Late stage colonialism with narcissist characteristics.

I kinda get why some people have wanted to laugh about Trump. I don’t really find it funny because of the real harm that goes with it, but it does feel almost like a RL setup and punchline that they went to all this effort creating this narrative about how Russian was supposedly meddling in USian elections in subtle and shady ways. And then Trump does this swaggering attitude like “yeah I interfered in an election today, it was a good day of interference, I look forward to more.” Whatever is the opposite of subtlety, he is that. He is the empire proud of its own barbarism, personified.

So this is the “manufacturing consent” setup for legislating against China-originating LLMs, right? Or have they already been doing that?

The US is allowed to have two jockeying parties vying for dominance to give the impression that fundamental change is possible through electoralism. But both are thoroughly controlled by bourgeoisie interests. It’s largely inconsequential if the occasional reformist slips through because the overall process and quantity of those who aren’t reformists will crowd out their influence into meaninglessness. And in the unlikely scenario that’s not enough to stop reformists from overwhelming the status quo, they can just call upon the police and military.

So yes, the democrat party is right-wing. But more than that, the system ensures it cannot get any further than mild reforms and that its policies will most represent the capitalist class.

It’s very P. T. Barnum? Something like that. Very much putting on a show, both parties. I think it’s part of why some USians have such a cynical view of politics and politicians. Their only experience with it is seeing a bunch of circus clowns pretend like they’re authentic tooth-and-nail fighters for the people. And no offense to actual circus clowns who are sincerely trying to entertain, rather than grift the populace.

That’s fair.

I had an additional thought just now. I wonder how some LLMs would do at editing for such a communist slant title. I wouldn’t expect them to be reliable for doing it to an entire article without careful reading through of their output, but it might be an easier way to get better titles, since it wouldn’t require much proofreading.

It’s a valid concern, I think, especially if people read the headlines uncritically at a glance without reading the content of it. IIRC, I’ve mentioned such a concern in the past myself. One thing I’ve seen yogthos do sometimes is post articles like these but with a communist slant custom headline that differs from the source. In this case, the headline looks like the empire taking an L even at a glance, so I don’t think it needs communist editing. But I do like the practice as a general rule to help guard against people taking imperialist news at face value.

We aren’t analyzing these articles as a more formal group communist discussion (though maybe we should be doing some of that), which is more where I’d expect benefit of us reading it. And approaching it as individualistic capability to see through the imperialist BS has its risks. So I tend to have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, yes, we shouldn’t bury our heads in the sand about it. On the other hand, we do have to consider the nature of how people engage with internet headlines and information in general.

I did have that thought, tbh, but wasn’t sure if that was being presumptuous about their culture. I’m not real familiar with face-saving culture in the specifics.

What is going on with this story and its claims

Later the same day, Trump set up a call with Takaichi and advised her not to provoke Beijing on the question of Taiwan’s sovereignty, said Japanese officials and an American briefed on the call. The advice from Trump was subtle, and he didn’t pressure Takaichi to walk back her comments, those briefed on the calls said.

A spokeswoman for the Japanese prime minister said it is not accurate that Trump advised Takaichi not to provoke the Chinese government over the issue of Taiwan’s sovereignty. Such a remark was not made, she said.

I’m glad for you sharing so much of it on the grad, it really is a light in the gloom sometimes.

The individualist fascist cowering alone vs. the collectivist communist hanging out and having a good time.

Depends on how a person interprets it. Some will just get doomer and want to give up. Some may end up floating in adventurism or ultraleft extremes. Some may even divert to fascism, if all they wanted was slightly better working conditions for themself. A principled, organized vanguard party is critical for giving people something grounding to rally around and such a party is not going to be only voting (though it may do some voting as part of its organizing strategy). The worst problem is when the organized vehicle is only voting and actively discourages people from doing anything else. Even AES state vanguard parties that have dominant power are not going to be only voting, they’re going to be doing other kinds of organizing too, such as in organizing local community and tending to its needs.

