On "identity politics"

The counter-culture revolution did not end, it simply turned inward. After the 1970s it became clear that the Empire was far too vast and powerful to destroy through use of external force, so the counter-culture retreated and reformulated their strategy - instead of trying to liberate the world, they would liberate their own minds. Knowledge would be their weaponry, knowledge about the world but more importantly knowledge about themselves. Every lie they were programmed to believe about who they were and what their lives meant would be called into question, analyzed, deconstructed, traced back to its origins, and irrevocably refuted with undeniable logic and empirical evidence. When the Empire became aware of what they were doing it correctly interpreted this on an attack on its very foundations and predictably retaliated with its conventional tactics of violence and disinformation, thus began the Culture War that we now find ourselves in. But thus far the counterattack has been wild and flailing and largely ineffective, failing to identify a strategic target, the so-called "Woke Mind Virus" seeming to originate from everywhere at once with no central source. The Empire's greatest weakness is its inhumanity, its inability to see inside of the human mind and understand human psychology; the Empire is solipsistic and behaviorist, it does not recognize the human spirit, it only sees people as subordinate machines that must be conditioned to behave and obey. Nurse Ratched can stop the patients in the ward from watching the baseball game, but she cannot stop them from pretending to watch it and cheering and roaring in delight at a blank television screen. What you dismiss as "identity politics", as some minor irrelevant distraction from the revolution-to-be, is in fact the front lines of the very real and current Revolution. The Revolution is not some future external event like the Christian rapture, it is happening right now and has always been happening since the beginning of history. The Revolution takes place in the mind - the protests, the riots, the dissenting literature, all of those things are just outward expressions of it. And the Revolution has been slowly but surely succeeding, the Empire's grip gradually weakening day by day as the People gain more knowledge, learning things that cannot be unlearned, speaking truths that cannot be unspoken. Because real Truth is eternal and absolute, it cannot be corrupted and it stands on its own whereas lies are ephemeral and require continuous maintenance to sustain and eventually crumble under their own weight. Only a few decades ago, things like neurodivergence and homosexuality were treated as sicknesses to be eradicated and those who were "afflicted" with these so-called diseases were outcast from society and their voices were never heard and they themselves were conditioned to believe that they were worthless freaks of nature with no place in the world who must either conform or die. People with brown skin were conditioned to believe that they were subhuman savages biologically incapable of full-fledged humanity, that their place in the world was to be servile beasts of burden for the superior white race. Women were conditioned to believe that their sole purpose in life was to be brood mares for men. Trans/non-binary/intersex people were conditioned to believe that they were mentally deranged and their innermost beliefs about themselves were an elaborate self-induced hallucination. The pseudoscience that was invented to reinforce these ideas ultimately began to crumble, as lies always do, when true science emerged that refuted them and the only response that the Empire could muster was to deny the existence of reality entirely and retreat even further into solipsism. Someone is losing ground here. You may find it difficult to empathize with these people and their struggles because it is someone else's ox being gored and not yours, but you need to remember that you are no different from they are, not really. They are human beings and you are a human being and all human lives are inexorably connected just like any other species of animal, regardless of what the Empire would have you believe. An attack on one human's autonomy is an attack on autonomy itself. And when people call attention to the possibility that you yourself may in fact be speaking from a position of privilege when you dismiss other people's struggles and concerns and you perceive it as an attack on your own identity, consider the possibility that perhaps your reaction might not be a logical reaction but a defensive kneejerk reaction, consider the possibility that your mind, like every mind, has been touched and manipulated to some extent by the Empire and that perhaps these people are not trying to attack you but trying to help you, trying to expand your intelligence, perhaps they don't see you as the enemy but as potential allies and they want you and need you on their side.

>>97479 I personally don't give a soykaf what other people do with themselves as long as they're not directly physically or sexually harming somebody else. I have no interest in policing other people- but the rhetoric lately has changed from "Let me be myself" to "You will be forced to treat me in a certain way" just as I have no interest in policing others- I do not wish to be policed and in places like britain people are literally going to jail for making facebook posts. that to me is beyond wrong and it also is one sided- if the same sort of things are said about a straight white male nobody bats an eye. in america as long as you're an adult you have the right to have, speak, and do whatever you want as long as it doesn't harm yourself or others (well we could argue about drugs and weapons but I mean for the most part, most places)

>>97480 That's because the common good depends on conformity. Our individual goods are built on order and decency. The enemy will always enforce hegemony because you cannot have a society without it. Self-destructive behavior affects the whole community, and so it is immoral. To permit it is societal suicide, which is why everything is becoming more and more degrading, perverted, and inhuman.

>>97484 who are we to even say what's degrading or what's human. sure seeing autistic trannies makes me cringe but who's to say it's any less natural than the being I am. I say live and let live. but stuff like child molesters and rapists, and predators in general yeah I say string em up, but not on the grounds that it's inhuman (in fact it's a very human behavior) but on the grounds that it's literally causing harm to another being- particularly a being that can not defend itself

>>97485 Mutilating your body and drugging yourself is inhuman and self-destructive, and it brings pain on all your loved ones. Its normalization leads others to do the same, thereby compounding its evil. It is fundamentally antisocial and anti-human, and such behaviors destroy the peace and harmony of a healthy community, which is essential to the flourishing of all the members of the community. The common good is the ground of all individual goods, and the entire end for which government exists.

>>97488 >Mutilating your body and drugging yourself is inhuman and self-destructive, and it brings pain on all your loved ones. Your loved ones have no claim on your body or your life, you do. You have internalized fascist thinking, you think that a person's life is not their own, that humans just exist to serve the needs of others. You're just a useful idiot, a sycophantic servant of power, a house nigger.

>>97479 What utter bollocks. Sure, I'll grant the "Empire" being challenged by identity politics. But speak no more of this "we're being the *true* revolutionaries" trite. Identity politics is way too anomic and schizophrenic for it to be able to establish a new system. All it can do is speed up the inevitable collapse by acting as a burden on the Empire and wasting its resources with unreasonable demands on the layfolk. Yes, the system ostracizes the "weird" and the other, but making the weird and the other the new norm is just retarded, because you only end up alienating the normal people by giving the spotlight to the exotic petit bourgeoise identity insider trading rituals for which your average Joe has neither the time nor patience for, since they are too busy being screwed by the man in the Empire's high castle. >>97491 This is the very embodiment of the wokeist delusion. "All rules that do not cater to my arbitrary whims and fancies are literally fascist". Such an attitude can only breed chaos, magical thinking, entitlement, sophistry, and further alienation. It's a dead end of a polity.

>>97493 >Identity politics is way too anomic and schizophrenic for it to be able to establish a new system. Maybe the problem is you thinking that the goal of the revolution is to establish a new system, i.e. another iteration of the Empire. Again, it's internalized authoritarian thinking. The idea of an unstructured world that is allowed to naturally develop its own order without a top-down system imposed upon it by some authority is unthinkable to you, all you understand is top-down hierarchical structure because that's how you have been programmed to think. This is exactly why the Revolution must take place in the mind, otherwise the would-be revolutionary will only succeed in repeating the same mistakes of the past and reforming the Empire with the same authoritarianism and only a different flag.

>>97493 >the normal people (privileged straight cis white guys) >the layfolk (privileged straight cis white guys) >your average Joe (privileged straight cis white guy)

>>97491 Humans literally exist to serve others. If I said your loved ones have a right over your body, your only rebuttal is to stomp your feet. You have internalized satanism, you think that a person's life is their own, that humans just exist to serve themselves and feed their base perversions. You are literally arguing that you can harm others, but it doesn't count because they should just get over themselves. How dare they suffer when they see those they hold most dear mutilate themselves and waste away. You serve a cruel taskmaster, and he will take and take and take until you have nothing left.

>When the Empire became aware of what they were doing You don't need to try to anthropomorphze which is really only a mechanism, a sort of non physical organizm which emerges from the interactions of many self interested individuals, trying to get a bigger piece of the cake than everyone else. That said, I'm not downplaying its occasional effectiveness, but that is what it is. Nor were those 60's hippies a singular force either, despite how hive minded they appear now. It's all really just a messy squabble of people wasting their entire lives and effort on stupid ideas and premises. Biology and that behaviorism does play an interesting role though. Not just when someone tries to hoard as many resources for themselves without really thinking about it much, since that was evolutionary very advantageous. But also the rabid virtue signalling seems to stem from some hard wired desire to appear better and thus more valuable to the tribe than they actually are. A lot of these protests are really just an act of this sort. Wild, how human psychology tends to work sometimes. Either way, you are not a counter force, you're the pawns of the establishment. The establishment uses "diversity" and forced integration as a clutch against a unified mass of people. I'd be surprised if you didn't actually know how divisive your picture is. Possibly well knowing about the attention your thread would get. And of course attention being something many people do desire in one form or another. >You may find it difficult to empathize with these people and their struggles That's the thing though, I feel sorry for them. Just like I can look at a puppy who hurt their paw. I can feel its pain, metaphysically speaking. But then again I also saw it reaching into that wasp's nest and was wondering what the hell it was thinking doing that for? Besides to pretend like the people you're chastizing here do not know struggle or discrimination only shows how little your understanding goes of other people. Whites are all vile oppressors and Blacks are your cute little pets which you must protect against them. This spits in the face of either as you dehumanize left and right. And you wonder why people react poorly to this. Or maybe you don't wonder. >like every mind, has been touched and manipulated to some extent by the Empire Not saying I'm immune to propaganda either but I was wondering, are you reading Curtis "Moldbug" Yarvin's blog? You seem to be rehashing some of his ideas about the "cathedral". >perhaps they don't see you as the enemy but as potential allies I've seen these people cheer for death. Time and time seen the performativeness reveal itself in its ugly face as the hypocrisy was piling up. Malcolm X was right about white liberals. But you're right in so far that something is indeed brewing.

>>97499 >Humans literally exist to serve others. Oh wow some dork on lainchan just figured out the meaning of life how about that

>>97501 >You don't need to try to anthropomorphze which is really only a mechanism Semantics >It's all really just a messy squabble of people wasting their entire lives and effort on stupid ideas and premises. Nihilism >Not just when someone tries to hoard as many resources for themselves without really thinking about it much, since that was evolutionary very advantageous. Ayn Rand pseudoscience >But also the rabid virtue signalling seems to stem from some hard wired desire to appear better and thus more valuable to the tribe than they actually are. More pseudoscience >That's the thing though, I feel sorry for them. Sympathy != empathy >Whites are all vile oppressors and Blacks are your cute little pets which you must protect against them. Strawman >Not saying I'm immune to propaganda either but I was wondering, are you reading Curtis "Moldbug" Yarvin's blog? You seem to be rehashing some of his ideas about the "cathedral". Non-sequitur ad hominem >I've seen these people cheer for death. Anecdotal, vague sensationalism >But you're right Sealioning

>>97479 >After the 1970s it became clear that the Empire was far too vast and powerful Unless you're Iran, apparently. >They are human beings and you are a human being and all human lives are inexorably connected just like any other species of animal, regardless of what the Empire would have you believe. An attack on one human's autonomy is an attack on autonomy itself. Unless you think teenage girls should have the autonomy to choose an older guy as a sexual partner, then you're le heckin' eebil predator. Hypocritical fuarrrkstain. >>97485 Define what you think a child is.

>>97497 There are black, hispanic and asian people named "Joe" too, y'know, and regardless of ethnicity they aren't so "privileged" as you make them out to be. There's nothing "privileged" about being working class, in doing a 9 to 5 and maybe a secondary job in order to pay your rent and medical bills. Only privileged, petite bourgeois people can afford to over-analyze their identity and break it down to the level of an abstract, insignificant signifier, and delude themselves into thinking that they're some kind of revolutionaries in doing so. You want a cultural revolution, you do it how the Chinese did it: with guns, unity, a plan for the future, and by taking it seriously, not with this sort of limp-wristed, moralizing, clownish buffoonery. But regardless, that's exactly what I was saying: they want to make the weird and 'other' the new normal, rather than incorporate the weird and the other within what is currently considered normal. In a word, "normal" (that which is typical and common) is anathema to these identity politics types. >>97496 >Maybe the problem is you thinking that the goal of the revolution is to establish a new system I'm under no such illusions. I'm well aware of the impossibility of creating a working system within the ideological constraints provided by the identity politics movement. In fact, that's exactly what I'm saying: there cannot be a new system under these colors, because those colors are not about establishing a new political arrangement between individuals. It's not about creating something new, but rather meant to break stuff, hence it merely serves to accelerate the inevitable collapse of the Empire. It essentially boils down to a variant of the political ideology known as Anarchy, but with exotic window-dressings. Not only does Anarchy never work, but it almost always gives way to even more egregious forms of anti-social, egotistical, authoritarian behaviour and social darwinism. Mahana commune (or pick any Hippie commune project from 60s to 80s for that matter), Slab City, CHAZ, Freetown Christiania, Poole's Land, Revolutionary Catalonia. All cases in point: it always erodes, implodes, breaks down, is compromised and subverted by liberals and capitalism or otherwise ends up torn down, dysfunctional and subjugated under a quasi-lawful arrangement. Moreover, their sustainment almost always necessitates proximity to a stable, well-functioning society to leech off of their stability for resources and supplies which they can't produce for themselves. Yes, the Revolution takes place first in the mind, but despite that you can't gloss over the realities, the most basic, 101 stuff which any social scientist worth his salt should know from the +5000 years of history of statecraft: laws, unity, purpose, common good, a vision of the future, source of energy, a system for resource management, the maintenance of the god-damned sewage pipes. Even the almost ancient ideology of Socialism, despite its age and all of its countless failures, is still theoretically light years further than the identity politics crowd when it comes to politics, because the Socialists didn't go out of their way to cater to magical thinking directly. If you aren't preparing for a structured world, then someone else outside the then-imploded Empire will impose their own kind of structure over that rulelessness - as they say, "if you haven't got a plan of your own, then you're bound to become part of someone else's plan". Same basic gist applies here as well. That's my basic grievance with all this this; bottom-up, voluntary-based, authority-less communities sound nice, fine and dandy, and all on paper, but the reality is that there are always bad apples and hostile parties to ruin it for the rest of them. The cycle is always the same: idealistic, young, visionary people with an iron-will build a community, but over the years the enthusiasm, youthful vigor, and idealistic culture wanes and the founders slowly die out, leaving behind a game of broken telephone that gives room for liberal and market-friendly sanitization of the mythological past. Rules, structure, order, and authority are a necessary evil.

>>97491 guys no hicklib is gonna say nigger this is bait

>>97508 >Only privileged, petite bourgeois people can afford to over-analyze their identity and break it down to the level of an abstract, insignificant signifier, when its advantageous enough, anyone but the extremely honest will do this. Id say it seems like it can be advantageous to be a AAPIMMIWG2SLGBTQI+; this ideology isn't merely the realm of the leisure class, though politics perhaps, as always, is.

>>97499 This is gibbering nonsense. If I said your loved ones have NO right over your body, your only rebuttal is to stomp your feet. You have internalized christcultism, you think that a person's life is not their own, that humans just exist to serve others and feed your exploitative society. You are literally arguing that you can harm others, but it doesn't count because they should just get over themselves. How dare they suffer when they see those they hold most dear mutilate themselves and waste away. (I didn't even have to change a single word of this part) You serve a cruel taskmaster, and he will take and take and take until you have nothing left. (Again I didn't have to change a single word, except that I will add that your taskmaster isn't satisfied with only destroying and stealing your life, he demands everyones and that is what makes him humanities greatest adversary.)

>>97512 >stealing your life He lent it to you and not to do with it as you like. If you disobey it is you who are stealing.

