1. #17956
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    Scotland passed a terrific bit of legislation today.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/w...-products.html

    The cool part is the headline,

    "Tackling ‘Period Poverty,’ Scotland Is 1st Nation to Make Sanitary Products Free"

    "1st nation"...Scotland's already being treated as an independent country.

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    Ultimate Member Mister Mets's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by worstblogever View Post
    Oh, so when your country doesn't have leaders beholden to Russia, you get 10 years added to your life expectancy?

    Good thing we're getting rid of Trump, then.
    I think we're both in agreement that communism is bad, and we're glad that Joe Biden is President-Elect.
    Sincerely,
    Thomas Mets

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    Invincible Member Kirby101's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Mets View Post
    I thought this was funny.

    All have become Democratic Socialist countries with Universal Healthcare.

    It's not because they have large corporations.
    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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    I am invenitable Jack Dracula's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Adam Allen View Post
    And no, Trump the individual is not the problem. Or, he is a problem, but just the tip of that particular iceberg. The entire Republican party is in lockstep behind him, and 70 million people wanted to give him another four years, despite the country being a disaster, compared to four years ago. It's really kind of inconceivable to me that people support him. Or Republicans in general at this point, really.
    It largely comes down to messaging. India for example currently has a 46% rate of unemployment, 9,000,000+ infected with Covid, widespread starvation, a recently failed rollout of a new national economic plan, and Narendra Modi just recently polled at 70% favorability. He speaks constantly about a strong national Hindu-centric identity and vilifies the Muslim culture among his own countrymen. Apparently, all the working class needs is rabid patriotism and a villain to look down on and they'll forgive any level of criminal incompetence.
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    "I love mankind...it's people I can't stand!!"

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Mets View Post
    I think we're both in agreement that communism is bad, and we're glad that Joe Biden is President-Elect.
    Life expectancy is not the slam dunk argument metric you are making it out to be.

    Cuba for instance has the same life expectancy that USA does even if per-capita investment is lower.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...health/508859/

    India which is democratic and a free-market economy has a lower life expectancy than Vietnam which is still a one-part nation run by the communist party.

    Rhetorically, I am not sure what point you are trying to make. I can presume of course, but I'd like you to clarify. If you are trying to mendaciously imply or tar the progressive wing of the party then I'd prefer you be upfront about it.

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    "I love mankind...it's people I can't stand!!"

    - Charles Schultz.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Mets View Post
    I think we're both in agreement that communism is bad, and we're glad that Joe Biden is President-Elect.
    I’d say it’s more that autocracy and oligarchy are bad; while communism was the official economic system of the world’s largest autocracy and oligarchy for half a century, the problem was far more in the heavy handed despotism of the rulers... much like to can be and often is in countries that are officially capitalistic, and much like the US has at times experience when de-facto oligarchies have been given free reign.

    Don’t misunderstand me; I doubt human nature enough to feel that it’s often obvious why some countries that experiment with socialism and communism fail, and fail hard... but I also know that’s not something either exclusively or permanently tied to the principles of Marx, in the same way they are not exclusive or permanently tied to the principles of Smith.

    The success story of some Social Dmeocraices has to be acknowledged in the same way the success of some Free Market systems have been.... as must the failures in both.

    The main reason i don’t respect Libertarians anymore is because I now know they’re equally as blind, naive, and arrogant as their Bolshevik counterparts - just replace “We will lead you to a utopia!” with “Supply and Demand I’ll lead you to a utopia!” Both can easily welcome incompetent despots, and the answer probably isn’t “in the middle” but in some specific place that exposes both philosophies to their inadequacies.
    Like action, adventure, rogues, and outlaws? Like anti-heroes, femme fatales, mysteries and thrillers?

    I wrote a book with them. Outlaw’s Shadow: A Sherwood Noir. Robin Hood’s evil counterpart, Guy of Gisbourne, is the main character. Feel free to give it a look: https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asi...E2PKBNJFH76GQP

  9. #17964
    Ultimate Member Mister Mets's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    Life expectancy is not the slam dunk argument metric you are making it out to be.

    Cuba for instance has the same life expectancy that USA does even if per-capita investment is lower.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...health/508859/

    India which is democratic and a free-market economy has a lower life expectancy than Vietnam which is still a one-part nation run by the communist party.

