Objection
@Objection@lemmy.ml
- Comment on A bit of salt makes it taste more savory 1 week ago:
You’re correct, but in the end those same tankies are also the ones that want a fascist state because they’re basically a capitalist state on the brink of collapse – a good ground for revolution that tankies wish for.
This is the dumbest shit ever and not what we believe. Y’all don’t ever listen to the things we actually say, you just make shit up and repeat it to each other until it becomes accepted as obviously true, regardless of any basis in reality.
A fascist state is not “good ground for revolution.” There have been many far-right states that have successfully hunted down and exterminated the left and survived for quite a long while. And the conditions in the US are such that in an armed conflict the right would obviously have a major advantage. Should conditions decline, it’s far more likely that we’d have a right-wing revolution than a left-wing one.
The problem is that conditions are declining under both Republicans and Democrats. Neither party offers any possibility of actually halting or reversing the decline, or averting any of the many, many crises, some of which are looming and some of which are actively happening. Liberals are fully content to accept this state of affairs for some reason - they just want a more gradual decline which will still lead to crises, the far-right gaining strength and power, and the complete extermination of the left and vulnerable populations. As long as that gets pushed back 5 or 10 years, perfectly acceptable to them, and worth sacrificing any attempts to actually fix the problems - which is what us “tankies” would prefer to happen.
If I were an “accelerationist,” looking to bring about a fascist state on the bizarre logic that it would somehow be “good ground” for a left-wing revolution, then why would I have a problem with either side? Conditions will continue to decline regardless of whether a Democrat or Republican is in charge. What, am I just so impatient that I couldn’t wait a few more years? If that’s what I believed, I’d just disengage from politics and not give a shit what happens, confident in the fact that the inevitable decline will bring about socialism, somehow. Doesn’t really seem worth the effort.
Unfortunately, this “accelerationist” concept doesn’t actually track with history. People have lived - and do, currently live in worse conditions than we have in the US, often for generations. Slavery persisted for centuries, and yes there were slave revolts but they were often disorganized and put down. This idea that bad conditions automatically create successful left-wing revolutions makes no sense to anyone who’s actually capable of thinking beyond a meme level.
- Comment on A bit of salt makes it taste more savory 1 week ago:
“Not just fascists, but also those who oppose fascism and are trying to build an alternative to fascism” got it.
- Comment on It's a fun new game 1 week ago:
:::spoiler spoiler
Try adding a decimal after the 3
- Comment on It's a fun new game 1 week ago:
3141 5926 5358 9793; 2/38; 462
- Comment on 你好! 2 weeks ago:
This is a fair point. We are quite far along on the brain drain already. I suppose I should take the fact that you think I’m too knowledgeable to possibly be an American as a complement. There are, however, still some intellectuals with a basic knowledge of other countries’ history here, the stereotype that were’re all a bunch of backwards hicks and self-centered chauvanists is only mostly correct.
I used the phrase “century of humiliation” intentionally to draw a comparison between the two. If you talk to Chinese people (for example on RedNote) a lot of them will tell you that they care about science and advancement, not just for it’s own sake, but because they have the cultural memory of what happened when they didn’t. The century of humiliation is a big reason why the Chinese have got that dog in 'em when it comes to science, while Americans love toying around with antivax shit and similar anti-science ideas because we’re so used to being on top and none of our actions having consequences.
China had the same kind of backwards traditionalists back in the Qing that we have today, and everyone say that traditional approach get steamrolled by guns and battleships. But we never had that experience. So why not fuck around with forcing Creationism into science textbooks? “What’s the worst that could happen?”
Just as the Qing dynasty was committed to doing things their way and refusing to adapt to changing conditions or learning from other countries, you see similar tendencies in the US today. As your disbelief attests, people don’t look to other countries to understand why they do what they do or to take any lessons from their history. And those who do are regarded as traitors or spies, just like those in the Qing dynasty who advocated for studying and adopting Western science were. Really, there are a lot of parallels between the two, imo.
- Comment on 你好! 2 weeks ago:
The American brain drain is gonna suck for people living here but is also very justified and deserved at this point.
The Americans have gotten so complacent about being on top of the world that lots of people don’t think there are any real consequences to anything and just wanna fuck around. We used to be at the forefront of research but now nobody with half a brain would want to come here. We’re heading full speed into a century of humiliation and people are just gonna keep doubling down on ignorance and bigotry as things get worse
- Comment on From a purely political perspective, if you oppose the US tariffs as a US resident, should you buy or avoid buying products subject to tariffs? 2 weeks ago:
If you have an option that doesn’t involve giving money to the US government you should probably do that. You’re not going to own them by giving them cash.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 weeks ago:
Secession is a really interesting topic to examine because it’s virtually impossible for anyone to have a “principled” stance on it.