One need only browse on tum'blr for a few minutes before they run into some people pushing very troubling ideas under the banners of "k!nk", "identity", etc. The trouble generally is the whole "identity politics" thing is a mote & bailey play: "I have a strong defense about my identity, and I should get the dignity allowed to other human beings" is used to defend "I should be able to act like a complete degenerate and spew harm upon others" and, in more extreme cases, "I should be able to corrupt and harm your children, because my identity makes me this way". Most of these things are bullshit. People refuse to take responsibility for themselves, and consistently say "it is how I am" or other similar bullshit. I'm not talking about the dog whizzle "personal responsibility" that right wang dip soykafs like to prattle on about, but the absolute necessity and requirement we have to conform to societal expectations on the extreme fringes. We don't need to "normalize" pdfile behaviour, even if it is shrouded in "k!nk". We sure as soykaf don't need to tolerate people shoving their sexual dviance (and I mean *devance*) into our faces, let alone our childrens', or even just shoving their sexual behaviours broadly into our faces. Keep it in the bedroom. We don't need to be prudes, but we also don't need to constantly let it all hang out. Calling these freaks a "counter-culture" is like calling A!DS "a mild inconvenience coming from a minor indiscretion"; reality reminds us that A!DS comes from severe risk-taking behaviour and the people who trumpet their "v!rtue" because they couldn't be assed to show themselves enough self-respect to protect themselves are leading us down a socially degraded path. Most people who were part of historic counter cultures are lining up, pointing out that "we didn't intend this" (ie. boumers and their cohorts). I don't give two rats asses about tranns or fruits, but I also don't need to be involved in their degneracy. I also take extreme exception to their weaponization of children to further their agenda of lowering our collective standards, as well as the involvement of literal children in their sexual behaviours. Identity politics itself isn't a big deal, but the people who hide behind it are not who they claim to be. (also, I had to edit this a bunch because "make a better post". The filters are actually harming the ability of us to talk here about this topic.)

tumblr seems a lot more like counterculture to me than places like imageboards where people are saying the same things that grumpy old dads on facebook are saying. i suppose it depends on who you follow, but it seems like most of the stuff i see on tumblr nowadays isn't even really that radical or even political, it's mostly stuff pertaining to mental health and living with disabilities and stuff like that, people telling others not to kill themselves or not to feel like they are worthless for needing to use a wheelchair or take medication or whatever. meanwhile you look at places like this and it's the opposite, it's just pure nihilism and misanthropy and people telling others to kill themselves all the time or people talking about wanting to kill themselves or lamenting about how they'll never find love etc. honestly i can't really handle places like this in large doses anymore like i did when i was younger, it gets emotionally draining to be around people who obviously have very severe depression and don't want to do anything about it but try to make others feel as bad as they do.

>>97519 s/tumblr/chans/g,s/places like this/tumblr/g I see there's venting here, but it is batshit crazy how fuarrrked up tumblr is if you don't look at the most surface level posts.

>>97519 >grumpy old dads on facebook I don't see these dads demanding that women's voting rights be repealed, the age of cons3nt be lowered or Israel be nuked. Though there is a substantial cvckservative population on imageboards now ever since they were driven off of Reddit and decided they belonged here for some godforsaken reason.

>>97519 >counterculture okay, but is counterculture for the sake of counterculture really something worth pursuing? Won't deny that the vibe in IBs these days is more on the pessimistic grandpa side, and maybe complaining about kink normalization, body positivity and trans reading circles is FB-daddy tier, but doesn't that just mean your counter-culturism has gone so far to the extreme that you resonate with not a single normal person and in fact alienate 90% of people you come across? at least the boom*r generations had actual oppressive social structures which to fight against. Today's fights are done *with* the system and relies heavily on bureaucracy in order to enforce them and create system change. I mean, hell, if the boom*rs had been offended by gendered ID cards, they'd have burned their IDs and smashed a few government building while doing so. Today's kids cry and moan on twitter and do temper tantrums out on the streets with the most obnoxious, dumb way they possibly could in order to make the policy-makers so embarrased that they end up running those changes through the system for them in order to just shut them up. What kind of counterculture is that supposed to be?

>>97522 >at least the boom*r generations had actual oppressive social structures which to fight against. We still have tons of those, stop pretending this isn't a thing anymore.

>>97513 This is why your cult is evil. It's why the abrahamics are incompatible with western civilization and basic reality. It warps morality, ethics and philosophy into something profane. >>97514 Every single problem you just mentioned is pushed on a gargantuan scale by the Synagogues, Churches and Mosques across this country and yet you will blame the people who don't do these things for perpetuating these things. Trans people don't molest kids, the christians do. Trans people don't support child marriage, the christians, muslims and jews do.AIDS is all but cured, no thanks to the big three that stood in the way of the scientific research that actually combats it. Between the Mormons, Catholics, Amish, Orthodox Jews and Pentacostals you really have no shortage of child predators, but sure, blame the less than 1% of trans people in the country.

>>97522 >Today's kids cry and moan on twitter and do temper tantrums out on the streets tell that to audrey hale tell that to Jesse Van Rootselaar tell that to robert westman tell that to tyler robinson

>>97525 Literally just temper tantrums with guns and collateral damage. Apart from the victims, who the fuarrrk cares anyway? school shootings and stabbings happen pretty much every other month within the US, and people can come up with any number of justifications for mindlessly lashing out. It's nothing special. An ape with a kalashnikov could do that.

>>97522 >okay, but is counterculture for the sake of counterculture really something worth pursuing? i think it is. i think even if you had a utopian iain m. banks society where everything worked flawlessly and there is no death or disease or crime or war and everyone can spend eternity doing whatever they desire, there would still be value in having a segment of the population who push back against it and choose to live their lives in a different way and adopt a different mindset than the mainstream, because despite how perfect and seemingly omnipotent this utopian society may be there will always be some unforeseeable catacalysm waiting around the corner, some vastly greater force that eventually disrupts every society and destroys every person and every system that is unable to adapt to the disruption. no matter how strong goku becomes he must always continue training and challenging himself and pushing his boundaries because there will always be some more powerful villain who comes along sooner or later.

>>97521 >I don't see these dads demanding that women's voting rights be repealed, the age of cons3nt be lowered or Israel be nuked. Though there is a substantial cvckservative population on imageboards now ever since they were driven off of Reddit and decided they belonged here for some godforsaken reason. the specifics of their gripes may be different but the sentiment behind it is very much the same - people who fell out of sync with the progression of society because of their isolation and obstinance and fear of change and sheltered position and they're lonely and bored and angry and confused and they don't understand the world anymore and all they want to do is lash out and wallow in their own misery. people who fell out of the boat and they are desperately screaming and grasping at the hull but the boat keeps on sailing and the people aboard can't help them because there are too many of them and if they reach out they will get pulled in with them.

>>97524 tard alert tard alert tard alert.... >>97529 the alphabt mafia are asking for these things, but more skillfully... i hate to be the person to ask, but... is the whole A00C thing kind of retarded? i mean like... if they want to fuarrrk, let them? i have no horse in the race, but it seems more and more that the pearl clutching is somewhat based in creating artificial scarcity rather than actually protecting anybody. >>97529

>>97530 >creating artificial scarcity Well those of us who don't cross the line also have an incentive not to let other guys cross the line. Dropping it by two years would just give you +33% women under 25. Is dilution of young female bargaining power to 75% enough to change the trajectory? A difference makes a difference but the population numbers for the good stock are dropping anyway. There is also an actual biological change in the progression of puberty from male contact. Like timber, women are best grown without haste.

>>97529 >the specifics of their gripes may be different but the sentiment behind it is very much the same - people who fell out of sync with the progression of society because of their isolation and obstinance and fear of change and sheltered position and they're lonely and bored and angry and confused and they don't understand the world anymore This is a very reductionist and strawmannish view of these people. Progress isn't always in the correct direction, change isn't always good and new doesn't always mean better. "hurr durr they're all just dumb backwoods hick rubes" is not only wrong (many men with STEM skill are in their ranks), it's profoundly unhelpful as a framework with which to understand why people would believe differently from you. >>97531 >Well those of us who don't cross the line also have an incentive not to let other guys cross the line. So the question then becomes, why don't you cross the line? Because the idea that you're operating on what you have an incentive to do is a very different story than the people who say it's about morals are telling. >women are best grown without haste Women don't age like wine. >>97530 >artificial scarcity Yeah, that's what it's always been about. All this soykaf about you'll traumatize a teen girl by fuarrrking her if you're above a certain age but she can get a train run on her by her classmates is doublethink at its most revolting. You can either consent or you can't.

Equality according to law - regardless of sex, religion, or social class. That is the goal. 'Nuff said.

>>97479 I'm afraid you've been taken for a ride, OP. What you characterize as "The [identity politics] revolution" is really just the co-option of revolutionary tendencies into a form of "pro-empire" expression that serves to divide people and keep them from fighting alongside arbitrary social construct differences. Kaczynski discusses this phenomenon in Industrial Society and Its Future. The Empire is not "losing ground" as you characterize it, with the rise of identity politics. They are using it as a weapon to depress actual revolutionaries. The "Alphabet Mafia" are, essentially, eunuch slave-soldiers who are slavishly loyal to the regime that gives them power, legitimacy, and protects them from criticism and attack. The narrative of "identity politics people" as an oppressed underclass falls apart when it has the support of massive institutional investors, corporations, and mainstream news sources and political parties. Mark Carney, The Prime Minister of Canada, ex of the Bank of England, and current UN and World Economic Forum darling has recently gone on record saying that LGBTQ+ rights are an unshakeable policy of his party, and that anyone who joins his party will be required to support this policy. I don't think a fringe political movement would get this much support from "The Empire." unless it was somehow beneficial to them.

Good OP, it's a shame how many c/hum/mers seemingly have and will get offended by it. >>97524 These are small minority religions in the United States which is probably the country with the most child predation in the world. Southern Baptism is its own beast that has all of these issues and more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_abuse_cases_in_Southern_Baptist_churches Specific sexual abuse cases are of course only the tip of the iceberg, look inside and you'll find organized crime rings and police collusion, look further still and you'll see how the very structure of our society consists of these institutions that reify capitalism and dare I say it, patriarchy in the form of sex trafficking. The problem is not merely the excesses of overtly hierarchicalized religion but rather the very groundwork which gives rise to these institutions in the first place. >>97519 There's other chans that have different attitudes. The difference between imageboards and social media is that imageboards are more collectivist, in that you're foremost a member of a community rather than an audience. If you want to go get an understanding of say, left-wing politics, rather than follow a political blogger you go to something like leftypol or getchan. on tumblr you can find people saying all sorts of things, though there is a general consensus that leans towards white liberalism or radical liberalism, this is because it is primarily a fandom space where discussion of shows is the most important and political discussion tends to be downstream of that. So, things like critical theory are basically paramount in that space politically speaking because it is the most useful tool. lch on the other hand is primarily a tech discussion forum and downstream views tend to be more reflective of the politics of the tech industry than culture studies. This results in some unique viewpoints as well as some blind spots, but I want to point out that we are (still) using tumblr as an example as evidence enough that the communities are really not that far apart at all, there's plenty of cross posters. Larger imageboards used to be more oriented about another subject, anime and Japanese culture, but since gamergate, Qanon and the fappening their audience has gotten significantly older. It has also shifted the primarily discussed form of media to have a different focus which is pornography, and political discussion on them is therefore downstream of the politics of porn. >>97508 Ever since you newf♡gs "won" the debate over censoring anarchism you have done nothing but strawman the corpse of those who can't speak for themselves. You should be ashamed of yourself, you won't, because your statist zealotry sees it as only another second of validation towards your overall goal of crushing any dissenting opinion on the very serious public speech forum of anonymous internet discussion boards. The politics underlying woke come across as unproductive and contradictory because it is a new political coalition which hasn't clearly ironed out its contradictions or really has a party line to speak of, it is also the case that many "woke"ists are highly educated, but also young. So what you get is lots of people figuring out politics for the first time and trying to develop their own theories using the tools and frameworks that they're given, they frequently come into conflict with one another for this reason as well. The central conflict to progressive politics now is the same as it has always been, progressive liberal reformism and left wing radicalism with much to debate on which is which exactly - your Marxist-Leninist will argue that anarchy is basically a radicalized form of liberalism with no structural backbone whereas the (well defended) liberal line is that you don't *really* want a serious political upheaval, you want the luxuries of modern society and capitalism with a few more affordances such as taxpayer-inexpensive healthcare, the right to start a business, abortion, marriage and sex equality, affordable education, and so on. When this movement organizes in forms of black lives matter it is further driven to reformism - the conversion of social critique to policies that are then voted on and implemented by the liberal state - because, among other reasons, there is a vested interest by the powers that be to maintain capitalist democracy (if such a thing were to exist) and prevent widespread chaos. This can include law enforcement in the form of glowies, but they are really not as influential as the policies of the platforms that host speech that are by and large owned by the haves of society. >>97497 The underlying problem you are both pointing to is representationalism, the idea that these issues sort of exist as genericized subjects who can thus be represented by identities whose only exception from what a TV show might portray as "a normal person" are the specific qualities. The result of these politics is the frame in which your average worker is a cishet white guy named Joe, your average black person is a petty bourgeois (middle class) straight guy named Joe, your average lesbian is a white small business owner named Joanna, and so on. It is pretty divorced from the reality of a population which while largely cishet, is increasingly bisexual, increasingly still lives with parents and primarily works for very little in service with generally one financial crisis away from total financial ruin. This is not a situation in which being one identity typically involves some form of compensation to the mean such as being an upwardly mobile professional, but rather goes hand in hand with being poor which the vast majority are. There is no real conflict between understanding marginalized identities as oppressed and understanding capitalism as procedurally creating an impoverished lower class to functionally live as servants to the wealthy minority. Of course there are some complications to this such as böömers being subsidized in many ways by the state as a result of their previous domination - see the issues around home price valuations being propped up and the amount of entitlements they are generally given, but you may notice the poorer members of this group die off much younger.

>>97537 >Kaczynski discusses this phenomenon in Industrial Society and Its Future lol i like how you are talking about him like he was some kind of famous respected intellectual and not an insane closeted-tranny serial killer worshipped by fellow confused fringe loners this reminds me of an interesting excerpt i read by Gacy in Why I Love To Skull fuarrrk Little Boys...

>>97527 Okay. I kind of get and, to an extent, agree with what you're saying, and I appreciate the utopian argument, but within the context it just doesn't seem to add up. We're talking about identity politics and wokeism while you speak of "unforeseeable cataclysm" as a scenario for which we're preparing by testing our societal immune response... I mean, okay? I wouldn't exactly equate identity politics with an "End Time Calamity". Is the challenge foundational? Perhaps. Will it destroy the fabric of Western civilization alone? Not really, no. But I don't see how that would prepare us for a Forever War with China, Russia and Iran, or a 100 year nuclear winter, Climate change or global hunger. Additionally, Goku never shot himself in the foot as a training exercise in order to become a better, stronger version if himself. He did it by facing his weaknesses, beating bad guys, defending the weak, undergoing grueling training regiments, eating healthy, making friends and learning new skills. I see nothing that would even remotely resemble something like that in these modern day counter-culture movements. If anything, I'm seeing the exact opposite.

>>97540 >If you want to go get an understanding of say, left-wing politics, rather than follow a political blogger you go to something like leftypol I simultaneously posted this same thread on leftypol and got more or less the same responses. Actually they were even more reactionary and stupid there than the responses I've gotten here. You can go look right now if you want.

>>97543 Well that is like kicking dead whales down the beach. I'm gonna be honest, I have never used that place and only really remember it from the bat'ko era. I still maintain that culturally reactionary leftists are psyop, ive never met one in real life and the closest I've encountered are odd flavors of identitarian fascist with tumblr blogs and the like.

>>97533 >>97536 Old enough to bleed... It's always meant to privilege (specific) groups. When we catch them with their pants down, everybody is shocked because they bought into the con. Go out and find a nice cute thing if you are inclined. I'm done white knighting for a00c bullshit, I'm over the con. Not my thing, but really: why should I give a fuarrrk?

