Or during Rome lol.

Republics don’t work. They always just end up authoritarian.

There isn’t really a single form of communist government, same as there isn’t a single way to do democracy or capitalism. Every country does it different, experiments a different way. For all we know, the perfect way to do it is just waiting for us to discover.

For example, I’d say the US’s form of liberal, bourgeois democracy is one of the worst ways to implement it, but it was also an early experiment with it and deserves credit for at least trying it and helping us learn what to do and what not to do.

And we haven’t even bombed you to the stone age yet to take all your oil! (or coal? Whatever Australia has) Imagine it would be even more after that lol.

Same, man, same lol. I’m still patriotic during the Olympics, but if we’re going to be funding genocides, assassinating leaders, and starting wars and shit, fuck it, I hope we lose them all lol. Let’s just start over on the whole project.

I invite US balkanization at this point so I can go hang out in the new sovereign state of whatever CA, WA, and OR will be called. Hawaii can come, too.

You should compare countries of similar development. That’s a good thing. People always compare the richest capitalist countries with the poorest communist countries, but by doing that always ignore the mass amount of poor capitalist countries, ones that are poor specifically because of capitalism.

Russia, for example, was extremely poor and behind. Comparing them to other majority agrarian societies during the Tsar makes way more sense than comparing them to countries that had been post-Industrial Revolution for awhile already, like Britain, Germany, or the US. That wouldn’t make any sense. They were trying to catch up but they were still only just getting a proletariat from their burgeoning heavy industry and rail industries when the Revolution happened. They were way behind the West otherwise. Yet in a short period of time they managed to catch up.

China even more so was basically all peasants. Vietnam, Cuba, Korea, etc all the same, extremely poor, small, or both. So they should be compared with countries of relative equal development, which tends to be the countries in the global South, like Africa or Latin America.

Then there’s the fact that they are kept at low development through purposeful exclusion from global markets, via sanctions, propaganda like the “Radio Free” programs, coups, support of separatist or terrorist groups, taking of national resources, being kept in debt by the IMF, and so on.

The USSR had to deal with a civil war, rising up during WWI and being sabotaged by the Germans, more civil war, foreign meddling, and all while being the first successful communist revolution. Yet they still managed to raise literacy, raise health outcomes, raise average life expectancy, gender equality, science and technology, end the cycle of famines (after the first one or two they had when they were still building up), had faster growth during that period than any capitalist country (except maybe the US, which was doing imperialism at the time and the biggest hegemon), all while helping sustain other socialist countries, like Cuba, Venezuela, or North Korea.

On the other hand, I always see people who use the term tankies calling everyone who the US propaganda says is an oppressor an oppressor. It’s so weird how that works out that way, that the colonized countries trying to get self-determination are the oppressors, and the western colonial and imperialist countries are the only ones with “freedom”. They eat the propaganda right up.

100% This moment can help galvanize people to the need to fix our Healthcare, but random acts of violence won’t fix it, people organizing together will.

I made the same point above, but should’ve just scrolled a bit to find this comment then I wouldn’t have had to lol.

Sound alike the gymnastics to define racial categories to preserve a social hierarchy as well. What is white? Well it’s people from here and here, not Irish, not Jewish, etc. Oh wait, Irish are allowed now but not Okies. Okay, they’re allowed now but no Jews! Now, Jewish can be allowed sometimes but no Italians. Alright, Italians, but no Jews, Irish are also okay, some Hispanic people if they can pass, certain Asians can be let in, etc. Etc. It always go on like that. It stays malleable just to make it exclusive.

Don’t look up too much the first time reading it. Just enjoy the weird ride. Feel free to page over to the relevant appendices every now and then, although they didn’t make a ton of sense to me. When you’re done, check them out. Apparently there’s various secret messages and stuff back there that reveal more of the story but like I said, I still need to figure them out myself lol. Once I finished the book my mind was too twisted up trying to figure it out to look into them, but I’ll come back… one day.

House of Leaves, I believe

House of Leaves I believe

I need to read that book again. It was scary, but I finished it utterly confused. I clearly missed a ton from the appendices.

A protest is not the same as a coup. A coup is a coordinated attack to replace one regime with another, a sudden, violent overthrow of political leadership by a relatively small group of people. The business plot, Jan 6, Brooks Brothers Riot, were all about that.

Even if it turns violent, a protest is not the same as a coup. A protest is basically where you try to affect change or public opinion through large public demonstrations. It’s trying to appeal the public or leadership to listen to you. Meanwhile, a coup doesn’t really need the public. You’re forcefully attacking the levers of power or the process to change leadership itself (ex: stopping elections, disrupting people counting votes, stopping electors from voting or swearing in, etc.). Meanwhile, even if some hooligans burn a police car during a BLM protest, that doesn’t suddenly turn the protest into a coup.

Occupy was mostly peaceful anyway. The whole joke at the time was that it was a bunch of dirty hippies doing drum circle in the park and in front of finance buildings, like that they were peaceful to the point of not being effective, just annoying. That and their demands weren’t clear. There was no criticism of them because violence that I remember at all.

Basically every war we did during the Cold War was about “sharing” the greatness of capitalism over communism, too. We’re still pretending our embargo against Cuba is just for the same dumb reason.

Zionist and Jewish are not the same thing, they’re not even euphemism like (((globalist))). There are Jewish people protesting against Zionism, and Christian people fighting hard for it. It’s not the same thing and no leftist thinks it is. Every now and then some Nazi tries to conflate them, and leftists do need to see it and shut it down, but that’s a different issue.

The US government is controlled by the same interests and lobbbyists that control the government, so it’s similar although not the same thing. Just because their interests align at this moment because the billionaires don’t want competition and the government has a hard-on for Israel doesn’t mean their right.

And for the record, I don’t even use Tik Tok, and I personally think social media and shortform content is bad for young brains and probably causing a lot of ADHD and impairing my ability to read. But I find this whole bill very fake and performative and probably done for the wrong reasons. It’s weird that we finally got an international perspective unfiltered by US media companies that bow to AIPAC and of course it’s getting banned.

Also the community episode

It’s beautiful lol