Personally, I just remind myself the West is a fraction - not even half - of the world’s population, and that even within the Imperial Core people are recognizing we need to change. I look towards BRICS with hope, and like to think it will force the West to finally change its ways. Sure, there’s a lot of what ifs with that, but it helps.
I could only get about 30 minutes into the film because I was annoyed by that. It’s the only film I can remember that isn’t intentionally political (satire, etc.) but makes the same political joke ad nauseum every chance it can. If the political comment had been progressive in any way, you can bet more people would have been complaining about it. Because it’s anticommunist, your post is the only thing I can find where someone sees it at all.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re just waiting for one of the myriad left-leaning orgs to do something like January 6th to justify an anti-communist purge and takeover. Doesn’t even have to be actual socialists. It just has to be enough for the media to spin into a justification. I can see it now: every socialist or socdem org being outlawed, any liberal who doesn’t become an ardent anti-communist getting arrested for questioning, etc. Finishing what McCarthy started.
After all, all those handy “anti-insurrection” laws didn’t come into effect until after the right tried their embarrassing coup. And all of those laws happen to be applicable to any leftist org “trying to overthrow the government”. I could see some extremely agitated Antifa action escalating via interference and the media just making it out to be a fullblown takeover. I know people working for the government who swear up and down that Antifa is a highly organized, evil, foreign communist threat because other friends in the government tell them so. It really wouldn’t take much convincing.
It’s even wilder when you consider that the gap between the “left” and “right” in the US is closing despite partisanship being fiercer than ever. Both sides are virtually identical at this point, probably more so than any other point in history. Democrats may spout lip service to progressive causes, but don’t lift a finger and consistently aid Republican causes. Both parties constantly claim election tampering and the democracy being corrupt, they just disagree on who’s responsible. Both support war and corporate power. I’m sure historically the “progressive” party has always been a weak, lying power, but now it feels so bald-faced that I’m amazed anyone can still delude themselves.
The question is, is the US finally going to cross the line and just admit to what they are in some fascist coup, or will the “progressives” accomplish some meager win for human rights at the end and draw millions back into the illusion? I can’t tell if it’s always been like this and I’m just seeing it for the first time, or if it really is becoming more and more obvious, more unwieldy, closer to collapse.
True. But I meant that it feels like an execution. If I were middle-class and could, y’know, relax and enjoy life when I’m not working, I’d probably feel the darkest despair losing a position like that and effectively being blacklisted in the only career field I have experience in. I’ve always been poor, and am still struggling, still feeling the axe against the neck so to speak. I could only imagine how it must feel to think you’re safe and prosperous, only to be thrust down to my position or worse (at least I have a job, and a promising career if I put my mind to it). If you’re invested in paying off a house or car, in raising a family or sending a child to a nice school, and suddenly you lose the means to do so, well that just makes it worse.
It’s just interesting to see that (on some level) even libs, who think we’re so much better and kinder than other countries, recognize they could lose their cushy positions and descend to the level the majority of Americans are at. The fact that they know this implies they’re aware of how fucked up it all is, but still they think what they fantasize about other countries doing is worse.
I always find it telling how authors have to walk on eggshells to even suggest something against the popular narrative, even when it’s become so obvious that anyone who bothers to look into it can see the reality. The way this article starts with setting the scene as sort of relaxed, and how the title reads like “We’re obviously super great and everything, but is it possible that maybe just this once we’re wrong?”
It’s the same with the Ukraine conflict. It wasn’t until the catastrophic failure of a counterattack that people even began suggesting that it might have been a disaster, or that Ukraine is flawed - at least in more public media - and even then, the earlier stuff starts off so… “Well obviously the Ukrainians are in the right and totally could win, but maybe this was a bad idea”.
I don’t know, I just find it pretty telling in our freedom-loving society, which values Free Press and Free Speech, that every mainstream journalist acts like they’ll get executed if they report something that displeases their masters. I mean, getting fired and blacklisted from a major media outlet would probably serve the same purpose anyway, so…
I’ve considered trying to move to Massachusetts someday. Maybe not Boston, because living in cities always seems like a hassle to my small town ass, but somewhere near it.
Exactly this. Unfortunately, nearly every American I’ve met - even the left-leaning - is convinced that, in spite of its flaws, the US is still the safest/best place to be. They’re so disillusioned with the American government and society, but still fervently believe every other system and place is worse (except the Nordic model). And they’ll believe me if I tell them why whatever they do support isn’t as good as they think, but they take serious convincing to even entertain the idea that China isn’t as bad as they think. Us Americans have been hardwired to be distrustful of any good thing, to a fault, and it’s really sad when you think about it. It’s just bizarre we can be so anti-government as a country and still blindly do exactly what the government wants.