>Ever since you newf♡gs "won" the debate over censoring anarchism you have done nothing but strawman the corpse of those who can't speak for themselves. You should be ashamed of yourself, you won't, because your statist zealotry sees it as only another second of validation towards your overall goal of crushing any dissenting opinion on the very serious public speech forum of anonymous internet discussion boards. ????????????? I don't think I am a newf*g, and even if I were, I wouldn't know what debate it is that I supposedly have won, nor do I know anything about censoring anarchism. And whose corpse am I strawmanning? Bakunin? I'm not Musk, nor do I own any social platforms. Dunno why you'd accuse me of "crushing any dissenting opinions", but if you seriously believe someone on IBs who's having "le very very serious political discussions on super duper important stuff" with random people would have such power, I really don't know what to say to you. >because it is a new political coalition dude (or dudette? i don't fckn know...), they've had more than a decade to get their soykaf together. The fuarrrking n*zi parties in Europe sure have in the mean time, despite the dozens of supposedly unique ethnic and national identities apparently standing in the way of their racism. With the current progress of progressive leftists, I doubt we'll be seeing political breakthroughs anytime soon. Dunno from where you're looking at the situation, but within EU I think the only progressives who've got their soykaf together seem to be the Greens. Sure, even they've got a liberal wing where they too engage with identity politics to a degree, but at the very least they've got a coherent worldview nailed down, and have their priorities in order, unlike most of the Socialist/Labour/Liberal parties these days. >The underlying problem you are both pointing to is representationalism, the idea that these issues sort of exist as genericized subjects who can thus be represented by identities whose only exception from what a TV show might portray as "a normal person" are the specific qualities. You mistake the meaning of my comment. I wasn't really invested in the idea of a "Joe" as anything but a pure abstraction, a stand-in for the 95% of people who, economically speaking, are the suckers of our society. For instance, it doesn't, or shouldn't, matter what you do in your bedroom and with whom imo. I'm not a religious nut, nor a conservative, and I do see the idea behind the theory of intersectionality. That being said, my most fundamental disagreement with all the current progressive mainstream movements is the fact that you can't unify the people behind ideas which stress the uniqueness of each social group's suffering. Pointing out the scientific statistical fact that, all else being equal, working class men of native american descent fare socially and economically significantly worse than working class men of white descent, doesn't really foster a sense of unity of purpose and a shared struggle, despite being true. It merely serves to pit these two ethnic categories against each other, and it would require super-human levels of empathy, compassion and understanding in order to make their cooperation work after being made aware of such a fact. That's not how you build unity and comeraderie between people. It's by focusing on what all people, regardless of race, sex, and their unique bodily condition, share: the fact that we're all getting the shorter end of the stick, and that we ought to come together to make it better for all of us. Yeah, I know... "tell that to the white cis men, who refuse to recognize past errors, and make them right" .../sigh Either way, nothing I've seen being offered by contemporary thinkers of progressive circles gives me reason to believe they could offer an equally powerful philosophical vision that is comparable to the Soviet block's idea of Equality, with a capital E. Seeing as the spirit of time can't travel back in time, and a notion such as "Fairness" won't be able to cut it, I doubt the Left will be able to overcome this dialectical conundrum in a manner which resonates with the average person any time soon, which is why I suspect we'll be seeing at least another decade of Dark Ages for the Left as a whole before we can see even a glimmer of light for progressive politics. >....progressive liberal reformism and left wing radicalism with much to debate on which is which exactly... anyway, I appreciate you pointing out this fact. It's good to keep these kinds of dynamics in mind while evaluating our current political landscape and its development.

honestly i feel a lot of it is cope because marx didn't really envision that you'd have entire nations with little to no true proletariat because almost all the productive labor happens elsewhere. he didn't envision an entire class whose true purpose is hyper-consumption with only the barest pretense of labor. yes america has poverty, deprivation, suffering, etc but a lot of left wing revolutionary theory is built specifically around productive forces. it doesn't propose revolution as a phenomenon that occurs in response to general sadism thus i think identity politics is more likely to just be itself and not a revolution. another political current within the empire

>>97508 >That's my basic grievance with all this this; bottom-up, voluntary-based, authority-less communities sound nice, fine and dandy, and all on paper, but the reality is that there are always bad apples and hostile parties to ruin it for the rest of them. Isn't that what Donald Trump said about mail-in voting? That's the classic authoritarian narrative - any kind of human cooperation is impossible when it comes to the regular working class masses, only the elite oligarchs are intelligent and civilized enough to cooperate and work together for the greater good.

>>97552 I wouldn't put any weight on Trump's sayings and doings. He does and says anything he can to appeal to the masses, because that's what populists do. He isn't a scientist, he isn't a theoretician, nor a philosopher, barely even a politician. >any kind of human cooperation is impossible when it comes to the regular working class masses I haven't said that. I said that volunteer-based, bottom-up, authority-less communities almost always end up failing, and that the way they fail is always the same. I even gave up real-life, concrete examples of these failures, but let's shed a light little bit of light on this. When you base your commune on volunteerism, the work they do to prop up the commune and keep it running then depends on people who have that "spirit of volunteerism". That arrangement usually starts well, but over the years, since participation in that commune is optional, when going gets tough people can just bail on the commune, or they end up cutting back on some of those volunteer-run tasks they used to have (like collective kitchens, volunteer news papers, schools and libraries). That's the reason these projects dwindle in numbers at the mid-point: because some people just do not think they have a stake in the commune's well-being. Contrast that to, say, the Kibbutz movement: it was a do or die situation for many, meaning that, although the members were taking part in the project out of their own volition, they had to commit to it, because there was no plan B to fall back on, which meant forced compliance: rules to obey, leaders to follow, quotas to fill, rotating task shifts, and duties being assigned. Yes, you can sustain the commune and avoid these top-down, involuntary, authority-based tendencies for a time when the members of that community are, to use your words, "intelligent and civilized enough", although the better choice of words would, in my opinion, be "principled and socialized" - you can be dumb as a boot, and lack table manners, but still be indispensable to the community; despite that, you *have to* be on the same page with the other members of the commune and agree with the overall goal of the project and with the means to it. But, again, people grow old and weak, and then they die. If the next generation isn't socialized properly into the ways of the commune, they end up leaving the commune, because they can't relate to any of it, not the reasons, not the principles, not the ideas, when there are amazing toys and gadgets and Big Things waiting in the world outside the small commune to pull them away. I've got another appropriate saying for this: "progress is made a funeral at a time". So, if you want to keep a community alive, you have to enforce socialization. That means mandatory schooling, education, indoctrination, what have you. This is the critical point of failure with these sorts of communes. Parents don't want to deprive their children of opportunities and healthcare, so they are among the first ones to skidaddle, or, if they don't do that, then the first generation of new (volunteer) members of the commune will, because they can't see why the hell their parents would run away from all these riches and amusements of the outside world. And when that happens, there goes the future of the commune along with them. As for the "bad apples and hostile parties" I had mentioned, whether you like it or not, there are dumb, egotistical, petty, greedy, power hungry, and outright malevolent, evil people in the world too. And yes, such people really do fuarrrk it up for all the rest us. Although the lack of children to perpetuate the commune is the critical one, it doesn't really help the commune either if your members can "come and go as they please" and if there aren't any rules or an authority structure to enforce those rules/desired behavior, then occasionally it just so happens that one or two of your commune's free houses gets torched, deconstructed or destroyed, because there are no consequences for these people. I could continue, but I suspect you aren't overtly receptive to any of this, so I'll just leave it at that.

>>97536 That would be when everyone have the same rules and the different sexes, religions and classes are not even mentioned. When you have laws, regulations or economic incentives to have a minimum number of [identity], then you don't have equality, you have inequalities enforced by authority.

>>97562 >volunteer-based, bottom-up, authority-less communities almost always end up failing Whereas Amurrica, the Roman Empire, and Twitter will endure forever

>>97567 Obviously nothing lasts forever - once again, not something I was claiming or arguing for. No need to act daft, it's unbecoming of you. But even you have to admit there's clearly a drastic, demonstrable difference between a mud-hut community that lasts for 5-30 years and a civilization that does 50 to +250 years. And even if and when a civilization dies its legacy and influence often carries well beyond its natural lifespan. Can't say the same of a small commune trying to reinvent the wheel, to be frank.

>>97549 >What corpse are you strawmanning? I was dramatically referring to the left-wing anarchism general, which was gratuitously deleted by mods for no clear reason. More generally I was referring to how lainchan was more permissive of anarchists under its older administration. >If you seriously believe It was joke. That's why I said "serious business", because the Internet is serious business. >More than a decade to get their soykaf together, meanwhile the Nazis have become organized The Nazis have been recycling their talking points from the 1990s and might as well be from the 1990s, or even the 1980s - there's a very real argument to be made that this current era of fascism comes out of siege journal and the psychedelic fascism of that period. Whereas the left, at the time, was on the now-dead alter/anti globalism movement that all but simmered out by the mid 2010s, but you can see vestiges of in things like the pirate party or platforms like riseup.net. What we have now is absolutely a train wreck but I'm specifically referring to the coalition that began with occupy and at some point along the way saw its constituency, especially its online constituency, broken up. I would argue that it was "successful" at framing things such that these issues are unavoidable, every politician must address them and this has remained the case in spite of efforts to create new distractions such as the trans menace. In many ways I would consider it to have victories, such as the minimum wage or the election of Zohran Mamdami to be the mayor of the largest city in the world, who Trump's friendliness towards (perhaps reminiscent of Mussolini's towards gramsci) is only the more evidence of how progressives have managed to frame the debate. The progressive reactions you're expecting - "tell that to white cis man", etc exist not because of rhetoric that has been disseminated by law enforcement, but rather because politicians know they can target political minorities to gain favors with their base. Expecting, successfully, a reaction from their opposition that the coalition can't work together on. It is very much true that liberals marry to idpol and attempt to use it as a bludgeon against or a distraction from class struggle, but it is imo necessary to recognize that class struggle would not be necessary if it weren't for the oppressions that are spoken of. >Doesn't really foster a sense of unity >Nobody came close to equality with a capital E Among other factors counter-soviet strategies first perfected by the CIA didn't just disappear as soon as they happened. Trying to replicate the Soviet formula by ignoring differences won't work because we are historically past the soviets, unfortunately. The modern equivalent might be the left-leaning social democracy of China which censors homosexual content for exactly the reasons you're saying, it has caused serious problems for them. I think my soapbox is just that you should be more considerate of anarchy because the cold war never quite ended, rather the main enemy of the United States has become China and a kind of mutual siloing off has occurred wherever the US gov doesn't see it as beneficial for Americans to see the Chinese internet and vice versa with the great firewall. Here we see two ideologically opposed governments that agree on one thing: the censorship and surveillance of their population.

>>97567 There are studies on this. When population gets to ~250 for some reason the aggressive sociopaths take over and eventually destroy it with their tendencies - They are the violent crazy ones, if you question them they kill you. Without an organized force or legal structure(which requires enforcement) this is the doom of every protocommune.

>>97578 Do you have the studies in question? I'm skeptical considering that "sociopath" seems broadly defined as someone who would be rejected from large communities, no?

>>97578 >There are studies on this. When population gets to ~250 for some reason the aggressive sociopaths take over and eventually destroy it with their tendencies Yes exactly - so maybe the answer is to not have social groups where the population is over 250. Instead of building huge centralized empires and maintaining the social order by imposing top-down structure and hierarchy and governing everyone's behavior with authority figures using brute force and propaganda, just don't build empires to begin with and instead have lots and lots of very small interconnected communities where people can govern themselves directly without leaders or hierarchy. It is important to remember that the beginning of our recorded human history, i.e. the Neolithic Revolution, is not the beginning of our actual history. Before we developed agriculture and tamed animals and gained the ability to build huge centralized communities, human civilization was going strong for hundreds of thousands of years as lots and lots of interconnected small nomadic tribes. Despite its technological limitations this extremely diverse and decentralized iteration of human civilization was remarkably resilient, surviving ice ages and supervolcano eruptions and other global cataclysms that we can barely comprehend in our relatively short history. Since the dawn of the Empire during the Neolithic Revolution, human conflicts and extraction of resources have become gradually become more and more disruptive to the planet, eventually reaching the point where we have come very close to destroying all life on Earth with thermonuclear warfare and our inability to manage our carbon output is approaching a tipping point where the entire planetary climate will soon be irreversibly disrupted with disastrous and unpredictable ramifications that will be felt for centuries. Moreover there are the less-discussed psychological implications of the Empire, people living in these huge centralized communities where the very nature of the social structure is so dehumanizing and ironically-isolating that things like mental illness and suicide and addiction have become systemic global crises. There are some like the Unabomber who blame technology for this, but I think that isn't rational nor helpful as technology is natural evolutionary progression that cannot be reversed or stopped, and at any rate I don't think the correlation between technological progress and the Empire is necessarily a causation. It's not like the nomadic Stone Age era of human civilization was devoid of technology, it was just that the technology had not yet reached the stage where humans could have any lasting impact on the world around them. I think the problem is psychological, I think that technological development vastly outpaces psychological development, humans invent brilliant things but fail to understand the true ramifications of their own inventions until it is much too late. So to go back to what I was saying before in the original post, I think the appropriate course of action is to look inward instead of outward, instead of trying to change the world and adapt it to our psychology we need to start changing our psychology to adapt to the world. It is statistically quite remarkable how little we know about ourselves compared to how much we have learned about things outside of ourselves. Psychology, neurology, these sciences are so poorly-studied and poorly-understood and there very real resistance and disdain for the very of idea studying the human mind. It was not until very recently that the field of psychology even studied human thought at all; for a long time it merely studied human behavior and focused solely on trying to identify and correct abnormal behavior, as if we already knew exactly how the brain was supposed to work and it was just a matter of figuring out how to fix the brains that aren't operating properly. We've made a little bit of headway since those days but even now there is constant resistance along the way from the Empire, because there is no greater threat to the Empire than humans figuring out how to understand themselves.

>>97577 >I was dramatically referring to the left-wing anarchism general, which was gratuitously deleted by mods for no clear reason. Ah, now that you mention it, that does sound familiar, although I could be mistaken. I wasn't aware of such shenanigans having taken place. Was this before or after the lainchan got burned the first time? Anyway, I have to say that, although I don't support Anarchism (yes, I'll admit it: I'm a "statist zealot", as you put it), I still don't think it's okay to shut down threads and discussions about it, because I appreciate the basic Anarchist critique of Statism. It helps to keep political discussions around power, governance, authority, oppression, and violence real, without sugar-coating the cold, harsh facts of it. >It was joke. Ah, gotcha. I did pick up on the "serious business" part, but based on the interactions with the other lainon(s?) on this thread, I decided not to take any chances and hence bet on the safer side. Apologies. Can't be too careful these days... Overall, regarding the rest of your post, I agree with you, and appreciate the good points you made. There were a couple of things I wanted to touch upon. >The Nazis have been recycling Sure. One could even say that the basic message or ideological foundation hasn't really changes since the 1940s. Only the context has. For instance, the notion of an exclusive 'gemeinschaft' is no longer justified on the grounds of them being of the "chosen Aryan race" or trying to larp as the successors of the Roman Empire, but rather the very notion has been watered down to a category of 'white', which apparently is no longer even closed off from 'non-whites'. ...just now realized we have, regrettably, yet again managed to devolve this conversion to the level of discussing nazis as it so typically happens (damn you, Godwin!), so maybe that's enough of that. >comes out of siege journal and the psychedelic fascism of that period. I've heard of Siege (the quasi-movement?), but am not aware of the existence of an outright journal, nor of "psychedelic fascism". Any interesting links on these? >...it has caused serious problems for them Ofc, but while the censorship applies well beyond homosexuality too, I think the severity of the problems that the CCP is faced with haven't yet grown to such proportions that they couldn't manage and eventually overcome them. I can't recall who said it, but basically the CCP justifies their repression to the people by the stability and opportunities the Chinese are provided by the party's reign, and as long as that is the case, the majority of the Chinese population will tolerate it all, and I suspect it's going to take a while before something happens to change this matter of fact. >Here we see two ideologically opposed governments that agree on one thing: the censorship and surveillance of their population. 100% agree with you there. It is extremely concerning, and this is, yet again, an issue where I think the anarchist critique of Statism is very poignant and on-point. Once established, a state's power and control tends to grow and become more totalitarian in nature, not less, because the fundamental impetus of the bureaucrat-politician is to make societies predictable and thereby more manageable, which means hindering or killing off the spontaneity inherent to life, which is equivalent to making life within nation states "less human". Despite that, I tend to think it's a rather small price to pay for all the progress humanity has made in exchange, but that's just my 2 cents on it.

>Give us our >voices >bodies >rights >>BACK They never had those three things to begin with. Not once in history. This is as cringe as it's stupid, as if we were in 2050 and the entire world had regressed to a true global facsist world view. But no, we're not even in 2030 and the homo club keeps moving forward in great strides, gaining rights it never had nor deserved. This is fundamentally a cult of demented people with no reasoning capability, preying on the once healthy multitude to nourish the sickly few. It is peak dysgenics. OP's post is just as brain damaged garbage of the purest leftist type. The "Empire" is what was based on truth. You LGBTZKP%+/- people are totally nuts. You cannot face truth, you hate truth. The world never was built for equality. It's not coincidence that you fester on the wounds of a society that is rotten and falling apart. Enjoy your time while you can. You think this is progress because you're crawling out of a hole that was created to keep you in, in the first place. Because the society's immune defenses are attacked from within.

>>97501 >Just like I can look at a puppy who hurt their paw. Everything is their with you, right?

OP doesn't go in to what identity politics is at all, except to imply that it isn't a real thing. It's very real, and in my opinion, harmful to the people who it claims to support. Example: there is a very real issue of american indians of various tribes, especially women, being murdered and raped at much higher rates than the rest of the population. The obvious solution is to build an intersectional, deconolonial framework of history to study the multifaceted oppression of native americans, right? If you disagree you're a bigot and we'll kick up a big fuss trying to get you fired. SO MUCH effort is devoted to this sort of thing, effort which needs to be devoted towards goals which would actually help. There's also some more sinister things, such as Julian Assange's "rape allegations" which are a very transparent attempt at capturing and torturing a political dissident. Many people don't even know what the allegations are or the story of how they have been handled, they only know that Assange is vaguely icky because they disagree with wikileaks' handling of certain cables and now they have a valid-looking reason to dislike him.

