Make the argument. What makes me a bad person? Rude? Sure but rude /=/ bad
Yes, that is intentional, because many people are labeled as being racist because they make some claim about the relative traits or qualities of different racial groups - some of which could subjectively be interpreted as superiority or inferiority. I do not believe that these claims, whether true or false, should rise to the level of racism. Making a claim about races shouldn’t be racism, there should be negative feelings involved.
Black's are prone to sickle cell anemia. That statement is not a racist statement. What makes a statement racist is not an observation about traits exhibited by different clines. A cline however is not the same thing as race. Race is determined by arbitrary external characteristics, where as clines refer to a graduated phenotype within a species. Race on the other hand carries the perception of humans near speciation, a claim which if made outright would be laughable.
But even general claims about race are wildly inaccurate as was the claim about sickle cell. Firstly because saying they are prone to sickle cell is only a small portion of the picture which leaves people with the wrong impression. Sickle cell evolved several times independently within different clines. Second and of broader interest is that when the selection pressure for the sickle cell mutation is removed the mutation disappears within a few generations even when it is dominant within a population.
What makes something racist is not the bringing up or even discussing relative traits. What makes something racist is what is being either outright stated or implied. One can lie by telling only the truth selectively. Take Katrina. FoxNews showed imagines of white people "scavenging" during Katrina and images of Black people "looting". These images and words leave the viewer with a specific image. They did not show white people "looting" which they did, or black people "scavenging" which they also did. The impression which the viewer was left with was that white people in a crisis scavenge necessary supplies, while blacks are stealing TV's that don't work. The impression was not "some people do what it takes to survive and some people do shitty things.". It is not necessarily the subject which makes something racist it is the framing.
If for example I start talking about the statistics of race and IQ that would be racist not because blacks tend to score lower on IQ but because IQ is linked to socio-economic status and a number of other factors. This is why when you control for confounding variables that gap vanishes. But if I frame it in terms of race anyone listening is left with the impression that race is linked to IQ. Or if I start talking about how 13% of the population accounts for 50% of the crime, again there is a certain impression someone is left with even though that impression is demonstrably false as again crime is directly related to socio-economic status.
There is no such thing as "Just stating a fact". Regardless of how innocuous the "raw fact" there are implications built into it which the hearer is supposed to accept and walk away with. For example if we were more honest and said that 3% of the population accounts for 50% of the crime (which is more accurate) there is still a built in implication. The implication being that race is still somehow a factor. For starters that 50% accounts for incarcerated individuals not individuals who were convicted but not incarcerated. Given that someone is far more likely to be incarcerated if they are poor and more blacks than non-blacks that is going to skew the numbers heavily against blacks. On average blacks are also more likely to receive longer sentences than other races for the same crime with the same criminal background. This is going to again skew those numbers.
It's not about the facts its about the narrative being shaped out of the facts, narratives which are false.
Really? What I have observed is that every claim you've made on an empirical matter has been wrong.
Okay let's see here.
You were wrong when you said Aristarchus invented modern science, and further demonstrated by that that you don't know what science actually is.
Not exactly what I said but close enough as to make no difference. Now I am going to restate what I said and then guess how you interpreted what I said. My claim was that Aristarchus damn near invented the modern scientific method in a time when most of the scientific instruments we had during the scientific revolution didn't exist. And further that he manage to invent the field of astronomy without the use of such tools prior to the scientific revolution. Both of these statements are factually true. Another claim that I made was that he discovered the earth was not the center of the universe. Again a statement that is demonstrably factually true. Now the way you are most likely reading this is that he cannot be the father of modern science or of astronomy because we credit those to Copernicus and Galileo. As I stated previously however, and this is the point you are choosing to ignore. Much of the discoveries of the scientific revolutions were rediscoveries of things that were known but suppressed. This was a fact which was lamented by Francis Bacon and others who were extremely frustrated over the fact that they would "discover" something only to find out that it had already been known to the Greeks. The source of their frustration was in that they had to 1) waste time and effort re-discovering things which were already discovered previously (duplication of work), and that they had to reinvent a method which already existed previously.
So... I am correct and you are incorrect.
You were wrong when you called early 20th century Russia a slave state, and wrong when you claimed that the Bolsheviks overthrew a monarchy. You were also wrong when you said that they were better than the Tsar.