So I would say part of the problem with the “vote” mindset is it’s not just that it will fail to oust the dominant political force from power, it’s also only a small part of exercising power. The voting part, in an actually democratic peoples setup, gauges what people most want and elevates those who most represent a given community/region/etc - represent in their consistent deeds, not just in platitudes and promises. It is a tallying of process of what’s already there. In faux “democratic” capitalist systems, voting is a marketing campaign of manipulation, selling a product based on empty platitudes and false promises, sold by a would-be representative whose claims to representation usually amount to little more than knocking on some doors or belonging to a certain class or caste categorization.

People need to understand this about political power. Voting on a product now and then does not get them any closer to an organized system of community and representation that can get needs met, much less challenge the hegemony of capital. The strongest forces of liberation are not those who have a “great man theory” once-in-a-millennia leader, but those whose organization is unshakeable and whose resources are strong enough to overcome the imperialist forces that will inevitably try to break them. Point being, there’s no magic “find the right representative” button to shape society in your image, you still need organization and you still need resources to call upon. The only reason it can look like that for the capitalists is because their representatives tap right into the capitalist organization and resource infrastructure.

I do think the most absurd take on aliens is the one in movies where they want to dominate or destroy us and like others in this thread pointed out, it’s a projection of colonialism to think they’d be like that.

The most materially grounded take is probably something like that aliens would have various material constraints to be concerned with and so they would probably want to open up communication, if possible (if they could figure out how to communicate with us in our language), in order to work out what kind of resources we have and how, if at all, those resources can be used by them. And the likelihood is it leaning mutual-benefit exchange of info and resources (sorta like how China operates) because for any humanoid species to get to the point where it can travel vast distances in space, it would need to have cooperation down to a tee. Space does not have the room for error for a bunch of selfish conquerors to be mucking about in it.

Surveillance doesn’t seem out of the question, in order to figure out how to communicate with us and to study us from a scientific standpoint. But this angle seems like it’d lean more toward a species of alien that is not humanoid and is different enough from us, there may be no communicating between the two species, even if both wanted to. And at that point, it’s sort of irrelevant if aliens are real, since we’d have no way to confirm it anyway. It’s also just an angle that, much like religion can be, is potentially a bit egotistical, in thinking that we are more important in the universe than we probably are in reality; a species different enough from us may not even register us as existing in the first place.

Bees I get, but Ants I don’t understand that one. I’ve long thought of them as a decent analogy for settlers, considering they seem to spread endlessly with no regard for what is already there and they take something akin to slaves: https://blog.entomologist.net/do-ants-hold-other-insects-as-slaves.html

White people being genocided for being white is basically a logistical impossibility. White isn’t an ethnicity and it only exists via a system that upholds it as superior as contrasted against others. And if whiteness as a concept collapses, what we’d be left with is a bunch of different european ethnicities, with varying levels of animosity toward them in various places in the world, depending on how complicit they are/were in the west’s historical atrocities, whether they are colonizers and don’t respect indigenous sovereignty, etc.

thanks :)

We can call it FORK as in Fascism, Organized Racism, and KKKolonization

“What is socialism?”

“You just triggered my trap card. Allow me to explai-”

“Sorry folks, we’re out of time, see you next show!”

Hilarious. I’m pretty confident that if by some next to impossible occurrence, the current Catholic Church got an actual Marxist Pope, there would be a schism, multiple assassination attempts, and western countries banding together saying the Catholic Church has been compromised and can’t be trusted. And the only way I can imagine it being possible is if some crypto Marxist worked his way up the ranks and only revealed his true views once he became Pope. The best we can probably hope for is Popes who lean into the “care about others” rhetoric, but through the lens of charity.

I assume what this is going for is the thing about capitalism and financial crises and bubbles and so on. Though my mind is going also to a more literal interpretation: Considering he’s already working class, if you imagine it like the capitalist class is what causes Kevin to trip and then they rob him while he’s scrambling to deal with the mess that they caused and the mess they made of his hard work, that also kinda fits.

What does “tankie” mean to you?