companies. At least you could maybe warn them? Tbh, if did go back to school for teaching, I feel like I’d want to teach history instead, it’s much more of a “study of everything” than physics is (and is more relevant to politics). Like tbh I kinda lost interest in physics after graduating, for me, it was tied to a lot of things that I’ve left behind.