Makes sense. If we can trust 87 year olds to govern the country, why can't we trust them to drive? /s
Yes, the real problem is a handful of academics writing esoteric stuff that most people (especially its critics) don't read or understand. Pay no attention to the billionaires behind the curtain.
The math contributes some to this. Let's say the correct answer is 1%, and out of ten people, 9 of them guess 1% and the other guesses 51% - that one guess shifts the average from 1% to 6%. And if it's 1%, then there's no room for people to underestimate and bring the number back down, and the same is true of numbers close to 100%. The numbers closer to the middle don't necessarily mean that people were more correct on an individual level, but that some people overestimated and others underestimated and it came out closer to the right number. The graph ought to give information about the spread of errors and not just the raw average.
So true bestie.
Unrelated, but the other day, someone cornered me in an alley with a gun and demanded I hand over my wallet - but I didn't lose to them! I simply put my hands up and abandoned my wallet, very different.
It's a staging area for the US that's very close to China, so there's that reason strategically. But really, there's not a lot of reason to which is why they haven't done so already. China is, as far as I'm aware, perfectly happy with the traditional US approach towards Taiwan, a policy of "strategic ambiguity" that doesn't officially recognize Taiwan as independent (while informally supporting them) and which has kept the peace for many decades. China does not gain much from provoking a military confrontation with the US, as things stand, China is winning the peace through economic development while the US is going all in on the military. By maintaining the status quo, China can leave the issue open and kick the can down the road, maintaining the possibility that someday in the future they may be in a strong enough position to press the issue.
Even still, China now has its own academia and engineering, and is larger than Taiwan. Hence, even without the corporate espionage mainland China is known for, wouldn’t investing in their burgeoning semiconductor industry make more sense, rather than spending that money on war?
That's exactly what they've been doing. That article mentions that they've actually recruited 3000 engineers from Taiwan's chip industry to help develop their own chips.
Yet while taking Taiwan would mean access to deep-water ports, it’s not as though Taiwan would ever pose a threat to Chinese power projection—their stance is wholly defensive. If China decided to pull an “America” and send a carrier to the Middle East or something, no one would stop them and risk a war.
Taiwan's stance is defensive, but the same isn't necessarily true of the US, which operates in Taiwan. The US has recently started throwing around rhetoric and shifting spending focuses towards treating a hot war with China as a serious possibility, insane as it may be. This is (hopefully) just bluster to justify defense spending, but I'm not at all convinced that if China sent a carrier to the Middle East, the US would not retaliate. If anything, they're looking for a reason.
So a handful of people grew consciences and decided that they didn't like the Nazis, but what was actually done to them while they remained loyal, or to others who never turned against them? "Some people grew disillusioned" isn't the same thing as the Nazis actively turning on them personally.
When the Nazis seized property, it was generally the property of minorities which was then often redistributed upwards to the rich. Many bourgeoisie made out like bandits, so long as they were white and didn't have a conscience.
Like, just google what happens to most oligarchs when they support any kind of authoritarianism. Whether it’s Mussolini, Hitler, or Putin, they always get shafted in the end.
What on earth are you talking about? The oligarchs who supported Hitler made a bunch of money, saw organized labor crushed, and then did fine after the war. Nazi war criminal Fritz ter Meer, who was a senior board member of IG Farben, manufacturing Zyklon B for the gas chambers, got a couple years in prison and then became chairman of Bayer.
The question you asked me before, multiple times, was "Do you believe all men are violent?" Which I answered. I will now promptly answer every single question you asked.
Do you think vaccines cause Autism?
No, obviously. Irrelevant nonsense.
Do you also have thought terminating memes about vaccines in that vein too?
No, and that logic is complete nonsense. Vaccines do not make people more prone to autism. Do you think they do?
Do you think everyone who got the COVID vaccine is also prone to death too?
No, of course not. This is all coming out of nowhere.
What is the difference between men who are violent and men who are not?
