• Lovable Sidekick
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    6 months ago

    That’s right, they aren’t going to overcome their irrational fears. They’ll have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future until it becomes normal and they realize the sky didn’t fall. I actually had hope that we were on the verge of a strong progressive wave, but then millions of people decided not to show up because Harris wasn’t perfect enough for them. So basically fuck y’all, and good luck with the whole People’s Front of Judea vs the Judean People’s Front deal. The thing about MAGA is they fucking show up, and they’re gonna keep showing the fuck up. Idiots need to figure out that you don’t make change happen by turning away when your ideal options don’t appear on a menu so you can click on one and go back to scrolling. /end rant

    • Cowbee [he/they]OP
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      136 months ago

      I think what you’re missing is that for most Socialists, electoralism has already been proven as a losing game to begin with, and is far below the minimum requirements to enact change. Real power comes from organizing, which is why Leftists always push for it (and when it happens, they get results).

      • Lovable Sidekick
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        66 months ago

        I think what people are missing is Trump/Vance being the worst possible outcome. But yes, real power does come from organizing - not from sitting in front of a screen “raising awareness”.

        • Cowbee [he/they]OP
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          96 months ago

          The worst possible outcome is really perpetuating this horrible system to begn with.

          • Lovable Sidekick
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            46 months ago

            I agree, which is exactly what refusing to participate does. Lazy rationalizations help the oligarchs as much as money and brainwashing.

            • Cowbee [he/they]OP
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              96 months ago

              Participating in the electoral system also perpetuates it, the Capitalists don’t care who wins because they already approve of both major parties.

              • Lovable Sidekick
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                46 months ago

                Okay if changing the system through the system is impossible then what’s your plan?

                • Cowbee [he/they]OP
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                  106 months ago

                  Revolution, which requires worker organization and the building of dual power, as has been done successfully in many countries.

  • BmeBenji (he/him)
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    726 months ago

    My dad: “Yeah, maybe a good solution to the problem of not being able to pay rent would be government-provided housing”

    Also my dad: “Socialism is horrible! If it wasn’t, then why would EVERYONE be trying to leave Communist countries like Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe???”

    • @[email protected]
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      6 months ago

      I didnt know i was living in a communist country

      Its also strange that there are anti-communist stickers in a communist country

    • Cowbee [he/they]OP
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      386 months ago

      I wonder what the modern world would look like had the USSR not been dissolved, and repaired its relationship with the PRC.

      • @[email protected]
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        86 months ago

        At the end of the day, there is a reason the USSR dissolved. Generally related to bread lines, gulags, all that fun stuff

        • @[email protected]
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          56 months ago

          Can we put the combined efforts of every capitalist market and oligarchy who’s power has reigned uninterrupted since centuries before communism was formally theorized?

          Or nah it was probably the… checks notes prisons gulags, right glad those are gone.

          Or the bread distribution? Yea didn’t work for Rome either.

        • @[email protected]
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          86 months ago

          If the USSR had dissolved due to issues like the ones you’re talking about (Gulags being basically entirely dismantled after WW2 so 45 years before the dissolution, and breadlines being nonexistent until the 1980s liberalisation during Perestroika), it would have been dissolved with the popular consensus. There was a referendum in 1990 that asked the citizens of the Soviet Union if they wanted to maintain their country under communism and 70% of voters (admittedly a few republics didn’t participate) voted yes, so the USSR was extremely popular and people didn’t want it dissolved. The reasons for the illegal and antidemocratic dissolution of the USSR are much more complex than that.

            • @[email protected]
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              46 months ago

              Did… Did you just equate the former socialist state that was the Soviet Union to the contemporary proto-fascist and capitalist Russian Federation that literally emerged out of the dismantling and auctioning of the former??

            • davel [he/him]
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              46 months ago

              I’m getting a little tired of hot takes from those who don’t know shit about fuck.

        • Cowbee [he/they]OP
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          146 months ago

          I disagree with the reasons you gave, feeding those in need didn’t hurt the USSR and the GULAG system was abolished several decades prior to the dissolution of the USSR. It’s ultimately a complicated issue, but one that I believe ultimately had to do with rejecting much of the world economy, which resulted in a form of Siege Socialism.

      • @[email protected]
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        286 months ago

        To me the biggest hypocracy in general when it came to forms of communism.

        It’s a failed ideology, it will always collapse in on itself as soon as it grows.

        Followed with

        We need to destroy it at all costs to keep it from taking hold anywhere in the world.

        You don’t need to stop something that’s self defeating. It’s like the tower of babel story in the bible. Mankind was building up a great tower because they thought uniting they would be a powerful as gods, so god knocked over their tower, scrambled their languages to divide and conquer the world… Isn’t that kind of an admission that, God believed without his interference man can be as strong as he is?

        • ZeroOne
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          56 months ago

          God ? Really ? Self-defeating, oh yes via spending billiins of dollars funding coups & sanctioning & bombing them in the name of Freeeeeeedom

        • Cowbee [he/they]OP
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          176 months ago

          Yep, really US foreign policy purely supports that which it can profit from, and it can’t do that if the population starts using its own resources for its own benefit rather than allowing them to be stolen by the US.

    • @[email protected]
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      6 months ago

      why would EVERYONE be trying to leave Communist countries like Russia and the rest of Eastern Europe???