    Rhetorically, I am not sure what point you are trying to make. I can presume of course, but I'd like you to clarify. If you are trying to mendaciously imply or tar the progressive wing of the party then I'd prefer you be upfront about it.
    I brought up Biden because WBE brought up Trump. I've been pretty clear for several years that I'd prefer Biden as President to Trump.

    In the initial post, I liked how the capitalist pig had been used in a variation on the money printer go brrr meme. I thought it was funny.

    I don't like the progressive wing of the democratic party, but my comment wasn't about that.
    Sincerely,
    Thomas Mets

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    Quote Originally Posted by godisawesome View Post
    I’d say it’s more that autocracy and oligarchy are bad; while communism was the official economic system of the world’s largest autocracy and oligarchy for half a century, the problem was far more in the heavy handed despotism of the rulers... much like to can be and often is in countries that are officially capitalistic, and much like the US has at times experience when de-facto oligarchies have been given free reign.
    The fact is a capitalistic free market economy can exist perfectly with autocracy. You see that in Singapore whose famous dictator is an inspiration for Vladimir Putin. You see that in Modern China which is agressively hypercapitalist and yet oligarchical and repressive. You are also seeing that in Brazil with Bolsonaro, and in India under Modi. There are numerous examples. Historically speaking, free market economies included Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany, it included the British Empire which certainly had a level of totalitarian control over its colonies, the French (ditto), Pre-Revolutionary Russia. And you know Woodrow Wilson's USA was pretty authoritarian in that time as well.

    Also the fact that Russia after the fall of USSR has become a kind of Neo-Tsarist state kind of subtracts from the whole idea and appeal of free market leading to democracy. Putin's Russia is capitalist and it's as despotic and repressive as the USSR was. Not as bad as Stalin's time (yet) but still as repressive as the Khruschev and Brezhnev and Andropov years.

    The main reason i don’t respect Libertarians anymore is because I now know they’re equally as blind, naive, and arrogant as their Bolshevik counterparts - just replace “We will lead you to a utopia!” with “Supply and Demand I’ll lead you to a utopia!” Both can easily welcome incompetent despots, and the answer probably isn’t “in the middle” but in some specific place that exposes both philosophies to their inadequacies.
    Well put.

    Understanding the Cold War solely in terms of "A tale of two systems" or as cheap brownie points is useless because it implies that these two things are static and not dynamic.

    "Admittedly, besides its moral failure, communism failed in its crusade to convert the whole world...But communism's impact was and still is enormous. In addition to provoking significant changes in capitalist economies, such as vastly increased military spending and the growth of a military-industrial complex, the USSR's existence changed Western social development in fundamental ways. Labor reform in the West in the past century came about under the threat of a radicalized international labor movement protected and supported by the USSR. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal was in part meant to steal the thunder of radicals who looked to Moscow and therefore could not be ignored. Social goals that are commonplace today, including women's rights and racial integration, were planks of the Communist Party platform long before mainstream American parties took them seriously. It was Communists who first went to the American South and began organizing African-Americans and poor whites around issues of social justice. The more politically acceptable young people who followed them in The '60s are heroes today. On the international scene the Soviet Union provided support for Nelson Mandela and other reformers. Communism made life difficult for Western establishments, and it is doubtful that reforms would have come when they did if the USSR had not existed ...Twentieth-century communism was no passing illusion; its legacies are everywhere."
    — J. Arch Getty, The Future Did Not Work (https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine...t-work/378081/)

    It's more interesting to see the Cold War as being about how capitalism changed in reaction to socialism and how socialism reacted to seeing capitalism change. And also look at people finding alternatives to USSR style totalitarianism and American style "founder's chic" self-hagiography.

    When the Berlin Wall fell, there was a slogan at the time that went "one down, one to go", people expected that with the end of USSR as a superpower, the end of USA as a superpower wasn't far away, and people hoped to move past the imperialism that comes with great superpowers imposing their systems and self-aggrandizing their ideas while making the rest of the world and its diplomats sit through quietly and grit their teeth at people forming wrong ideas based on luck.
    Last edited by Revolutionary_Jack; 11-24-2020 at 08:07 PM.

