All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[PaulBullion]

It’ll be interesting to learn if the FBI uncovers some sort of manifesto explaining his motives.

Or a MAGA hat.

[The Cool Thatguy]

Well, there's also the "the perpetrator was a conspiracy theorist moron" to explain any flaws in the plan.

Smart enough to build a stable bomb with a reliable, connected detonator but dumb enough to think that Covid was being transmitted via 5G networks.

Humans! We own this planet yet are still the dumbest animals on it.

[Jack Dracula]

Has there ever been a nation that called itself "Communist" that didn't get taken over by a dictator or oligarchy at some point?

Follow-up question. Is there any form of government that can't degenerate into a dictatorship or oligarchy under the right circumstances?

[Kirby101]

Has there ever been a nation that called itself "Communist" that didn't get taken over by a dictator or oligarchy at some point?

That's the problem, we have not seen a true Marxist government, just leaders using the Communist tag to run a dictatorship.

[Tami]

Follow-up question. Is there any form of government that can't degenerate into a dictatorship or oligarchy under the right circumstances?

Communism is a system that is inherently vulnerable to being turned into a dictatorship mainly because humans are tribal and inherently seek out leaders. They need someone to tell them what to do and how to do it, someone to protect them, to look after them, to make sure that they have the money and resources to survive. Trying to govern by consensus is a slow, difficult process that leads to internal conflicts and eventually making tribalism more likely to happen.

Nations are a collective of tribes, each one pushing their own agendas. However, as soon as the whole of the nation is threatened, the population seeks out a leader. Once someone with the right characteristics rises up and takes control, praise might be heaped on that person, and the populace might decide that this is something they like better.

Problem is, the way that a Communist Society is structured, there are no guardrails in place to keep this new supreme leader from doing anything he wants, including becoming a dictator.

American style democracy works as god as it does [and we know that it's not perfect] because the Founding Fathers took a page from history and decided that they never want a country run by a dicator. So, they did their best to write up a constitution that placed clear guardrails on a leader's powers, as well as ways to check those powers internally.

[Tami]

Anthony Quinn Warner, person of interest in Nashville bombing, a 'computer geek,' neighbor says

Neighbor: Warner never talked politics; kept to himself and cared for his animals

Steve Schmoldt and his wife have lived next to Warner for more than two decad When Schmoldt’s wife moved into the house in 1995, Warner was already living next door.

Schmoldt described his longtime neighbor as friendly, someone with whom he would make brief small talk before parting ways.

He described Warner as “kind of low key to the point of, I don’t know, I guess some people would say he’s a little odd.”

“You never saw anyone come and go,” Schmoldt said of Warner’s home. “Never saw him go anywhere. As far as we knew, he was kind of a computer geek that worked at home.”

Warner had placed lights and security cameras outside his house.

Warner would do a lot of work in his yard, a tall antenna is placed prominently on the side of the house, Schmoldt said. Warner built the fence around his yard himself, the neighbor recalled.

The neighbors never talked about politics or religion. Warner never gave any indication of any closely held ideology.

“I can tell you as far as politics, he never had any yard signs or flags in his window or anything like that. If he did have any political beliefs he kept, that was something he kept to himself.

[DrNewGod]

Communism is a system that is inherently vulnerable to being turned into a dictatorship mainly because humans are tribal and inherently seek out leaders. They need someone to tell them what to do and how to do it, someone to protect them, to look after them, to make sure that they have the money and resources to survive. Trying to govern by consensus is a slow, difficult process that leads to internal conflicts and eventually making tribalism more likely to happen.

Nations are a collective of tribes, each one pushing their own agendas. However, as soon as the whole of the nation is threatened, the population seeks out a leader. Once someone with the right characteristics rises up and takes control, praise might be heaped on that person, and the populace might decide that this is something they like better.

Problem is, the way that a Communist Society is structured, there are no guardrails in place to keep this new supreme leader from doing anything he wants, including becoming a dictator.

American style democracy works as god as it does [and we know that it's not perfect] because the Founding Fathers took a page from history and decided that they never want a country run by a dicator. So, they did their best to write up a constitution that placed clear guardrails on a leader's powers, as well as ways to check those powers internally.

While this argument on Communism is accurate, I think it goes a bit too easy on the US system. Twice in the last century, the US nearly fell into oligarchy, with the course turned back only by the social impacts of The Great Depression +WWII and The Civil Rights Movement+Vietnam. There's even some reasonable argument that the US actually was always an oligarchy, disrupted first by The Industrial Revolution (we switched from agricultural+merchantile oligarchs to industrial oligarchs) and then The Great Depression.

The oligarchists have never given up. They're being supplanted by a new breed, tech based, but oligarchs all the same.

