Politics thread (USA Elections 2016) - Page 148

the starvation under Mao was not a direct death, it was structural violence. It was not the intention of political elties to deliberately starve millions to death, and it was largely due to ignorance as all the major decision making was centralized, and there was a lot of misinformation involved, due to having no free press. The ukranian holodomor is debatable weather it's structural violence from state policy or it was intended as political oppression.

It's similar to exxon mobil's policy, it's not their intention to cause massive droughts or anything else climate related that will kill a lot of people, that's just a byproduct of their economic policy. Though in this case they are much more informed of what they are doing than Maoist China was.

The hypocrisy on these comparison's on death's from 'communism', and deaths from 'capitalism' is pretty clear. All forms of violence that result from political and economic policy under 'communist states' counts, and sometimes their structural violence is misinterpreted as direct violence. However when looking at capitalism it is very rare that structural violence is counted as 'death from capitalism'.

Do I need to present my reasoning and data of why people would rather do things they enjoy like surf in the beach than scrub the tiles and toilets for 50 hours a week?

There are/has been small stateless societies none that I know that didn't have a form of compulsory labor, Rojava that you so dearly admire has currency, compulsory labor and unequal wealth distribution at the end of the year for example.

I used "shithole"deliberately because I knew your SJW ears would bleed :D, it becomes an example of a succesful society when its industrialized, modern, a place where millions of people would want to migrate to, Somalia isn't an example of a succesful society obviously, it simply showed how without the corruption and inefficiency of a state a country in the middle of a civil war and extreme poverty outperformed all the other african nations in every metric, its just a testament of how massive of a dead-weight the state is.

You think AOC color-corredted photoshoot crying with red lips and white suit next to an open fence is not designed to gain political traction? well then you are even more stupid than I thought.

Definitelly those were not the conditions of the Nazi camps are you insane? the Nazi camps starved and worked them to literal death, killed their relatives in their face etc, to minimize the nazi camps to this extent is frankly antisemitic.

I dont know what happened in the Trump rally, anything noteworthy? I saw a video of some retaded racist rednecks chanting to kick out Ilhan Omar who is equally reacist and even had a WSJ article written about her antisemitism, is there something else?

You want a revolution in your lifetime, not me, so I'm cool with my 0% but you are not with your also 0% , you kick, cry and deluse yourself in desperation to not see it.

I believe the current border control is terrible so is the wall, its much easier to fix this problem by going hard at the ones employeeing illegal immigrants which also creates a wrinkle in the free market, no employment and no benefits would remove any incentive to migrate, also I would make legal migration much easier, I don't think ICE officers are terrorits, but I've said it many times before that the biggest terrorist organization in the world is the US army & CIA.

Can you give me an historical example of compulsory labor within a stateless society, regardless of how long it lasted or how big it was? Like, from an actual source, not your opinion? How does that work? Who is obliging who and under what threat? Then we can maybe compare that to what you call "voluntary" labor under capitalism. Please, I want specifics here, not something vague.

I never said that the conditions are the same as they were in Nazi extermination camps or even concentration camps, you are wasting my time. The point is that there are many similarities to the latter and they should not be ignored. You know these things are a process, right? The process of dehumanization and cruelty ramps up over time. Right now they are at the stage of having concentration camps, not extermination camps. Nazi concentration camps used tactics of hunger and physical exhaustion which I know for a fact are being used in the US camps as well, just not to the same degree. They both killed people through lack of access to rest and medical care, poor sanitary conditions, as well as insufficient living conditions. This is unlike the victims of the extermination centers who were killed immediately upon their arrival.

Tell me, how many deaths are acceptable to you in immigrant camps before you'd be willing to support their shutdown? All that needs to be debated is the fact that people are concentrated in an area that they cannot leave and that they can die from preventable causes. Leave the semantics to people with no humanity left.

Funny how you use the word "benefits" ... yeah, the "benefit" of receiving food stamps to have a shitty unbalanced diet so that you are not starving to death in the world's richest country. That's a bad thing, we don't want that, it's better to depend on the generosity of rich people directly every time we want to eat.

