1. #17971
    Invincible Member Kirby101's Avatar
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    We have never had a truly Communist country. We had rulers using Communism to impose totalitarianism.

    Marx's Communist utopia is most likely impossible to achieve, given human nature.
    There came a time when the Old Gods died! The Brave died with the Cunning! The Noble perished locked in battle with unleashed Evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!

  2. #17972
    Astonishing Member mathew101281's Avatar
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    Are liberals bad at naming things?
    Democratic socialist, Black lives matter, Occupy Wallstreet. I feel a lot of these movements would be more successful if they didn't have either vague names that could mean anything( and thus can be easily twisted) or us words that large sections of the population associate with negative things.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kirby101 View Post
    We have never had a truly Communist country. We had rulers using Communism to impose totalitarianism.

    Marx's Communist utopia is most likely impossible to achieve, given human nature.
    Marx never actually wrote about or described how a Communist utopia would come into existence leave alone what it would be. The only time he described it was like this:
    "For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critic and must remain so if he does not wish to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic."

    That doesn't sound so different from --
    "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

    The CPUSA had a slogan that went "Communism is nothing but 20th Century Americanism".

    If America lived up to that aspect of the Declaration of Independence, it would be functionally no different from a communist utopia.

    Quote Originally Posted by mathew101281 View Post
    Are liberals bad at naming things?
    Democratic socialist, Black lives matter, Occupy Wallstreet. I feel a lot of these movements would be more successful if they didn't have either vague names that could mean anything( and thus can be easily twisted) or us words that large sections of the population associate with negative things.
    It doesn't really matter...the American right wing will twist the clearest thing to mean whatever it means and have the effect it wants.

    They don't have any ideology other than white supremacy and white oligarchy.

  4. #17974
    Invincible Member Kirby101's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by mathew101281 View Post
    Are liberals bad at naming things?
    Democratic socialist, Black lives matter, Occupy Wallstreet. I feel a lot of these movements would be more successful if they didn't have either vague names that could mean anything( and thus can be easily twisted) or us words that large sections of the population associate with negative things.
    Yes, liberals are very bad at messaging.
    There came a time when the Old Gods died! The Brave died with the Cunning! The Noble perished locked in battle with unleashed Evil! It was the last day for them! An ancient era was passing in fiery holocaust!

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    Quote Originally Posted by Kirby101 View Post
    Yes, liberals are very bad at messaging.
    First of all, Black Lives Mater and Occupy Wall Street and for that matter Democratic Socialist weren't used by liberals. It came from activists on the American left.

    Black Lives Matter was seen as a divisive slogan, and a divisive and controversial movement until the George Floyd protests and "defund the police" made BLM suddenly the centrist viewpoint, to the point that it's become a steet monument in Washington DC, NYC and many other parts of America.

    Occupy Wall Street was never truly embraced by the Democrat party and was a radical call for redistribution.

    And as slogans both Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street are precise, clear, and exact. Occupy permanently inserted into the American consciousness the idea of "99% versus the 1%" and made 1%ter the 21st Century word for aristocrat, oligarch and so on. In that respect it was quite successful in doing what a movement should do.

    So I don't think the problem is with the slogans. I don't think any other message or slogan would have worked better when you have a section of America that believes in whiteness as privilege and birthright.

    As for Democratic Socialists of America...well at some point you are gonna have to remove the sting from the term socialism. For most of history, the word Democracy was a pejorative word. The people who called for democracy like the French Revolution were seen as loonies but modern democracy resembles the French Revolution far more than the American Revolution.
    Last edited by Revolutionary_Jack; 11-24-2020 at 08:56 PM.

  6. #17976
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kirby101 View Post
    We have never had a truly Communist country. We had rulers using Communism to impose totalitarianism.

    Marx's Communist utopia is most likely impossible to achieve, given human nature.
    We've also never had a truly Christian* society. Because, like pure Communism, it requires a critical mass of people committing to a selfless ideal.

    *I refer to Christianity in the sense of the sect before Imperial Rome got its hooks in. When it was still called "the religion of women and slaves."

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    Quote Originally Posted by DrNewGod View Post
    We've also never had a truly Christian* society. Because, like pure Communism, it requires a critical mass of people committing to a selfless ideal.