      China is empty. Russia is empty. Cuba is empty. Vietnam is empty. South Africa is empty. They’ve all been hollowed out by the scourge of Communism. That’s why nobody lives there anymore.

      Meanwhile, the US is the most populous country on Earth. We have the densest cities. We have the largest apartment towers. We have the most-used transit systems. Our nation is full to bursting thanks to all of the people who want to live here. And the more traditionally conservative, the more flagrantly capitalist, the more Christian and Based and Traditional, the larger the US State. That’s right, folks. West Virginia, South Dakota, Utah, and Idaho are the four most densely populated corners of the planet.

  • @[email protected]
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    126 months ago

    But the talking head on Fox told me what to think about socialism, using no facts or common sense.

    What am I supposed to do? NOT believe them?

  • @[email protected]
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    6 months ago

    If we can simply help Americans understand small-s socialism from small-c communism, we’d be in much better shape.

    Because yes, my healthcare is already paid in advance by me and everyone else from our taxes; and my buddy’s emergency Sunday morning quintuple stent install after the widowmaker heart attack and two ambulances and a bed in one hospital before transfer (a third bus) to the regional trauma/cardiac center for the operation and 2 weeks of aftercare was free to him that day – and his only concern was not dying. And that’s not just normal but that’s the general expectation. No monthly subscription, no premium cost, no user fee, just paid-parking and vendor-machine food for visitors not coming in via the train.

    Our upcoming election will gut that, though. Being bankrupt, losing retirement savings and mortgaged to the hilt at 61 is the American dream mr Polievre has for all Canadian plebes.

  • @[email protected]
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    6 months ago

    “No, no, they tries to tricks us, precious [capitalism]! They wants to take you from us, stop you from helping us, precious, gollum!”

    • Cowbee [he/they]OP
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      136 months ago

      Both is good. Sometimes politicians are quite honest in an explanatory way for their actions, both need to be taken into account. They don’t have to be honest, but their stance is usually projected clearly.

      • metaStatic
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        36 months ago

        The phrase is ‘When someone shows you who they are believe them’ and has nothing to do with their words because people say all kinds of shit.

        • @[email protected]
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          16 months ago

          Well in some ways there’s double meanings.

          Fact is almost universally people lie to make themselves sound better. When someone says “I like to backstab people who put their trust in me, and I love to take loans and never pay them back, by the way can I borrow $200”. You probably don’t need to loan the person the money to find out if he was really just lying.

  • @[email protected]
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    76 months ago

    the fear for good, is the fear for change or admitting they where wrong. it is pride, as well as lazyness, combined with stupidity and weakness. because weakness is not how strong one seems(or lack there of) but weakness, is how little a person would be their real self, as well as how much they assume that in order to be strong they need to supress others so they are in a worse state than them. supressing people is a sign of the weak, because they are blinded and can only destroy.

  • @[email protected]
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    6 months ago

    I don’t know what worse, the corruption of communism or the corruption of capitalism. Right now, we’re in the American Nightmare stage of capitalism. Seems to me humanity can’t have an economic system where a group of people want all the wealth and power.

  • @[email protected]
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    676 months ago

    Socialism is the people. If you are afraid of socialism, you’re afraid of yourself.

    • Fred Hampton
    • Cowbee [he/they]OP
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      6 months ago

      Rest in Power Fred Hampton, a brave Marxist-Leninist that tried to do what was right and got murdered by the US police for it.

    • @[email protected]
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      66 months ago

      The same folks I know who wouldn’t even consider a conversation about socialism are not going to be swayed when I quote any black man to them, much less a panther.

      • @[email protected]
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        46 months ago

        Totally fair. The trick is to meet them where they’re at, and then work from there. The folks you’re thinking about will take a lot of effort, but if union organizers can do it then so can you

    • @[email protected]
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      6 months ago

      I think “private property” isn’t well defined in socialist discourse and this idea of no private property gets a lot of backlash from some. A distinction between personal and private property needs to be made where one is used to generate capital in exchange for wages and the other is your dildo. The dildo is your personal property and no one is going to take it. A piece of land can be someones private property when they employ you and pay you a wage to work it - you get payed a pittance and they, without work, take the cream.

      • Cowbee [he/they]OP
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        26 months ago

        I think it’s generally well-understood amongst Socialists, the issue comes from those first learning about Socialism and thinking it is applied as dogmatism to the strictest degree, and isn’t a drawn out process of iterative improvement following revolution. For such people, they need to know if “going along with” Socialism means they can’t have a gaming PC or something, but the reality of Socialism is that it isn’t nearly as rigid or strict as it is stereotyped as.

      • Dessalines
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        126 months ago

        Its well defined IMO, but anti-communist propaganda intentionally spreads the wrong definition of it to make communists look scary.

      • @[email protected]
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        116 months ago

        A distinction between personal and private property needs to be made where one is used to generate capital in exchange for wages and the other is your dildo

        That’s always the definition. It is well defined, the problem is that there are national propaganda machines outright lying to the people.

      • @[email protected]
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        6 months ago

        This is a reasonable explanation, similar to the ones I write on the spot when attempting to explain things. Made more difficult by the fact many signs barring entry to owned land say “private property” (or some variation on it, at least in France and the US)