What does the AOC picture have to do with the subject of her using the words "concentration camps" being about popularity? And why is she being held responsible because someone took pictures of her? What does her being dressed up have to do with anything? You should only protest migrant camps on your day off when you're right out of bed? She is a working woman, that's how they look like, wtf. An open fence? You're saying that it was staged then? You sound like Candance Owens or some InfoWars nutter.

I dont know what happened in the Trump rally, anything noteworthy? I saw a video of some retaded racist rednecks chanting to kick out Ilhan Omar who is equally reacist and even had a WSJ article written about her antisemitism, is there something else?

You actually need me to explain to you how that racist crowd isn't just separately doing its own thing but that their racism is complemented by the president's racism? Do I need to explain to you how it's particularly bad to have the most powerful man in the world be a racist when it's happening in the midst of an immigration crisis that's only going to get worse as capitalist extractionism and expansionism keeps creating more and more instability in the world?

What evidence do you have that Omar is racist? Don't tell me "because someone who writes for the Wall Street Journal said so" please. The islamophobic Andy Ngo wrote for the WSJ, I don't think they have very high standards as far as that goes.

You want a revolution in your lifetime, not me, so I'm cool with my 0% but you are not with your also 0% , you kick, cry and deluse yourself in desperation to not see it.

Yes, and that's because you're ignorant and you think there's time for people to become free market fundamentalists in 100-200 years from now on. "Look at this particular limited geographical area, the forests there have grown, therefore the world has never been greener than it is now! You leftists and your stupid catastrophizing!" That shit was the same thing Stephen Crowder did with his cherry-picked NASA study to justify his denial of global warming. It's clear you have no clue how pressing the climate problem is and so you can comfortably revel in your free market delusions.

Most people who are affected by it right now or who have a future at risk or children they care about can't afford to be that ignorant. Those people are looking for solutions, and they are not looking towards fringe free market fundamentalists that have no credibility, they are looking towards the possibility of salvaging capitalism by throwing a shitton of regulations at it, and once they become disillusioned with that, they look at things like social ecology. It's a normal process. More and more people will subscribe to a form of eco-socialism like the one I promote because its necessity will become more and more apparent as the many intersecting crises deepen. It is absolutely inevitable, I don't have to wish for it or kick and scream about it. The only thing I can wish for is that it happens sooner than later, at least in my area, so that I can be more active in organizing rather than being limited to preaching in a desert or on the internet for the next decades.

“The things that are happening are horrible, the causes of those things are fine” - ancient liberal proverb

The lesson from the ruins of Notre Dame: don’t rely on billionaires

https://www.theguardian.com/commentis...dame-billionaires-french-philanthropy

"“It is more blessed to give than to receive,” said Jesus. To which anyone surveying the Notre Dame debacle might advise the son of God to get a better brand manager. Because the billionaires who promised those vast sums have received all the credit while not giving more than a fraction of the money.

They have banked the publicity, while dreaming up small print that didn’t exist in the spring. As another charity executive, Célia Vérot, said: “It’s a voluntary donation, so the companies are waiting for the government’s vision to see what precisely they want to fund.” It’s as if the vast project of rebuilding a 12th-century masterpiece was a breakfast buffet from which one could pick and choose.

Meanwhile, the salaries of 150 workers on site have to be paid. The 300 or so tonnes of lead in the church roof pose a toxic threat that must be cleaned up before the rebuilding can happen. And pregnant women and children living nearby are undergoing blood tests for possible poisoning. But funding such dirty, unglamorous, essential work is not for the luxury-goods billionaires. As the Notre Dame official said last month, they don’t want their money “just to pay employees’ salaries”. Heaven forfend! Not when one could endow to future generations the Gucci Basilica or a Moët Hennessy gift shop, so you, too, can enjoy the miracle of sparkling wine, or a nave by L’Oréal (tagline: Because Jesus is Worth It).

For the super-rich, giving is really taking. Taking power, that is, from the rest of society. The billionaires will get exclusive access to the “vision” for the reconstruction of a national landmark and they can veto those plans, because if they don’t like them they can withhold their cash. Money is always the most powerful casting vote, and they have it. Never mind that much of this cash actually comes from the public, as French law grants a whopping 66% tax relief on any donation – the power is entirely private. The annual cap on such contributions doubtless constitutes a prudent reason for the big donors to stagger their generosity.