    *I refer to Christianity in the sense of the sect before Imperial Rome got its hooks in. When it was still called "the religion of women and slaves."
    Marx actually did say that communism could happen democratically but only in nations with decent liberal and electoral norms. And he refered to Early Christians.

    "Someday the worker must seize political power in order to build up the new organization of labor; he must overthrow the old politics which sustain the old institutions, if he is not to lose Heaven on Earth, like the old Christians who neglected and despised politics. But we have not asserted that the ways to achieve that goal are everywhere the same. You know that the institutions, mores, and traditions of various countries must be taken into consideration, and we do not deny that there are countries — such as America, England, and if I were more familiar with your institutions, I would perhaps also add Holland — where the workers can attain their goal by peaceful means. This being the case, we must also recognize the fact that in most countries on the Continent the lever of our revolution must be force; it is force to which we must some day appeal in order to erect the rule of labor."
    — La Liberté Speech (1872), The Hague, International Workingmen's Association.

    And for those who argue that Marx arguing for force...he was referring to nations like Imperial Germany, Tsarist Russia and Austria...and nobody can argue with a straight face that "force" wasn't a factor in say, the turn to Democracy in Germany, and Austria for instance. From a global perspective, it's hard to imagine a nation like Saudi Arabia which is an Absolute Monarchy with Divine Right of Kings ever attaining any kind of democracy without a 1789 style Revolution.

  8. #17978
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    Quote Originally Posted by Hypestyle View Post
    not really sunk-- not as long as gerrymandered districts in states still exist, plus "true believers" among governors and senate members--
    and as long as there are cohorts of friends and family (not exclusively, but overwhelmingly) who tend to vote for "whiteness" for their elected representatives, things won't really be getting any better-- you're still going to have outsized influence from comparatively sparsely populated states like Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas, etc.

    “Whiteness”, in this case, isn’t particularly a reference to skin color. Nobody has to be an open KKK supporter to vote for "whiteness". Instead, it is the aggregation of narratives, starting at the beginning of this nation in 1619, that colonization and Manifest Destiny were natural outgrowths of the advancement of a culture. The conceits that still largely attribute a recurring innocence to the motives of the actors that achieved “great” things for a particular cohort of people, while other cohorts of people were deliberately left out, actively attacked, or both. These narratives, gradually assimilated and both implicitly and explicitly reiterated, have led to the ethnocentric conclusions that people of America have about themselves.

    Until this is directly and consistently confronted, including primarily by co-members of the dominant culture, it will continue to fester. Cycles of people will continue to believe in Q-Anon, Barack Obama will continue to being the secret Kenyan bogeyman hired by Iran, and other scurrilous, anti-intellectual notions will inform their political choices. The results of the 2020 election proved that more white people are willing to double-triple-quadruple-quintuple-down on gallingly bad candidates because they refuse to let go of "being white" above anything else, including their own health and welfare.
    Quoted for the scary truth.

  9. #17979

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    On this date in 2014, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of Andre Bauer, who for years was a thorn in the side of former Governor Mark Sanford, and looked to supplant him after his "hike in the Appalachians". After spending years intimidating local police in the Palmetto State into not giving him tickets for extreme speeding violations, and crashing his own personal plane, he garnered further attention for pushing for state-issued license plates with a crucifix on them that said "I Believe", and condemned anyone opposed to this violation of the separation of church and state to hell. His campaign for governor was marred with ugly gaffes, like having former CSGOPOTD Jake Knotts say that his opponent, Nikki Haley, "wasn't really a Christian", and a "raghead", dragging as many men out of the woodwork as he could to claim they had participated in adulterous affairs with Haley, and then Bauer himself comparing people on welfare to stray dogs. Needless to say, there's a reason that people now refer to her as "Governor Nikki Haley", and Andre Bauer went on to fail to be elected in South Carolina's 7th District two years later in 2012.

    On this date in 2015, we published our original "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profile of Stephen LaRoque, a former member of the North Carolina General Assembly who was an opponent of voting rights, gay marriage, and climate change research who mocked protesters who appeared at the state capitol to protest the Republican-controlled legislature stripping unemployment benefits by offering them a job doing yard work for a pittance at his home. LaRoque tried to act like these workers were getting a sweet deal by being paid more than a dollar an hour than he gets paid as a legislator... but then word broke that LaRoque had been caught embezzling $2 million in ill-gotten interest on state agriculture loans since 1998. Since he was found guilty and sentenced to 24 months in prison.

