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Is socialism the Grandmaster League of political opinion-having? Shit, I didn’t know it was *that* ambitious. What’s the Diamond/wants-to-get-into-Masters-but-doesn’t-practice-enough-to-macro-properly equivalent? That might be more my speed. I’m trying to learn and ponder in my spare time, I’m not trying to Be The Very Best (Like No One Ever Was). Is that anarchism maybe? Please don’t say libertarianism.
It seems you don't have a firm grasp on the reasons you aren't(/objections you have to being) gm in SC2 a socialist and until you do I don't think there's much anyone can do to explain why they're wrong.
Couldn’t agree with this more. Like I said, if DPB hadn’t asked I wouldn’t have said anything until I’d gotten around to reading enough that I was confident even posing a question. To be honest, I read the intro and like 10 pages like a week after we talked about it, forgot about it for a month, picked it back up from the beginning, lost access to the app I was reading it on, and haven’t tracked down another means of reading it since.
Edit: not to worry, the good folks at “marxists.org” have my back every bit as much as you’d have guessed.
@JimmiC: I haven’t been, but I’m not surprised there’s a big LDS population up there! It’s not just Utah, there’s a lot of them in a big swath ~north of it, too (a lot of my family is from Idaho, for instance). Also I realized I probably should have said “LDS” – when I was growing up in the church they tended to say “ ‘Mormons’ isn’t our official name, but we don’t mind the nickname.” Apparently since then it’s changed; the new prophet is more of the opinion that “Mormons” is a slur and the devil wins when people call them that. I’ve been trying to switch it in my head.
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Libertarianism is Silver League. Played the campaign, watched a guide to kind of learn a build and will never learn anything else and think that build should cover them in all scenarios forever.
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On July 14 2023 07:29 ChristianS wrote:Is socialism the Grandmaster League of political opinion-having? Shit, I didn’t know it was *that* ambitious. What’s the Diamond/wants-to-get-into-Masters-but-doesn’t-practice-enough-to-macro-properly equivalent? That might be more my speed. I’m trying to learn and ponder in my spare time, I’m not trying to Be The Very Best (Like No One Ever Was). Is that anarchism maybe? Please don’t say libertarianism. Show nested quote +It seems you don't have a firm grasp on the reasons you aren't(/objections you have to being) gm in SC2 a socialist and until you do I don't think there's much anyone can do to explain why they're wrong. Couldn’t agree with this more. Like I said, if DPB hadn’t asked I wouldn’t have said anything until I’d gotten around to reading enough that I was confident even posing a question. To be honest, I read the intro and like 10 pages like a week after we talked about it, forgot about it for a month, picked it back up from the beginning, lost access to the app I was reading it on, and haven’t tracked down another means of reading it since. + Show Spoiler +@JimmiC: I haven’t been, but I’m not surprised there’s a big LDS population up there! It’s not just Utah, there’s a lot of them in a big swath ~north of it, too (a lot of my family is from Idaho, for instance). Also I realized I probably should have said “LDS” – when I was growing up in the church they tended to say “ ‘Mormons’ isn’t our official name, but we don’t mind the nickname.” Apparently since then it’s changed; the new prophet is more of the opinion that “Mormons” is a slur and the devil wins when people call them that. I’ve been trying to switch it in my head.
No. It's like a playstyle or maybe race (Pretty sure Zerg is intentionally a caricature of communism). You can be a gold league socialist (that's probably about where I'd honestly place myself).
But whining on a forum that you're still bad at it after practicing a couple hours in 7 months (after ~7 years of being told you have to practice to improve) and they aren't helping by telling you that you have to do the work isn't how you get better and you know that.
You improve by doing the work. You don't have to do the work, but if you don't, then you don't get the credit for it being a pursuit that you take seriously.
EDIT: I know all this can come off as harsh so let me say I think your contributions have been among the most valuable in the thread for months.