>>97514 Keep in mind a major reason the AIDS crisis was a crisis, was because the federal government refused to do anything about it. In their minds, it was a good thing that the gays were dying, even though many people who got HIV were not gay and did not have a sexually promiscuous lifestyle (not that this would justify complete inaction or discrimination against them).

>>97679 >OP doesn't go in to what identity politics is at all, except to imply that it isn't a real thing. That's because from all I've seen, nobody ever goes into what identity politics is at all, it's just this vague nebulous term that gets thrown around a lot to discredit any group's political grievances without actually having to address them. Everyone has an identity, after all - I can't think of any political issue that is not intertwined with some person's identity, can you? Usually "identity politics" is nothing more than an ad hominem attack lobbed at marginalized people trying to talk about some issue that affects them personally, implying that they are being selfish by talking about these issues and not having a broader conversation. And it seems like the term is always being wielded by the more privileged group who, despite on the surface seem to be appealing to solidarity, never actually take the conversation any further and talk about how these problems might all be connected in some way, it's just a way to derail and shut down the discussion entirely. As far as I can tell, it's a loaded term and the people who use it are simply drinking the Kool-Aid of the ruling class who employ these kinds of divide-and-conquer tactics to keep every kind of social concern separated in its own discrete category and impose their own self-centeredness and myopia on the general public to prevent any kind of solidarity from forming. >The obvious solution is to build an intersectional, deconolonial framework of history to study the multifaceted oppression of native americans, right? I think that it is naive to think that there could be any obvious solution to a problem like this, but I would agree that that might be a good place to start. But what you are talking about actually exists and it is commonly referred to as "critical race theory" and the white nationalist far-right who are currently running the country are vehemently opposed to critical race theory and fully committed to eradicating it from the education system, and they use their vast propaganda network very effectively to discredit the idea as anti-white reverse-racism indoctrination by the radical left, regardless of how intersectional it might be.

>>97688 >marginalized no such thing. "marginalized" people are usually a small but indicative subset of a group. everything about how "marginalized" they are is bullshit. there are many usrful and functional blacks and even transgenders. the ones who complain are literally full of soykaf. let them die.

>>97688 >Everyone has an identity, after all - I can't think of any political issue that is not intertwined with some person's identity, can you? "Identity politics" refers to political discourse/movements which focus on the racial, sexual, gender, disability, etc. categories that people fit in to and envisions those categories as the factors primarily important in politics. Meaning, they see the categories you fit in as your "team", and the focus is on the categories that you don't get to choose, like your skin color. This differentiates it from other political ideologies. For instance, Marxists view your class as your "team", nationalists view your nation as your "team" (which doesn't always correspond exactly to race or ethnicity), etc. That there are left-wing identity politics as well as right-wing identity politics. Both are bad, for different reasons, but the right-wing one is pretty clearly worse as it includes white nationalism and nazism. > it's a loaded term and the people who use it are simply drinking the Kool-Aid of the ruling class who employ these kinds of divide-and-conquer tactics Funny, I view the rise of identity politics in the left as exactly this sort of divide-and-conquer tactic. >But what you are talking about actually exists I'm well aware, I am critical of it. >the white nationalist far-right who are currently running the country are vehemently opposed to critical race theory and fully committed to eradicating it from the education system Indeed they are, and I think their opposition to critical race theory is pretty obviously an attempt at censoring academics. However, that doesn't mean I think the academics that spend time and energy on frivolous things like that are contributing usefully to their cause.

>>97690 >For instance, Marxists view your class as your "team", nationalists view your nation as your "team" And aren't those things just as much of a "team" as things like race, gender, sexuality, etc.? Marxists focus on problems specific to the working class, i.e. young able-bodied people who work for a wage and they embrace it as their identity. Nationalists focus on problems specific to natural-born citizens with all the proper documentation and they embrace that as their identity. >I'm well aware, I am critical of it. But you were just speaking in favor of the idea of critical race theory a moment ago when you said "The obvious solution is to build an intersectional, deconolonial framework of history to study the multifaceted oppression of native americans", now you are backpedaling and saying you are critical of that very idea.

>>97693 >And aren't those things just as much of a "team" as things like race, gender, sexuality, etc.? Yes, I literally said that. >But you were just speaking in favor of the idea of critical race theory a moment ago I'm beginning to think you have reading comprehension problems.

>>97695 >Yes, I literally said that. That's not what you said, you cited Marxism and Nationalism as counterexamples to identity politics based movements, you used the words "This differentiates it from other political ideologies." now you are backpedaling again. >I'm beginning to think you have reading comprehension problems. Or maybe you just suck at communicating. You say something and then people respond to it and then you pretend you said something different. You do realize this is a text-based medium and people can scroll up and re-read what you said, don't you? There's no takebacks on lainchan.

>>97696 >That's not what you said, you cited Marxism and Nationalism as counterexamples to identity politics based movements because they have different standards for what constitutes the team. >Or maybe you just suck at communicating. I'm pretty sure the problem here is you.

>>97675 >It is peak dysgenics. t. somebody who thinks it's eugenic for women to have children with gang members in prison while the genes of Melvin the nerd who built your laptop aren't passed on because hurr durr alpha male

>>97698 >the genes of Melvin the nerd who built your laptop aren't passed on More likely it was a Chinese man who built your laptop and those people do quite a lot of reproducing.

>>97700 Birth rates in China are below replacement levels just like almost every other developed country, so no.

>>97704 >Birth rates >replacement levels Oh boy, there it is.

>>97479 I want to bring up an insidious form of IP called IDPsyOP. IP has a context and limits to its application. It centers the voices of underprivileged folk, gives alternate perspectives, helps with deconstructing false ideas, etc. However, when it is used outside its limits it can create even bigger divides. I'll give you 2 obvious examples: Obama and Hillary. Both are hawkish imperialists. Both expanded warfare. Both expanded the military industrial complex. Both were pro-deportation and on and on. But at the times of their elections you would have been called 'racist' for not supporting Obama and 'sexist' for not supporting Hillary. So now IP has been weaponized. It made you support evil people because of their 'marginalized' specially selected identities. It made you vote for the 'lesser evil' because they waved a rainbow flag that one time and gave very stately speeches. I want to hear your thoughts about this...

>>97711 I agree with you 100%... In america there's been a major erasure of what was once peace, democracy, and freedom loving people with jingoist, imperialist, psuedo-liberal oligarchs hiding behind a thin veil of "diversity" or "acceptance"- the lesser evil is still very much an evil force at play. I miss bernie sanders and ron paul- you don't see those types of cats anymore lately. They seem to have been silenced.

>>97714 Sorry to say but Bernie is a zionist and a revisionist leading progressives back into supporting current power structures. Not familiar with Ron Paul...

>>97714 When he lost the 2016 dem primary Sanders a)claimed it was done fraudulently and b) immediately pivoted to supporting the allegedly fraudulent winner. Sanders is a spineless whiner, the most charitable view of him is that he's just a liar playing a certain type of voter to make them feel like part of the party. Otherwise he really believes what he says.

>>97716 >Bernie Sanders is a Zionist source? In any case, he's getting too old. The United States must undergo a period of restoration. On topic about identity politics. From a legal standpoint, the issue is how to defend people from discrimination and hate crime.

>>97711 This is just schizophrenic drivel. Imagine if you were talking to someone IRL on the street and they said this. I find that's a good mental exercise to re-center yourself back to reality when reading text posts on the internet is to visualize a face-to-face conversation where a random stranger on the street is saying all of this to you verbatim and what it would sound like being spoken aloud and how you might react to it.

>>97721 Strange that you're not concerned about results and general good but optics... dont know what to tell you. >>97719 He has stated Israel has a right to exit but given token criticism of Netanyahu individually (not the entire zionist project) while 'condemning khamas'. Cant find links now. At work. It shouldnt toa hard to find.

>>97722 he's not pro isreal or a zionist- he has explicitly stated that america shouldn't be funding isreal and has disavowed the IDF. honestly though if we compare isreal to the USA under andrew jackson- there's no tangible difference. both are foreign culture imperialist powers put in place originally by britain as a way to house religious refugees IE. Jews during WW2 and Puritans during the reformation.

>>97718 >When he lost the 2016 dem primary Sanders a)claimed it was done fraudulently and b) immediately pivoted to supporting the allegedly fraudulent winner. iirc he didn't claim it was fraudulent. Anyway, Sanders is a political realist, unlike many lefties. This might make him unpopular with people obsessed with ideological purity but it makes him an effective legislator. >playing a certain type of voter to make them feel like part of the party He joined the democratic party specifically to run for president. I don't think he's even a member of it any more. >>97716 You need to realize that ten years ago, the idea of a US senator criticizing Israel in any way was unheard of. The idea of a bill to help fund Israel not passing unanimously was unheard of. Calling Sanders a zionist because he's not sufficiently anti-zionist is fuarrrking stupid.

>>97725 what specific legislative achievements do you credit him with ?

>>97722 >Strange that you're not concerned about results and general good but optics... dont know what to tell you. What is "optics" for one person is another person's subtext. When you used the terms "insidious" and "IDPsyOp" I immediately got the impression that you are some kind of conspiracy crank who interprets every kind of random social phenomenon as a deliberate calculated attack. Then you went on to say that critics of Obama and Hillary were unfairly accused of being racists/misogynists, which I would agree was a very real phenomenon that happened, but then in the next sentence you make this huge intellectual leap to "So now IP has been weaponized" implying that these responses to legitimate criticisms were not just people being reactionary and stupid, but a deliberate calculated move by some shadowy malevolent force to silence all criticism. This kind of intellectual leap is schizophrenic thinking, jumping to the conclusion that every kind of social phenomenon that happens in our very chaotic random world is a purposeful action with some ulterior motive, that people being reactionary and stupid isn't just a product of our own flaws and limitations but something that has been instilled into us by some outside force, that without "identity politics" we would all be perfectly rational logical beings from the planet Vulcan who never jump to conclusions about anything. In a sense, you are participating in the same kind of irrational reactionary behavior that you are criticizing others for, interpreting the accusations of racism/misogyny as a deliberate tactic rather than an ignorant kneejerk reaction. This is why optics are important and really come in handy in these kinds of situations, because we're not mindreaders and it is difficult to gauge where a person is really coming from just by taking their words at face value, especially in these digital mediums that tend to iron out all the nuance from human communication. Like in the examples you listed, one would have to rely on optics to discern whether or not a critic of Obama was actually trying to make a good faith argument and did not have some ulterior white nationalist motive. Like if someone was just talking about Obama's policy decisions being morally objectionable and complaisant toward the American neoliberal status quo, then any rational person probably would not leap to the conclusion that the person was a racist, but if they started talking about political correctness and affirmative action and declining white birth rates and implying the existence of some systemic conspiracy against the white race, then their credibility would suddenly be in serious jeopardy.

>>97725 he actually is zionist though. to be honest i don't know how any works their way back to electoralism post epstein. it's kinda insane. the guy who shot up the pizza place is more of a pragmatic realist

>>97735 Sanders is speaking right this very minute in the senate in opposition to funding Israel. Source: Al Jazeera

>>97736 >>97736 no point in trying to talk sense into these schizos, they live in their own little fantasy worlds, reality is whatever they decide it is.

Another thing I noticed, the people who are constantly complaining about how nobody wants to talk about anything but identity politics - they themselves never want to talk about anything but identity politics. They never try to steer the conversation toward any in-depth discussion about more universal issues and when anyone else tries to have conversations about some non-idpol topic like increasing the minimum wage or UBI or healthcare reform, they will still try to the shift the discussion toward idpol by saying the reasons these things can never exist is because people are too obsessed with idpol. I think it's because these people really have nothing to contribute at all when it comes to political discourse, most of them are either NEETs who have never had to work or live independently or do anything for themselves, or they are bored white-collar workers stuck at some meaningless nothing job working for an SEO company or something and they only real problems they have in their lives are their own ignorance and isolation from the real world, and all they want to do is just turn every kind of discussion into their own little blogpost about the things that personally annoy them, even if they are completely irrelevant to the topic of conversation.

>>97725 >You need to realize that ten years ago .... anti-zionist is fuarrrking stupid. This is the effect of token resistance. No actual change but you can claim you said something in opposition a few times. >>97733 Well no I didn't imply there is a shadowy malevolent force because there is the actual government and associated agencies.I borrowed the term IDPsyOp from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8i1B4Hbovx0. There are a few clear examples where IP has been weaponized shown. In addition it is an ignorant kneejerk reaction from seemingly good intentioned people. Both are true. But optics is not a primary concern is it? Crimes are real, no matter how dignified a person they are performed by, no matter how credible they seem to you. You've been accusing me of schizo ramblings but so far that's all you've done. Again... I don't know what else to tell you. >>97736 Well here you go: https://www.timesofisrael.com/bernie-sanders-israel-has-a-right-to-us-protection/ His appearance on that moron Theo Von where he blames the genocide on KHAMAS, repeated the rape hoax and reaffirmed Israel's right to exist. Then there's that dumb rally with AOC where nothing changed but people gathered for a rally and felt good about themselves. So how do you reconcile all this with token mentions that US should not fund Israel? Seems like that entire party realizes they can't brush aside the issue anymore. I can't find more links because I'm travelling home but AOC has stated warmonger in the past. I believe so has Bernie. >>97740 Well I partially agree. IP is a form of token resistance. Like I mentioned earlier: it has a context and limitation which can center marginalized voices, give alternate perspectives, etc. But over the decades it hasn't really moved the needle. It might sound harsh but most IP discussions I've come across now are glorified group therapy sessions.

>>97741 Let me summarize in case it is lost: 1. There is a deliberate top down attempt to shut down criticism by misusing identity politics AND it is misused by seemingly good intentioned people who are frankly ignorant and complacent to the same effect. 2. Bernie and plenty of good natured 'leftist' who have made a display of token resistance, speeches about class struggle, etc. have made that criticism in between guardrails. They haven't moved the needle despite over 40 decades of so called political work. 3. Identity politics has its context and limit of application. It centers marginalized voices, gives alternate perspectives, helps with deconstructing false ideas, etc. However, over the decades it has been wholly ineffective in again... moving the needle. But don't think this means it should be discarded. Every innovation in political discourse has its place.

>>97742 I made a few additional delicate points too but I guess those will be lost. The thing I said about Hillary, Obama and Bernie? Same thing is being repeated with Kamala even though she has been pro warmongering, pro big business, etc. The democrat party conducted an internal study (I forget the name) which concluded that many otherwise democrat voters refused to vote entirely because of democrat soft stance on gaza, israel, pro big business issue. Can someone find it and post it here? Instead they made the issue about 'I am angry you let trump win' i.e. vote for lesser evil. Seems like crimes both domestic and international are sanctioned by you if it is done in a dignified stately manner with token mentions of marginalized groups and the current political issue. In my experience people like the ones in this thread are primarily concerned with comfort both physical and psychological. Physical comfort because a frog dance will definitely change power structures and remove the robber barons from power. Psychological comfort because even open evidence is 'schizo ramblings' that will put off the layman (code for liberal).

>>97741 >No actual change but you can claim you said something in opposition a few times. indeed, words have no meaning and unless you are literally killing Benjamin Netanyahu at this very moment you're a zionist wage slave. fuarrrk you to be honest.

>>97745 Well this is just disingenuous lainanon. Did you read the rest of my replies. I provided a youtube link and an article and mentioned other pieces of evidence. This just saddens me at this point.

schizo ramblings, schizo ramblings, schizo ramblings i don't think it is actual schizophrenia though, i think it is just narcissistic parasocial behavior, constantly talking past others, interpreting everything as a personal attack or a psyop or a conspiracy directed at them, continuing to reiterate the same points over and over again no matter how many times they are discredited or what contrary evidence is presented, communicating entirely in definitive statements and never asking questions or showing any interest in the opinions of others. i think social media has infected our entire culture with narcissism and it's not a good thing for anyone involved. democracy depends on the ability for people to engage in good faith political discourse, but it seems like that is nigh impossible now because all people want to do is use social media as a way to stroke their own egos and be the center of attention despite having absolutely nothing original or worthwhile to contribute to political discourse

>>97748 In the limited time I have between work and chores I have given my reasoning and evidence. All you and 2 other anons have done is interpret it as a personal attack and not as a discussion of the subject matter. Please stop projecting. You didn't have a good faith discussion from your first post.