    On this date in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published a profile about Don Dwyer, a former member of the Maryland House of Delegates whose career when spiraling out of control, much like the vehicles Dwyer would often operate while inebriated. Dwyer’s first incident back in 2012 saw him crashing his boat, “The Legislator” while intoxicated, injuring himself, another adult, and four children with a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit. Not even a year later, Dwyer was charged with DUI during a traffic stop where he failed three different sobriety tests and was cited for over 14 violations including driving without a license. Supposedly, that second incident went on record while Dwyer claimed to be in a treatment program, and while he was about to be sentenced for his drunken boat crash. Dwyer, though, had a reasonable explanation for losing himself to raging and irresponsible alcoholism… His wife left him and he was really sad because his colleagues had allowed gay marriages to start happening. In the small world of Maryland politics, maybe it should come as little surprise that Dwyer is also closely linked to the White Nationalist Michael Peroutka, as he once served as the executive director for Peroutka’s Institute on the Constitution. When you’re pals with a Neo-Confederate lunatic, it can’t come as a surprise that Dwyer ended up frequently submitting nullification legislation to any law he didn’t like. Or, y’know, the fact that Dwyer misinterprets the Constitution to think that people should have to pass religious tests to hold public office (The Supreme Court’s Tarasco v. Watkins ruling says otherwise). And, it’s real hard to feel bad for him for getting voted out of office considering that Dwyer responded to the Sandy Hook Massacre in early 2013 by holding a fundraiser where he auctioned off two assault rifles. Anyway, Don Dwyer failed to get re-elected in 2014, finishing a distant sixth in an eight candidate Republican primary for his seat. He did not run for any office in 2016.
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    It was on this date in both 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled Glenn Gruenhagen, a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives who first came onto the scene back in, you guessed it, the 2010 Tea Party Wave with but 51% of the vote. He since has somehow gathered a following among GOP voters, winning with at least 60% of the vote in 2012, 2014, and 2016. Perhaps his charm with his party lies in his radical social conservative views, like that he is “pro life from conception to natural death” and thinks that abortion somehow has “economic consequences” or that he claims the Affordable Care Act will lead to “healthcare rationing”, a frequently debunked myth the right likes to spread about the ACA that has been widely known to be a bogus talking point for around… oh, eight or nine years now.

    Gruenhagen’s signature issue, however, is LGBTQ rights, or why we should not have them. Going back to his earliest days serving on a school council, Gruenhagen has been fervently anti-gay, often interrupting school board meetings to, non sequitur, rant about the evils of sodomy. In 2005, his own colleagues noted:
    Back in 2007, Gruenhagen also wrote an op-ed in his local paper, where he wanted to discuss Christmas… The topic he veered off for a moment to show how aghast he was at Congressman Keith Ellison being sworn in on a copy of the Koran and how it was a plot to have it someday take the place of the Bible, and somehow, he went even further off course from talking about celebrating the birth of Jesus and instead onto the dread topic of sodomy:
    When newly elected U.S. Congressman Keith Ellison insisted on using the Koran (Qur’an) at his oath of office, many citizens raised concerns about the symbolism of that event. . . . . I believe we see the disturbing and subtle influence of using the Koran to replace the Bible as our source of “civil and religious liberties.”
    . . .Many have great concern for our country as we have drifted from the Judeo-Christian principles which gave us our liberties and freedoms, into the religion of atheism, such as the belief in abortion, pornography, sodomy as an orientation, evolution, etc. The corruption of atheistic values in our schools and government institutions leaves open the door for a foreign religious value system to influence our country’s culture. [emphasis added] Many patriotic Americans are concerned that our freedoms and liberties will be lost with the censorship and removal of our Creator who authored our liberty and freedoms. Is it important for publicly elected officials to place their hand on the Bible during their oath of office in spite of the American Civil Liberties Union? I’ll let you decide
    .”
    At another point in 2013, Gruenhagen wrote a column online that linked any constituent who read it to an anti-gay hate group from Massachusetts that conveniently still reports sodomy is a crime (which, no, not after the Lawrence v. Texas ruling in 2003). The gist of all this rants is, by being allowed to exist, and marry people, and have any gay sex, the gay community are “coming after Christians with their gay agenda” and that homosexuality is just a form of “sexual addiction” based on an “unscientific lie. And he will, at any point, reflexively start telling lies about homosexuals.