There isn't a singular difference. Some men are more violent than others because of the conditions they're born into, or the way they were raised, or different reactions and ways of handling testosterone (as you suggested). This question is largely unconnected from the point I've disputed, which is your claim that men are generally less prone to violence than women.
What is the difference between those who are vaccinated, and those who are vaccinated and have autism?
The ones who are vaccinated and have autism happen to have autism. What even is this question?
There you go. I'm not interested in responding to the rest of your rambling. I asked what question I haven't answered and then answered every question you asked, if you have another question you forgot, I'll answer that too. What did I have for breakfast this morning? Do I condemn Hamas? Go for it. You can say whatever you like about me, but I'm not afraid from answering questions or engaging with hard concepts, that's just false.
Strange that Biden won in 2020 despite 2/3 of the country "effectively voting for Trump" by not voting for Biden🤔
I won't feel bad about not voting for Kamala even if I were sent to El Salvador, or marched into a gas chamber. I made peace with that before I voted PSL.
Y'all fundamentally misunderstand us. You think we're simply misinformed, that we don't appreciate the threat, that if only we saw the facts of what the Republicans are like, we'd immediately see things your way. What you don't understand is that we do see the facts, we're just operating under a different ethical and political framework from you. The point of disagreement is not about the facts on the ground, it's about the best way to respond to them. So merely pointing to the awful shit the Republicans do has no chance of swaying, well, I can't speak for everyone, but certainly me, and anyone who thinks like me.
There are definitely similarities, but China has its own fascinating history there, with a lot of traditional beliefs resurfacing as weird, sanctioned versions of themselves after the cultural revolution had mostly suppressed them.
I think you've got it backwards. One of the lesser known, positive parts of the Cultural Revolution (which was primarily a horrible clusterfuck) was the Barefoot Doctors program, in which medical students were fast-tracked in education and sent out to the rural regions of China, which had never before had access to modern medicine. It was a very basic level of care, but it increased the number of doctors per person tenfold in the span of five years, and access to vaccines had a significant impact, increasing life-expectancy and reducing child mortality. However, because medical supplies in those regions were limited (and the scale of the program), the doctors were instructed to supplement care with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). This allowed the program to be rolled out more quickly, and the partial reliance on TCM may have helped with public acceptance (since it was what they already believed in), but it had an unfortunate side effect that it legitimized TCM.
This program was phased out in the 80's with China's broader economic shift, towards privatization, while also moving away from TCM. The new policies made care less accessible and focused more on curing serious ailments rather than preventative care. China has made some efforts to address these issues, though I'm not well informed enough about their current system to weigh in.
A lot of the modern popularity of TCM likely comes from the time of the Barefoot Doctors program, because people remember their quality of life improving during that time and then declining later when the focus was shifted away from TCM, incorrectly attributing it to TCM's effectiveness rather than the accessibility of care and focus on prevention. Which is to say, many of the people who believe in TCM may actually be nostalgic for the healthcare system implemented during the Cultural Revolution.
What "hard questions" have I avoided? I responded to everything you asked me.
It's a clear, objective fact that men are, statistically, more prone to violence than women. That means that you are, objectively, wrong. There's no reason for me to "admit that I'm wrong" when the facts and evidence are clearly on my side, lol.
What an idiotic, rambling comment. You ignore basically everything I said and latched on to a couple random pedantic points, while accusing me of being pedantic.
Quite literally, you are trying to argue that distress and anger are different emotions, despite both of them coming from the same place.
You are basically saying that Pepsi isn’t cola flavored because the can it comes in doesn’t look like Coke.
Except the distinction does matter, because testesterone is connected specifically to anger and not to general "distress." Women are just as likely to experience feelings of distress as men, that means that there's a significant difference in the context of this discussion between the two.
Not ALL men are violent. OBJECTIVELY. Do you agree?
Of course. At NO point did I ever claim otherwise. What I have claimed is that, generally, statistically men are more prone to violence, which is just as objectively true as the fact that not all men are violent, despite your claims to the contrary.
they ALL have TESTOSTERONE. They would ALL be violent.
This is complete nonsense. Testosterone only makes people more prone to violence, generally, statistically, it doesn't make every single person violent.