There is so much wrong with what you have said here it is not even funny. So lets take this in parts.
20th century Russia a slave state.
There are a few principles which you need to understand first. De Juri is a concept which means something exists as a matter of explicit law. De Facto on the other hand means that something is in fact that case but is not officially sanctioned. Serfs in Russia were slaves owned by their Land Lord and could be sold and or traded. Their debts were inter-generational meaning that they passed down to the offspring. Given the way the debts were stacked once an individual became a serf they could theoretically buy their way out but effectively could not. The push and pull during the reign of Alexander I saw a tug of war between the crown and the noble classes over serfdom and while the serfs kept being promised freedom eventually by Alexander I the promise ultimately fell through and the Serfs found themselves jerked back and forth both in the question of their rights as well as the question of their freedom.
In 1861 Serfdom was officially abolished with much the same stimulative promises as were made to the American Slaves. Just like the American Slaves however the Serfs were shafted in the land transfer with a large number of Serfs becoming unlanded due to shenanigans on the part of the Nobel's who believed they would be able to force Alexander II to recant and so placed onerous practices in place in order to preserve the land and keep the serfs indebted. While the practice was ended De Juri the practice persisted De Facto for decades after (just like American Slavery). With the industrialization of Russia being introduced the practice of Serfdom shifted forms but never vanished. Again while the practice was not De Juri legal the nobles and Bourgeoisie were able to apply economic pressure on the peasants such that resisting them was a literal death sentence. While there was no open market for serfs there was an unofficial black market that had existed since 1861.
As to the Bolsheviks you are correct only on a technicality of the most obscene and asinine sort. In February of 1917 the Duma backed by the Military which was ready to mutiny seized the government from Nicholas II and abolished the Monarchy placing the Tzar and his family under house arrest. The Russian Provisional Government was formed by Noble's and Wealthy Industrialists (most of whom were also nobles or related to nobles). At the same time Councils of both soldiers and peasants began forming demanding a voice in the government. A second revolution occurred eight months later when it became clear that the Provisional Government only intended on making superficial gestures to include peasants in the government and that things would otherwise remain the same. "Here's the new boss he is like the old boss".
So yes on a pure technicality the Bolsheviks did not overthrow the Tzar. The October revolution was not actually a second revolution however given the timeline of events and the lack of a stable government at the time of the second
major uprising.
You were wrong when you said the Biblical narrative portrays God as evil.
So Yahweh did not commit genocide by drowning, or by slaying all of the first born of Egypt? He wasn't capricious when he punished adam and eve who didn't know good from evil. He didn't scatter man kind to the four corners of the earth because he feared what a united mankind was capable of (tower of babel)? You are lying or morally degenerate.
You were wrong when you said that Morales was an all-around good sort, that Bolivia was a fascist dictatorship, and that the current President of Bolivia called for the indigenous to be genocided.
You are lying again. Morales is a politician which means by definition he is not a good sort, just a less bad sort than he could be.
Did Bolivia’s interim president delete anti-indigenous tweets? Given that you are too lazy to do even the most mild amount of looking allow me to provide quotes
"The aymara new year! Satanic, an affront to Yahweh." There is no question this tweet was published.
“
I dream of a Bolivia free of satanic indigenous rites, the city is not a place for indians, they must go to the highlands or the plains.” This tweet is questioned but is in line with other things she is known to have said so I give it the benefit of the doubt.
She is not just a Christian but is a fundie who has expressed great distress with the Christian Church being removed from it's central place in Bolivia as an official state religion. The party she is a part of opposes the secularization of Bolivian Government and expresses fascist ideologies by any reasonable definition of fascism. So ya She is a fascist.
You were wrong when you called a quote from a character in Halo a white nationalist slogan.
For starters this is a political forum. Next we move to while you have taken that quote from halo it predates halo by just a tiny bit, as does the sentiment expressed by that quote. Do not play either dumb or innocent.
Why do you think that is? (Hint it's because these countries lack social mobility or a middle class.)
Which is what makes socialist movements in those countries dubious at best.
So why have only non-liberal democracies ever seen socialism as anything more than a fringe movement? (Hint, hint, it's because "the system" you rail against is tolerable for the majority of people).