    The “secret gay agenda” is hardly the only bizarre conspiracy theory Gruenhagen believes in, as he is also a climate change denier wielding a particularly abhorrent lack of logic, insisting that talk of it is “a United Nations fraud”, while making the idiotic accusation that those who do acknowledge evidence of climate change “believe that exhaling is causing global warning”, citing “facts he learned at CPAC. And honestly, when the most sane idea you’ve pitched in government is to castrate sex offenders because “it worked on the farm”, maybe you shouldn’t be a legislator. That’s just us at CSGOPOTD thinking, though.

    Regrettably, Glenn Gruenhagen was elected to a sixth term in office in 2020, where we’re sure he’ll continue to try and block any Democratic bills that cross his path, even something as simple as a ballot initiative to amend the state constitution to include an equal rights amendment. Meanwhile, he’s back to focusing on homophobia, as he is the sponsor of a bill that would defund any public library that dares to host a Drag Queen Story Hour.

    Clearly, a high priority to have during a pandemic. If you’re a bigoted ***hole, that is.
    Last edited by worstblogever; 11-25-2020 at 01:38 AM.
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  11. #17981
    Silver Sentinel BeastieRunner's Avatar
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    "Always listen to the crazy scientist with a weird van or armful of blueprints and diagrams." -- Vibranium

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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Marx never actually wrote about or described how a Communist utopia would come into existence leave alone what it would be. The only time he described it was like this:
    "For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critic and must remain so if he does not wish to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic."

    That doesn't sound so different from --
    "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

    The CPUSA had a slogan that went "Communism is nothing but 20th Century Americanism".

    If America lived up to that aspect of the Declaration of Independence, it would be functionally no different from a communist utopia.
    It's easy to espouse high-minded ideals, actually trying to live up them is quite a bit harder and usually requires making tough choices that will upset a lot of people. The Declaration of Independence was written by a notorious slaveowner, and the fundamental contradiction between what he preached and what he practiced couldn't have been lost on him. What's more, without the wealth created by the slave economy, the American colonists would never have been in a position to declare independence or make any demands of democracy or equality to begin with, since the colonies would never have become economically viable and would have just been abandoned or wiped out by the natives. The things that we like about America are only possible because of the ugliest aspects of our society, and we've still never reached the point where that stopped being true.

  13. #17983
    Invincible Member numberthirty's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tendrin View Post
    I had no idea 30 liked this so much.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6w2eivKmfU
    Right there in the link...

    Quote Originally Posted by numberthirty View Post
    Tuba City is still a great record. It's down to them and Fudge Tunnel when it comes to priceless Cream covers.

    If it's a knock on that they got old?

    Well, yeah. Walter Schreifels is the only one from back then that time didn't really lay a mitt on.

  14. #17984
    Old school comic book fan WestPhillyPunisher's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by BeastieRunner View Post
    Yeah, pretty much. But then, even if Johnny MAGA could read, chances are he wouldn't have accepted that inconvenient truth.
    Avatar: Here's to the late, great Steve Dillon. Best. Punisher. Artist. EVER!

  15. #17985
    Ultimate Member Tendrin's Avatar
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    Same as it ever was.

    Amazon has hired detectives with the infamous Pinkerton spy agency to monitor European workers' labor union organizing efforts, per a Motherboard report.

    The outlet obtained leaked documents from Amazon's Global Security Operations Center, where data analysts can easily track workers' union organizing activities down to the date, time, and location.

    Pinkerton spies have a history of busting up unions: Their involvement in a steelworker strike in 1892 eventually led to states prohibiting the use of third-party security in labor disputes.

    The Motherboard report highlights Amazon's latest efforts to prevent its workers from unionizing — it has a long track record of being staunchly opposed to labor unions.
    https://www.yahoo.com/news/amazon-us...194258550.html

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