Whether in France or Britain or the US, the rich give money to the grand institutions at the heart of our cultures to secure their social status in plaques and photo opportunities. In much the same way, they fund our political parties, then enjoy the kickbacks when they form a government. As Julia Cagé, an economist at Paris’s SciencesPo, points out, some of the same people pledging donations to Notre Dame were also among those who funded Macron’s rise to the presidency. In her recent award-winning book, to be published in English next year as The Price of Democracy, Cagé calculates that 600 wealthy people in France gave between €3m and €4.5m to Macron’s election campaign. In other words, 2% of all donors made up between 40 % and 60% of all En Marche funding. Within a few months, the new president cut taxes on the wealthy, giving his richest donors “a return of nearly 60,000% on their investment”. Just as with Notre Dame – a tiny deposit, a lot of influence and one hell of a payout."

Standard stuff. If only all of those ultra-rich people had watched Stefan Molyneux videos to teach them how to be good and moral capitalists like Baal. Let's just quietly wait and hope they will eventually find them.

On July 19 2019 05:13 Loco wrote: Can you give me an historical example of compulsory labor within a stateless society, regardless of how long it lasted or how big it was? Like, from an actual source, not your opinion? How does that work? Who is obliging who and under what threat? Then we can maybe compare that to what you call "voluntary" labor under capitalism. Please, I want specifics here, not something vague.

I mean compulsory/voluntary like capitalism, meaning you must work to get a form of wage or benfit, no big society in history works as what you describe, a transactionless socioty where goods and services providers simply give stuff away in any quantity to anybody, or a society where work isn'nt mandatory and that people can do whatever they like and they will still be provided for.

I never said that the conditions are the same as they were in Nazi extermination camps or even concentration camps, you are wasting my time. The point is that there are many similarities to the latter and they should not be ignored. You know these things are a process, right? The process of dehumanization and cruelty ramps up over time. Right now they are at the stage of having concentration camps, not extermination camps. Nazi concentration camps used tactics of hunger and physical exhaustion which I know for a fact are being used in the US camps as well, just not to the same degree. They both killed people through lack of access to rest and medical care, poor sanitary conditions, as well as insufficient living conditions. This is unlike the victims of the extermination centers who were killed immediately upon their arrival.

By calling them concentration camps the comparison is implicit, you played this dishonest game a few posts ago quoting jews about if it qualifies as one or not, and then others will quote jewish organizations that say they doesn't etc, thats my point, bringing up this term was a deliberate comparison to nazi camps.

500,000 detainess go to these camps every year, yet the death toll has been less than 10 per year, so that is a mortality of 0.00004%, well shit the ICE agent's are more likely to die driving to work than the detainees to die in custody.

In fact, if the Nazi camps had this death ratio Auschwitz would have been the safest place in Europe in WW2 LOL

So again, there is no reason to keep pepole in cages for weeks for no good reason, but as I keep saying the state is inefficient and corrupt, so they get stuck there suffering because of a mix of bureocracy and corruption through private contractors.

Does that mean that the borders should be opened? no, deportation should be quick

Are guys armed with rifles and molotovs attacking these officers and facilities terrorists? yes

Are hysteric strippers and balding men with literal balloon tits right? no lol

Are people really dying because of sleep deprivation, no access to medicine and unsanitary conditions? absolutely no, as proven a few paragraphics above.

Was Loco manipulated like a child by a crazy-eyed politician? yes

Funny how you use the word "benefits" ... yeah, the "benefit" of receiving food stamps to have a shitty unbalanced diet so that you are not starving to death in the world's richest country. That's a bad thing, we don't want that, it's better to depend on the generosity of rich people directly every time we want to eat.

nope, not dependant on the rich, but on yourself in a prosperous efficient economy with no unemployment and booming productivity that would generate more abundance for everybody, and the very few who are unable to depend on themselves would be taken care of by society, not the rich specifically, like the Red Cross does but better.