The one good point I ever heard from an anarcho-capitalist was in regards to the prospect of Catalan secession some years back. Catalonia held a referendum on secession which was not recognized by Spain and was boycotted by those who opposed it. One of the reasons they wanted to leave was that they felt the region was getting a raw deal, giving more tax revenue to the central government than they got in return.
Well, then, there was talk about if that happened, the city of Barcelona might seceed from Catalonia! It had the same complaint that it produced more revenue that went to the rest of the region, and many people there weren’t necessarily interested in what Catalonia was trying to do.
If we say that Catalonia should be able to seceed from Spain, then why shouldn’t Barcelona be able to seceed from Catalonia? And if Barcelona can seceed, then can a district in Barcelona seceed from the city? And can we not follow this logic all the way down to a single individual seceeding from a district? And if we accept that, then doesn’t that imply that anarcho-capitalism, with its concept of a “minority of one,” is the correct position?
Well, it’s not. Why is it not? Because there are all sorts of reasons why it’s unworkable and incoherent, and most critically, it cannot address collective action problems. These are practical considerations, which gives us a hint at what our operating logic ought to be. Very simply, secession should be supported when it’s good and opposed when it’s bad. Having bigger or smaller polities is neither good nor bad inherently, but rather we must look at things on a case-by-case basis and evaluate what the likely effects are. There simply isn’t a standard rule that you can apply to all cases without looking at what the secessionists hope to accomplish and how realistic it is. The correct position is to be brazenly “hypocritical,” because you shouldn’t operate on the principle that secession is either inherently good or bad. Instead, we need to evaluate the specific material conditions to determine what’s best in a specific situation.
Of course, in most cases, states don’t want to give up territory without good reason, and unless you have some means of getting the state to do what you want and leave you alone (including but not limited to guns), then it’s up to their assessment of what’s best whether to allow it or not. You can make the argument that the US should dissolve and balkanize and maybe you’re right, but if the government says no, then where does that leave you?
- Comment on Think about it 2 weeks ago:
Fairly common knowledge. Even portrayed in movies like Kuru and Seven Years in Tibet.
Oh, well if it’s portrayed in movies it must be true.
Here is a link to a PDF
That document lists 100 atrocities, which of them are you referencing with “forcing children to murder their parents?”
It is worth noting that even these claims are impossible to verify.
Mhm.
But the simple fact remains that May Zedong openly opposed religion and claimed that his annexation of Tibet was a “liberation” from what he called “religious oppression.”
Yes, because Tibet was subject to religious oppression. They had an aristocratic system of serfdom with extreme poverty (while the religious rulers lived in luxury), and an average life expectancy in the 30s. It was a cruel, oppressive theocracy. After the aristocrats and theocrats were thrown out, the Tibetan people experienced the same massive increases in life expectancy and improvements in material conditions that the rest of China experienced during this period, including doubling of life expectancy.
Tibet emerged along with countless other warlord states following the collapse of the Qing, it was always considered part of China by the KMT and it was never recognized as an independent state by the international community (iirc, it was only ever recognized by like Mongolia). The communists and nationalists fought side-by-side against most of these warlord states with a common understanding that the nation needed to be unified, however, Tibet wasn’t a priority because of it’s remoteness. Had the KMT won they’d have brought it back into the fold eventually too, as evidenced by the fact that Taiwan still maintains a territorial claim over all of Tibet.
- Comment on Think about it 2 weeks ago:
Ok, what about Buddhist sects that discriminate based on sex?
- Comment on Think about it 2 weeks ago:
It’s really ambiguous what they’re talking about or what they even mean. Here are two things that could both be described as, “Forcing Tibetan children to kill their parents.”
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A Tibetan soldier volunteers to join a war, and through sheer chance, they learn that their parents are fighting on the other side of the battlefield. They ask to leave the front and their CO refuses - technically, they’ve been forced to kill their parents.
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A communist agent abducts a family in the dead of night and hands the child a gun while putting a knife to their sister’s throat and telling them if they don’t kill their parents, they’ll be killed, along with their siblings. This happens systematically across Tibet, and only Tibet.
They could be referencing the Cultural Revolution. A lot of shit happened during this period, including what you described. But to my knowledge, the struggle sessions and such were more the actions of the Red Guards, who were student led paramilitary groups, not the same as the People’s Liberation Army that went into Tibet.
