Not_mikey @ Not_mikey @lemmy.dbzer0.com

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6 mo. ago

This isn't data security though. In a cyber security context, yes paranoia is a valuable attribute. It can let you catch threats before they happen which is good.

In a political context though, paranoia, especially directed within the organization, is a corrosive and reactionary attribute. It divides and causes factionalism in political organization and brings energy away from making positive change and fighting the actual oppressors and puts that energy toward testing and purging your "allies".

If a group out of power gives into paranoia and conspiracies they just divide into smaller and smaller factions who don't trust each other and can't work together to gain power. If a group in power gives in to paranoia, the majority group tends to start purging whoever they can claim are "fakes" conveniently along with everyone else they disagree with.

I can't think of a single time in history where paranoia directed at secret enemies within has ever helped a progressive cause. Meanwhile I can name tons of instances where it destroyed a progressive cause, or at least it's credibility and popularity: the reign of terror, stalins purges, mao's cultural revolution, even in modern day Maduro loves to claim the CIA is out to get him.

It never helps the cause, it is just used as a way for the leaders of the group to offload any anger directed at the people in charge of the organization towards some, often imagined, sabotoeurs. Collectivization failing and causing mass starvation? Is it stalins fault?, no it's the kulaks and the trotskyists sabotaging the revolution.

The democrats have failed us, twice now. Instead of recognizing there failure and changing tack they're trying to direct anger at the enemy within, progressives and Palestinian activists who they claim are sabotaging the democratic chances and are probably agents of russia. Pelosi literally told a group of pro-palestinian activists protesting on her lawn to "go back to russia".

We need to stop focusing on finding the "Russian assets in our midst" and focus on reforming the democratic party and defeating trumpism with a positive plan for change.

In the u.s. a bidet refers to a type of toilet or an attachment for a toilet that shoots water at your asshole to clean it while your still on the toilet after you shit. The separate sink as a bidet is unheard of here.

In a sense yes, people generally tell the truth more than they lie so the default assumption should be that someone is telling the truth, otherwise you enter into paranoia. That assumption can be broken when there is a clear gain from lying. Eg. You catch a thief outside the store they robbed they have a very clear reason to lie and say they were just walking by.

You're explanation on why they're lying isn't very clear. First off, you fail to name who these people are and leave it ambiguous to let the person reading fill it in with their enemy (maga, nazis, russians etc.) just like every other conspiracy theory. Since the subject isn't clear neither is the motive, you just sort of fill that in with "they hate the left, why do they hate the left? What are they gaining from convincing maybe a couple dozen liberals that the democrats suck on a very marginal social media? This isn't the politburo for the comintern, there is barely any power on here to diffuse, so why put effort into doing so when there are far larger platforms to influence.

Yeah, the u.s. ended up with ~70% of the world's gold reserves by 1947. In a global economy still mostly using "hard" gold/silver backed currency this was a massive advantage.

just do a little thought experiment with me. If there is a vector that allows authoritarians to dismantle all progress made by the left, to demotivate us and to detract from our ability to form coalitions and build solidarity, do you really think they wouldn't take advantage of it?

This is the same kind of argument that the tankies use to dismiss anyone who disagrees with them as a CIA plant. At least they name the CIA, you seem to be pointing to an even more ambiguous "they" that are out to get us. This is a conspiracy theory, dress it up all you want but your pointing to some ambiguous "they" and blaming them for your problems with no proof.

Occams razor is that they are leftists who hate the democratic party. They critique them more then the Republicans because the liberal side of lemmy covers that pretty well already, half the front page is shitting on trump right now. That's good but at a certain point your beating a dead horse, everyone here already hates trump and thinks he's bad, no point in reinforcing that past a point. A lot of people on here still have loyalty to the democratic party though that far exceeds the democrats loyalty to the left, so pointing that out can be effective and help change people's minds instead of posting/commenting trump is hitler for the millionth time.

if it just wants to die quietly along with the older people who just remain catholic by habit.

That may be true in europe and north america, but catholicism is booming in Sub-Saharan Africa in a lot of countries with younger populations. A lot of those countries also don't have very progressive views on LGBT people and would be fine with backtracking on that front.

This is why I'm for tarriffs dependent on wage, labor and environmental standards. If you're moving production to another country because they have some resource or large field of experts fair enough. If you're moving production over seas to dodge labor and environmental regulations you should pay up. It also encourages those countries to raise wage and labor standards to avoid tarriffs.