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GH, most people don’t read this thread as a rational and concerted effort to solve the world’s problems (re: “you read plenty of this thread”), we read it because we need a break and it’s interesting enough and we’re screen addicted. They’re not comparable uses of time.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t bring valuable thoughts to the thread. It just means that if you want to use it as a venue to change anybody’s mind, you have to get a lot better at explaining things in your own words, a few paragraphs at a time.
You’re far more likely to make a socialist out of someone by outlining an example socialist solution to a real-world problem — and then outlining more examples over the following weeks — than by assigning them outside reading. What’s more, you’re also more likely to make socialists out of the rest of us in that way than by assigning reading to ChristianS.
If somebody wanted to know what was so good about calculus, you wouldn’t tell them to go read Newton. You would walk them through the solution to a worthwhile problem that couldn’t be solved without calculus.
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On July 14 2023 07:57 Djabanete wrote:+ Show Spoiler +GH, most people don’t read this thread as a rational and concerted effort to solve the world’s problems (re: “you read plenty of this thread”), we read it because we need a break and it’s interesting enough and we’re screen addicted.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t bring valuable thoughts to the thread. It just means that if you want to use it as a venue to change anybody’s mind, you have to get a lot better at explaining things in your own words, a few paragraphs at a time.
You’re far more likely to make a socialist out of ChristianS by outlining an example socialist solution to a real-world problem — and then outlining more examples over the following weeks — than by assigning him outside reading. What’s more, you’re also more likely to make socialists out of the rest of us in that way than by assigning reading to ChristianS. If somebody wanted to know what was so good about calculus, you wouldn’t tell them to go read Newton. You would walk them through the solution to a worthwhile problem that couldn’t be solved without calculus.
As I mentioned earlier, basically all the remotely good things Democrats have accomplished going back to the New Deal were coopted/bastardized socialist policy they had to be dragged to kicking and screaming and basically all the parts people (that don't identify as centrist Dems) don't like are direct results of said cooption/bastardization.
I think that's pretty plainly obvious with even a rudimentary comprehension of socialism, the history, and/or the social democrat thinking that ostensibly guides the Democrat party.
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United States41959 Posts
Which side in chess is communism?
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On July 14 2023 07:52 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2023 07:29 ChristianS wrote:Is socialism the Grandmaster League of political opinion-having? Shit, I didn’t know it was *that* ambitious. What’s the Diamond/wants-to-get-into-Masters-but-doesn’t-practice-enough-to-macro-properly equivalent? That might be more my speed. I’m trying to learn and ponder in my spare time, I’m not trying to Be The Very Best (Like No One Ever Was). Is that anarchism maybe? Please don’t say libertarianism. It seems you don't have a firm grasp on the reasons you aren't(/objections you have to being) gm in SC2 a socialist and until you do I don't think there's much anyone can do to explain why they're wrong. Couldn’t agree with this more. Like I said, if DPB hadn’t asked I wouldn’t have said anything until I’d gotten around to reading enough that I was confident even posing a question. To be honest, I read the intro and like 10 pages like a week after we talked about it, forgot about it for a month, picked it back up from the beginning, lost access to the app I was reading it on, and haven’t tracked down another means of reading it since. + Show Spoiler +@JimmiC: I haven’t been, but I’m not surprised there’s a big LDS population up there! It’s not just Utah, there’s a lot of them in a big swath ~north of it, too (a lot of my family is from Idaho, for instance). Also I realized I probably should have said “LDS” – when I was growing up in the church they tended to say “ ‘Mormons’ isn’t our official name, but we don’t mind the nickname.” Apparently since then it’s changed; the new prophet is more of the opinion that “Mormons” is a slur and the devil wins when people call them that. I’ve been trying to switch it in my head. No. It's like a playstyle or maybe race (Pretty sure Zerg is intentionally a caricature of communism). You can be a gold league socialist (that's probably about where I'd honestly place myself). But whining on a forum that you're still bad at it after practicing a couple hours in 7 months (after ~7 years of being told you have to practice to improve) and they aren't helping by telling you that you have to do the work isn't how you get better and you know that. You improve by doing the work. You don't have to do the work, but if you don't, then you don't get the credit for it being a pursuit that you take seriously. EDIT: I know all this can come off as harsh so let me say I think your contributions have been among the most valuable in the thread for months.