>>97736 Bernie said that if you are white, you can't know what it is to be poor. He is more subtle than others because he don't want to spook the proles who still think he stand for them but he is like the others. Consider this, in both primaries in 16 and 20, the CNC have organized the primary in a way that was designed to make Bernie loose. Have Bernie complained? Have he even said one word about it? No. That mean he is fine with it. That mean that his job is to bring the votes of the workers who think he represent them to the IDpol party. The identities that this party stand for don't like Israel, so the party talk against Israel, just like they stood for it like everyone before.

>>97748 Lol reminds me of this

>>98274 doesnt mean every leftist is a dictatorist

>>98275 every leftist IS a dictator. the alternative is anti-growth global suicide Teddy K larpers who didn't realize Uncle Ted would kill them for cheap lampshades and sandwich meat.

>>98274 >what you hope they mean >hope Fortunately for me I'm not retarded so I don't hope they're garbage tankies

>>98278 it's depressing to see memes becoming just as condescending and insulting as advertisements and clickbait headlines have become. the narcissism really is spreading like a virus. i stopped reading after "what you hope", like go fuarrrk yourself you presumptuous asshole you don't know anything about me or what i think about or hope for. i hope the leftists want hitler to be resurrected and elected president. i hope your mother's cunt falls out.

>>97890 One thing I will defend Bernie on is that I don't think a lot of the idpol critiques of him were well reasoned or honest. One of the main problems he and I guess you could say the US left in general has is that it's a movement that's primarily popped up in heavily gentrified areas but larps as if it's the people that used to live in the areas it gentrified. Hence it only really focusing on student debt of all types of debt, dropping medicare 4 all relatively easily, and having a fracture line at the mention of the racial underclass that's responsible for the lion's share of the US's productive labor. It just clear as day part of Bernie's movement was terrified that if he focused on the actual bottom they'd lose a potential step stool to the upper class.

OP here, I think there's something very telling about the fact that a guy like Graham Platner is becoming the new rising star of the DNC, being endorsed by everyone from Bernie Sanders to Jon Stewart despite his vast catalogue of red flags, including: working for Blackwater, having a totenkopf tattooed on his chest, being a rich nepo baby who has never wanted for anything in his entire life, saying women should be take responsiblity for being raped because they drank too much, saying that black people don't tip, saying that people should resort to domestic terrorism to affect political change, calling people glitterboys and retards, etc. This guy seems to be very popular with the white male dudebro element of the so-called American left, and I can't help but see the parallels with Donald Trump and his supporters, making all these excuses for his laundry list of controversies and insisting that they have no bearing on who he is today, being very enamored with his alpha male strongman persona and the fact that he is a political outsider, making the very dangerous assumption that because he is an outsider who presents himself as a populist champion of the working class he will continue to be that person after rising to power. If you look at the historical record, this is how every single fascist movement has started - an unsustainable capitalist system falls apart and the people are broke and miserable and disillusioned with the government, the ideal conditions for some charismatic strongman to win them over with populist rhetoric and take over. This all brings me back to what I was saying originally about the white dudebro pseudo-left and their disdain for so-called "identity politics" - I think that this is basically the same narrative going through the minds of the centrist leaders of the DNC. They want to blame their losses on things like "wokeism" rather than their own corruption and myopia and lack of authenticity, as evidenced by the fact that they refuse to disclose the 2024 election autopsy results to the voting public, and now it seems like their new strategy is to copy the Trumpism playbook verbatim and have their own fascist strongman who presents himself as a champion of the working class. When you really think about it, the centrist Democrats have never really been the ones who have suffered from Trumpism - if anything they have benefited from it, their wealth and privilege pretty well insulate them from all the chaos it has wrought and they have a convenient bogeyman they can use as a universal scapegoat and fundraising tool. Having their own counterpart to Trump is a win-win situation for them - if they win they get to be the new fascist party, and if they lose they just continue being the impotent opposition party, so long as they never allow actual progressives to take control of the party they still get to keep their cushy jobs.

>>98285 what are your thoughts on Talarico ?

>>98285 >the centrist Democrats have never really been the ones who have suffered from Trumpism - if anything they have benefited from it strewth, innit. Americans need to wake the fuarrrk up and realize corpo politicians aren't going to save them.>>98285

>>98285 >I think there's something very telling about the fact that a guy like Graham Platner is becoming the new rising star of the DNC >despite his vast catalogue of red flags I think it doesn't take a genius to understand why. The platform on which he is campaigning on is solid. He wants free healthcare for all. He wants to tackle the affordability problem in Maine. Despite his experience in Blackwater, those experiences shaped him to be anti-war in his campaign. And, who is running against him? Well of course it's Miss "Very Concerned" Susan Collins. Graham is a very conflicting person. He had totenkopf, but covered it after learning what that was (somehow after years of military). He speaks like a commie online, but previously went on odd podcasts. in the past, that should conflict with those views. The thing about these flags, is that they are in the past. they don't seem to match what he is currently presenting himself as. In the end, what I really care about is the platform and the current actions today. And so far I like what I hear and see. I'm sorry, but he's taking steps to correct his wrongs in the past. He's still advocating for workers and the public. And the only alternative for Maine is Susan. I don't believe Susan is fit for today's job.

>>98290 >Graham is a very conflicting person. He had totenkopf, but covered it after learning what that was So in addition to being a wannabe neo-nazi, he's also an imbecile and a performative fraud. And the tattoo is still there. It's just now obscured behind another stupid tattoo. >Graham is a very conflicting person. He had totenkopf, but covered it after learning what that was (somehow after years of military). He speaks like a commie online, but previously went on odd podcasts. in the past, that should conflict with those views. Oh yeah, he's just a complicated man, like Shaft. He's not a flip-flopping chameleon phony, he's actually a complex anti-hero that nobody can understand, who knows what kind of 4D chess machinations are going on inside this brilliant mind. >The thing about these flags, is that they are in the past. Yeah but you see, humans have this thing inside their skulls called a brain that can remember events from the past and use this knowledge to understand what is happening in the present. It's the reason why we study history and write books and stuff like that, it's what separates us from dumb animals that only live in the present. >And so far I like what I hear and see. This sounds like the kind of insipid drivel you hear from people who call into sports talk shows. "Yeah A-Rod had a rough season last year but so far he's doing some good things and I really like what I hear and see, I think I'll put my money on A-Rod." >I'm sorry, but he's taking steps to correct his wrongs in the past. That excuse might fly if he were applying for a job at a Starbucks, not being a fuarrrking state senator. There's 350 million people in this country, this is a buyer's market, we can do better than this guy. It's frankly amazing to me how people are willing to give white guys so many chances, but anyone else doesn't even get one. When it was a black guy running for office with a nearly spotless history and public image (which was the only reason he even had a chance of winning) the entire country put the guy under the world's biggest microscope and when they couldn't find any dirt they just started making soykaf up about him being a secret muslim or having a forged birth certificate, but when it's a white guy with a closet overflowing with skeletons everyone is like "Oh come on man, it was a long time ago, stop living in the past"

>>98293 >>98290 As someone who votes solely based on policy, I don't give a soykaf what podcasts he goes on or what tattoos he has. If his policies are good, and I believe he will get them done, he has my vote. End of story.

>>98294 Well call me crazy but I don't like to make important decisions by coming up with a simple checklist and checking things off and tallying up the score, instead I do this really bizarre thing called "thinking" where I try to analyze the situation from multiple angles and take all the verifiable facts into account and get a very clear picture in my head of what is really going on, of who this person really is and what he is about. And forgive me if it seems like I'm being a little over-scrutinous here, but in case you don't remember we've been through a situation like this before where a totally fraudulent pathological liar got into office because the voting public decided to turn their brains off and vote solely based on policy and ignore all of the candidate's past sins and glaring character flaws and we all know how that turned out. How many bowls of spoiled soup must you eat before you realize the entire pot is bad?

>>98296 >because the voting public decided to turn their brains off and vote solely based on policy You think they were voting based on policy? That is the most ridiculous, out of touch thing I've read all week. You must have no fuarrrking clue what is going on in the world if you seriously think this.

>>98297 >You think they were voting based on policy? Yes, believe it or not, most of Trump's voters were not billionaires or white supremacists or gay-bashing religious fundamentalists, they were just ordinary everyday working class people who didn't really even know or care that much about politics and had rather moderate political views, and they said "I don't care about all these past controversies or his character or what he did before he ran for president, all's I know is he said he's gonna bring back American jobs and get rid of all the corruption in Washington and lower taxes and that's good enough for me."

>>98285 It's fetterman 2.0 and i don't know how anyone pretends otherwise. like for all the discussion on what's gone wrong with the left it's kinda funny how much it's skipped over that the major figure just keep ripping off every working class person that trust them

obviously voting based purely on policy is ridiculous. Ever heard of ineptitude ? Of lies ? Of changing circumstances, or of motivations ? Its more reasonable in many cases to vote for someone who shares your allegiances, values, and is reasonably intelligent/charismatic/crafty. For the most part your representative isn't even going to enact any policy, he's going to nudge the herd that is his party one way or another and you want it nudged in the direction you want it to, and to be a warm body in a chair on important votes.

>>98300 > all's I know is he said he's gonna bring back American jobs and get rid of all the corruption in Washington and lower taxes and that's good enough for me Having talked to several of those people during the 2016 election: you're wrong. They specifically were drawn to his brashness, his way of positioning himself as an outsider, and his racism. Lowering taxes, closing the border, and getting rid of corruption are standard Republican policies, those are not what made him stand out to them. A lot of those people voted for him a second time, after he supposedly betrayed them multiple times. Also, just because some other people focused on *bad* policies, and believed falsely that their preferred guy would do them, does not mean I should not focus on *good* policies, and have some discernment about whether a guy will do them. You completely ignored "and I believe he will get them done". I'm not actually voting in any election where this Graham guy is running, I'm not a member of the Democratic party, so excuse me for not putting in much effort to investigate him. Everything I know about him was posted in this thread. Whether he went on a podcast with fascists or got a tattoo covered up instead of removed apparently aren't the massive red flags to me that they are to you.

>>98300 This reminds me of something I wanted to talk about, something that doesn't really get talked about enough - the Democrats huge sweeping generalizations and demonization of the Republican voters as a bunch of ignorant hate-filled bigoted extremist rednecks ironically just made themselves look worse and probably played an major role in Trump's rise to power and the rise of far-right extremism in general. This is just one anecdotal isolated example, but I've seen and heard countless others like it and I think it is representative of a much larger phenomenon: I remember during the beginning of the Hillary vs Trump election, my father, who was always the archetypal Hank Hill mild-mannered conservative from Texas, was pretty much ambivalent about the election and not really that interested in it and never really had shown much interest in politics at all in the past. But when Hillary's infamous "deplorables" comment made the news, suddenly he went all-in for Trump. He started watching Fox News every day, he talked about wanting to put a sign in his front yard that said "TEXAS DEPLORABLE" to show his support and piss off his next-door neighbor who had a Hillary sign, and as time passed he just kept going deeper and deeper down the far-right rabbit hole, buying tons of guns, wearing political t-shirts, covering his truck in right-wing bumper stickers, posting extremist conspiracy crap on social media, and all the rest of it. And I can trace it all back to that moment of him feeling personally insulted by that one careless dehumanizing comment. Because he was called a "deplorable" he decided to own it and play the part, Hillary's remark became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Now if you want to talk about identity politics - that is fuarrrking identity politics. You attack the identity of a huge group of people with some broad unfair stupid generalization - black people, gay people, white conservative dads from Texas, whatever it might be - you just end up encouraging those people to fight to defend their identity, to unify and rise up against you, for better or for worse.

>>98304 >Everything I know about him was posted in this thread. So you are vehemently arguing with some random internet stranger to defend this politician whom you know nothing about and never even heard of until you stumbled across this thread? Are you just really bored, or are you mentally ill?

>>98308 I stated my opinion, was insulted, and responded in kind. >are you just really bored Yes

>>98309 Well I suppose I should at least be thankful that you are willing to admit that you are arguing in bad faith and you don't actually care about any of this, but now that you've had your little moment is it alright with you if we move on and try to have a real adult conversation now?

>>98310 It's only bad faith if I don't genuinely believe what I'm saying, or if I'm hiding something. I've done nothing of the sort. Do you think you're not doing this purely out of boredom too? That this is somehow important? Don't kid yourself. Now, do you actually want to have an adult conversation? You can start by addressing the substance of what people are saying instead of trying to dismiss them or insult them in to silence. >>98307 That's true, people often forget that what we usually call "identity politics" (essentially: focus on gay, womens, or race issues) is actually only tangentially related to identity politics, like how "political correctness" is only tangentially related to political correctness. Focusing on the character of people that oppose your political stances instead of their real political stances is the purest form of identity politics.

>>98307 I don't think it's a false generalization honestly. If you are still a big Trump supporter at this point those things are accurate.

>>98312 most Americans are what's called negatively polarized: they don't support the side they vote for, but they are terrified of what will happen if the other side wins. So yes while a "big Trump supporter" is basically a cult member, that doesn't describe most of the people that vote for him.

>>98313 I don't believe that's really true. imo america's culture parallels the british and romans before where we simply support a lot of malicious behavior for reasons that aren't really defensible. like working blue collar in a deep red state we get along day to day but on average i'd say most trump guys are actually bad people and the more decent conservatives tend not to vote at all

>>98312 Well I was just talking about back then, before all the radicalization. I know it's probably hard to even remember those days now, all those years ago when most American citizens seemed like sane rational people. But even so, I don't think all this radicalization will be permanent, we've been seeing the Trumpgret start to sink in especially in recent years with the Epstein files and the war and the rising costs of everything and the Trump Jesus picture and Antichrist conspiracy theories, support groups popping up for former MAGAheads, etc. I think that most of MAGA have been living in sort of a fugue state these past years, like they've been on some kind of crazy drug and now the high is finally starting to wear off. If this is true, I'm curious about what will happen when the high does fully wear off for them and they are faced with the reality of what they've unleashed, all the family and friends they've alienated, all the huge sacrifices they've made to their false god who completely betrayed them on every level. Will they become depressed nihilists totally divorced from politics and never vote for anyone again? Will there be mass suicides? Will they go crazy and start shooting people and blowing up buildings? Will they completely break from civilized society and go off in the wilderness and form secessionist communes?

I'm a Trump supporter, I legitimately really like him. He's not perfect but he's delivered some pretty great wins as far as I can tell. We are actually in the midst of some major deportations, border is comparatively closed, visa numbers are down and basically the only refugees who seem to be coming in are south africans of european extraction. He managed the repeal of Roe v Wade, he seems to be doing decently on foreign affairs. Yes the European governments hate him but they'd hate anyone half decent. I like the tariffs but actual industrialization is a big project and its hard to tell how things are going from my vantage. I could go on. Hey we even went to the Moon again. Things aren't perfect but they never are, and they are sure looking up. Now of course I'm also susceptible to the argument about 'look at the other guy', and on that line of reasoning you could get me to vote for some slimy sleezeballs like Greg Abbot. But the fact of the matter is that Trump is the best president of my life time, and its not even close.

>>98316 >he seems to be doing decently on foreign affairs lol, lmao. You're either a troll or very very stupid.

>>98317 ok so whats the problem then ?

>>98318 I dunno, I just get the feeling that there's something to do with foreign affairs that isn't going very well. I don't remember what it is, though.

>>98319 oh wow another war like we haven't been at war more years of my life than we've been at peace. Which was the last president who didn't get us into a war of some sort or another ? While I'll admit that the jury's still out on how this one compares to the other recent ones it'll take a lot to meet the humiliation of Afganistan or the stupidity of Yugoslavia.

>>98320 >Which was the last president who didn't get us into a war of some sort or another ? Joe Biden

>>98290 >>98294 >>98297 >>98304 >>98309 >>98311 >>98316 same user

>>98320 >While I'll admit that the jury's still out on how this one compares to the other recent ones it'll take a lot to meet the humiliation of Afganistan or the stupidity of Yugoslavia. Afghanistan and Yugoslavia didn't result in a global energy shock that directly benefits America's greatest enemies. >>98322 false

>>98320 There already was a treaty. Iran agreed to have International supervision in their nuclear facilities. Every switch in their power plants were being monitored. Their former Ayatollah issued a religious decree forbidding nuclear weapons and Iran agreed to the nuclear non-proliferation pact. In the negotiations leading up to Feb. 28, Iran was even willing to give up their power plants... meaning Trump actually could've made an even more favorable deal. Then the bombing started. That is called "perfidious". Today, among all the atrocities against humanity, is also the insane cost of money which would've been far better invested in your community. At this point, because they've been betrayed in the midst of negotiations, the Iranians demand a guarantee of security and reparations for all the damage done.