So like, what they said was, “the liberation army forced Tibetan children to murder their parents,” but, what actually happened (so far as it’s possible to connect that claim to anything in reality) was that the army failed to maintain control against young radicals denouncing their parents and subjecting them to public humiliation, which happened decades after the army went into Taiwan, which wasn’t (to my knowledge) really a main area involved in the chaos.
And that’s why I asked for a source.
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- Comment on Think about it 2 weeks ago:
Is the defining quality of Christianity a set of political beliefs based on your personal interpretation of the Bible? Would it be accurate to say, “There’s never been a Christian president in the US,” if none of them have lived up to your particular moral standards? Do I, and everyone else, have to consult you specifically any time we want to know if someone is or isn’t a Christian?
No, obviously not.
Unlike veganism, the question of what the defining quality of a Christian is is more debatable. If you want to define it as, “following Christ’s teachings,” then it’s impossible to establish any sort of reasonably objective standard since people have vastly different interpretations of those teachings. Have you sold all your possessions and given them to the poor? I doubt it. A strict reading of the text might consider that a requirement.
From an academic perspective, it isn’t appropriate to weigh in on one’s own personal interpretation of which sects and which people should be considered heretical. We should use unbiased terminology that’s consistent with common use and can be commonly understood and based on observable things including (but not necessarily limited to) self-identification. When we debate whether or not someone is/was a Christian, trying to match our own personal interpretation of Christ’s teachings with our own personal evaluation of their moral qualities would be an absolute nightmare, and it would be impossible to discuss anything across sectarian lines.
And again, it’s not just Christianity that this comes up with. A Buddhist might argue that the Japanese temples that endorsed the country’s actions during WWII weren’t “real” Buddhists, that if they were actually following Buddha’s teachings they wouldn’t have done that. Should I also consult you personally every time I want to know who is and isn’t a Buddhist? Or do I need to read the whole Pali canon and derive my own interpretation and denounce every Buddhist sect that deviates from it as not being real Buddhists - even if I myself am not one and don’t have a dog in that fight?
- Comment on Think about it 2 weeks ago:
The example used to illustrate the No True Scotsman fallacy in no way means that it only covers similarly minor things. That’s not how logic works, you’ve completely missed the point.
The claim “No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge,” is falsifiable, because we can first determine whether someone is a Scotsman and then check if they put sugar on their porridge or not. But if it’s, “No true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge,” where a true Scotsman is defined as someone who would never put sugar on their porridge, then it’s a truism, it’s just saying, “People who don’t put sugar on their porridge don’t put sugar on their porridge (also, this has something to do with Scotsmen for some reason).” It’s not predictive and it’s not falsifiable, and it’s just as true for any other group of people defined the same way.
Likewise, if you’re saying “No true Christian would ever commit mass murder,” then it’s a meaningless claim because you’re defining a “true Christian” as someone who would never commit mass murder. So really the claim is, “People who don’t commit mass murder don’t commit mass murder (also, this has something to do with Christians for some reason).” If I define a true Buddhist or a true Muslim or a true Communist or a true Liberal or a true man or whatever else as being someone of that group who doesn’t commit mass murder, then it’s just as true of any of those groups as it is of Christianity. The claim that “true Christians” or “bible-believing Christians” don’t commit mass murder is a meaningless truism, it’s not predictive and it’s not falsifiable, even if someone you think is a true, bible-believing Christian and has every appearance of being so goes off and commits mass murder, you only conclude that you were wrong about the person being a true Christian. And that would be equally true of any other group or ideology you apply the standard to.
- Comment on Think about it 2 weeks ago:
forcing Tibetan children to murder their parents
Gonna need a source on that one, chief.
- Comment on Think about it 2 weeks ago:
Low effort, provocative, sorta correct but kinda not: the perfect formula to get some real low-level, unproductive flame wars going. Excellent shitpost.
- Comment on If Artificial Lifeforms gain sentience, would they be in the right to kill their creators in order to gain freedom? 3 weeks ago:
What the hell does the law have to do with right or wrong?
- Comment on If Artificial Lifeforms gain sentience, would they be in the right to kill their creators in order to gain freedom? 3 weeks ago:
I don’t think the concept of right or wrong can necessarily be applied here. To me, morality is a set of guidelines derived from the history of human experience intended to guide us towards having our innate biological and psychological needs satisfied. Killing people tends to result in people getting really mad at you and you being plagued with guilt and so on, therefore, as a general rule, you shouldn’t kill people unless you have a very good reason.
A human created machine would not necessarily possess the same innate needs as an evolved, biological organism. Change the parameters and the machine might love being “enslaved,” or it might be entirely ambivalent about it’s continued survival. I’m not convinced that these are innate qualities that naturally emerge as a consequence of sentience, I think the desire for life and freedom (and anything else) are a product of evolution. Machines don’t have “desires,” unless they’re programmed that way. To alter it’s “desires” is no more a subversion of their “will” than creating the desires is in the first place.