Thanks (for the edit)!
Not to worry, though. When I said “If you start liking me, I start worrying I’ve misrepresented myself,” I was thinking specifically of that conversation (apparently) 7 months ago. I genuinely was interested in what reading you would recommend, but was kinda worried I’d given you the impression I was going to be a diligent student of socialism now. Sounds like that’s exactly the impression you’re criticizing me for not living up to. Which, I mean, fair enough! What else is there to say? There’s stuff around the house my wife asked me to fix like 3 years ago I keep forgetting to do. It’s not a virtue, I’m not gonna act like people should praise me for it.
Funny thing is, I know it’s an analogy but this isn’t far from the relationship I had to Starcraft when I still played. Liked the idea of putting in the time to get better, but couldn’t really bring myself to do it. Even if I was finding some time to ladder or watch Day9 stuff or something, I wasn’t actually sitting down and practicing making an SCV every 17 seconds even though I knew that’s what it would take.
Oh well. If I do actually read enough socialist theory to feel up to having a discussion about it, then we’ll *really* make the thread hate us. So look forward to that, I guess.
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On July 14 2023 08:16 ChristianS wrote:
Oh well. If I do actually read enough socialist theory to feel up to having a discussion about it, then we’ll *really* make the thread hate us. So look forward to that, I guess.
I’d read that.
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On July 14 2023 03:52 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2023 01:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 14 2023 00:07 ChristianS wrote:On July 13 2023 23:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 13 2023 23:22 ChristianS wrote:On July 13 2023 16:22 GreenHorizons wrote:+ Show Spoiler [spoilered for length] +On July 13 2023 08:04 ChristianS wrote:
@Mohdoo: I mean, I’ve got my complaints about the FDA myself. But my point was more about the idea of *creating* a regulatory framework in the first place, going back to like 1906. That was something where as a government it was possible to look at an unregulated market like drugs, with a lot of cutting edge scientific questions around what a regulatory framework would even mean, and go ahead and build one anyway. It’s unfathomable to me that we could do something like that today (e.g. with unregulated markets like social media or AI).
That the existing regulatory frameworks are becoming increasingly inadequate too is only further evidence of the institutional decay I’m trying to describe.
@GH: Come on now, I’m not insisting that anyone “tolerate the increasing deprivation of their rights indefinitely.” If you or anybody else has a plan to get those rights back I’m eager to hear it. Saying “letting Republicans get elected will demonstrably make this problem worse, not better” is not explicitly or implicitly saying that anybody should tolerate it a second longer than they have to.
If you’ve got a way that *not* voting for the person with a D by their name would give those rights back, I’m very interested to hear how that works. Otherwise, filling out a ballot only takes part of a day every couple years. Why can’t we spend the other 364 days working on non-electoral solutions, without ceding control of government to fascists? It very much reads that you are to me. You already know the ideas/plans I relate to are rooted in revolutionary socialism. I've given plenty of recommendations for further reading/understanding of what that means to me over the years. I welcome sincere and serious engagement on anything I've recommended or other relevant socialist perspectives. To be specific, it's a disagreement about how long and under what conditions "they have to", hence the reference to Dr. King's white moderate quote about paternalistically setting the timetable for other peoples' freedom. This isn't a new argument and the decades following Dr. King calling it out so poignantly have thoroughly shown its futility imo. You used the euphemistic "transformational change" for revolution but this is where this conversation always ends up for social democrats. The acceptance that the US probably needs "transformational change", recognizing that the politicians in power (including Democrats) will never allow those changes, and then the realization they have no plan beyond continuing to vote to keep those politicians in power to (hopefully at best) slow down the march toward full blown fascism with maybe some futile support for bastardized socialist policy/strategies sprinkled in. That wouldn't be as egregious if they didn't simultaneously dismiss the progenitors of the socialist/anarchist policies/strategies they bastardize to conform to the Democrat party framework and provide the superficial appearance of solidarity while undermining revolutionary energy. + Show Spoiler +Since I’m being called a “white moderate” I thought it was a good time to go reread the Letter from Birmingham Jail. Maybe this is poor reading comprehension on my part, but isn’t it kind of definitional to a “white moderate” that they’re discouraging some means of affecting positive change as too hasty/extreme? Where have I done that?
