MarxMadness @ MarxMadness @lemmygrad.ml

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2 yr. ago

If you believe anything the U.S. has to say about fighting Islamic extremists after Iraq and Afghanistan...

After the U.S. spent the last 20 years indiscriminately killing hundreds of thousands of people (at minimum!) throughout the world under the guise of fighting Islamic extremists, it's disgusting to trot out concern for lives as a defense of continuing the same failed policies.

I won’t disagree that the US has short-sightedly funded a lot of mujahideen fighters including recently some questionable groups in Syria, but that doesn’t change the fact that they’re directly opposed to the Islamists in Saharan Africa.

"This time it's different, I swear, just give me one more undeclared forever war"

Like all elites, we use language and mores as tools to recognize one another and exclude others. Using words like problematic, cisgender, Latinx and intersectional is a sure sign that you’ve got cultural capital coming out of your ears. Meanwhile, members of the less-educated classes have to walk on eggshells, because they never know when we’ve changed the usage rules, so that something that was sayable five years ago now gets you fired.

This is giving reactionaries -- who have shown time and time again that they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt -- entirely too much credit. These aren't well-intentioned folks who are anxious about keeping up with changing social norms; they know the norms they like, that of an idealized 50s or 60s white America, and they want to go back. They want to be able to say "Mexicans are a bunch of rapists and drug dealers," like Trump said, and have everyone around them nod along.

Even the one decent point about people with more education (and from more elite schools) re-shaping the job market is at best half baked. It doesn't mention how we've gutted career options for people with less than a bachelor's degree. It doesn't mention how we simultaneously made it impossible for most people to pay off college as they go through it. It doesn't mention the skyrocketing costs of healthcare and housing.

It of course does not attempt to describe the alliance between these sorts of legitimate working-class grievances and the rest of the reactionary political project, or how actually addressing those grievances could undermine that alliance.

Ukraine has liberated 74,443 km² or 28,743 square miles since the start of the invasion

The front lines have remained basically static since Fall '22.

...a forum post, where you might actually have something resembling a real discussion, is of course preferable to someone who thinks you're an idiot bothering you in your DMs.

Tells their users to follow the rules = it's a ruse, they're trolls

Tells their users to troll = see, they're trolls!

Says nothing = they aren't even trying to stop their users from trolling

This is what we call an unfalsifiable orthodoxy.

Are we a strictly pro-NATO server or something?

Functionally, yes.

There is nothing wrong with following the rules and being "subversive." That is literally just challenging people's ideas.

As others have pointed out, the population of the whole fediverse is currently less than a bunch of subreddits with far less than 4.3 million users. Mod/admin energy shouldn't be taken for granted, but people are way overstating the potential for issues.

A game thread on any popular sporting event has way more comments and problems than basically any post in the history of this place.

Why would a ban on one instance merit a ban on another? Instances have different rules for reasons.

The U.S. has fought maybe two justified wars in its existence, but trust me, this one is good for real!

Can't imagine why someone wouldn't want to have a DM conversation with a person who thinks they're worse than a flat earther

"Are you now or have you ever been a member of hexbear.net, or a fellow traveler?"

lemmy.world can always federate after they’ve demonstrated that elsewhere

Pretty funny how you immediately abandoned this bit. Why not just be honest?

It's good as a heuristic because 90% of the time it's correct. Same thing as saying "if the U.S. is supporting it as part of its foreign policy, it's likely bad."

You still have to educate yourself and think, but this is a useful starting point and tiebreaker.

Nearly everyone, if not every single person, in America that will read this has never seen our government and politicians do ANYTHING that would advance the lives of its citizens, no matter how small the action might be. When/if anything slightly beneficial is done, cynical ulterior motives are the reason.

This mentality is actually part of the problem: the right-wing talking point that governments never ever ever do anything good. See the Reagan quote about "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." It's demonstrably untrue and we shouldn't fall into reinforcing it from the left.

craft a political strategy that convincingly makes the case for why they and their lot are very likely to benefit from joining your political project. Not in some utopian infinite timescale, but soon.

This is great stuff. I'll disagree a little with the "you figured it out and they could if they wanted to" part, though -- it's the same logic as "you're successful and poor people could be too, if they wanted to."

Most socialists in the U.S. were not raised that way. Of those who initially subscribed to other politics, I would bet very few (maybe none) came around to socialism entirely on their own. Someone out there at least laid down a path left, if they didn't actively engage with you and challenge your ideas. You had help getting here even if you had to do some hard introspective work yourself.

Practically, this means we shouldn't be too quick to write anyone off, and we should at least present socialist ideas everywhere. We have the internet; we can do this without tons of effort. Now when it comes to messaging that takes more effort, sure, it absolutely makes sense to focus that on the people most likely to be receptive, and the author is correct that showing people a near-term material benefit is the best way to do that.

I guess the US and USSR were allies in the Cold War because they didn't openly attack each other and occupied different halves of numerous countries

He's going to be recast as incurably corrupt and ineffective, a modern-day Ngo Dinh Diem.