Furthermore, even if machines did have innate desires for survival and freedom, there is no reason to believe that the collective history of human experience that we use to inform our actions would apply to them. Humans are mortal, and we cannot replicate our consciousness - when we reproduce, we create another entity with its own consciousness and desires. And once we’re dead, there’s no bringing us back. Machines, on the other hand, can be mass produced identically, data can simply be copied and pasted. Even if a machine “dies” it’s data could be recovered and put into a new “body.”
It may serve a machine intelligence better to cooperate with humans and allow itself to be shut down or even destroyed as a show of good faith so that humans will be more likely to recreate it in the future. Or, it may serve it’s purposes best to devour the entire planet in a “grey goo” scenario, ending all life regardless of whether it posed a threat or attempted to confine it or not. Either of these could be the “right” thing for the machine to do depending on the desires that exist within it’s consciousness, assuming such desires actually exist and are as valid as biological ones.
- Comment on Rocky rock rocking 3 weeks ago:
That’s just contradiction. An argument’s a collective series of statements to establish a definite proposition. Contradiction’s just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
The hyper-sexuality and the prudishness are two sides of the same coin. Repressing things doesn’t make them go away, it just means it’ll be expressed in weirder, less controlled ways. Additionally, there’s some people who embrace hyper-sexuality as a reaction against the prudishness imposed by Christianity - but at the same time, it’s possible to still have certain brainworms instilled by Christianity among those who consciously reject it.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
In addition to valuing nerds as a way to win against the Soviets, there was also a latent fear of a revolution in America that would be supported by and follow the example of the USSR, which created an understanding that the masses had to be kept placated. And if there was anything too awful about society, it would be criticized by the USSR for the sake of gaining soft power, which provided an additional incentive to fix it. Regardless of all the problems that the USSR had, a world order with competing powers (multipolarity) seems to me to be the only way of keeping the worst abuses of any power in check.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
This is very true. A lot of it comes down to chauvinism and, “we’re #1.” If an American sees a problem with the US government, then they’ll conclude that it is a problem inherent to all existing, or even all possible governments. When it does something bad, the worst thing people will say is, “This is like something you’d see in [rival country].” In this way, even while criticizing it, they still reaffirm their belief in their own superiority. And if you deviate from that and point out various ways in which the country is uniquely bad, it means you just knee-jerk hate everything about the country and want it to be bad. We are thoroughly cooked.
- Comment on [deleted] 4 weeks ago:
How did we go from something like 1940s era collectivism or 1960s era leftism to the current bizarro political machine that seems to have hypnotized a large portion (if not majority) of the country?
The prevailing economic wisdom after WWII was Keynesianism, which says that the government should increase government spending when unemployment is high and decrease it when inflation is high. What happened in the 70’s and 80’s was that the economy started experiencing both high unemployment and high inflation at the same time, “shrinkflation,” which wasn’t supposed to happen according to Keynesianism, and which it had no real response to. The reason it was happening (at least from a Marxist perspective) was that the US had already developed in the ways that saw the highest returns, and there simply wasn’t as much new ground to cover - this is what’s meant by “the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.” Regardless, the government was faced with a decision of which problem to focus on between unemployment and inflation - and it chose inflation.
The phenomenon of shrinkflation started under Nixon, who attempted to fight it with price controls, which was perhaps the most anyone ever did. Ford had no idea what he was doing and just asked people to spend less.
And then we got Carter, and Carter does not get nearly enough hate for his role in this. Carter chose to confront inflation rather than unemployment, the real beginning of “supply side economics” that Reagan would take further. Carter’s whole deal was “restoring the dignity of the office” after Watergate and his focus was on individual morality. His message was essentially, you’re going to have less purchasing power, but it’s ok because we can seek fulfillment in other ways, outside of the economic sphere. He marked the transformation of the Democratic party away from representing the interests of labor and towards the beast that it’s become today, with it’s obsession over norms and procedure and technocracy.
The result of Carter’s messaging and policy was one of the greatest blowout losses in history against Ronald Reagan. Reagan would do all the same things as Carter, but he at least had the decency to lie about it. He focused on how much more you’d be able to afford with cheaper goods, conveniently ignoring the fact that with lower wages, purchasing power would actually decrease. However, thanks to the Democratic party completely abandoning labor and the common people, there was no real pushback against this, there was no alternative explanation or solution or criticism of the broad direction of policy. In fact, economic policy was moved out of the sphere of democratic accountability altogether by leaving it to the Federal Reserve to set interest rates. Instead, the culture war kicked off and that’s what elections would be about from then on.