This is a ridiculous strawman that you've constructed to divert the course of the conversation into utter nonsense. It has nothing to do with anything I said.
It's not "hostility to the working class," it's just objective facts. The CCP originally tried to follow the more orthodox approach of focusing on the industrial proletariat, with the exception of a particular member who had personal experience with the rural peasants and believed they had greater potential for radicalization. The CCP ignored him, and were promptly defeated, leading to the Long March. Among the survivors was that man I mentioned earlier, who was now able to implement his strategy of focusing on the peasants, and as a result of that strategy, even though the communists had been thoroughly defeated, hiding in the most remote regions of China, most of the party dead, the revolution caught on and spread like wildfire.
If othodox Marxist theory was objectively not suited to the conditions of China regarding which class had radicalization potential, because the lack of industrialization meant that the proletariat hadn't really developed, then isn't it reasonable to think that orthodox theory regarding the bourgeoisie was questionable as well?
And in Germany, the so-called "working class" party of the SDP actively fought against the potential of setting up a socialist government, set the freicorps against communists, and insisted on setting up a system where they would give the bourgeoisie power and then work with them to worsen the conditions of the working class. You yourself acknowledged their betrayal of the working class, it's just when they take off their "Second International" hat and put on their "SDP" hat they're absolved of everything, apparently.
Goes to show that the Trotskyist tendency towards blind contrarianism is as strong as ever. If Trotsky and Stalin had switched roles, you'd all be Stalinists, it doesn't even matter what their ideological differences were, you just want to support the guy who lost so that you can imagine he would've done everything perfectly and you don't have to engage with difficult practical decisions. Classic "support every revolution, except the ones that succeed."
I have to wonder how much of it is driven by chauvinism towards developing countries too, as you seem actively hostile to considering their material conditions.
I don't agree with that assessment. The KMT at the time was led by Sun Yat-Sen, who was much more left-leaning than his successor Chiang Kai-Shek. The KMT was originally a revolutionary party that deposed the monarchy, and it had left-wing elements within the party (as well as cooperating with the CCP) before Chiang purged them. Also worth noting that as a pre-industrial, colonized society, the class distinctions were not precisely the same as in Western countries, as demonstrated by the fact that it was by mobilizing the peasants rather than the much smaller industrial proletariat that the Chinese revolution was eventually successful. As argued by Frantz Fanon, class collaboration with the bourgeoisie in poor countries is potentially viable because the primary conflict in those cases is with foreign colonizers.
If you ask me to choose between the early KMT under Sun that overthrew a monarchy and cooperated with communists, and the SDP who betrayed and murdered communists, denounced them as being as bad as fascists, and enacted austerity policies that contributed to the Nazis' rise, I'm picking the early KMT every time.
The correct policy would have been to spread the revolution throughout the world on the basis of Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution, as advanced by the Left Opposition.
The failures of the revolutions in Germany through 1923 were terrible tragedies, prepared largely by the betrayals of the Second International and the inexperiance of the new communist KPD of the Third International. This is not something you can really blame Stalin for, but it created the conditions for what followed.
The ultraleft line of the Comintern in its third period led to disaster and betrayal in Germany in the 1930s. Stalin divided the forces working class by refusing to allow a united front of the communists with German Social Democracy.
What? These criticisms are all contradictory.
On the one hand, Stalin should've done more to spread the revolution to other countries, like Germany. On the other hand, he should've convinced the KPD to work together with the SDP instead of taking a more revolutionary approach. Were the SDP not the very people who were in the Second International and betrayed the revolution?
It seems kind of silly to blame the KPD-SDP split on Stalin considering that the social democrats both killed much of the KPD leadership (such as Rosa Luxembourg), and also continued using equivalent language about how the KPD were just as bad as the fascists. The SDP made the decision to align with the bourgeois parties and help them enact austerity policies during an economic crisis, and ultimately to back Hindenburg over Thälmann, who then appointed Hitler. The KPD felt that, in addition to the SDP being utterly uncooperative and uninterested in reconciliation, their association with crushing economic policy made them more of a liability than an asset - in hindsight, this was probably a miscalculation, but the blame is not entirely on them.