The US system does have flexibility and tools to defend the rights of the people. Oligarchs have been undermining it all my adult life (at least). The only thing that gives me any hope in all the mounting troubles we've experienced these last several years may yield one of those inflection points to roll back inequality. At least, for a while.

[Kirby101]

While this argument on Communism is accurate, I think it goes a bit too easy on the US system. Twice in the last century, the US nearly fell into oligarchy, with the course turned back only by the social impacts of The Great Depression +WWII and The Civil Rights Movement+Vietnam. There's even some reasonable argument that the US actually was always an oligarchy, disrupted first by The Industrial Revolution (we switched from agricultural+merchantile oligarchs to industrial oligarchs) and then The Great Depression.

The oligarchists have never given up. They're being supplanted by a new breed, tech based, but oligarchs all the same.

The US system does have flexibility and tools to defend the rights of the people. Oligarchs have been undermining it all my adult life (at least). The only thing that gives me any hope in all the mounting troubles we've experienced these last several years may yield one of those inflection points to roll back inequality. At least, for a while.

The last election, in which the worst President in history barely lost and the Party of the oligarchs gained seats in the House and can retain the Senate does not give me hope that Americans will vote to roll back inequality.

[DrNewGod]

The last election, in which the worst President in history barely lost and the Party of the oligarchs gained seats in the House and can retain the Senate does not give me hope that Americans will vote to roll back inequality.

It's not done getting worse yet.

[Jack Dracula]

Communism is a system that is inherently vulnerable to being turned into a dictatorship mainly because humans are tribal and inherently seek out leaders. They need someone to tell them what to do and how to do it, someone to protect them, to look after them, to make sure that they have the money and resources to survive. Trying to govern by consensus is a slow, difficult process that leads to internal conflicts and eventually making tribalism more likely to happen.

Nations are a collective of tribes, each one pushing their own agendas. However, as soon as the whole of the nation is threatened, the population seeks out a leader. Once someone with the right characteristics rises up and takes control, praise might be heaped on that person, and the populace might decide that this is something they like better.

Problem is, the way that a Communist Society is structured, there are no guardrails in place to keep this new supreme leader from doing anything he wants, including becoming a dictator.

American style democracy works as god as it does [and we know that it's not perfect] because the Founding Fathers took a page from history and decided that they never want a country run by a dicator. So, they did their best to write up a constitution that placed clear guardrails on a leader's powers, as well as ways to check those powers internally.

Frankly, I don't know enough about the real structural systems of an ideal Communist government to say whether it's more prone than any other to becoming a dictatorship. I'm inclined to think all it takes for any system is a certain level of corruption in a party hierarchy and near-absolute control of the military to start the downhill slide.
I do agree with your thoughts on the ideas behind the design of our own government. I'd like to expand on that and use one interpretation of the 2nd Amendment to reinforce your point by positing that the actual reason for the 2nd calling for state militias was to eliminate the need for a standing national army thereby making it more difficult for a President or political party to use military force to dominate the nation as a whole.

Edit: Tami, if you haven't already, I'd recommend you read Rousseaus The Social Contract. I believe the framers borrowed heavily from it when they were designing our democratic system.

[Kirby101]

It's not Communist government becoming dictatorships. Marx saw the dictatorship of the proletariat the initial step in Communism. In order for the populace to be brought up to a literate, self governing level. When Marx wrote the Manifesto, much of the p,worker populace were uneducated. But no Communist government has gone beyond the dictatorship phase into true a cooperative of equality. So it's not slipping into dictatorship, it's dictatorship using the premise of Communism.
Given human nature, true Communism may be impossible.

[Mister Mets]

It's not Communist government becoming dictatorships. Marx saw the dictatorship of the proletariat the initial step in Communism. In order for the populace to be brought up to a literate, self governing level. When Marx wrote the Manifesto, much of the p,worker populace were uneducated. But no Communist government has gone beyond the dictatorship phase into true a cooperative of equality. So it's not slipping into dictatorship, it's dictatorship using the premise of Communism.
Given human nature, true Communism may be impossible.

So every effort at communism has resulted in a dictatorship?

[Gray Lensman]

So every effort at communism has resulted in a dictatorship?

I can't think of one that hasn't. At best they have been totalitarian commitees that become dictatorships after the initial leader dies.

[Kirby101]

So every effort at communism has resulted in a dictatorship?

As far as I can think of. The Communist utopia is probably unattainable. Democratic Socialism works much better for the majority of the people than attempts at Communism.

Marx was a great observer of Society's ills, and could analyze were they stemmed from. His way to fix it wasn't as successful.

[DrNewGod]

...Given human nature, true Communism may be impossible.

Yes,and for the same reason as ideal capitalist-democracy: neither adequately reckons with vanity nor laziness.