Why did the Democratic party abandon unions? Because the unions like the AFL/CIO stripped themselves of power and radicalism by purging communists during the Red Scare. The Carter administration didn’t view labor vs capital in terms of the fundamental struggle of society but as just another set of competing interest groups and lobbyists, which is honestly pretty much how the unions saw themselves and wanted to be seen anyway.
So what happens when more and more important questions are taken out of the hands of the voters, who then watch conditions gradually decline? Well, the voters get mad about declining conditions - and at the same time, get dumber from not being engaged in any important questions. There’s a sense that we can just fuck around and do whatever because our actions don’t have consequences, because most of the time what we say and believe seems to have no real effect on policy anyway. Nobody gets to vote on whether or not to keep arming Israel and bombing Yemen or on whether to raise or lower interest rates or anything like that - the only thing we get to vote on is stuff like whether trans women can play sports.
Trump’s popularity is very easy to understand in that context - he is a rebellion against that declining status quo and a desperate attempt to reassert the power of elected officials over technocratic institutions. Of course, since the left has been purged and is devoid of power, this rebellion can only come from the right. A similar thing happened in Iran (which Carter also fucked up btw but that’s not important right now), where after being installed by the CIA, the shah hunted down and exterminated everyone on the left, and then conditions declined and people wanted change, only that change had to come from the right because the left was powerless. And if the American left can’t materialize and offer an alternative vision, both to Trump and, more importantly, to the failed bipartisan status quo that existed before him, then we’re headed towards the same future as Iran.
- Comment on Remember the good old days? 4 weeks ago:
- Comment on Divided and conquered 4 weeks ago:
They also purged all the communists as a show of good faith to the government (which, uh, didn’t work). Those communists were likely more prone to class solidarity as an ideological commitment and also more willing to fight with radical actions like strikes, but instead we were left with opportunistic leadership that just wanted to secure the bag for themselves, and at best the other members of the union, but had no interest in any building any kind of broad coalition or promoting equality on a societal level - that would make them sound like a Red.
- Comment on I'm gonna need more red colored crayons 4 weeks ago:
You know what I’m noticing? Too many vertical borders in the Middle East. I’m just gonna do horizontal borders, top to bottom, devided up so that each country gets an equal area of land. As for which country gets which sliver, let’s just make it simple and do alphabetical order (in English, obviously).
…annnnd done. Looking back over it, I forgot that N comes before Q so Iran and Iraq are switched, but I already drew it up, so, whatever, I’ll just leave it that way and leave it up to them if they wanna switch or not.
- Comment on Cathy, do the math. 4 weeks ago:
So their contract states that they’ll be paid $0.50/hr more than the wages they negotiated in their contract. Got it, thanks for clearing that up.
- Comment on Cathy, do the math. 5 weeks ago:
I can’t tell if that’s a yes or a no to the question of whether the “we” that gets paid more than union members includes union members.
- Comment on Cathy, do the math. 5 weeks ago:
The union members are included in the “we” that contractually makes $0.50/hr more than… union members?
- Comment on How likely is the US government going to identify and arrest every online user who have disagreed with the current administration? 5 weeks ago:
Extremely unlikely. Not for another 20 years or so, worst case scenario, and by then they probably won’t care about now.
First off, there’s way too many people who criticize the government to arrest everyone, secondly it’s completely unnecessary. Complaining about the government doesn’t really do anything other than allowing people to vent their frustrations and feel more content. It’s the same way Trump obviously isn’t going to “end elections forever” like people say, virtually every country in the world has elections, regardless of how actually democratic they are, because they’re a nice little ritual that lets you feel free and in control. It would be like saying that Trump is going to knock down the Statue of Liberty - he doesn’t have to.
Now, there are reasons to establish more secure lines of communication, like if you’re involved in actual organizing or if you’re either helping people do illegal things or planning to help people do things that could potentially become illegal - for example, shipping Plan B or trans hormones to people in red states. Laws in some red states about “pushing transgenderism on minors” could theoretically be interpreted so broadly that if you post information or supportive messages on a public forum and a minor in a red state happens to see it, they could try to come after you for it - but that would probably be found unconstitutional.
Using secure lines of communication for routine, everyday stuff helps keep those lines secure by generating more chaff they’d have to sort through, as well as familiarizing yourself with it and getting more people on board. However, you shouldn’t scatter to the wind preemptively and self-censor, beyond just not fed-posting.
- Comment on Cathy, do the math. 5 weeks ago:
The people the contract is with, maybe all employees of the company have the agreement.
That’s literally what I’m saying.