Now, if your position was that the USSR should have taken a realpolitik perspective and backed the anticommunist SDP to stop Hitler, despite their attitude to the KPD, that would be a coherent criticism - except that you also criticize the USSR for making a very similar decision in China. The USSR policy viewed the CCP as too weak to win a revolution, and instead aimed to achieve a united front, regardless of ideological disagreements.
Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see that this estimation was an error, but I'm asking for a single coherent path. Either be willing to compromise and work together with anti-communists like the KMT and the SDP, or take a hard line and support revolution - even in the face looming threats from the Nazis in one case and the Japanese on the other. Or, I suppose, take it on a case-by-case basis, in which case your criticism would be less ideological and more personal, regarding Stalin's ability to assess foreign situations - and that's a bit of stretch because I don't think most of the leftists in Germany and China foresaw what would happen in their respective countries either.
Aside from these contradictions, I don't really agree with the Trotskyist demand for an aggressive foreign policy. Of course, Marx predicted a global revolution but Marx was not a prophet, and socialist movements in other countries were not sufficiently developed to follow suit (as evidenced by the failure of the Second International). Trying to create an insurgency within another country is an act of aggression, at least potentially of war, and it seems like you're demanding that the USSR should've gone to war with every country on earth simultaneously to compensate for the failure of those countries' own socialist movements. That would've obviously been suicidal.
The USSR's (post-Stalin) policy of "peaceful coexistence" was based on the correct understanding that such aggression would (perhaps correctly) be seen as a nationalistic act of aggression. Indeed, to the extent that the USSR expanded militarily, for example under Stalin or in Afghanistan, I think it deserves criticism. It seems a lot more reasonable to consolidate their position and serve as a proof of concept for socialists worldwide to follow on their own initiative than to try to impose those conflicts from the outside.
Every fucking time Socialist Alternative shows up, it’s fine until some edgelord dipshit unfurls the fucking huge Soviet flag with Stalin and Mao silk screened on it.
I'm not super familiar with Socialist Alternative, but aren't they a Trotskyist org? What are they doing waving Stalin flags?
The failure of the revolution to take root in Europe (largely a result of the historic betrayal of Social Democracy in the Second International) created conditions for the consolidation of a nationalist clique and a bureaucratic degeneration of the workers state that formed from the victory of the October Revolution.
What path should the USSR have taken instead? (genuine question)
If he hadn't been, would the USSR survived? That focus on technology, factories, and efficiency, no matter the cost, seems like the right approach when there's Nazis at your doorstep, conquering all of Europe and conducting mass exterminations.
i’ll freely admit i’m not reading books on the subject
Let me first clarify a few points then.
Marx and Lenin were also "authoritarian." You should read Engles' On Authority, it's not long and explains his position on the matter, which was consistent with Marx.
"Stalinism" isn't really a thing, nobody calls themselves that, it's just a pejorative for Marxism-Leninism, which was Stalin's stated ideology (in fact, he's the person who coined the term). Marxism-Leninism ("Stalinism") is the most prevalent ideology among self-described communists globally, particularly in the global south.
If Sanders just wanted an authoritarian figure to compare Trump to, there are no shortage of right-wing ones who have much more in common with him. The choice of Stalin seems to be intentional, to distance himself and his own brand of socialism from Stalin and other M-Ls.
I believe this is a flawed strategy, in the same way it would be to accuse a witch-hunter of being a witch. The problem is that you're accepting the premise that witches are real and need to be hunted, and at that point it becomes a question of who can better make the case that they're not a witch - which is going to be the witch-hunter, because that's their job, they know how to play the game, they made the rules. In the same way, right wingers are always going to be more convincing anti-communists than someone who calls himself a socialist, they made the rules of the red scare and they know how to play it. The real way to defeat the witch hunt is to have enough people who aren't afraid of being called witches, and the way to defeat red scare stuff is not to accept the framing and punch left, but to say, "So what if I am a Red?"