What does the AOC picture have to do with the subject of her using the words "concentration camps" being about popularity? And why is she being held responsible because someone took pictures of her? What does her being dressed up have to do with anything? You should only protest migrant camps on your day off when you're right out of bed? She is a working woman, that's how they look like, wtf. An open fence? You're saying that it was staged then? You sound like Candance Owens or some InfoWars nutter.

Most people who are affected by it right now or who have a future at risk or children they care about can't afford to be that ignorant. Those people are looking for solutions, and they are not looking towards fringe free market fundamentalists that have no credibility, they are looking towards the possibility of salvaging capitalism by throwing a shitton of regulations at it, and once they become disillusioned with that, they look at things like social ecology. It's a normal process. More and more people will subscribe to a form of eco-socialism like the one I promote because its necessity will become more and more apparent as the many intersecting crises deepen. It is absolutely inevitable I don't have to wish for it or kick and scream about it. The only thing I can wish for is that it happens sooner than later, at least in my area, so that I can be more active in organizing rather than being limited to preaching in a desert or on the internet for the next decades.

The hubris


For years I've called out your transparent fake sage humility, and its in momoents like these where the mask falls and you show the true egomaniac inside, what I call my massive ego is a tiny nugget compared to that gargantuan shit you are oblivious you carry... holy shit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Posobiec

Please look at whose Tweet you just posted and go hide in shame for a little while. You are promoting a conspiracy theory from the same group of far-right morons that made you post about cement milkshakes just a couple weeks back. Why do you still think you have some credibility on this website? Oh and I know what you're going to say, "it doesn't matter whose Tweet it is, I'm only sharing the video." Except, no you are not. You get your anti-left news from "centrist" grifters and white supremacists, that's why you post their stuff. They tailor what you see and believe. It keeps happening that you not only share the content but also share the narrative they are shaping and the smears they use to mock and attempt to discredit social justice activists. It's not a coincidence that you use those exact same smears, just like it's not a coincidence that your socio-economic arguments overlap some 95%+ of the time with the fascist conspiracy theorist cult leader who radicalized you.

As a matter of fact, she wasn't "fake crying over an empty parking lot with an open fence" and it wasn't a planned/staged photoshoot. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/aoc-empty-parking-lot/

This is why people get a liberal arts education and learn how to think, so that they don't end up like you.

On July 19 2019 23:35 Baalim wrote: Show nested quote + Most people who are affected by it right now or who have a future at risk or children they care about can't afford to be that ignorant. Those people are looking for solutions, and they are not looking towards fringe free market fundamentalists that have no credibility, they are looking towards the possibility of salvaging capitalism by throwing a shitton of regulations at it, and once they become disillusioned with that, they look at things like social ecology. It's a normal process. More and more people will subscribe to a form of eco-socialism like the one I promote because its necessity will become more and more apparent as the many intersecting crises deepen. It is absolutely inevitable I don't have to wish for it or kick and scream about it. The only thing I can wish for is that it happens sooner than later, at least in my area, so that I can be more active in organizing rather than being limited to preaching in a desert or on the internet for the next decades. The hubris For years I've called out your transparent fake sage humility, and its in momoents like these where the mask falls and you show the true egomaniac inside, what I call my massive ego is a tiny nugget compared to that gargantuan shit you are oblivious you carry... holy shit.

That's what some critics of Bookchin said when he predicted the climate crisis before everyone else. Now who looks like an egomaniac, people who refused to look because they wanted to live in illusion and couldn't bear the idea that they may have to sacrifice some of their comfort, or him?


"Why was Bookchin's book mostly overlooked? One reason was surely the fact that its author was a political radical, a former Communist turned anarchist, whose natural métier was broad social analysis. As the culture critic Theodore Roszak speculated a decade or so later, “the staggering breadth and ethical challenge of Bookchin’s analysis” was overwhelming: “Nobody, as of 1962, cared to believe the problem was so vast. Even the environmentalists preferred the liberal but narrowly focused Carson to the radical Bookchin.” Moreover the remedy Bookchin offered was social revolution, and as the environmental writer Stephanie Mills noted a decade or so later, that was “too much for people to swallow in ’62.”" (https://blog.oup.com/2015/08/murray-bookchin-climate-change/)

More people are ready to swallow that pill. You can see it in the many revolutionary actions undertaken around the world if you care to look. I see their testimonials every day, and it's inevitable that more people will wake up, because that's what happens in times of crisis: people stop being complacent and they start to search for answers. But there will always be people who prefer to live in ignorance and illusion like you do and who'll say "things will be just fine". Especially people who have been well rewarded in life by being careless and domineering. That is just as inevitable.