I worked at a hospice (I guess you could call it that?) here in the States, and this nurse was from Romania. I’ve noticed a trend with “former communist citizens” randomly working in “I was from communist country” into interactions for some kind of sympathy, I guess? There was no rhyme or reason for it, but while talking to her, she brought up she hadn’t had bananas when growing up in Romania because they were a communist country. When I suggested it might have been because a lot of bananas were grown in American-controlled regions and the US probably refused to trade them to communist countries, she looked really confused at me, like she hadn’t expected me to actually give a sensible reason for it. I’ve also talked to a comrade who worked as a psych student and had to deal with an Eastern European entrepreneur who would do the same thing: work in something about how he didn’t have access to (X), blame it on communism, laugh, and wait for some kind of positive affirmation about it, then get uncomfortable or confused if whoever they’re talking to doesn’t care.
I sense a pattern, especially when I read articles from other wealthy or well-off immigrants from socialist countries. A sort of exaggeration of hardship that, in a vacuum, looks bad, but with context undermines its severity. But I only know a few cases, so maybe it’s just coincidence. Then again, if I were to move and live comfortably in a socialist country, I’d probably tell the citizens how much shit was wrong here in the States, even unprompted.
Something that’s darkly amusing about that, living here, is that the election results are almost a 50/50 split every time on the national level, and sometimes even when one candidate has more than the other guy, the other guy wins anyway. So, even if everyone had faith in the system and that the numbers are accurate (which politicians do cheat, so they really aren’t), that still means that: a) roughly half the country is going to be against the winner and support any effort to undermine them, and b) even getting a majority doesn’t really mean much if the Electoral College can just support the other candidate.
But yeah, I just gotta keep voting Blue for that harm reduction they can’t deliver on, while living in a state that’s consistently 2/3 Republican in every election, and which passes laws that make it difficult to vote for anything else.
I’m not bitter in the slightest.
I think part of that stems from Westerners (at least where I live) struggling to comprehend how large, populous, and diverse China is as a country. It’s presented and taught as a monolith, unless the media/government is trying to push a secessionist movement, then all of a sudden everyone thinks they’re an expert on an ethnic group they only thought of as “Chinese” until influencers told them they’re oppressed.
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard some alleged former citizen of an Eastern Bloc country bring up the lack of imported fruits, and I always found it odd that they choose to blame the communist government instead of, idk, the fact banana republics were controlled by imperialists and probably insanely hard to come by? Regardless, it also feels like a petty caveat to throw onto a weak argument about why I should feel bad for them having grown up in a country with free housing, low unemployment, free education, and free healthcare (or damn near free, anyway). Because they didn’t get Star Wars or oranges often?
“Woefully uneducated”… that’s something else. Where I live, our schools are so badly underfunded it’s insane. I remember in high school, we had to read a bunch of Ayn Rand and I wondered why the fuck we had to do that. I mean, Orwell was bad enough but kinda made sense because he’s just always been on the reading list. Then I read the covers of the brand new Rand novels we got in spades, and they were all donated by the Ayn Rand Society.
Libertarians rely on undercutting education and state restrictions on what can be taught in public schools, specifically so they flood the schools with their “charitable donations” of free propaganda. Started working in education and it’s even worse being on the other side of the school desk, lol.
The way he talks about it really puts it in perspective and makes it just downright depressing. It hurts to know that a story like this, if it was allowed to run here in the US, would just be twisted to claim the Russians are genociding Ukraine and we need to send them more guns and war machines… This is a damn tragedy, no doubt about it.
deleted by creator
It seems to be their preferred strategy.
Yeah, they’re good at that.
True, but I’m thinking about the grassroots fascist orgs that coordinate online, that got involved in this whole project. I’ve talked to fascists before, and there is a breed of them that really would burn a whole country down to incite fascist sympathy across Europe. If the US gave them power, knowingly or unknowingly, in Ukraine, then I think there’s more at work than just the ghouls in leadership.
I’m sure it will backfire for the liberal element in the West, but this is exactly what the fascists could have hoped for. And unless those would-be terrorists are dealt with in the aftermath of the war, I foresee a fascist shitstorm in a region that’s primed for fascist takeover.
I can’t shake the feeling that more than a few people planned for a Russian victory from the beginning, martyring Ukraine for a fascist revival in Europe. Not saying people didn’t genuinely think Ukraine could win, just that there were cleverer puppeteers who sacrificed the country for a wider fascist movement.
If they’d forced him to use Starlink for Ukraine and they still lost, however, the illusion of “we could have won if…” is broken. This way, depending on the public, they have a sage peacekeeper who avoided nuclear war, or a selfish traitor they can use as a scapegoat. Gotta keep the libs and fascists dreaming.