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen says he met Thursday with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who immigration officials admitted was deported by error to El Salvador.
>Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen says he has met with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who immigration officials say was deported by error, in El Salvador on Thursday.
>The senator shared a photo with Abrego Garcia at what appears to be a restaurant.
>"I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar," Sen. Van Hollen said. "Tonight I had that chance. I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love. I look forward to providing a full update upon my return."
https://lemmy.ml/post/28111691/17749466
This is actually insane. Another user was criticizing the New Deal era and brought up a bunch of points, I commented refuting a bunch of their points but describing two of of them, Japanese Internment and the Red Scare, simply as "legitimate criticism."
@Decoy321@lemmy.world responded "No they’re not. Those two things were caused by far greater international factors. Like, you know, the 2nd World War."
I cited a commission that found that internment was not caused by a legitimate threat posed by the Japanese but was rather caused by racism and hysteria, and that even Reagan agreed with that conclusion and signed a bill paying reparations to the victims.
Well then the mod responded that I was jumping to "inflammatory conclusions" and "personal attacks" because I assumed that when they said that criticism of internment is not legitimate it meant that they were defending internment. They continued to refuse to explain how else I was possibly supposed to interpret such a claim. I still have no idea. Apparently their stance is, "It's not legitimate to criticize the thing I oppose." If anyone can make sense of that, please enlighten me.
Since they refused to explain, I took a guess that maybe the misunderstanding was that they were interpreting "legitimate criticism" as "damning criticism," like that because a bad thing happened during that era, nothing good came of it at all. I made it clear that this was speculation and that any criticism of interpreting it that way only applied if that's what was happening.
The mod responded by permabanning me, removing all of my comments so they don't show in the modlog, and adding this:
>Edit: the other commenter essentially proved that they were just baiting people into inflammatory discussion. They kept resorting to personal attacks and flip-flopped on their position solely to continue arguing. This behavior is not tolerated here. Please report such trolls in the future.
At literally no point did I "flip-flop" my position of "internment was bad, actually." Nor did I "bait" them, unless "criticizing internment is legitimate," is somehow "baiting" someone into saying "no it isn't." By far the most "inflammatory" thing that was said was when they said that criticism of internment was "not legitimate." The "personal attacks" I made were stating the fact that the position they had expressed was to the right of Reagan on the issue, and also making a quip about a .world mod defending the Red scare and Joseph McCarthy.
This seems to be a case of a clear case of PTB, the mod apparently misspoke but because they're a mod they can just ban people for calling them out instead of owning up to it.
Edit: My comments are still visible on kbin.earth (thank you @Skua@kbin.earth) so I can provide screenshots:
transcript
DISRUPT INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING NOW!!
OGEY
Niche ocean carrier Atlantic Container Line is warning the fines the U.S. government is considering hitting Chinese-built freight vessels with would force it to leave the United States and throw the global supply chain out of balance, potentially fueling freight rates not seen since Covid.
“This hits American exporters and importers worse than anybody else,” said Andrew Abbott, CEO of ACL. “If this happens, we’re out of business and we’re going to have to shut down.”
[...] U.S. is no position to win an economic war that places ocean carriers using Chinese-made vessels in the middle. Soon, Chinese-made vessels will represents 98% of the trade ships on the world’s oceans.
Hey, Abdul-Malik Badr Al-Din Al-Houthi, how'd I do?
Thank you Mr. President, that's exactly what I meant. But why-
Another day, another banger
Context:
This comes from a game called "Queen's Wish: The Conqueror," a retro indie RPG. In the game, you play as the third child of the queen of Haven, a large and powerful nation, but up until now you've lived an idle live with little power and few responsibilities. The queen decides to send you off to reestablish control of lost vassals in a remote continent which were abandoned following a major magical disaster.