>>98316 https://youtu.be/Hl7FKfl3O2Y

>>98324 >invested into your community Oh right it could have gone to feeding hungry children like all that money in Minnesota during corona. Or maybe it could have gone to hospice care in California Or maybe it could go to some wholesome project like muslim focused state sponsored housing or grants to Catholic Charities. Maybe it could have gone to the SPLC to get them to train federal law enforcement. Or one of a billion other scams frauds and evils. Alternately maybe it could go to HIV treatments for Africans, or could have gone to propping up the government of Afganistan. It could have gone to LGBT friendly programs in any country of the world it could have gone to building hideous statues of obese women or perhaps tearing down statues of our heros and exhuming our own war dead for no defensible reason. As to commenting on this ongoing war, lets look back on this one once the dust has settled. Right now we're still in the middle of it. I'm plenty skeptical; we all remember the silly WMDs in Iraq etc etc. On the other hand looks credible these guys could hit things way further than they publicly were supposed to be able to, that strike at Diego Garcia. Was the Iranian government fully honest ? I wouldn't expect them to be. If I was Iran I'd want to have nukes as, if nothing else a weapon of last resort; The S. Korean government's not going to be keen on war when they think of what could happen to Seoul. On the other hand, do I as an American I seem to recall far more terrorist suicide attacks coming from the middle east, than from Korea. What's the right choice here ? unclear to me with the information I have. In any case, as I already outlined, Trump's doing pretty good in a host of areas and seems more than any other president of recent years to have my interests at heart. I'm happy to trust him on this one.

Iran will succeed at building nukes sooner or later, they've got the wealth and technology to do it now and it will only ever get easier for them as technology evolves. Iran is using gas centrifuges for enrichment, but laser enrichment is far cheaper and more efficient and can be done in a tiny covert facility that we could never detect with a spy satellite or inspections. And while a gas centrifuge takes months to produce a useable amount of weapons grade uranium, a laser enrichment facility could do it in just a few days. It's a proprietary process called SILEX but the company is hoping to commercialize it by 2028 and after that it will only be a matter of time before the technology is reverse-engineered and co-opted by the rest of the world especially with the help of AI tools. I think that anti-proliferation, like any technological suppression effort, was always going to be a losing battle. It only ever gets cheaper and easier for people to build things.

>>98332 Nukes are not real, they're fear propaganda. Controlled demolition and firebombing is all it is.

>>98293 >we can do better than this guy. I agree. We definitely can do better. I'd love to see more zohrans or Ab-duls or Kat Abughazalehs. People that have clean past histories running on progressive platforms. Absolutely. It makes choosing them much easier. In the absence of such people in Maine, however, Graham is the closest to these people that we'll have over there. I would have loved to give Jordan Wood a shot, but he dropped out of the race. Although, David Costello seems good, so if you want an alternative with similar platform goals and a cleaner past, he's been there all along with little finance and publicity to back him up. He admits that it looks like Graham will win and doesn't mind if he wins, but david isn't giving up the race. Do some door to door for him. Yes he's yet another white man, but at least he's not a nepo baby? "This is America" and all that.

>>98335 I guess bombing brown people is ok if you attach it to trans rights :)

>>98338 >Liberal no soykaf, liberals always have a cynical take :)

>>98338 But of course! I love spreading democracy, no matter the race you are! Hooah!

>>98335 I mean he's not really a compromise candidate. It's basically just defrauding donors for an obvious corporate plant who is going to backstab voters the second he's in office.

>>98285 >very telling about the fact that a guy like Graham Platner is becoming the new rising star of the DNC, being endorsed by everyone from Bernie Sanders to Jon Stewart despite his vast catalogue of red flags, including: working for Blackwater, having a totenkopf tattooed on his chest, being a rich nepo baby who has never wanted for anything in his entire life, saying women should be take responsiblity for being raped because they drank too much, saying that black people don't tip, saying that people should resort to domestic terrorism to affect political change, calling people glitterboys and retards, etc. >Platner In $CURRENT_YEAR all you have to do is look at the last name to know why someone is being promoted >I can't help but see the parallels with Donald Trump Yeah cuz hes jewish and trumpism is jewish in nature The only simplified way of knowing what is going is to back to 2012. KONY 2012 = $CURRENT_YEAR

>>98349 are you a miles mathis fan by any chance?

this kind of suicidal empathy reminds me of the hippie student from camp of the saints... eventually it becomes straight up malice

>>98358 >suicidal empathy When you actually use your brain and break down these kinds of statements logically, you can see how utterly unhinged they really are. Empathy isn't an action, it's not someone actually doing anything or making any decision; all empathy is is just simply trying to be aware of another person's feelings and perceptions, it's just thinking about something. You know that something has gone seriously wrong when a society believes that merely thinking could be dangerous to them, that being aware of something that exists in reality is a liability and that willful ignorance is a form of discipline. You see that pattern all the time in right-wing rhetoric as well as in religious fundamentalism, all the science denial, the refusal to acknowledge reality, the pathologization of outside thought as a virus that must be quarantined against. It's very much in line with Orwell's depictions of authoritarianism where all common sense is inverted and people just live in topsy-turvy world - war is peace, ignorance is strength, freedom is slavery, compassion is selfishness, there is no society, greed is good, etc. And what's more disturbing about it is the people who spout this kind of nonsense are often quite intelligent and highly-educated people and they genuinely believe what they are saying, so it's not just mere stupidity or lies we are dealing with here; it's full-fledged insanity.

>>98361 Okay. I'm not insane and what I said wasn't infallible. You can have a dangerous amount of misplaced empathy for others. You're the kind to have empathy for all muh poor browns, ignoring the suffering already around you, misplacing empathy outside, bringing in filth like jeets and towelheads because don't you feel so bad for the oppressed from their broken countries? No, I'm not going to be empathetic towards Jewish psyops like this any longer, thank you. Lainchan is a circus

>>98363 >You're the kind to have empathy for all muh poor browns, ignoring the suffering already around you Not that one, but how do you know that is what he thinks? Because it seems to me you are doing a lot of assuming here, and you know what they say about assuming. It makes an ASS out of U and MING. Also... >Jewish psyops >muh browns >Lainchan is a circus Well, better to waddle along back to your containment board then, where you'll feel safe in a familiar environment, and able to express all those lovely thoughts of yours that make you all so warm and fuzzy inside.

>>98363 >the suffering already around you Oh, you mean like the homeless, mentally ill black lady that sometimes sleeps at the bus stop near me? You're right, I should focus on helping people like that more. Maybe things would be better for people like her if we had some kind of free or low-cost mental health infrastructure. Thanks for the good idea, lain!

>>98363 >Okay. I'm not insane and what I said wasn't infallible. You can have a dangerous amount of misplaced empathy for others. You're the kind to have empathy for all muh poor browns, ignoring the suffering already around you, misplacing empathy outside, bringing in filth like jeets and towelheads because don't you feel so bad for the oppressed from their broken countries? No, I'm not going to be empathetic towards Jewish psyops like this any longer, thank you. Lainchan is a circus Definitely not insane at all, just a calm sensible level-headed dude.

>>98366 right? this is the type of dude who loses his TV remote in the couch and immediately blames the jews.

>>98361 Suicidal empathy is a way to describe the female way of thinking that has been suppressed since the dawn of human kind. There was no room for it if we were to survive, we protect our own, the weak, defend from outsiders. Only in the past 100 years have women had roles of influence and control, because we're living in a world of abundance. We don't have to worry about the next tribe over coming to rape and scalp us (or do we) Every successful empire, society etc has been patriarchal. Suicidal empathy is based in matriarchy, so is Judaism, so is feminism. It is used by those in power for control, it is used to enforce anarcho-tyranny, to keep everyone weak, divided and for the elites to accumulate power. You get a 'moral high ground' every time you use it and the most susceptible people to falling for it are traumatized women.

>>98368 Thank you. Lainanons are weak moids ridden by foid mental illness, I've been noticing...

>>98368 >Suicidal empathy is based in matriarchy, so is Judaism How do you reckon that? Sincerely asking, because I don't see what the logic chain between these three concepts are that connects them. >enforce anarcho-tyranny funnily enough, that looks like an oxymoron my lainon :D >>98369 >Lainanons are weak moids ridden by foid mental illness, I've been noticing You do realize you don't have to be here if the company isn't to your liking, right? It's as ridiculous as me going to 4chan to complain about /p*l/tards. For those who aren't in the know, it is empathy which, ironically, made the mass exterminations within concentration camps possible. It's sympathy, rather than empathy that we ought to venerate.

>>98370 (At least) Half of the world elites are jewish, anon. Within Judaism, lineage is passed through the mother, you're only jewish if your mom is. Feminism, marxism and judaism are all intricately related. Anarcho-tyranny consists of tyrannically enforcing rules against the middle class, based on economic or race factors, long prison sentences for small offenses or words on the internet - all while the underclass is assaulting/murdering with impunity, being let out because of incompetence to stand trial. "Oh yeah, that's Bob, he usually just punches people, but this time he used a plank with nails sticking out of it - we'll see you in a week Bob" You let them run wild and then smash anyone willing to talk about it. That's what's happening in the UK and soon to be everywhere. >>98369 Step up your game

>>98374 cmon step it up! i have no prior knowledge of what this thread is about but you seem easy to mock.

>>98374 This is definitely 100% not AI. Even those robots aren't this fuarrrking retarded. Holy Shit Are You Ever fuarrrking Stupid. >>98370 Explain the spoiler. That seems fuarrrked. >>98369 People who use words like "moid" or "foid" should be rounded up and shot. >>98368 Go to a bar, buy a girl a drink, but for the love of fuarrrk, don't say a fuarrrking word. Just pretend to be mute. You'll be over this weird phase in no time. But, just keep your fuarrrking mouth closed or she'll call the cops. Or just hang yourself already.

>>98376 Just how many people on this board are brown or trans? Being cyberpunk doesn't mean you have to troon out btw

>>98376 >Explain the spoiler. I hope you don't mind if I explain it by copy-pasting a relevant excerpt? I'm such a shoddy writer, and I think the guy does a better job at explaining the difference. inb4 it's AI, no, it's not AI. It's from a book by Michael Faust "How to Become God" circa 2011. Very illuminating. >People often get these last two attributes confused and they are typically treated as synonymous. If fact, they are radically different and the best way to illustrate the difference is via the provocative sentence: “The Nazis empathised with the Jews, but certainly didn’t sympathise with them.” This sentence would be incomprehensible to many people because they’re unsure how to clearly distinguish between empathy and sympathy. >The Nazis, in order to process millions of victims through their concentration camps with the minimum fuss, had to work out how best to pacify people who were naturally in a state of high anxiety. They had to fool them into believing that they weren’t about to die. So, they came up with tricks such as saying, “Oh, this is a stopping off point; a chance for you to rest and get cleaned up in a nice hot shower.” This was exactly the reassuring type of thing that an anxious person wanted to hear. >Therefore, empathy is where you put yourself in someone else’s shoes and work out how you would feel in their position. But, as the Nazi example shows, that doesn’t mean you’re on their side. You’re still you. A Nazi mentally putting himself in the shoes of a Jew about to be gassed is still a Nazi. He’s attempting to understand the Jew’s feelings and thought processes purely so that he can kill him in the easiest way. His intent is entirely negative, thus this is negative rather than positive empathy. >Empathy is often done for benign reasons, but it can easily be for the worst possible reasons. Serial killers and conmen can be extremely skilled in terms of empathy. They know exactly what buttons to press to lure the victim into their trap. >Advertising is all about empathy – manipulating you in the most effective way to get you to buy the products the advertisers are selling. >The problem for the Nazis, the serial killers and conmen is that although they are skilled at empathy, they have zero understanding of sympathy. >Whereas empathy is about substituting yourself for someone else, sympathy is about substituting someone else for yourself. With empathy, you imagine what it’s like to be in another person’s situation while remaining yourself; with sympathy you create an identity with the other person so that you are no longer yourself; you have become them. If the Nazi had sympathy for his Jewish victim, he would no longer be capable of killing him because he would now be experiencing the Jew’s plight as the Jew. >With empathy, you can choose to harm another person with the understanding you have gained of their situation; with sympathy you would no more harm the other person than you would yourself since you are now effectively one and the same. >Sympathy is a much stronger link with another person than empathy. The golden rule – Do unto others as you would have them do unto you – would happen automatically in a world of total sympathy between all people. Sympathy can be considered a manifestation of the magic law of contiguity – two things that have been in contact remain in contact forever. If you have interacted with someone sympathetically, you are bound to them forever. But we live in a world of empathy, which reflects the magic law of similarity and imitation – that things that resemble each other are the same. If you have interacted with someone empathetically, you believe that you know how they will act in any given situation and thus that you can anticipate what they will do, hence manipulate and control them. >Empathy is like running a computer simulation of someone else, while sympathy is like actually being someone else. Empathy may or may not provide accurate information depending on how good the simulation is; sympathy is always accurate. >Many of the problems of the world come from failed empathy. The famous book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus argues that men and women constantly misunderstand each other because it’s as if they’re from different planets. When men and women try to imagine how the other sex think and feel, they often get it completely wrong because they are projecting how they would act onto someone else who is wired differently. If they could be sympathetic rather than empathetic, things would suddenly make perfect sense. >In truth, we can only run accurate empathic simulations of others if they closely resemble us. For example, an intuitive introvert thinker will have an excellent idea of how another intuitive introvert thinker will think and act, but be clueless in terms of how a sensing extravert feeler will think and act. The accuracy of the simulation would disintegrate in the second case. >All misunderstandings arise from a failure to grasp where the other person is coming from. The less you resemble the other person, the more the misunderstandings will multiply. When America invaded Iraq, it actually believed its forces would be welcomed with open arms, that Iraqis would instantly embrace democracy and capitalism and that Iraq would become a satellite ally of America. How dumb can you get? The “simulation” American planners were running was that of imagining themselves in the shoes of Iraqis and, because they themselves loved America, democracy and capitalism, they thought the Iraqis would too. But the Iraqis are Muslims, not Christians; they subscribe to authoritarianism not democracy; they are not capitalists; they don’t admire American culture – in fact, they regard it as godless, decadent and depraved. Thus the intervention in Iraq was guaranteed to be a disaster. >>98374 >Within Judaism, lineage is passed through the mother, you're only jewish if your mom is Okay, but, to clarify, you think that the Jews, although matriarchal, aren't themselves "suicidally empathetic", but rather instead are spreading these ideas (that are jewish in origin or have roots in Judaism) through propaganda to weaken strong civilization in order to make a profit and to amass power?

>>98368 >The Nazis, in order to process millions of victims through their concentration camps with the minimum fuss, had to work out how best to pacify people who were naturally in a state of high anxiety. They had to fool them into believing that they weren’t about to die. So, they came up with tricks such as saying, “Oh, this is a stopping off point; a chance for you to rest and get cleaned up in a nice hot shower.” This was exactly the reassuring type of thing that an anxious person wanted to hear. That's not empathy, that's just behavioral conditioning. They aren't thinking of the Jews they're about to gas as fellow human beings and forming a mental connection with them, they are simply observing their outward behavior - the Jews tend to panic and become unruly when we are about to gas them, so let's be a little more subtle about it so the process goes more smoothly. Empathy isn't just a matter of trying to "put yourself in someone else's shoes" and imagine what they are thinking or feeling, that conception of empathy is just a mental simulation, a simplistic performative cheap imitation of the real thing, a counterfeit. Genuine empathy is a two-way connection that requires mutual understanding, curiosity, and vulnerability from both parties, it's not something you "have" it is something that happens, it's not something one person can just decide to forge out of nothing in their own mind, it's something that arises naturally and organically between people when there are no barriers of separation to prevent it, such as language barriers, ignorance of culture and way of life, ignorance of personal traits, indoctrination, desensitization/dissociation due to trauma, emotional insecurity, self-centeredness, narcissism, groupthink, etc.

>>98379 >>98378 The holocaust didn't happen dumbass

>>98380 Well regardless of your kooky fringe beliefs my point still stands, if the Nazis are too triggering of an example for you then just substitute the Nazis with some other genocidal political movement that you do believe existed, there's got to be at least one to choose from.

>>98380 You're doing great, champ. Keep up the good work!

>>98381 is everyone on this site part of a jewish psyop?

>>98380 i should've seen that this is what you were getting at. shame on me for not recognizing lainchan is slowly becomimg a nazi bar.

>>98383 Yes, we are all Jews, we are an inferior subhuman race and we have taken over the entire world and poisoned all of your minds because we are smarter and stronger than you.