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Arthur Schopenhauer

On July 20 2019 02:08 Loco wrote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Posobiec Please look at whose Tweet you just posted and go hide in shame for a little while. You are promoting a conspiracy theory from the same group of far-right morons that made you post about cement milkshakes just a couple weeks back. Why do you still think you have some credibility on this website? Oh and I know what you're going to say, "it doesn't matter whose Tweet it is, I'm only sharing the video." Except, no you are not. You get your anti-left news from "centrist" grifters and white supremacists, that's why you post their stuff. They tailor what you see and believe. It keeps happening that you not only share the content but also share the narrative they are shaping and the smears they use to mock and attempt to discredit social justice activists. It's not a coincidence that you use those exact same smears, just like it's not a coincidence that your socio-economic arguments overlap some 95%+ of the time with the fascist conspiracy theorist cult leader who radicalized you. As a matter of fact, she wasn't "fake crying over an empty parking lot with an open fence" and it wasn't a planned/staged photoshoot. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/aoc-empty-parking-lot/ This is why people get a liberal arts education and learn how to think, so that they don't end up like you.

It was the first video link I found when googled for aoc photoshoot in detention centers, obviously people who oppose her are the ones that are going to share unflattering video/info about her genius.

What's a conspiracy theory? She went to the detention centers with a lot of media and got her photo taken with teary eyes and huging each other watching at a fucking empty entrance with a couple of cops


Nobody:
Absolutely nobody:
Loco: You believe in the free market so your beliefs overlap 95% with this facist.




















When you said you were new to politics you really meant it, you have the political naivety of a 12yo child. Next time act as a proper anarchist and don't eat up politician's bullshit with ta spoon.

Yeah, have you thought that maybe that's the first result you found because you googled the name of the actual conspiracy theory pushed by right-wing extremists, you genius? I don't see how that's the first result you got anyway, I receive no results from Twitter when I search for that, but the first thing I get is FoxNews. Does that mean FoxNews is where I should get my news from then, Mr. gigabrain?

There was no "photoshoot", the conspiracy is that there was one. A photoshoot by definition means that she planned to have her pictures taken when she went there. You just said she "went there with a bunch of media". No, she didn't. She went there to protest. If you had gone to a protest before you would probably know that there are photographers who go there and take pictures of people, that doesn't mean you go there with them. The first time I went to a protest I didn't know anyone and my picture was taken by a professional photographer there without me asking for it, it's a public space.

The cops are blocking inside access to the detention area, so yes, there's a parking lot between them. I've seen dozens of protests from animal rights activists who also can't get past the parking lot so there are no suffering animals in sight, yet they are also in tears knowing what's going on just a few meters from them, so does that mean they are necessarily faking too? "Oh but look, you can't tell me she wasn't prepared for it with her red lip stick!" What an illogical clown you are.

I posted a fact-check link for anyone to see your garbage being exposed, but you can keep doubling down and showing everyone once again that you are not some neutral person who is interested in the truth; you have absolutely no problem helping right-wing extremists just like your buddy Andy Ngo does for a living. It's no wonder you are so scared of antifascists and repeatedly argued for a slippery slope fallacy. At this point it would have made no difference if you had doubled down on Omar being racist either, you had no credibility left to lose. Even though you've taken it back, just the fact that you called her racist and had nothing to back it up is telling enough on its own when you combine it with everything else. What a waste of time to have to debunk this bullshit. I have to spend a lot more energy doing it than you have to spend pushing it.