There are three vassal states and each has two factions who you can choose to support into power, usually one side being more aristocratic and the other being poorer. You also have the choice of how much you actually follow through with your assignment, you can just run around doing your own thing regardless of what the queen wants. But you can navigate a route where you side with the poor while still negotiating agreements as expected of you and feel like it's a "good guy" route. Although the queen would rather you work with the aristocrats, she's satisfied as long as you get either side to win and cooperate, just so long as somebody's keeping the spice flowing, so to speak.
This conversation occurs with a sage/scholar working in one of your forts in that region, who refers to "The Theory of Inevitable Decay." It's missable, but it's a crucial line of dialogue that recontextualizes everything that you're doing. From the beginning, you see a lot of the mess that was left behind and the power vacuum from when the kingdom pulled out before, but then, it sorta seems like you're fixing things, getting rid of bandits and warlords and establishing order, traditional fantasy hero stuff, and with a kinder, gentler hand, even. But even if you as an individual have the best intentions, you're still kind of setting things up in a way that's dependent on a great power a long way away. Haven has its own stuff going on and it probably isn't going to be knowledgeable about the region, interested in it's long-term well-being, or accountable to the people who live there. Sooner or later, it'll get a ruler who doesn't give a shit about a given vassal, and the vassal will fall to ruin - or so the sage suggests.
Anyway sorry I posted this in the wrong comm, this is just an interesting bit of dialogue from a video game with absolutely no relevance to modern day politics 😇
https://youtu.be/VT6LFOIofRE
"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings." - Ursula Le Guin
Lots of things are impossible until they happen and become inevitable. The human mind has a tendency to place things in that box that don't really belong there. We can see it in people's personal lives, "Oh, I could never possibly stand up to my parents!" and then they do, and the chips fall where they may. "I could never leave everything behind and move to another country/city" but you take a leap of faith and you make it work. "Oh, I could never become a soldier," but then you find yourself in the trenches and you become one. Humans are far more adaptable than we give ourselves credit for.
But the things that need to happen are things that we have determined rationally. The bias that exists in our minds when there is such a conflict is to ignore reason and evidence and think that we have to follow our self-imposed restraints and limitations, and if that's not enough, well, too bad, maybe it'll still be fine somehow. It is easier to simply pretend a physical problem doesn't exist then it is to confront a psychological barrier - but the physical problem remains whether we acknowledge it or shove it aside.
It is abundantly clear that there is a mismatch between what the US political reality is capable of delivering on and what actually needs to happen, on an increasingly large number of issues. Wealth inequality increases every year, and there is no path to stopping it. Every year we get closer to ecological collapse, heading towards tipping points that will spiral out of control. And of course, the military-industrial complex gets larger and larger, now fueling a genocide with overwhelming bipartisan support.
All of these things need to change, but it is also impossible for them to change. So we have no choice but to do the impossible (see the invisible, row, row, fight the powah). It is impossible that we could convince the democrats to change, they are too attached to their corporate donors. Too bad, we'll get them change anyway. It is impossible that we could build a third party, it isn't viable in FPTP. Too bad, we will build it and make it viable anyway. It is impossible that we could resist the strength of the military and police. It is impossible to organize a general strike. Boycotts can never work. The king would never allow us to have a constitution. Too bad.
The limits of existing political systems have been overcome in the past even when they seemed impossible, and the desperate need for change means that the limits of this one will be too. Shit is headed towards the fan, and things will change, for better or worse. The longer we wait, the more shit will build up. Only by finding a breach in "impossibility" can we start to address any of these problems.
Where will that breach be found? Who knows? All we can do is search for cracks and hit them as hard as we can until we find a way to break the limitations. We can discuss where to focus our efforts and that's a valid and important discussion to have. But we cannot allow the functions of the existing system to limit our efforts to break out of it. You cannot be so concerned about damaging an already sinking ship that you won't rip off a plank to hold on to.
I don't really care who you vote for or don't vote for. Follow your conscience. What's important is that you have your head in the game. What matters is recognizing the the things that what needs to happen is a function of immutable natural laws while what can happen is a function of mortal laws and conventional wisdom. When there is a mismatch, to uphold the ideas of "what can happen" is to reject that "what needs to happen" is actually real, which is no different from thinking you can change the laws of physics by passing a bill in the senate. The "reason" of conventional wisdom must be kicked to the curb in favor of actual reason that says things need to change, and that it's necessary to go beyond the impossible to make it happen.