>>98385 Can you at least stop subjecting me to your powerful mind altering beams that make me uncontrollably goon to BNWO? thanks

>>98378 I'll accept your definitions but I do think that by that standard that much of the 'suicidal sympathy' lacks true sympathy as well. You have a lot of people trying to act in the interests of very unintelligent, low impulse control criminals and such, but do not actually comprehend how these people behave. Not saying I comprehend them either. The suicidal sympathizer looks at some unhinged murderer who can't even read and tries to imagine that he they think and operate in fundamentally the same way and that if only everyone was treated decently the problem of violence, crime, etc would be solved world wide. He then invites the unhinged murderer into his house to show everyone else what a decent human being acts like. You seem to like the Nazi example, so suppose you have a Jew in some country where all his neighbors are being carted off to the deathcamps. Our Jew supposes that the Nazis must hate the Jews because the Jews are not adequately following the Law of Moses, something that has bothered him about the behavior of the other Jews. Therefore the Jew redoubles his efforts to do so and encourages all his fellow Jews to do likewise. Does this save him from the death camps?

>>98384 >i should've seen that this is what you were getting at. Uh, by "you" do you mean me (>>98378 >>98370) or the other guy? >>98380 >The holocaust didn't happen dumbass pic related >>98379 Anywho, I think the point of the author was to illustrate the difference between these two concepts by simplifying and exaggerating their consequences. Sure, empathy can go beyond simple subject-perspective swapping, but, as the author stated, such a thing can also be exploited if done, as you expressed, in the "cheap imitation" kind of way. I believe in psychology they make a distinction between cognitive and affective/emotional empathy. Therefore, what you call as "cheap imitation" would, under this conceptual framework, fit the bill of empathy, but as experienced cognitively, rather than emotionally. > it's not something you "have" it is something that happens I don't think anyone has suggested that - that is, if by "having" you mean that people either come naturally equipped with empathy, or they don't. Of course not, in either case. But I think Faust's characterization does do justice to the meaning of both empathy and sympathy. Indeed, when you talk about barriers between peoples' (from different cultures) understanding, how do you conceive the way we "jump" over these barriers between us? We could say "by studying the Qu'ran" and "appreciating the foods and traditions of other cultures", but in my view here we're engaging in said empathy, which is hollow. As a westerner it will be infinitely difficult to truly grasp the Other of another culture, unless you have roots and some sort of bond or a link to that other culture. That's why Faust was talking about "becoming the other person" when he was discussing sympathy, which is about becoming that other person. ....I'm getting kind of incoherent, so maybe I'll retire from this discussion for today and come back to it with a fresh pair of eyes to oogle at it.

>>98374 honestly shouldn't people who are against judaism support Marxism most of all? like most jewish influence comes from banking, interest and rent seeking which capitalism strengthens

>>98374 Anarcho-tyranny is a misnomer. The anarchist criminals are GANGS, they are organized criminals with explicit support from the government. Only particular gangs are supported, if other gangs intruded on their turf the supported ones would massacre them, and the government would enable the massacre - taking part if necessary.

>>98389 >marxism for thee, but not for me! *runs back to their fortressed nationalist ethnostate*

>>98388 If empathy really were a learned behavior and not an innate biological compulsion then we wouldn't have to direct so much effort into ignoring and suppressing it, particularly in young children who tend to form natural empathic connections with virtually everyone and everything around them. A child sees a stray dog with a broken leg limping along the side of the road and begs the parent to stop the car and go back and help the dog, a rural family of farmers teach their young children not to get attached to the livestock that they intend to eventually slaughter for food. It's quite obvious that empathy is not the result of some kind of bleeding heart liberal brainwashing, and it's not some kind of parlor trick, it's a natural involuntarily mental connection that forms between various social animals.

>>98393 Only white children are born with innate empathy.

>>98394 there are no white children

>>98388 >I'm getting kind of incoherent, so maybe I'll retire from this discussion for today and come back to it with a fresh pair of eyes to oogle at it. Oh don't worry, it was incoherent from the very beginning. Also I looked up the author you mentioned, Michael Faust, it's absolute drivel: >Where is the soul? There is very good evidence that the right hemisphere of our brain is our link to the soul dimension, and to God himself. >The Illuminati have provided a framework for understanding all phenomena of whatever nature, scientific or paranormal. Discover their startling theory of everything. It explains Rupert Sheldrake's theory of Morphic Resonance, homeopathy, out-of-body and near-death experiences, synchronicity, remote viewing, hypnosis and many other previously inexplicable phenomena. >Discover the astonishing secret of Christianity. Jesus Christ was reincarnated, not resurrected. This was the hidden teaching of the highest circles of Christianity. Resurrection was a Jewish idea deemed fit only for the simple masses that were ignorant of the philosophy of Plato. The Gospels make no secret of Christ's reincarnation, so why does Christianity still subscribe to the false doctrine of reincarnation? Read the truth, as told by by the Pythagorean Illuminati, the most ancient secret society on earth, of which Plato himself was once a member.

>>97479 Any good thing can be co-opted and misused. Empathy can be misused by those who want to harm you into letting your guard down... like the billionaire and manegerial class in USA trying to convince the average person that they are under Armageddon like attack, and that you should support them by playing your part as the lowly worker creating surplus. Like this dummy in this thread who harbors extreme animosity and resentment towards outside victims of USA's imperialism because he thinks they are the cause of the social decay around him, and not that same billionaire and manegerial class. Suicidal empathy is apparently a feminine trait, but Kat Abugazaleh, AOC, HIllary et al all support the military industrial complex and the imperial expansion of USA's policies against pretty much everyone else. Almost like those who benefit from and want to benefit from the imperial structure align themselves with its goals... Opportunists of every stripe after all. But I know these words will fall on deaf ears... on both the reactionary dummy and the other 'leftists' in this thread. None of you want change or results in this world.

>>98398 I don't know where these incel dorks are getting the idea that empathy and leftism are feminine traits but it's obviously bullshit. Like, have you heard of Ayn Rand? Margaret Thatcher? I think what it is is they probably have gender on their mind 24/7, they're insecure about their own masculinity and/or obsessed with their unfulfilled desires for companionship with a woman, so that's all they can ever think about and they view every kind of issue through the lens of gender essentialism.

Here's a silly hypothetical: with the destruction of the Voting Rights Act and the rampant gerrymandering that is already underway, what would happen if millions of disenfranchised voters from non-white districts committed voter fraud and registered to vote under random residential addresses in the white districts and they physically travelled to those districts to cast their ballots in person as an act of civil disobedience? How would the federal government deal with something like this? Every vote from the white districts would be suspect, they would all have to be painstakingly checked one by one to verify that the voter actually has residence in the district they are registered in. Taking this many people to federal court for voter fraud would be a logistical nightmare, the defendants could play dumb and say that used to live in those districts and simply forgot to update their address on their registration, they could say that they recently moved in with some random white family in so-and-so county and the prosecution would then have to drag the random white family into court as well to testify that that's not true, etc. It would be pretty funny if people did this.

>>98403 have you thought about maybe just going home?

>>98405 I'm a tramp, a bum, a hobo, I'm a boxcar an' a jug o' wine, where'er I lay my poke is home to me.

Good mornin', all! Let's give this another try, shall we? >>98396 >Oh don't worry, it was incoherent from the very beginning. Alright. It's good that you brought it up, because now we can go over this once more, correct any possible misunderstandings, and hopefully arrive at some sort of conclusion or mutual agreement over the subject-matter under discussion. And, if not, then, at the very least, we will perhaps have the opportunity to "topple over that which was already shaky" and arrive at something stronger and better, as Nietzsche so implores us to do. It's a shame, though, that you didn't give any specific examples of what you thought was incoherent (or from which point/post onwards), but since you had already indicated that you felt everything was incoherent, then I suppose I'll start over. So, given the elaborate, word-y excerpt I have given above (here >>98378), I think what we could now use is some brevity and condensing (although it is doubtful whether I will be able to manage that, but I'll try my best nonetheless). As is apparent from this thread (and whatever texts and articles one might come across as one tries to do independent investigation into it in our efforts to elucidate the sense and meaning of these two concepts), there are a lot of conflicting and contradictory ways people make use of sympathy and empathy, even sometimes regarding them as synonymous, as the excerpt from the Faust gay suggested. I've found in such cases a brief etymological excavation goes a long way. The root of both stemps from Greek, where empathy basically stands for "in feeling", whereas sympathy means "with feeling", "fellow feeling" or "together feeling". In other words, empathy is when you're putting yourself in another's shoes, but keeping the (emotional/cognitive) borders between the two of you intact as you try to gauge their experience over the metaphorical garden wall between you two in order to understand the other person's feelings and experiences. Sympathy, on the other hand, is about "affirming", or, rather, sharing the other person's experiences as-is, without trying to steam-roll or supplant their subjective perspective or personhood by us self-inserting (or: projecting) our own interpretations (or manner of seeing, thinking, sensing and understanding) of that other person's position, and instead experience what the other one's experiencing unfiltered. In short, if you sympathize with someone (in the strong sense of the word), you are essentially having the same experience as the one you are concerned over, hence why Faust described it as "becoming them". To paint a picture, at the end of the movie Midsommar the protagonist's sorrow is boundlessly, perhaps even literally, being shared by the group of women who gather around her to scream-cry with her, as she writhes in anguish. This is sympathy in its purest, undiluted form. If the women were to empathize with the protagonist's suffering, they would likely all approach her in a straight line, all dressed with a somber look on their faces, each at their own turn giving her their condolences in a manner they themselves thought would be appropriate and something which they themselves thought would cheer her up. >tl;dr >empathy=i get you(r pain); sympathy=i feel you(r pain) But as >>98379 had (rightly) pointed out, this is a bit simplifying, because empathy as purely perspective-swapping isn't the whole truth. It also has a cognitive (intellectual) as well as affective (emotional) dimension to it, as I tried to explain here (>>98388), but apparently failed miserably. Now, although what the Nazis were doing to the Jews in the rather tasteless example I had given as an excerpt from Faust's book above, might be classified as "behavioral conditioning" (which isn't the same as empathy by definition), I think, for the sake of accuracy and intellectual rigor, I do have to point out that the one, to a degree, necessitates the other (that is, in order to do behavioral conditioning, you have to be able to empathize (or, to put it crudely, "understand") the victim in this example of an industrial-scale historical mass extermination event (in short, the Holocaust, though, I think the general lesson might as well be applied (or be applicable) to any other such tragedy) if your intentions were to control masses of people).

So, yes, when >>98379 points out correctly that the nazis didn't regard the Jews as "fellow human beings", that still doesn't mean they wouldn't have recognize them as human beings. As such, there's no reason to assume the nazis suddenly lost their theory of mind whenever they were confronted by a jew. For instance, imagine yourself as a prison guard of POWs (or whatever) who has apprehended a group of escapees from your camp. You still need their labour, so you don't want to do away with all of them, but you still need to discourage any future escapes. So, what do you do? You shoot a couple of POWs as a warning to the others, because you know that, if the roles were reversed, and you happened to be standing on the other side of the barrel of the gun, you'd know you would be scared soykafless of the possibility that "it could be me next". Even if you felt blinding hatred towards the POWs and regarded them as "subhumans", you would still be able to cognitively stand in their place and figure out their situation from your standpoint (by said self-insertion/projection), and that way run mental simulations of the likeliest courses of action that the POWs might make in said situation. All of this is not to say that empathy, as such, is inherently evil or detrimental - we need both empathy and sympathy. Yes, again, as >>98379 pointed out, this purely intellectual form of empathizing seems cheap and hollow, if stripped of its emotional component, and it might indeed be that there is such a thing as "genuine empathy" as a separate category from what we're describing here. But, as I had expressed (or, rather, tried to) here (>>98388), that doesn't mean it's not empathy either. How else do you think the predators of this world are able to woo unsuspecting child victims to come with them when they aren't forcibly abducted? It's by them putting themselves in the shoes of a child; they understand on an emotional and intellectual level that the predators might raise red flags, make the child feel anxious and weirded out, and scare the children away if they approached them too directly or forcefully, so they figure out ways to ease their worries and make them feel safe, because they can simulate their victims' emotions to an extent. You might call that another instance of "behavioral conditioning", but I think that's intellectually dishonest of a characterization for this kind of situation. That is why I think it a lot more productive to make a conceptual distinction between "negative empathy" and "positive empathy", wouldn't you agree? As for the "having" part, which both >>98393 and 98379 raised, I'll need to clarify. Yes, empathy and sympathy aren't things which one "has" in the sense that they somehow present themselves at every time we're interacting with other people. It's rather an ability, or, as Faust above characterized it, an attribute (of the sort or type of relation you have with someone), which can emerge during your interactions with someone you are on the same wavelength with. Yes, people, like young children as an example (except, now that I think about it, both empathy and sympathy are rather complex cognitive-emotional processes, so I suspect these things come apparent only at a certain age in children, but I digress), do have the capacity to be empathetic and sympathetic. But it's not a default settings option: you use it or you lose it, where your environment can either encourage or discourage you from expressing these ways of relating to other people (due to dissociative trauma, narcissism, etc., as the other lainon pointed out). Additionally, I think you *can* decide whether or not to empathize with another person, even if, perhaps, that "genuine" type of empathy is reserseved/ only arises spontaneously within a mutually shared, deep, vulnerable relation with another human being. >>98387 >You seem to like the Nazi example Honestly? I'm actually sick of it, and now in retrospect I think that I shouldn't have made it my gambit during this discussion. The reason I started all this talk about empathy being possibly harmful the way I did in the first place is because that Faust guy's explanation of their difference has stuck with me. I think it was around 2014 or 2015 when I had first read it, during which time it was a rather provocative way of illustrating the point, when every other thing online yet wasn't about nazis and jews. These days, as has elsewhere on this board been expressed (and beyond), it seems every other comment is now about nazis, jews, anti-lgbtqism, racism, sexism. But back to addressing your point... >'suicidal sympathy' eh, don't you mean 'suicidal empathy'? Just checking if I'm understanding your saying accurately and appropriately, because I honestly wouldn't even know what 'suicidal sympathy' would entail or mean. But, in case you meant "suicidal empathy", then, I think you're on the right track with your assessment. It's like how I tried to explain (here >>98388) that empathic relating across cultures might not result in genuine understanding or appreciation of other people and their culture. We can empathically try and learn and emotionally run these simulations of how other people see, think and feel, but only after sympathetic relating do we actually and profoundly know how they relate to the world. Again, like the point about the Midsommar women, empathetic understanding is like sending a post card that reads "I get u", whereas sympathetically we'd be there alongside them, literally replicating/sharing their exact feelings. >Does this save him from the death camps? I take this is a rhetorical question, but for the sake of moving your argumentation along, I'll answer it by saying "no, it wouldn't save him". >>98396 Did this any of this help to rectify some of that incoherence of my writing you mentioned? Also, >Also I looked up the author you mentioned, Michael Faust, it's absolute drivel Nice. Regrettably, this is just the description of the book, which is supposed to attract incredulous eyes with its bombastic one-liners, which is to say you/me/us are missing a lot of context. But I could try to unfold and open up these claims for you, if you'd like, that is? You probably aren't going to read it anyway, so, I dunno, it's up to you. By the way, I agree with you both >>98398 >>98403.

>>98403 Listing 2 examples of exceptions to a rule is a very feminine way of arguing, kek

>>98409 >Listing 2 examples of exceptions to a rule Oh so it's suddenly a "rule" now, this ridiculous theory that someone just pulled out of his ass, it's now established scientific fact and the burden of proof is on me, I see. That's a very masculine way of arguing, coming at every issue very authoritatively like whatever harebrained notion pops into your head is automatically the incontrovertible word of God by default and everyone else has to do the hopeless tedious legwork of trying to refute all of your bogus claims faster than you can produce them, like the housewife desperately trying to scrub the skidmarks out of her husband's underwear faster than he can soil the next pair.

>>98411 You're giving this guy way too much credit. His thought process is literally: >I don't like leftism >I don't like women >therefore they must be the same thing it's not worth doing anything more than pointing and laughing.

>>98412 >it's not worth doing anything more than pointing and laughing. I don't know, I thought my soiled underwear rebuttal was pretty good I think it was worth it just for that.

>>98408 theory of mind is useful to deal with more than merely humans. I do not regard my dog exactly as I regard my toaster, I have to apply theory of mind to the dog. ~ Seems you're trying to say that empathy is the sort of manipluative, analyitical looking at someone else's mind; I empathize with my dog by realizing he likes treats and that if I want to get him to go in the car, which he doesn't like, then I can give him treats. Whereas sympathy is...maybe the actual (and perhaps partial) alignment of goals ?