A multi-billion dollar campaign by extremely wealthy corporations and governments to fund highly effective propaganda campaigns and tightly control the Overton window by selective coverage and intentional framing along with judicious application of information control and domestic and foreign intelligence operations (CoIntelPro) carried out to create internal conflict along side political assassinations. I remind you (or perhaps you didn't know to begin with) that the Civil Rights Movement was a socialist revolution carried out in a first world country. It's an uphill battle won by centimetres not inches. All of this is a matter of public record. Nearly all of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were Socialist.
They become authoritarians as soon as the evil bougies refuse to hand it all over to be collectivised. We've seen all this before, we know where the train ends.
So you are just going to ignore facts. Okay. You are also going to ignore anything I say because you have made up your mind ahead of time. Okay. Even though it is useless I will state it again. There is a difference between a centralized top down socialization and a bottom up socialization. What you are referring to is a top down approach which I reject categorically for exactly the reason that I do not believe they can work.
Let us say that a secret cabal libertarian socialists are in charge of the entire government top to bottom tomorrow. Aside from establishing independent districting commissions and expanding voting laws to cover all US Citizens of age nothing much would change immediately. The first step would be a dual approach which both simplifies the tax code and fixes any loopholes. In addition to this they would begin advocating a change in inheritance laws which place a restriction on monetary inheritance over $10,000,000 and place it before the people as a referendum. Most major reforms would be carried out through referendums. I say most because there are some reforms which it is legally impossible to carry out through referendum as the power is vested solely in the congress. Even there however passing such reforms without consent of the governed is at best dubious. A secret dirty little secret to politics that nobody talks about is that politicians lead from the rear. The primary role of a politician ought be that of the philosopher making sound and valid arguments which are convincing due to their truth value. The abolition of private property (and preservation of personal property) must come not from the politician but from the people. Anything else is doomed to misery and failure. Seizure of the means of production and of housing and of, etc, must not come de juri but de facto. Only then may the government formally recognize the fact of the matter.
Ideally however even that is not the optimum solution as the ideal push would be to establish banks which provide favorable lending to worker coops which have a proven track record of out preforming traditional firms. This in tandem with the above would nullify a violent revolution. Of all the most the reforms this would be the most simple appearing and have the longest and deepest impact. If you are wondering why this has not been done already it is because there are legal roadblocks in place that make establishing a workers coop more difficult than a traditional firm.
Yeah, yeah, you've said this a lot. Save that your definition of "in response to aggression" includes preemptive strikes.
My definition is in fact the legal definition which yes includes preemptive strikes against threats which are a clear and present danger in the moment. I am actually uncomfortable with the degree to which preemptive strikes are considered legally valid, but I am also unaware of how to tighten them to a point where force is not restricted to retaliatory force. Laws which protect you in the case of retaliation are useless to you if you are dead. This is why an individual must know not only when force is ethically justified, but also when it is practically justified before such a thing happens. I am less concerned with legal justification as it is overly permissive in my view.
Again, your definition of "defensive" includes pre-emptive strikes.
again as does the legal definition. Which I consider to be overly permissive.
Yeah, we know the system you're advocating for. It's the same one socialists have always tried to create, and always made nothing but mountains of skulls in trying.
Have you ever been judged for something a relative has done? This feels much like my experience when others judge me based on my brothers reputation (he is a self avowed Nazi who has been in and out of jail for a variety of crimes). It doesn't matter than I have never been arrested, people have already made up their mind and don't care one whit for how much I despise him or loath is actions.
It will be, because "the workers" won't be able to self-organise.
And this is the primary way you can tell the difference between an authoritarian socialist and a libertarian socialist. The moment someone believes that the workers cannot self organize they have failed the socialist experiment. If the workers cannot self organize then what is the point? Convince them they should self organize? Sure. Offer tips on how to self organize. Sure. "self-organize" for them. Epic Fail. Education not dictation is the only way socialism works.
Ah, so now we're at that excuse are we?
Wait? What!? You asked me a question. I answered your question which you are fully capable of self verifying is a demonstrable fact. Facts are not excuses. There are no excuses. The way to achieve an objective is to recognize a failure, identify the source of the failure, and plan around it for future attempts.
So a utopia built on science-fictional technology impossible IRL, and three rants about "smashing the system", in two cases via terrorism. And in the first case the system isn't even that bad, is the only reason humanity continues to exist, and ultimately isn't even overthrown.
