MarxMadness [comrade/them]

Interesting point. I kind of like still calling it Twitter, though, to highlight that it wasn’t always full of overt fascism.

Jesus, I didn’t connect that to the Phoenix Program until right now. James Cameron you’re a goddamn genius

“Woke” is the key example here

The white savior criticism of Avatar is somewhat fair, but is also an oversimplification in a lot of ways.

It does have a lot of similarities to Dances with Wolves in the first half, but the conclusions (fighting back vs. running away) are very different.

I think your two examples are less about a lack of literacy and more about people defaulting to reddit-style pedantry because it’s easier than engaging the merits of whoever you’re talking to.

I bet 90% of “your analogy doesn’t work”-style comments aren’t people misunderstanding what analogies are, and probably aren’t even bad faith, but are people attacking the analogy because doing so is an easy way to disagree.

“Good Tsar, bad Boyars” (Russian: Царь хороший, бояре плохие, romanized: Tsar khoroshiy, boyarie plokhiye), sometimes also known as Naïve Monarchism, is a Russian political phenomenon in which positive actions taken by the Russian government are viewed as being the result of the leader of Russia, while negative actions taken by the government are viewed as being caused by lower-level bureaucrats unbeknownst to the leader. Originating from the Russian Empire, the term has since been used to refer to the leaders of the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russian Federation, particularly during the rule of Vladimir Putin.

Classic lib shit: take a phenomenon that happens in all sorts of organizations (your offensive coordinator usually gets fired before your coach, who usually gets fired before your GM) and orientalize it.

I think the best leftist approach to crime is “the best way to reduce crime is to reduce poverty.” This covers a lot of the same ground as the OP, but does a better job of setting you up to have a more productive discussion.

I’m guessing the threatened lawsuit is for plain-old breach of contract, not anything new.

Why is the state so terrifyingly effective at times, and so bumblingly incompetent at others? One reason is that when you’re the state – especially when you’re the feds – you can get away with a ton of stuff an individual or a small private group would get absolutely nailed for. This is partly because you have so much influence over investigating and prosecuting everything, and partly because you have so many resources to begin with. You’re on easy mode most of the time, so most of your personnel don’t have to be too sharp.

the one where Brad Pitt speaks Jamaican patois

Don’t leave me hanging on this one!

Back in the 00s or earlier, a lot of people said the r-slur basically as a way of saying “dumb” with emphasis. There wasn’t always the connotation of an edge to it, or a direct understanding that you were demeaning people with intellectual disabilities. Even when it was directly mocking those people, you hadn’t had an extended period of mainstream reflection on punching up/punching down, or on how fucked up mainstream language can be (e.g., the former name of the Washington Commanders).

But all those cats are out of the bag now. People who say that slur today are at best trying to be edgy, and are at worst consciously being mean. The edginess only kind of works – everyone knows you weren’t saying this a few years ago, so how edgy are you, really? I’m not even sure it works well anymore as performative meanness, because the whole idea of “we’re bringing this back” so strongly emphasizes how uncreative it is.

Is there a paywalled section I’m missing, or does the article end at “won’t be going any further?” Pretty light on details.

A tweet that’s purely a take quoting a tweet that makes a “walking it back” claim without quoting a statement or anything? I’m supposed to take this at face value?

If there’s a real criticism here, let’s see what the guy actually said.

what are they gonna do, hunt down the skeleton staff lockheed martin employs for maintenance and impress them?

“Draft” would be the technical term, but yeah. This is definitely a bad idea if you want an effective, ready military, but I would be careful not to overestimate how bad it’ll actually be.

A decent political opponent could exploit the Republicans’ contradiction between “America Fuck Yeah” and “tax is theft,” but we have Democrats instead.

When a socialist society needed to develop its economy enough to maintain internal support and survive against external aggression.

China endured its Century of Humiliation and then a genocidal occupation during WWII. The communists then had to win their civil war, only to immediately face U.S. aggression on their doorstep in Korea, plus hostile U.S. bases all over Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. In 1950 it was a poor, largely pre-industrial country with urgent, existential problems. How quickly were they supposed to build utopia?

Do you think repeating what I said is insightful?

I get it’s a meme and all, but no AES state has ever claimed they’re five years away from a stateless society. You’d be selling out your own people if you dismantled your state while the entire capitalist world wants to kill you.

You can become a billionaire in China, but billionaires don’t control the government there, and the law actually applies to them.

When forum posting is not liberating, the dream of the poster is to become a mod