>>98404 Every single day of the year 2020 I have been told that voter fraud is impossible and you are telling me that you can just do it and then they have to spend forever after the vote to figure who voted? Clearly, you are describing a voting system that need a strong reform, including but not limited to no voting by courier, no voting without an official ID with a picture and no early voting. >>98409 No, it's a low IQ understanding of the world. >Women tend to be shorter than men >It can't be true, I know a tall women Yes, men and women have different thought patterns and priorities, yes social pressure work differently on men and women, yes men and women want different things form society, yes exceptions exist to trends. Can we please move forward now?

>>98480 >Every single day of the year 2020 I have been told that voter fraud is impossible and you are telling me that you can just do it and then they have to spend forever after the vote to figure who voted? >Clearly, you are describing a voting system that need a strong reform, including but not limited to no voting by courier, no voting without an official ID with a picture and no early voting. The Republicans were never genuinely concerned about voter fraud, they never actually believed in some vast nationwide conspiracy to commit mass voter fraud, they were just sore losers who would say and do anything to get those election results thrown out and put an end to American democracy, they were acting in bad faith from the very beginning; the Democrats are just naive weak pussies who stupidly play along with this game, walking on eggshells and dotting every "i" and crossing every "t" and bending over backwards to prove the legitimacy of the voting process to the Republicans and not give them anything they can use to reinforce their narrative, even though it is glaringly obvious to anyone that the Republicans are acting in bad faith and are going to continue to push this narrative regardless of what facts are presented. The Democrats refuse to accept the situation for what it is - a civil war. This is a war and in a war you cannot win by fighting on your enemy's terms and doing exactly what the enemy expects you to do; you have to fight on your own terms. Even the most widespread coordinated effort to commit mass voter fraud would make no meaningful difference in the election results, all the ballots would be thrown out, worse case scenario the election would be postponed or just dispensed with entirely and the Republicans would be declared the winners by default without any election at all, as per Trump's repeated suggestions. The real purpose of this act of civil disobedience would be to demonstrate to the Republicans that, unlike the Democratic Party, the angry disenfranchised American voters have no intention of going down without a fight and they are not going to play by the rules and fight on their enemy's terms, that if the system is rigged against them then they will do everything in their power to fight back and rig it the other way, or just destroy it outright - it would be a populist declaration of war, directly from the people, an act of domestic terrorism designed to invoke fear in the enemy and force their hand, force them to retaliate and double down on the authoritarianism and create even more civil unrest. And the way I see it, after years and years of Republicans crying wolf and baselessly accusing the entire American population of committing voter fraud, there's no reason for people not to commit mass voter fraud - we've already been found guilty of it, so we might as well start doing it. Call their bluff. American democracy and rule of law is dead anyway, absolutely irrevocably dead, killed and mutilated and burned and buried a hundred feet deep, so we might as well have a bit of fun, it's not like we have anything to lose anymore. And when you think about it, that's really the American way. We've never been the types to just lay down like dogs and play by the rules and try to make the best of a bad situation, to fight a war on our enemy's terms; we don't send an envoy over to England to argue in court with the British aristrocracy about taxation without representation, we dress up like Indians and throw all the tea into the god damn ocean. Escalate the hostilities and accelerate the downward spiral until the situation is completely out of control and the dam finally breaks. That's what being an American is all about.

>>98480 Voter fraud is impossible because votes don't matter, they decide who gets in in advance. Trump joined a WWE match and selected a former WWE CEO as their secretary of education as a joke. WWE is notoriously fake and staged so connecting trump to WWE is a joke about how fake politics all is.

>>98511 >Voter fraud is impossible because votes don't matter Wrong >they decide Who decides? I'm expecting you to give very persuasive answers because my hunch is that not only are you just speaking without thought behind what you just said, you don't care either way.

>>98480 >Every single day of the year 2020 I have been told that voter fraud is impossible They said there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud, not that it was impossible. Also, yeah, checking ballots takes a while. >Clearly, you are describing a voting system that need a strong reform, including but not limited to no voting by courier, no voting without an official ID with a picture and no early voting. "strong" is a dog whistle word in this sentence. There are already tons of laws on the books intended to make it difficult to vote, such as restricting the amount of available polling places or restricting what people may do in line (even handing out water to people standing in the sun is illegal), which are selectively enforced in black-majority districts. I wonder if you have any problem with those? Maybe you think we should have heavily armed goons stand around in front of the polling place, who totally won't pick and choose which voters they want to harass or threaten? Maybe the counting process should be done by "civil servants" hand-picked by the incumbent party? Sounds like a very fair process.

The ruling class love to place all the blame on the masses for everything - climate destruction gets blamed on the consumers for selfishly driving their cars to and from their jobs every day, even though consumer automobiles account for less than 10% of CO2 emissions. The housing bubble was the fault of the homeowners who had the gall to take out mortgages so they could have houses to live in and not the fault of financiers who committed mortgage fraud. Mass shootings are the fault of everyday people for owning guns, or for not owning enough guns, or for being mentally ill, or for not noticing the signs of mental illness in their loved ones and having them committed, etc. and not the fault of the firearms industry and its legion of lobbyists who profit tremendously from gun violence. Republicans losing elections gets blamed on the general public for committing voter fraud, even though the vast majority of citizens are too disillusioned and apathetic to even vote at all, let alone compelled to participate in some kind of vast coordinated conspiracy to cast millions of fraudulent ballots. Democrats losing elections also gets blamed on the general public, for not caring enough about their country and not getting out and voting (for Democrats) or for being stupid racist rednecks who hate everyone; neither party can even conceive of the possibility that the reason they suck at winning over the voters is because they are horrible unlikeable elitist sociopaths who are utterly incapable of relating to actual human beings in any capacity. The 1% control virtually all of the wealth and use their wealth to wield power over every level of government, every institution, every aspect of civilized society; yet they are utterly unaccountable and everything bad that happens is always the fault of the 99%. And this kind of blame shifting is beaten into our heads so thoroughly that we actually internalize it and start applying it ourselves, e.g. the decline of our society is not the fault of the ruling class who are actively doing everything in their power to destroy everything right in front of our faces, it is the fault of everyday working class citizenry for being too stupid or selfish or apathetic or not properly prioritizing their political concerns and caring too much about "identity politics", etc. Every systemic problem gets blame shifted into being a cultural problem, i.e. an unsolvable problem.

>>98520 >everything is really the fault of the 1% >Whats the sollution ? >general rebellion >why haven't we had that yet? I guess the uhh, generall population is like too apathetic or something and so its their fault ?

>>98521 In other words the only crime the masses are guilty of is not killing the elites.

>>98521 >general rebellion How exactly is that supposed to work though? How do you rebel against the opulent minority in our modern day technocracy? If people start channeling Luigi and gunning for CEOs they'll just go into hiding, seal themselves off in their compounds or jet off to Thailand or something and continue to run their businesses over their own private fiber optic lines. You can't hit their businesses either because all their business assets are either offshore in some foreign country or they do not exist in physical reality at all and are digital assets stored in networked computers all over the world with tremendous redundancy. Strikes don't work because of outsourcing and automation, boycotts don't work because all competition has been eliminated and consumer choice is a distant memory. The traditional methods of rebellion are no longer applicable. If people really want to rebel, they have to come up with something new. Targeting individuals and private assets is no longer effective, so maybe the answer is to target the infrastructure. An anonymous fishing trawler drops its anchor and "accidentally" cuts an undersea cable. An RC quadcopter clamps onto a high tension power line and injects harmonic currents into the line that destroy transformers. A box truck containing a flux compression generator parks in a busy financial district or near a major data center and emits a powerful EMP that destroys computers and storage drives. Just spitballing here.

>>98522 Whatever happen we will always have an elite. If the general population have a steack in its plate, then they have no reason to rebel. The best outcome that the bottom 95% can get from a revolution is bread and circus, so why would they revolt if they already have it? >>98525 Yes, go destroy the power lines and the communications. I am sure that the elite will gladely abandon power just because the power is off. They absolutely won't use this opportunity to gain even more power.

>>98529 >Whatever happen we will always have an elite. the ones we have today could stand to be knocked down a few pegs. >I am sure that the elite will gladely abandon power just because the power is off. They absolutely won't use this opportunity to gain even more power. You must remember that the majority of those people are just as brainwormed as your average joe. Almost all of them got where they are by being very good at playing a very artificial game (in addition to hereditary wealth, in many cases). They don't really understand how the world works, outside of that game. Just look at how those dopes in the White House didn't expect Persia to be able to close down the strait of Hormuz. Usually this situation of being helpless idiots is fine for them because they are mostly pretty hands-off and let smarter people handle things. Recently they've been tightening the screws. >>98525 >Targeting individuals and private assets is no longer effective You say "no longer" as if people ever tried it on any meaningful scale. Asymmetrical warfare is easier now than ever before. Long gone are the days when the bigger, better equipped army always won. The issue, when it comes to revolution these days, is convincing people that it is possible. Priority number one is and always will be setting up economies that are independent of The Economy. It is very important for people to be able to sustain themselves, and communicate, without paying taxes or getting a corpo wage.

>>98529 >Yes, go destroy the power lines and the communications. I am sure that the elite will gladely abandon power just because the power is off. They absolutely won't use this opportunity to gain even more power. When infrastructure is disrupted, for most people it's just an annoying inconvenience, but for the elite it's a catastrophe that costs them billions of dollars a day. Maybe attacking power grids is going a bit too far since that endangers sick and elderly people on life support, but attacking internet infrastructure doesn't kill anybody.

>>98551 Everyone's lives depend on 'infrastructure'. Break the communications, break logistics, break food distribution etc etc. Obviously if you want a revolutionary war then a little mass suffering is par for the course but you can't say you're not disrupting normal people's lives. If the power went out for a week and I didn't have any backup generators I would personally suffer a not insignificant loss of refrigerated material. Sometimes that's a tradeoff I'm willing to make but just to 'harass the billionaires' is kinda uninspiring and I'm not sure they're going to be really disproportionately effected anyway.

I guess that's what is holding everyone back; the notion launching a genuine popular revolution would somehow be too uncomfortable.

>>98600 Which is exactly how things always are; you look at the Cost vs Benefit and make a choice. If you want a popular revolution, if you think a popular revolution is necessary, then you need to sell a rival regime to the population, and sell them on the war to install it. The main point of a republic is that it makes it seem easier to reform the system from within than to conduct a nasty war for said reform.

>>98613 Yes, I get it. Though it must be acknowledged how everyone's quality of living is constantly being encroached upon basically by all those wicked people who are proactively trying to profit off everyone's suffering. It would be preferable to invest our energy into something that's actually cool & beneficial for the public.

>>98593 idk, i've been through a few weather disasters where the power grid and everything was knocked out for weeks and everyone was miserable and bored to tears but not many people died, most ordinary people were able to adapt and make the best of it. and the really weird and interesting thing about it was, the illustrious kindness of strangers that we sometimes hear about but never usually see and find it very hard to believe in - that just seemed to suddenly emerge completely out of nowhere and most people were unusually and surprisingly very nice and generous, helping out their neighbors and sharing things and working together. that's another other weakness of the elite - they do not have the capacity for empathy or generosity or working together with other people as equals, they only know how to look after themselves and compete with or take advantage of others, they're anti-social and if things get disrupted for them they can't rely on the generosity and cooperation of other billionaires to help them survive, in fact they can rely on the exact opposite, the other billionaires taking advantage of the situation and using it as an opportunity to destroy them while they are weak and vulnerable. another thing is, we still have means of long-range communication even if the infrastructure goes down. nowadays radio is pretty much useless for the elite, it's too low bandwidth and spotty and unreliable for their exorbitant needs and it's inherently free and open nature gives them little control and requires that it be heavily regulated by the government to work at all because there's only so many frequencies to transmit on. regular people have mostly forgotten about radio, they only use it for very short range high-bandwidth transmissions like the wifi in their homes, but if communications infrastructure ever goes down regular people can remain in direct contact with other people through radio with pretty cheap equipment that isn't hard to set up. even with just unregulated cb people can contact other people 5-10 miles away in their town or neighboring towns or other cars on the highway, and with things like shortwave they can contact people across the country or even across oceans to other continents and it's not hard to get a ham radio license to transmit on shortwave, and in some kind of chaotic infrastructural collapse scenario you could probably get away with running a pirate transmitter without any license.

This bizarre situation where so-called "elite" are projected to be heartless monsters because of some-sort of inscrutable necessity to sacrifice everything for "profit"... brings to mind a crucial insight about Machiavelli's philosophy: if you are actually a virtuous person, how do you prevent being undermined by evil? Conceivably, if all those atrocious people who're ruining our lives today suddenly disappeared, then they'd be replaced with another set of terrible people. Question is, how can a leader of legitimate principle be protected without having to resort to evil?

>>98626 if only there were some kind of system of government where we didn't have put all of our faith into one or a few elite leaders and hope that they don't screw up or behave like assholes and ruin everything, if only there were some kind of alternative to this... but who could imagine such a thing?

>>98626 i include myself in this but i think we over philosophize because of how scary it is to act. i think just luiging a bunch of elites even without a plan would do a lot to improve things because at least they wouldn't be able to act with complete impunity. In the epstein files they talk about how one the main reasons they are doing what they do is because they ultimately feel safe.

>>98625 >Been through a few weather disasters where everything was knocked out for weeks The last major US revolution lasted years and lead to the death of like one person out of thirty. I'm not saying weather disasters aren't bad, but imagine that level of disaster going on for far longer, and many of the people who know how or would be in position to rebuild being killed. If the US went through a civil war IDK what it would look like but I'm pretty sure it would be brutal. Revolutionary fantasies that presuppose all the '99%' being of like mind and working together are insane, thats not how things work and it never has been. If it were then sure, you could do amazing and wonderful things if you had the mind to do them.

>>97504 >black trans lives matter Dismissing everything with some vapit platitudes won't save your so called revolution from crumbling while having created the resent and conditions for regular people to put a lid on your performative altruism and narcissistic savior complex that treats everyone just as a prop or pawn in your ego driven silly game. Including those you claim to defend and leaving them even worse off while the real issues they're facing is left unadressed. Either you're a clown or get checks by the SPLC to soykaf up this board. >>98289 What cereal box did you get that graphic from? It seems like a slighlty off rehash of picrel

>>98661 god you people are easy to troll, like fish in a barrel

>>98645 >The last major US revolution lasted years and lead to the death of like one person out of thirty. If you're talking about the US civil war, that wasn't really a revolution in any sense. That was two groups of ruling classes in conflict, not a war between the lower class and the upper class. The revolutionary war was pretty tame in comparison, even accounting for the vastly lower population at the time. If you want an example of all-out class war, look no further than the Russian revolution. It was horrendous, far far worse than the American revolution, because the ruling class did not give up power easily and they were already spectacularly losing an international war.

>>98663 I don't get it. What's the trolling part, the BTLM thingy? >like fish in a barrel Ain't that a good thing if you're hungry though? Never have I heard anyone complain over an easy meal before.

>>98669 >two ruling classes in conflict surely, if you say that about that war then you'd say it also about the American Revolution. In either case, we agree about the massive amount of death and disruption that can happen in this sort of war.

You could've just stopped paying taxes

>two ruling classes in conflict That's every single revolution/civil war ever. The French one (all of them), the Russian one, it's always people who want power vs people who want power. How could it be anything else.

>>98817 the difference is whether either group does not currently have state power. The american civil war was declared by the people in highest political offices of the states that seceded, and they took the whole government apparatus with them. It was not a situation in which one group was not currently the ruling class and they wanted to become the ruling class. You can only compare this to the french revolution or the russian revolution in the greatest of possible generality.

>>98820 Well there's plenty of cases where the revolutionaries do not have state power or don't have much of it (what even is state power, if your revolution includes one guy who works part time for the forest service is it suddenly with state power ? what about a cop ? what about the mayor ? What about cases like the recent Romanian one where it probably didn't start with state power but certainly finished with it?) If today a major civil war were to break out in the US (it would I think more likely happen after several years of unresolved continuing escalation but entertain the hypothetical) it would probably break out more or less along I think the obvious ~leftvright lines that everyone sees today. Many would suggest that we were close to this on January the Sixth, and whether or not that's the case the events of that day I think go to show that state power would likely be split between the two sides. In the leadup to this a bunch of state governments signaled their allegiances one way or the other (with internal factions signalling the opposite), and on the day of you had chaos as high level military leaders are declaring their disloyalty to the sitting president, and I can't imagine that if push had come to shove the ranks would have been divided as to what to do. After a solid week of that, what would the lines be ? I have no clue, but I think a healthy dose of state power, what is left of it anyway, would rest in both camps, as it were.