Attempting to discredit every single thing AOC has done because "she is a politician" is just as illogical as believing that if you're a politician of color or whatever you can only do good things. You have a fucking brain, use it and stop posting the propaganda you find on Twitter as soon as it agrees with your prejudices. None of this was ever even about AOC in the beginning, you are just distracting from the issues and focusing on semantics. She is not the only person who believes the term "concentration camps" is accurate, many scholars do, but I know you don't care about people who study shit for a living, fascists on Twitter are much more credible sources of information.

Where was your outrage when the Trump administration used those very words to describe the "Xinjiang re-education camps"? No where, because this is just fake outrage. You could not care less. You care more about trying to discredit people wanting to bring attention to these dehumanizing and cruel acts than the acts themselves. The threat is not using too strong language, but the opposite. It was Hannah Arendt who called it "the banality of evil" when people use euphemisms to cover for atrocities.

Trump hugs flags all the time the reporters just happened to be there because he was giving a speech later, it was just a honest infraganty moment right? you dumbass

She doesn't have to bring the media in her car, her staff just has to tip them or they simply knew they would be there, its irrelevant, apparently the pathetically obvious teatrical insincerity of a politician is a conspiracy theory lol.


Sorry to burst your bubble but nobody directly fear antifa, people fear the escalation of political violence and I fear leftist economical policies but scrawny vegans and lesbians aren't very viscerally threatening, I find nazis way scarier they strike me as more driven, organized and far more comfortable with violence and actually bigger.

The person who took the pictures was an unknown guy and he released them one year later, it wasn't "the media". She or her team were not in cahoots with him. That is the essence of a conspiracy theory, to disregard the facts and imagine them instead. Keep doubling down and making some imaginary connections, it's as good of a hill to die on as any other apparently.

"there's no reason to fear powerless antifa, buncha soy boys"

"omg look at how bloodied these fascists are, fuck antifa"

"the escalation of political violence is bad and should be avoided, but we should do nothing about the causes that make this violence inevitable. well, except make sure we purchase ethically, like I do. For instance I only purchase ethically tortured food."

"I'm worried about political violence escalating, because when antifa punches fascists and their allies, that leads directly to gulags. However I am not worried about state-funded political violence under the leadership of the world's most incompetent racist in the world's most powerful country, as there is no reason to believe that this will lead to anything truly dangerous."

I think you're projecting your apathy here baal. There are in fact people who genuinely care about stuff like detention centers (or animal rights for that matter) to the point where being confronted with the horrors of reality brings them to tears. And AOC's story and ascent to politics me reminds me much more of a genuine believer than of a callous career-politician favoring reelection or personal power over political achievements.

Like, my dad was a politician. He also cried many times during the vietnam war from reading stories about the atrocities committed. My brother was also a politician. Him, I don't think has ever done that. (And I also heard him state that there were opinions he held himself that he would never state in public, presuming them to be political suicide. ) It's certainly a thing in politics.

But honestly AOC seems way more like my dad than like my brother. Obviously this is just personal opinion (on AOC) - but you seem to reject that real idealism can be a chief driving factor in creating political engagement. Personal opinion is that overall, the younger you are, the more likely your idealism is to be real, tbh. And AOC is actually younger than most of us.

Apathy and a lack of empathy are quite different. No one is that invested yet apathetic. Baal's not apathetic, he is an authoritarian at heart and it bothers him to see people fighting for social justice. How dare people try to change "natural" hierarchies of dominance in a meritocratic society? His immediate instinct is to try to diminish them at all cost. They must be either dishonest, merely trying to score virtue points to elevate themselves in the social hierarchy, or they are delusional if they think they can change anything or believe that things should be changed outside of freeing corporations to allow them to be as unaccountable as possible.

It's all part of the "degeneracy" that he rails against like other far-right agitators and violent extremists. Just look at how important it is to him to show us more than once a picture of a person who is dressing funny for no necessary reason. He just tries to hide who he is, not only to us but to himself. People who are apathetic are not constantly at war against others with something like degeneracy in mind. When Eric Garner is choked to death, there is nothing there to make him emotionally react. But when Richard Spencer gets punched however, there is outrage, and he feels the need to protect him, not because he is against violence, but because they both share a belief in their own inherent superiority and a hatred of "degeneracy".

