PZK [he/him]

“…stop politicizing an issue troubling to many, myself included.”

Of all the crap I see and hear politicians do, seeing them whine about things being “political” is next level absurd. ITS YOUR FUCKING JOB TO BE POLITICAL.

It would be easy to denounce the individual after learning more about who he was, but this crocodile-tears approach tells me she knew who he was before (or doesn’t care) and is just upset she got caught worshiping him. Here, I can write a better half-assed, passive voice coverup for her:

“I was not aware of the individual’s past and it was not communicated to the other MP’s. I do not condone or support the individual’s past actions and I apologize for for my part in celebrating their presence. This was a mistake on the part of this governing body that should have been better communicated to us. I believe I speak for all MP’s that we openly denounce Nazism, and the individuals responsible.”

In the decades before 2016, Trump’s hot mic incident would have been lethal to any politician. It doesn’t seem like much in hindsight because he ended up winning, but the Republican party was panicking and scrambling for an alternate candidate.

In a way, it ended up creating a lot of the political climate in the United States today. Republicans realized doubling down often was a viable strategy and have done it ever since. It also added to Trump’s mystique, that he could buck the established norms to such a degree, that it convinced many chuds that anything was possible if they were a big enough asshole.

It was probably a major source of my radicalization, because the fact that he won in spite of it lead me to believe that optics were not the only thing going on with politics. It made me pay attention and figure out why this would happen and why it didn’t matter.

The same people who defend the idea of meritocracy will also defend nepotism and inheritance as legitimate forms of success.

Reaction videos are an occasional guilty pleasure of mine. But I avoid channels that are explicitly about “reactions” because as UlyssesT said, they end up all being the same reaction to different things.

I do genuinely enjoy seeing people be excited and happy. But so much of that “industry” is fake. People either go over the top or provide nothing in addition.

I think some niche youtube channels are fun, but it certainly is becoming a bore. If I had to guess, it probably is from everything being localized to a handful of websites and those are in turn optimized by an algorithm for profit instead of something enjoyable. The internet has been turned into what is addictive instead of fun.

My personal theory is that we are so detached from joy that many find “reaction videos” a source of amusement because we can’t feel excitement ourselves anymore, so people vicariously enjoy something “new” by watching someone else be very excited and happy about it.

I only really partake in interacting with people I don’t know on Hexbear, and anything else I leave exclusive to people I know in real life.

Its a fantastic reservoir of knowledge at your fingertips, but a terrible and inhuman way to interact with other humans. Much nuance and body language is not seen, and people essentially develop the same kind of anonymous rage they feel when driving a car except it is in front of a computer screen.

After he was directly criticized for his love of slavery in spite of it’s increasing worldwide recognition as a moral evil.

Who would have thought a balloon is not useful for spying. You have little to no control over its direction, it isn’t discrete, and most silly of all, why use that when you have satellites?

I guess the US was outwitted by a balloon after spending billions of dollars on cutting edge spy planes and powerful satellite cameras.

Or they are fear mongering with the intent to sway opinion that societal collapse is imminent so that we all must be ready to use extreme measures.

“Societal collapse” in their mind is the collapse of their privileged life. “Extreme measures” meaning find ways to quietly genocide a group of people before it becomes an open power struggle.

Honestly most of the time I see a variety of ball cap on a white dude it feels like a tell. Not necessarily always a chud but I feel the ratio is in that direction. I would be curious if there is actually data on this or just a prejudice of mine.

Intense fearful gaze is another one, which is why they also love to wear sunglasses everywhere. The funniest thing chuds do is take selfies of themselves scowling with sunglasses on in their pickup truck.

Of course he would never understand, hes part of the problem.

Everything is political, not just when your views are challenged.

I can’t help but wonder if the presence of a Democrat in the presidency just sort of pacifies liberal, left, and radical mass movements and mobilization.

Ding ding ding. You got it.

A former friend of mine went from being a budding leftist to spinning into liberalism during 2020. He then started punching left the instant Biden was in office. The real reason liberals hate Trump is because he demonstrates that their ideals don’t work because he can succeed amongst them, and he fires up left wing thought. They were terrified of Trump winning in 2020 because it would have meant the collapse of mainstream liberalism in the Democratic party, which funnily enough I recall them openly admitting this when it was looking like Sanders was actually the front runner.

That said, Sanders also demonstrates why he isn’t a solution. He rolled over to the Democrats and let his movement die. When he was pushed, he caved to capitalism. This is why Stalin said people like this are the moderate wing of fascism because they ultimately don’t combat it and will actually facilitate it in some ways. He isn’t committed to rooting out capital, but he was openly critical of it, which was enough for the Democrats to demonize and destroy him. But he does represent that attitudes changing is possible, and the Democrats were furious that he was able to stay aloft on small donors as opposed to corporate money to fund his campaign. They have relied on that tool to filter out left-ish candidates and he proved it alone isn’t a silver bullet in American electoral politics, they need the media too (which unfortunately they also own).

Americans are very far removed from leftist thought. So much so that Democrats pass as “leftists” if they are “progressives”. Bernie’s campaigns demonstrated a shift that was slightly outside of the political electoral norms in the United States. The Democrats went nuclear, utilizing the press and doing every they could electorally and institutionally to derail the Sanders campaign (including outright cheating in Iowa). It worked, and to their great delight, nobody noticed because Americans are that propagandized.