Trumps tarriffs are idiotic, tarriffs on countries with higher labor standards like Canada and the EU aren't helping anyone. The countries that do have low labor and environmental standards aren't going to raise them to avoid the tarriffs, it seems trump just wants to get them to buy more American goods to lower the trade deficit for some reason.

by perfectly standard measures kokain is way more dangerous then alcohol

No it's not, by your perceptions of those measures it may be but experts disagree.

Source

You also have to consider deaths from collateral damage, eg. Driving under the influence. Alcohol tops those charts by a lot and causes a lot of innocent deaths.

science defying stupidity

The scientists are on his side. Most drug harm experts agree that cocaine is on the same level as alcohol

A lot of drug harm experts agree

Source

Idk about the claim of it being illegal because it's from Latin America, but a lot of racism was involved in deciding to make it illegal. There was a moral panic at the time that it was giving black men super human strength and unctrollable lust for white women.

If it was a comedy I would give it a pass, but this episode wasn't, or at least it was a bad one. The only sort of funny scene was the sermon. The rest was young boys slowly dying.

Thanks for the references.

Fair enough, seems there's not full consensus on this. Just wanted to point out that there is real science backing the idea that saturated fat is bad and it's not just some contrived myth by a bunch of politicians like OP said.

I get the focus is supposed to be on Elijah and how bad he is but the background is the lost cause myth and sympathizing with the common confederate troops. I guess you could say they didn't want to make the confederates look bad so Elijah could look horrible in comparison, but you could've had Elijah just be even more racist then the troops.

Like the only sort of funny part where he gives the sermon, if it were realistic he would've gone full race baiting and go one about how the unions gonna come and free the n*****s and slavery is in the Bible etc. to rile up the troops. But in this mythical confederacy racism and slavery don't exist which is ahistorical.

They gave it back after doing a war crime and executing prisoners of war. They also executed them with a fucking gattling gun which is just cruel. I think they were trying to get you to sympathize with the confederates about to die instead of the northerners who were killing an already defeated foe.

if it was a serious show I'd agree but it's satire

I agree, righteous gemstones generally whitewashes the southern church and rarely shows the racism and homophobia that would be present. But I give it a pass because it's funny, this episode wasn't funny. The only joke of the show was him giving a bad sermon to those troops, the rest was just sad imagery of confederate boys dying. This episode was them trying to be serious and it didn't work IMO.

Just going through the wikipedia and a lot of health organizations still recommend reducing saturated fat including the WHO, the American Heart Association, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the British Dietetic Association, the World Heart Federation, the British National Health Service. These organizations are run by health professionals, not politicians with some vague anti-fat agenda.

Here's a study going over some meta analysis and finding that

Saturated fat was associated with an 8% increase and trans fats; a 13% increase in total mortality compared with carbohydrate. Thus, replacing 5% of energy from saturated fats with equivalent energy from PUFA ( polyunsaturated fat) and MUFA ( monounsaturated fat ) was associated with estimated reductions in total mortality of 27% and 13%, respectively

It goes on to say that there is less evidence for fat in general to cause cardiovascular disease and mortality, but saturated fat and trans fats definitely do.

Wouldn't call carney and the liberals lefty, there centrists. The left NDP party under Singh has been losing ground as people have ben rallying around the liberals to make sure the conservatives don't win.

Still would probably piss off trump and his crew. They just probably won't get much progress, but considering the direction of a lot of other western countries not backsliding into fascism is pretty good.

Tradwife content is on the rise for women as well, more and more young people are buying into this mythical simpler past as the world gets more complex, alienating and difficult.

The tension between a capitalist wanting lower wages and more consumption is a contradiction at the heart of capitalism. It's one of the reasons Marx thought it was bound to destroy itself. One resolution to this contradiction is debt, get people buying everything on credit cards and you won't have to raise wages to keep consumption up. This is why the economy has kept growing while wages have stagnated, credit card debt has boomed recently.

There are many contradictions in capitalism, another is that workers want higher wages, but also want cheaper products. If wages do increase then the price of products increase as well and we get inflation. These contradictions lead to the instability of capitalism and require the state to step in and mediate them otherwise the system oscillates wildly between booms, busts, inflation, deflation etc.

Sorry to hear about your situation. I understand how that sort of rhetoric can kick you while your down and stick with you a lot more. Blaming poverty on the impoverished is always disgusting.

I agree, some family situations are shit and any post-capitalist society would have to provide the resources to leave those situations.

The idea that people SHOULD leave there parents home at 18 is consumptively motivated, the idea that people CAN leave there parents home at 18 is liberating