How would you answer this, and how would you expect Chinese netizens on Xiaohongshu to answer?
I will link to the thread in the comments because I want you to take a moment and think about it first.
Just curious.
The first sentence on the Wikipedia page for it calls it "a disputed medical condition." Even the CIA itself has admitted that cases are not caused by "a sustained global campaign by a hostile power." The State Department similarly released a report that it was highly unlikely the symptoms were caused by any sort of directed energy weapon. In fact, seven different US intelligence agencies released a consensus statement saying, "available intelligence consistently points against the involvement of US adversaries in causing the reported incidents."
But the clowns on .world don't care about things like truth or evidence, or even direct statements from the people who's boots they have in their mouths. If it makes an enemy of the US look bad, then it is absolute truth, and anything short of complete faith and loyalty must be purged from conversation.
Before I begin, I have a confession: until recently (until today, in fact), I was a tankie. But this morning I just woke up and realized everything I believed and everything I'd been saying was wrong, and my critics were right about everything. And so, I have decided to completely and totally adopt their way of thinking.
The above image is an example to illustrate how my thinking has changed. You may be familiar with "Russell's Teapot," a thought experiment from Bertrand Russell where he imagines that someone says that there is a tiny, invisible teapot, floating out in space. He argues that while such a claim cannot strictly be disproved, it can be dismissed without evidence because there is no evidence to support it. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. He goes on to explain that while he could not disprove the existence of God, he still considered himself an atheist, because he did not see sufficient evidence for the claim of God's existence to be credible.
In my previous (tankie) way of thinking, I would have agreed with this idea, that claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. But I now understand that this made me a Bad Person. Suppose that, as in the beautiful diagram I drew in MS Paint, the claim is not only that the teapot exists, but that inside of the teapot, there are a bunch of tiny invisible people who are geopolitical enemies of the United States and they are committing genocide against innocent people. Again, before, I would have said that that only makes the claim more implausible and would require extraordinary proof. Now, I realize how wrong I was, and I can only say that I deeply regret and apologize for my statements. The existence of the teapot can be proven incontrovertibly, by the following logic:
-
If you claim that the teapot does not exist, you are denying that the genocide inside it is happening.
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If you deny the genocide is happening, you are a genocide denier and therefore a fascist.
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Fascism is wrong.
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Therefore, it is impossible to correctly deny the teapot's existence.
As a brief aside, I should mention that in addition to my political conversion, I have also experienced a drastic change in my religious beliefs, as it is now trivially easy to prove that God exists. According to the Torah, God flooded the world, wiping out virtually all of humanity, including countless ethnic groups. To deny the existence of God makes you a genocide denier and a fascist. However, it should be added that to worship God is genocide apologia, which is also fascist. The only non-fascist belief, which is necessarily correct, is that God exists and is evil. Moving on.
Before, I believed that it was ridiculous for the US to spend as much on the military as the next 9 countries combined. I wanted to slash the military budget to fund domestic spending, schools, hospitals, making sure bridges don't collapse, helping the poor, etc. I see now how wrong I was. The Genocide Teapot exists, somewhere out there in space, in fact, there could be countless numbers of them out there. Therefore, the real progressive thing to do is to further cut domestic spending and have everyone tighten our belts so that we can produce as many missiles as possible, to be fired out into space indiscriminately, in hopes of hitting a Genocide Teapot.
However, we must also consider the possibility that these teapots could be located here on Earth too. Teapots are a form of china, which is a very suspicious connection. Clearly, the US must be permitted to inspect every square inch of China in search of these invisible teapots, and refusal to comply should be considered an admission of guilt. But we should not, of course, limit ourselves to China. Perhaps there are Genocide Teapots in Russia, or Brazil, or Germany, or Canada, who knows? I do, because to deny that Genocide Teapots exist in all of those places is genocide denial, which is fascist and wrong.
