Comraragi [none/use name]
Can we please not quote the head of a feudal slave society Tibet until 1951, I don’t think the Dalai Lama was very interested in the inner workings of Marxism while he enjoyed the company of his serfs.
If you want to rehabilitate the current Pope because he says nice things that is ok, do it at your own risk of credibility. Words are cheap, actions are what matters and the Catholic Church is the definition of inaction and criminal activity.
Don’t quote mine the Bible, it is one of the most hateful books in existence. A handful of vaguely leftist statements don’t erase nice little gems like this “how you get to keep the wife and children of male slaves for yourself”. Exodus like the rest Old Testament is a human disgrace.
If his master have given him a wife, and she have born him sons or daughters; the wife and her children shall be her master’s, and he shall go out by himself. Exodus 21:4
I recommend you go through the Skeptics Annotated Bible. The Old and New testament each have their own flaws are have more than enough bigotry in either one.
I am very supportive of Christian and other religious socialists/communists in any community, and I believe we can continue to support any religious person who wants to become or is already a leftist and a socialist by upholding our own human decency principles and not trying to rehabilitate religions with scriptures full of hate crimes and bigotry.
God may be a communist, he certainly almost never acted like one.
“Western Europe” nationalism is curbed because nationalism is a threat to the neoliberal EU project which is itself too big too fail. Looking at the issues of Spain/Italy/Greece you’ll see specially how Greece was forced to accept the German led negotiation(the Troika) of their deals or suffer severe consequences. You can read that Varoufakis writings where he basically admit the “socialist” option(or really any anti-imperialist arrangement) like leaving the EU, abandoning the Euro, defaulting, becoming socialist was not an option period.
It is not about “liberals” fighting nationalism out of good will lol as much as neoliberals having to maintain a heavy grip on the nations part of/close to the imperial core. Is that something to applaud them for? I mean this is a thread for lib takes so maybe. But from an actual leftist point of view not at all.
Then you compare that to the former USSR countries and you can see the clear differences. While the entire western capitalist countries conspired with and supported nationalist anti-USSR/right wing movements in order to de-stabilize the region, the same policy can’t be applied back at home. Germans for example have no reason to be extremely nationalist when Germany is already at the heart and control of the EU. The same goes for France. Both are changing though e.g the migrant crisis.
But as I said as soon as you look at the edges like the UK/Spain/Greece/Italy you’ll see neoliberalism is not able to contain this threat any better than other countries.
How the fuck does someone reach the conclusion that associating yourself with a fly is a good thing to anchor a propaganda piece around?
What is next substitute your leader with a garbage bin filled with MAGA insects?
Bin Laden’s siblings were at the white house the day of 9/11.
Meh they could have visited the WH anytime in a 6 month period before or after 9/11 and people would make this connection… You only need a good history book to understand US ties with Bin Laden not an inside job conspiracy.
Have no idea what episode you are talking about without googling it. If it is a S1 or S2 episode I probably haven’t seen it. One word: Episode guides. Skip S1-2, maybe watch the handful of good episodes of both seasons each and move on to S3. You wont miss anything trust me.
In general I’d say yes of course Star Trek has fairly liberal takes of course because Gene only ever got as far as creating a mix of the most basic understanding of socialism e.g no money, no “jobs” in exchange for survival, nobody owns the “economy”, absolute equality of race/gender and framed it squarely on his own American biased liberal ideology e.g worshiping of “Freedom” in a very abstract sense, “individualism”, explorers aka entrepreneurship etc.
But DS9 gets better, I think S3-6 are the best seasons. I wont spoil it but there is definitely more maturity and attempts at tackling real world issues related to war, exploitation, psychological consequences etc… You’ll even find a few timely episodes for our climate and excellent examples of good time travel episodes. The problem with DS9 is consistency and some very heavy handed elements(the whole religion thing), so when DS9 goes off the rails it really goes off like a freight train.
But when they manage to find a topic and execute it well it is one of the best science fiction TV ever.
I could understand this attitude with a Bernie presidency even if we accept his inevitable failure to govern.
But a Biden presidency is not even a consolation prize. It is like the Titanic movie when the ship breaks in half and the rear side drops down to the water level again. For a moment things would look fine, except you know, half your ship is missing, everything is flooded/destroyed, 2/3 of the passengers already died or escaped etc etc… That is pretty apt description of the US currently actually.
Well there is a massive difference between musical genres. I do think there is some level of ability that must be acknowledged, to me it is undeniable that classical musicians are incredibly talented artists in general. You may not like classical, I don’t enjoy some of it either.
But when you compare [insert generic pop artist here] to Rachmaninoff or Beethoven, I mean you must acknowledge the massive level in skill and dedication required to reach those levels. Being a concert pianist, let alone a composer is literally a lifetime endeavor.
Being a pop musician? Make sure you have a good voice, auto-tune, have someone else perform all the instruments/compose/do all the mixing for you. Done. The modern music industry is certainly easier to get into, it is not a bad thing necessarily.
So I guess yes you could say certain genres and/or artists are massively overrated mostly due to their popularity and/or being novel artists, the right song at the right time.
But then some genres and artists don’t get enough recognition, I don’t particularly care about Rock but the pioneering in electric guitar techniques back then should be acknowledged. Again Jimmy Hendrix isn’t Liszt, but he deserves all the recognition he got.
The normal everyday mundane bullshit just continues if you’re in the middle class, you just might narrowly avoid being bombed on the subway one day and the next day step over a dozen bodies on your way into the office
Very well put and I’d say the US was already there 20 years ago with the whole school shooting episodes, the frequency in how they repeated and the collective inability of 300million people to give enough of a damn about their own children being turned into swiss cheese at school was already a sign of collapse 20 years ago. One of like 3 dozen or so bright neon signs anyway.
We are seeing it again and it is accelerating, now almost the entire collective pretends it is fine if their children catches a deadly virus because statistics or something.
Of course there is always the giant elephant in the room of police violence against minorities then and now, but you could reasonably explain away as nothing new, a country built on slavery etc…
Bronze Age Collapse style disruption of the international order to pwn the libs
What the fuck is this shit tier take?
“Hey guys we can’t make the US fall in disorder and chaos because basically everyone else would go right back to being caveman with sticks without the big western man to keep things in order”.
Like fuck off this is shit reddit level take I wouldn’t expect to see here.
Here is something you may not have realized: The world will go on just fine without the big red line going up. Heck some places may actually see a tiny little bit of peace and prosperity without the sight of a predator drone on top of their heads.