  11. #17966
    Old school comic book fan WestPhillyPunisher's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Steel Inquisitor View Post
    That's what people thought with W,. when he lost and the party went into the wilderness. That's how we got Trump.
    Inbetween Dubya losing the White House and Trump lucking into the presidency, there was the Halley’s Comet ascendancy of the Tea Party which greased the skids for all the madness the country is dealing with today. That festering, pus filled political bane can’t be discounted.
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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.
    There's probably a middle ground between believing in Q-Anon and believing that it is essential to confront the myth of American greatness.

    Quote Originally Posted by DrNewGod View Post
    If we don't see a GOP split, and the end of the corrosive 2-party system by 2023, we are well and truly buggered.
    How would you see the split occuring?

    Quote Originally Posted by BeastieRunner View Post
    The party is already sunk.

    Give it another 1-2 POTUS election cycles.
    If a party kept the Senate, lost the electoral vote in the presidential election by less than one percent in the tipping point states, has a slight majority of governorships, controls 61 state legislative chambers, and seems to be within ten seats of taking back the US House, it's not sunk.

    There is some stuff we don't know.

    Historians might look back at the election, and determine that Joe Biden is a terrible presidential candidate who would underperform almost any other Democrat, and that Donald Trump was a uniquely appealing Republican candidate. If this is true, it suggests things will go poorly for Republicans in the future if they couldn't win that match-up. If it's not true, which is my suspicion, it suggests that Republicans can be competitive in the future.
    Sincerely,
    Thomas Mets

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    Quote Originally Posted by WestPhillyPunisher View Post
    Inbetween Dubya losing the White House and Trump lucking into the presidency, there was the Halley’s Comet ascendancy of the Tea Party which greased the skids for all the madness the country is dealing with today. That festering, pus filled political bane can’t be discounted.
    The American Right Wing as a whole -- including conservatives, white supremacists, religious right what have you -- has this tendency to double-down and never learn from defeat.

    It's pretty unique. If you look at British Conservativism, they do learn from defeats and setbacks. When Tony Blair came and went and the tories were out of power, David Cameron came and moderated the party. The Tories which had a homophobic legacy under Thatcher ended up overseeing the legalization of gay marriage.

    In American history, the Civil War and Reconstruction would have been enough for any other conservative party to accept defeat and move on...but you instead had Jim Crow and segregation. Herbert Hoover's catastrophic handling of the Great Depression didn't finish him for good since his books and writings opposing FDR's New Deal ultimately inspired neoliberal policies all the way to Milton Friedman. Barry Goldwater's insurgent extreme campaign which basically marked the ascendancy of the GOP as we know it today (taking power away from moderates and others) led to a historic landslide defeat but somehow Goldwater's looney tunes ideas didn't die and the GOP lurched further and further to the right under Nixon and then Reagan. After W. and his bad presidency after Obama's thumping wins...any other conservative party around the world would have moderated and tried to rein in the crazy. Instead they quadrupled down.

    So no, I don't expect the GOP to learn from this loss.

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    There are capitalist states which aren't dictatorships, Communism never got that far. Putin is a big fan of emulating Stalin's Russia, it's just with a capitalist right wing bent. Thats why Russia's been settling scores with America and trying to bring back all the states it lost when the Soviet Union fell.

    Socialism should be respected but Communism is soaked in blood just as much as America is. Communism did good by supporting those people and causes but it didn't do that because they agreed, they did it to weaken the West and provided good PR to sympathisers. They also did things like support dictatorships and death cults like Jonestown.

    Capitalism is bad but Communism hasn't proven it's the better alternative. Check out how Communism's governance allowed Chernobyl to happen. They have their own Trump's with disastrous consequences.

    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf...64220600746623

    And that's not getting into failures like Pol Pot and North Korea.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Steel Inquisitor View Post
    There are capitalist states which aren't dictatorships, Communism never got that far.
    Marxist parties did come to power at the state level in India, like in a Southern state in India and in Bengal. So it's not like Communism hasn't had success in democracies. There have been communists who had important positions in state and regional power in Italy and also France.

    Capitalism is bad but Communism hasn't proven it's the better alternative. Check out how Communism's governance allowed Chernobyl to happen. They have their own Trump's with disastrous consequences.

    https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf...64220600746623

    And that's not getting into failures like Pol Pot and North Korea.
    True that.
    Last edited by Revolutionary_Jack; 11-24-2020 at 08:34 PM.

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