came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them] @ came_apart_at_Kmart @hexbear.net

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Joined

5 yr. ago

that post was maybe 1500 words to summarize 100+ years of regional conflict with special attention on the last 10 years written in plain language. no special jargon or references to theoretical concepts. if that's a "novel" for you, it definitely explains your grasp of this situation and affirms the critique that you are willfully ignorant and incapable of analysis beyond "russia bad." and this is why people make fun of libs like you. many libs smugly dismiss conservatives as having "simple/childlike" worldviews and value systems. then they promptly adopt their own perfectly mirrored positions and petulantly stick their fingers in their ears like you're doing here.

being dumb is exactly how you got where you are.

having a PhD doesn't mean you think critically or can evaluate literature anymore. and it definitely does not give you license to kick out of your coverage, like you're trying desperately to do here..

having your little credential just means your committee wanted you gone after 5 years of being an asshole and didn't want to fuck the stats of whatever shit tier program's orifice you oozed out of.

i think one of the aspects of fascism that really freaks out liberals is that fascism is the return of the policies they (casually or explicitly) support overseas to their homes and applied to them and their neighbors. i was reading that post-colonial analysis excerpt about how hitler did to the core what "heroic" churchill and his predecessors had been doing to india and other peoples/nations for decades. libs avoid any material analysis of the core/periphery or fascism because the connections make it obvious libs have no trouble enjoying the fruits of evil done elsewhere to secure markets, but bringing those same methods of repression and control home is the unspeakably evil act of a madman.

the idea that their poorly-interrogated political project creates and necessitates the very monster they fear is too much to grapple with for some.

maybe they meant one of our langley-based fedposters.

maybe the

the word you are striving not to say is capitalism. capitalists did this to russians, using the playbook developed and advocated for by western institutions.

imagine ignoring the absolutely ruthless, western led cannibalization of the former soviet union and pretending history's baseline started AFTER the largest decline of living standards in global history.

human trafficking, prostitution, alcoholism, food/energy insecurity, diseases of despair all exploded when the west forced capitalism and privatization onto the former soviet union in the immediate aftermath. Gorbachev thought he was going to get some easy-going nordic social democracy, but instead the west carved up their public sector like a christmas ham. maybe you were too young, but in the 1980s the propaganda portrait the west had of russian women were all heavy-set, ugly babushkas. suddenly, after 1989, the mail order beautiful russian bride phenomenon exploded. they were fleeing the gutting of the public sector and the shattering of the social safety net, which made it near impossible to raise a family in the eastern bloc without becoming a sex worker.

the west sponsored every retrograde nationalist reactionary psycho to undermine any hint of democratic resistance to economic liberalization schemes and bombed the shit out of infrastructure (Yugoslavia) whenever they could get away with it. the west has the most blood on its hands for the aftermath of the USSR, but people like you want to ignore those early days and then claim credit for the "winners" the west propped up in the aftermath of all that chaos. like a killer who torched a town but kidnapped a few kids and now touts his heroic rescue of them. the most ignorant and disgusting take.

the average manager/boss is so inculcated with "job creator" brain worms in the US, they believe they, as benevolent nobles, are the ones generating value in the organization while their underlings extract value as salary/wages. it leads to shit like this where bosses are baffled they can't actually get everything they want by snapping their fingers, even though they control the immediate material access to housing, healthcare, etc.

as it turns out, workers are the critical resource because they make it all go. the execs are the ones extracting massive value as salary/benefits or stock manipulation, while realistically only going to meetings to strategize ways to get more value out of workers without sharing any increases. workers are paying managers to boss them around all day and act important.

in secondary school (ages 14-18) it was highly encouraged to take at least 2 years of a foreign language, though american sign language counted. and kids on the "not college" pipeline didn't have to do that. j'ai trois ans de les cours de francais, but i haven't had much opportunity to practice or use it conversationally in like the 25 years since.

edit: secondary school offered french, spanish, german or ASL. the private $$$ schools offered mandarin and others.

where i grew up in burger land, back in the 80s, the public schools were teaching us all spanish in from age 5 to 10. not like true bilingual education, but we had a spanish class once a week. it last about 2 years before the white nationalists--who panic at the idea of working class people easily communicating with each other--got it shut down. between that and some years working with seasonal agricultural workers practicing their english, i am at the comprehension level of an inebriated toddler. i wish i had more opportunities to practice. honestly, the US should have all its signs in english and spanish anyway, but you know the reactionaries would go info a full blown pogrom over even a whiff of that being proposed.

i remember some small business tyrant in florida in the 2000s called up my work one time and wanted me to pass along his complaint to my boss that our phone system had an option to "press ocho for espanol". he said that our company even offering the option to "those people" was wrong... in FLORIDA... the state with the name that means "land of flowers" in spanish.

i joined chacha as a lifeboat years ago when the CTH reddit got banned and stayed as it became Ursus hexagonalis. the lack of ads, the memes, irreverence for institutions combined with respect for humans, and the absolute god-tier emoji selection is what keeps me here.

also, the megathread topics are very interesting/informative as a People's History, since many of the stories come from the "periphery" for all my world systems nerds out there. living in the imperial core, the constant cacophony of cultural outputs and hegemonic discourses, i appreciate any channel that connects me with post-colonial narratives, critical theory, etc.