WTF? I got whiplash you pivoted so hard. That particular line of conversation was about Socialist art. To which I was responding to the claim that you were unaware of any socialist art except that which was smoldering. I think pointed out socialist art. WTF are you on about? Am I in some alternate dimension? No I checked and my post specifically was a reply about Socialist art. There is an irrational hate boner and then there is just disconnecting from everything your interlocutor says.
Yes, and as I've shown "libertarian socialism" is an incoherent political ideology, so for real-world purposes it's irrelevant.
Making a claim and showing something are not the same thing. You have shown no such thing.
There weren't "hundreds of bloody failed attempts" at establishing liberal democracy. They arose within 60 years after the idea started percolating around - and you claim socialism has existed for 2,000.
Yes it has existed for 2,000 years and has even had minor success insofar as the theory was developed and it was attempted. Given that it is an egalitarian society by its nature however it's not exactly popular among those who think themselves "betters". Just like democracy is over 2,000 years old and yet it took until the relatively recent past in order to become somewhat established on a large scale and it disappeared outside of small aberrations for large swaths of history.
They'll be stomping you mercilessly, because they're both better-prepared for violence and better at organising than your "let's vote for officers and decide our battle plans by canvassing the grunts for ideas" level of military theory. And if they don't a neighbouring country will see your resources protected only by isolated decentralised communes and stomp you then.
This shows both a lack of imagination on your part and a lack of historical information. What you have put forward is an Anarkiddie vision of socialist military organization. While it is going up against one of the more powerful militarizes in the region much is being learned from Rojava as it is proving to be an effective military force based on socialist principles.
Socialism is an international project. It's not just cleaning your room, but starting with your room and moving outward until you are cleaning up the neighborhood, the town, etc. After the cleaning comes the improvements which again start with your room and move outward. You are acting like a move towards socialism is as simple as "seize control of a particular region and blamo". That is a childish view which some (particularly tankies) do hold. It's not like that. It's a process which can be made easier by doing some things and more difficult by doing others. It is pealing an onion one layer at a time. One goal of socialism is boarder abolition. Doing so immediately however would spell disaster. We know this. This is something we have considered as well as how to get from here to a world without boarders. We have considered why boarders exist and how to break them down systematically. We have also considered the need for defense forces.
We're not talking about dysphoria here. We're talking about the equivalents of those people who "self-identify" as animals or as fantasy elves. "Self-identification" is meaningless because it's subjective.
Sort of. Self-identification is meaningless except when it is not. Identity especially self identity can be a tricky thing. As a very serious question if someone does not self identify as a racist does that make them not a racist? I have met serious people who have told me they are not a racist because their racist beliefs are true, somehow implying that only if a racist belief is false that they would be racist. Or to use another less inflammatory example "Rock-n-Roll" was what we now term Doo-Wop. Did Doo-Wop stop being Rock-n-Roll? When/how did what we think of as Rock-n-Roll stop being Doo-Wop and become it's own thing? edges are a bitch.
With gender this is made even more complex because the edges are constantly moving around completely arbitrary characteristics. The definition of something like biological sex moves (there is no end all be all this is the definition of sex forever definition), but it tends to move much much more slowly. Masculine and Feminine on the other hand can vary wildly both within and without a given culture. Human minds hate floating concretes. We like epistemic certainty which is not possible, but we like to tell ourselves it is. We also tend to learn definitions on the fly and never develop them concretely for the most part.
There are some things like "other-kin" which we can dismiss as a clear violation of identity. To be an elf or a cat-person is to deny certain scientific truths. Culture and cultural identities are much more malleable on the other hand. For example define nerd in such a way that it does not exclude people who consider themselves a nerd or include people who do not consider themselves a nerd. Social roles and social identities are very elastic concepts and while they do have uses they are also major over simplifications. This is why black and white thinking is counter productive, because things are not black and white. They exist in degree's and spectrum's.
More like we simply don't believe you when you say that it wouldn't be.
then don't ascribe positions to me and push me on the positions I put forward. Don't strawman my position actually push me on my libertarianism. It's what I do with people who say they want an ethnostate (a question I have asked here to which I have gotten zero response). I ask how do you plan on bringing it about and how do you deal with X.