On July 20 2019 04:51 Baalim wrote: Nobody: Absolutely nobody: Loco: You believe in the free market so your beliefs overlap 95% with this facist.

More like:

Baal: I'm fine with everything being legal and people being free to do what they wish as long as they dont hurt anyone
Loco: you're a facist

:D

On July 20 2019 09:34 Liquid`Drone wrote: I think you're projecting your apathy here baal. There are in fact people who genuinely care about stuff like detention centers (or animal rights for that matter) to the point where being confronted with the horrors of reality brings them to tears. And AOC's story and ascent to politics me reminds me much more of a genuine believer than of a callous career-politician favoring reelection or personal power over political achievements. Like, my dad was a politician. He also cried many times during the vietnam war from reading stories about the atrocities committed. My brother was also a politician. Him, I don't think has ever done that. (And I also heard him state that there were opinions he held himself that he would never state in public, presuming them to be political suicide. ) It's certainly a thing in politics. But honestly AOC seems way more like my dad than like my brother. Obviously this is just personal opinion (on AOC) - but you seem to reject that real idealism can be a chief driving factor in creating political engagement. Personal opinion is that overall, the younger you are, the more likely your idealism is to be real, tbh. And AOC is actually younger than most of us.

I also agree with this, i don't think it's just projection though, this is the main ideology of the past 40 years: the government are the bad guys. I think it is innacurate to portray all politicians as deceptive and power hungry. I was going to comment on this a week back or so when Baal was making similar comments. I've met a few politicians myself, and generally the one's i respect are the one's that don't rise to power easily. There are quite a few out there that are trying to get things done and make the world a better place rather than comment on internet forums. I think many politicians are simply normal people that find themselves stuck in a culture that relies on deception, and they internalize the values. The same could be said of corporate executives. Though, of course, as institutions im totally opposed to state and corporate power.

And i mean, if you want an interesting look into the world of politicians, maybe you don't need it if your family members were politicians, but for other's i'd recommend the autobiography of the greek ex finance minister, yanas varoufakis. It has a very rare and candid inside view of an anti establishment poltician who got to see the inside world of the european establishment.

On July 20 2019 10:54 Spitfiree wrote: Show nested quote + On July 20 2019 04:51 Baalim wrote: Nobody: Absolutely nobody: Loco: You believe in the free market so your beliefs overlap 95% with this facist. More like: Baal: I'm fine with everything being legal and people being free to do what they wish as long as they dont hurt anyone Loco: you're a facist :D

Well, libertarianism is authoritarianism. There can't really be any debate about that imo, looking at the structure of corporations it's hard to deny they are top down, orders come from above, and decisions are made in secret for the most part. The video loco linked with Chomsky explaining this basic fact, imo Chomsky is very mild in his critique. The guy says 'corporations can't murder you', Chomsky doesn't debate this. But in actual fact in a good chunk of the world, they are involved in some serious violent crime. It's just western societies where private power can't go around commiting those violent crimes.

I'd argue libertarianism is a form of economic facism. Perhaps this book is enlightening, it's been on my read list for 5+ years: https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Fasci...y-Mussolinis-Capitalism/dp/1604190760

On July 20 2019 10:54 Spitfiree wrote: Show nested quote + On July 20 2019 04:51 Baalim wrote: Nobody: Absolutely nobody: Loco: You believe in the free market so your beliefs overlap 95% with this facist. More like: Baal: I'm fine with everything being legal and people being free to do what they wish as long as they dont hurt anyone Loco: you're a facist :D

People are free to oppress other people in the way that he likes as long as it benefits him, but not the ways in which it wouldn't, is more like it.

Btw, I like how according to Baal I am an egomaniac, but he refers to Jordan Peterson as a "powerful ally against the left" which he likes very much. Meanwhile, his new biography has the totally banal and non-egomaniacal title "How Jordan Peterson is Saving Western Civilization", approved by JP himself.

Wife got that Varoufakis book a couple weeks ago. And yea Varoufakis is legit, I'm a big fan. Have not read the book but I'm very familiar with him.