In conclusion, we should bomb every country in the world simultaneously, including ourselves, and anyone who disagrees with me is a war-loving fascist.
Thank you.
Large majorities in nearly all 35 nations surveyed say China has a great deal or a fair amount of influence on their country’s economic conditions.
Chinese authorities start investigating revelations that companies are transporting fuel and cooking oil in the same trucks.
>President Trump kept America out of new wars and brought thousands of brave troops home from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and many other countries. Joe Biden has undermined our military readiness and surrendered our strength to the Taliban.
When Trump pulls troops out of Afghanistan, it's "bringing thousands of brave troops home," but when Biden does the same, it's, "surrendering our strength to the Taliban." He brags about "keeping America out of foreign wars" while at the same time bragging about assassinating "the world's number one terrorist," Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, which was an extreme act of provocation.
This is taken from the issues page of Trump's campaign website, and there are several more statements relating to foreign policy, frequently and boldly contradicting each other. It's a perfect example of the "If By Whiskey" tactic. So what's actually going on here? Well, to understand the reasons for this equivocation, we need to analyze the foreign policy positions of Americans.
Broadly speaking, people fall into one of four camps: Idealist Hawk (liberals), Idealist Dove (libertarians), Realist Hawk (nationalists), and Realist Dove (socialists).
Idealist Hawks believe that US foreign policy is driven by benevolence and spreading freedom, and the fact that it repeatedly fails to do so (Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc) is explainable by a variety of excuses. Generally, they are more interested in current events and easily persuaded to support intervention based on seeing a bad thing happening, without a broader analysis or explanation of the situation or how things have played out historically.
Idealist Doves also believe that US foreign policy is driven by benevolence, but they see that as a bad thing. They are generally right libertarians or hold libertarian values, they see war as another example of wasteful government spending as it tries and fails to improve people's lives, which they generally don't see as a valid goal in the first place. Being idealists, they are still rather easily duped into supporting war and militarism, often, they will support a "night watchman state," with police and the military being the only legitimate functions.
Realist Hawks are nationalists who believe that states pursue their own material interests and are right to do so. They are incapable of distinguishing between the state's interest and their own. Some few are rich enough to actually receive benefits from US foreign policy, but most just root for America in the same way that they might root for a football team.
Realist Doves, which I am a part of, do not believe that US foreign policy is not grounded in benevolence and does not benefit the people it claims to be helping, but also (generally) that it doesn't benefit the majority of people at home. We see it as being driven by and for class interests, and are opposed to the class it benefits.
Trump's foreign policy equivocation, and his "America First" slogan allows him to appeal to both the Idealist Doves (libertarians) and the Realist Hawks (nationalists). He can't consistently take any line on any specific thing. If by Afghanistan, you mean a disastrous nation-building exercise, wasteful government spending, and endangering our troops for the sake of helping foreigners, then of course Trump opposes it. But if by Afghanistan, you mean exerting American strength, intimidating Russia and China, and weakening terrorists to keep America safe, then of course Trump supports it.
In reality, to the extent that Trump has coherent beliefs at all, he is a Realist Hawk, a nationalist, and his record reflects that. But part of the reason he was able to get anywhere was because he was able to triangulate and equivocate well enough to dupe anti-war libertarians.
Unfortunately, in American politics, the conflict is generally between Idealist Hawks and everyone else. This is part of what allows the nationalists and libertarians to put aside their differences (the other part being that libertarians are easily duped). Realist Doves are not represented anywhere, the Idealist Interventionists consider us Russian bots along with everyone else who disagrees with them on foreign policy (regardless of how or why), the Idealist Doves are extremely unreliable, and the Realist Hawks may see the world in a similar way but have diametrically opposed priorities.
tl;dr: Trump's halfhearted antiwar posturing is an obvious ruse that only an idiot would fall for, but painting everyone skeptical of US foreign policy with the same brush helps him to sell it and to paint over ideological rifts that could otherwise be potentially exploited.
OBJECTION! @lemmy.ml If someone claims something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they're lying.