These two political parties need eachother. Republicans are the real ruling party of the United States, and the Democrats are the seat warmers that co-opt leftist movements and give themselves all kinds of stupid rules so they are excused from doing anything for working class people.

These parties are Bonnie and Clyde stealing from you, but Bonnie has been more upset lately because Clyde is getting abusive, she still loves him though.

I don’t know if he means well, but whether he is accidentally correct by whining about treats or he is giving a relatable example, he is right on the money.

Rather amusingly, treats are pivotal to both the economy and the culture of America. A Wendy’s closing in America could actually be a sign of decline.

I think even the Golden Throne pales in comparison to how many lives are sacrificed to keep the US alive.

It was awesome back in the day. Its clunky but still fun today. While it was a little campy during the cutscenes, it was actually supposed to have a more serious tone than RA2.

It also answers the question of what if Stalin didn’t stop at Berlin.

I don’t think I have seen all three at once before.

Gee, it sure sounds like an appeal that the abductor would use to try to leverage a hostage situation. “You wouldn’t want them to get hurt… would you?”

Beyond the absurdity of using a hospital patient as a metaphor, it also serves to ridicule it’s own position: A hospital patient is dying, you the doctor offer to save the patient by giving them medicine. This person ridicules you for even trying and casts you as a murderer if you fail.

This argument is also projecting. It casts the socialist as not knowing what they are doing by messing with “levers that no one could possibly understand”. Yet the post implies that those unknowable levers are a perfect analogue to a patient who is hooked up to what is clearly an understandable apparatus of life support. It sounds like the argument doesn’t not in fact know what those nebulous levers are, yet describes the socialist position as clueless to the “complexity of society”.

Better not try to fix the dying machine. It’s death is certain, but trying to save it is uncertain, and that’s too scary.

“Pity me.”

Unfortunately we are here because we have enough critical thinking and reading comprehension that we kept asking questions until we found the real underlying explanation to politics, history, and world events. Marxism explains the failings of the world, and we just happened to be patient and stubborn enough to find it. I say unfortunately, because of the unwillingness of most people to hear something until it reaches a point of survival. We are a minority because we think.

For the average person, it isn’t satisfying to keep digging for the truth, knowing that they probably won’t like the answer. They would rather give up and be confused and mystified when things don’t go as they assumed or predicted. Think about how miserable we often are. The more the average person finds out how evil the system is, the less they want to know. Granted, if they kept digging long enough they would find happiness through understanding, but the journey of watching your heroes become your villains is a tough thing for most people to accept. When I try to show co-workers a different way of thinking about politics, they reach a point and often shut down by dismissing politics in general, preferring to be ignorant than angry.

The fact that we exist is probably enough evidence that western propaganda isn’t bulletproof, but I think anyone could have told you that you can’t convince people that they aren’t struggling. The worsening conditions of the west is what is leading to more enlightenment.

They could not have won. Their army and their “reich” collapsed the moment they suffered a major defeat. The Soviet Union by comparison suffered horrific defeats and losses in the early stages of the eastern front and the nation rallied back and won the war. Why couldn’t the Germans do this? Because their “reich” was nothing more than plundering Europe, and it fell apart when it encountered its first test of resilience. The thousands of miles of captured territory was quickly lost despite plenty of opportunities to build and create contingencies in the event their offensives failed. They didn’t do it. They didn’t have a back up plan, or a way to transition their military into fighting a war of attrition.

The militant fascism required them to invade everything and everyone as quickly as possible. To try to fabricate a scenario where the Nazis made smart and long-term war winning decisions is to effectively make them not Nazis to begin with. You can argue that they may have had more success if Rommel was given command of everything but he never would have been able to create the political movement that gave him the tools in the first place. To speculate further is to create an alternate history scenario where everything went perfect for the Nazis and they had a dramatic regime and ideology change in the midst of their conquests.

Victory for the Nazis was total domination and nothing else. Conquering and holding Europe alone would never have been seen as “winning the war”, at least as far as they were concerned.

The argument can be made that any military force could have won if they just made no mistakes and got lucky everywhere they needed to. Despite having most of the cards in their favor early on, they lost. That isn’t a reflection of how close they were to victory, but how fragile their victories had been.

*Me saying a fairy tale scenario that will not exist under capitalism.

*Reality standing behind me.

You can’t and wont deliver a long term solution for “middle class” people by working within that system. The goal of capital is ultimately to have as few as people as possible, with as much power as possible. Any middle class you are talking about will become lower class and poverty class with enough time. It absurd that you can look at the current system and believe that it would ever deliver on your promise. Believing that it would work with an uncorrupt government is trying to say that there is an “ideal” version of capitalism out there and we just need to do that.

You are looking at the only version of capitalism that exists. Any regulations, safeguards, and safety nets will be corrupted and withered away eventually because the people and institutions that supposedly uphold these ideals will be rewarded for doing so. You create a competitive class system and you are shocked and outraged when people cash it out to gain, or maintain their social class to avoid becoming lower class.