[-] Objection@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 month ago

Do you have a link to that conversation? I'm interested in what your proof looked like.

[-] Objection@lemmy.ml 14 points 1 month ago

If you say something wrong about something they care about and you can't back it up, they're going to be rude to you.

[-] Objection@lemmy.ml 15 points 3 months ago

That's a complicated question without a clear answer. It's hard to establish the motivations of an individual person, but much harder when you're talking about the entire country. Generally, people were united in the war effort, but for a variety of reasons. The NYT downplayed the Holocaust and specifically tried to avoid focusing on antisemitism, in part because they were worried that people wouldn't like the idea of fighting a war to protect Jewish people, as racism and antisemitism were very much present. On the other hand, you had people like folk singer Woody Guthrie who explicitly connected the war to anti-fascism in his songs. But there were also plenty of people and media who had been praising Hitler, before he started invading everywhere.

Basically there were lots of reasons for lots of people to dislike the Nazis, so it's kind of hard to detangle who was motivated by what and to what degree. Generally though, if they had kept to their own borders, it's unlikely that any other country would have invaded them just for being fascists, and many countries went through great lengths not to go to war with them, because nobody wanted to recreate the devastation of WWI. Even then the US wasn't willing to get directly involved until it was directly attacked.

[-] Objection@lemmy.ml 14 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I'm a tankie. What tankie is supposed to mean is someone who blindly supports anything anyone does so long as they claim to be communist and wave a red flag. There's maybe a handful of edgy teens who actually fit that description, but the way it's actually used is to punch left at anyone who supports anything a socialist country has ever done, or who is insufficiently patriotic/nationalistic and is willing to consider things from an internationalist perspective.

If you say for example that Cuba under Castro had a successful literacy program, then there are people who will accuse you of being a tankie just for that. Because it gets used this way, some people like myself chose to reclaim the insult and wear it proudly.

Generally, the actual term for most "tankies" would be Marxist-Leninist. But I actually prefer tankie because it's a more general, big tent label. It's used so broadly that even anarchists can be called tankies. It's basically like "woke" where it doesn't actually have any real meaning.

[-] Objection@lemmy.ml 15 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Stop trying to make Trump look cool. If anything, he's more like Batista.

[-] Objection@lemmy.ml 15 points 4 months ago

There’s a lot of talk about inflation and its causes. Is it corporate greed?

Yes

One clear base cause of inflation less talked about is having an inflationary currency supply. Any other inflation caused by supply chain issues, corporate greed, lack of market competition, etc is just added on top of that.

In the sense of you add a million to two, the "base" is two and the million is "just added on top of that," sure. Monopolization and price gouging are by far the larger factors.

How is that the case? Shouldn’t it cost less? Where is that “extra efficiency” going if not to lower prices? The answer:

Corporate pockets.

Poor people live hand to mouth, so their net wealth is not impacted much, but inflationary currency prevents them from saving and “moving up”.

Complete nonsense. And extra 2% interest is not the root cause of poverty. You actually missed the real way in which inflation can hurt the poor which is when corporations don't increase wages with inflation, which is effectively a pay cut. This is a form of class warfare which they are able to do because they are more powerful and better organized, as a class, than labor is.

[-] Objection@lemmy.ml 13 points 5 months ago

Oh, well thanks for the explanation, now I understand.

[-] Objection@lemmy.ml 14 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Is it also delusional to say that Biden is intentionally alienating the people most likely to vote for him?

Of course not. The democrats fully expect anyone on the left to continue supporting them because "what are you gonna do, vote Trump?" The people Biden is most likely to alienate are the people most likely to vote for him, because he has no reason to cater to the demands of safe voters.

Not to mention the fact that he's literally spent his entire career unwaveringly supporting Israel, and all his current actions are totally consistent with full support for Israel and everything it's doing. You know, actual evidence.

You are right to say it's stupid to claim he's doing nothing at all. What he's doing is much, much worse than nothing - he is unconditionally arming a genocide.

[-] Objection@lemmy.ml 15 points 5 months ago

You win elections from the center.

That's absolute nonsense. The number of people who are politically engaged swing voters is very marginal. Meanwhile, a full third of the country doesn't vote. You win elections through turnout, and you get turnout by supporting popular policies that actually benefit people.

Alternatively, you can win elections through money, if you can convince the rich that you'll govern in their interests, against the interests of the poor.

The democrats, broadly speaking, prefer to win through the latter method because they get more money that way, but that doesn't make it the most effective method. They just have a loud enough signal to convince people it's the only method.

[-] Objection@lemmy.ml 14 points 5 months ago

Why on earth would they move left if there's no risk of losing? They want to enact right wing policies because that's what their donors pay them to do.

[-] Objection@lemmy.ml 13 points 6 months ago

There's no country where every single person lives in freedom and happiness. But there are numerous countries that have significantly improved the quality of life for the vast majority of people compared to what they had before, including Cuba, Vietnam, and China.

It may be true that in some cases the quality of life is higher in capitalist countries. But there's a good reason for that! Historically, the countries most prone to socialist revolutions... were countries with some of the lowest standards of living in the world!

Despite this, China has recently eclipsed the United States in life expectancy. If you compare the two countries' life expectancies before the Communists came to power, no one would expect that to happen! Why? Because for the average rural Chinese person, their way of life was virtually unchanged since ancient times with a life expectancy of 35, comparable to that of the Roman Empire.

Anti-communists would have us compare communist countries against either an imagined utopia, or against countries starting from a significantly higher level of industrial development. But those comparisons are not relevant to the question at hand! In order to evaluate the efficacy of socialism, the relevant comparison is the system that actually existed before, and what it was on track to do! And in cases like China, we can clearly see that the quality of life was miserable and stagnant for the vast majority of people, until the communists came to power!

Why do Westerners fail to account for this vital evidence? Because people used to a higher standard of living would take these improvements for granted! For a village tailor, being able to afford a sewing machine could be life-changing - but someone living in the imperial core would have no relevant experience to relate to that! The only thing they would notice is how poor the person still is, regardless of how much or how quickly their life is improving!

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