Look, we've had a few people already coming here claiming to represent Anarcho-Communism, or Libertarian Socialism, or whatever you call it. I've noticed a thing, as have a few others:
When asked for details on how their proposed society would actually function, such people evade or disengage.
I haven't evaded or disengaged I have laid out in small detail a few aspects. One problem might be the scope of your question as you must admit it is a rather broad thing to detail. Another problem might be a general understanding without specific understanding. Yet another problem might be lack of expertise. Factually speaking there are few people who do what I do in large part because of the sheer amount of work that is involved. Most people fall into one of two categories. Scholar or activist. Scholars may be activists and activists may be scholars but the second function is usually completely overshadowed by the primary function. Even within those two general categories though there is a lot of specialization. Randomly stumbling upon someone who can answer the question you are trying to ask is as much dumb luck as anything else.
So let me ask you: how would your proposed society defend itself? If the Tankies come tanking, how would you stop them?
Ditto for if it's "The Company" instead.
I will take this in three parts.
Part 1: Establishment
There is no possible way to lay out a detailed A,B,C. As the old saying goes "The enemy get's a vote" thus any step by step concrete plan would be highly subject to change based on what is viable when. For socialists in the US however there are key objectives which we need to achieve. Winning the culture war is one major step in the right direction. I have detailed it prior but in short it operates using the seven mountains of influence model. Which was designed by the Frankfurt School and refined by Reactionaries. next I gave a general outline above with some minor changes that have major consequences but one such is setting up independent districting commissions to address gerrymandering. Also there is an expansion of voting rights to cover all US citizens of age. Caps on inheritance. And also create a more favorable loaning environment for worker cooperatives by removing barriers to entry. There is a lot more in this area ranging from healthcare reform to judicial reform to monetary reform and more. It's too expansive and too much to cover at once. One of the more drastic changes however would be incorporation of all US territories as states or expulsion of territories which do not incorporate.
Part 2: Expansion
As conditions permit begin investing capital into Mexico to bring them up to parity with the US and thus removing the thorn in the side at the southern boarder. Build and repair is something the US has experience with and it can be done in much less predatory ways. Upon reaching parity the two nations would merge at some point. Don't ask for a timeline that is impossible. The focus is on achieving particular objectives not on when they are achieved. Haste makes waste. If the merger is de facto or de juri is not relevant. Then with Mexico's help we began providing education and material for other areas with a focus on uplifting third world countries to first world status. While initial investment may come from MexAmerica there would be a strong focus on creating interlocking trade between various underdeveloped countries to provide a mutual bootstrapping effort. The primary export of MexAmerica would be education with it covering shortfalls in available resources as necessary.
Part 3: Assuming as I have that things will not go neatly as planned and that there is a tankie/fascist uprising the means to deal with both is much the same. A gorilla counter insurgency with a heavy emphasis on HumInt. This takes place in a number of ways.
Infiltration: Any movement that wants to grow opens itself up for infiltration which is something the left has made itself particularly good at over the past 40 years having had excellent teachers (Thanks FBI). Being able to identify the opposition and to learn their plans ahead of time is crucial to any intelligence operation.
Subversion: The left has also had excellent teachers on how to destroy movements from the inside which doesn't work quite the way most people think. The common narrative is that an agent saboteur works themselves into positions of authority and does flashy things. In reality the saboteur is usually the last person you expect and the first person you should expect. Operating in teams of two to three the Saboteur's act in two distinct and independent functions. One agent acting strictly as an informer, the other works subtly to foster and ferment interpersonal conflicts within the group. This can be especially effective if the group is large enough so as to need other branches and smaller branches start getting picked off. It can cause massive paranoia among a mindset that is already ripe for paranoia. Less than a handful of agents can bring down an organization of thousands.
Informant: Of all this is the most useful and which will both frighten the other Counter-Revolutionaries the most. Being able to provide detailed information about the oppositions plans and movements as well as to ferment discord must leave the other counter-revolutionaries always wondering how many of our own agents we have managed to embed in their own numbers. Thus regardless of our actual size we guarantee a seat at the table.
This is again an overview and has been developed by studying both at home and abroad intelligence operations as carried out by the US government.
Feel free to ask for more details but please be as specific as possible as the more specific you are the better I can answer your question.
It's about this time someone pops in and calls me an evil devious son of a bitch.