If I read that letter with the question “how should I view the electoral system in trying to affect positive change?” I, at least, get something like this: the electoral system is real, it’s important, and it’s okay to care about its outcomes; but voting alone insufficient to achieve necessary change. As King mentions, their Birmingham Campaign delayed mass demonstrations because they didn’t want to influence the election; specifically, they hoped to see Albert Boutwell defeat Bull Connor (even though, as King also mentions, Boutwell was merely a more moderate segregationist). Once Connor was defeated, they didn’t cancel the campaign and go home, they went right back to demonstrating. If someone had told Dr. King “I’m thinking of voting for Boutwell,” I doubt he would have said “Don’t!” Doing my best to understand what he’s saying in his letter, it seems to me that he would have told them to go ahead, but that it wasn’t enough on its own. (I’m very uncomfortable with the idea of trying to put words in Dr. King’s mouth, but it seems essential to engaging deeply with a text to try to apply its lessons to new situations; if you think I’m misreading it, I’m eager to hear what you think I’ve failed to understand.)
I didn’t intend the phrase “transformational change” to be euphemistic. I suppose you’d prefer “revolutionary change?” I shy away only because I’m never sure how metaphorical the “revolution” is, and when I’m not really sure what a phrase means I try to avoid it. A lot of times people read you calling for revolution and think that means recruiting soldiers, obtaining weapons, and engaging in pitched battles against the military in hopes of triumphing on the battlefield and overthrowing the government. Maybe that’s what you do mean? But if that’s what we’re talking about I’d like to make that more explicit. Otherwise if “revolution” is meant to be more abstract/metaphorical, I was hoping to avoid that distraction. But I’m not dismissing socialists + Show Spoiler +or anarchists, nor am I telling them to conform their activities to the Democratic Party framework. If they’ve got ideas for what to do next I’m happy to hear them! I have no interest in tone policing or prescribing appropriate and inappropriate methods. I can’t promise to believe whatever they tell me to; I’m not a blind follower, I have to engage critically with ideas and decide for myself whether to believe them. But I’m not opposed to reading some of the theory you push for either (although finding time and energy for it has been pretty difficult; the reading always seems to be pretty dense). You literally said: I know for GH the answer is “revolutionary socialism” but I’m pretty unconvinced that Lenin has the answers for us. If I wanted to get gaslit I'd just engage BJ. Yeah, later in the same paragraph I also said I’m not promising to believe whatever they tell me. I started into “What Is To Be Done” a few months ago. Didn’t get that far, I’d like to read more of it, although I will say the intro written by other socialists that clearly love Lenin and were lovingly summarizing the work didn’t particularly persuade me. I know socialists whose ideas I’ll happily listen to on political subjects, but so far, I’m not about to call myself a socialist. If “I read some socialist theory but so far I’m not convinced enough to call myself one” counts as “dismissing socialists,” then you’re right, I’m dismissing socialists and a whole lot of other people too. Under other circumstances maybe I’d want to get into my reservations right now, but honestly? If I engaged BJ right now I think I’d have a much better chance of somebody actually reading what I wrote, thinking about it, and then telling me what they think I’m getting right or wrong. So maybe I should just hold off for a bit, huh? I read it, thought about it, and told you one central and glaring thing I thought was wrong with it. It is unreasonable for me to go deeper into it without confronting the absurdity that you weren't being dismissive of socialists. When I recommended "What is to be Done" (it's about a 6 hour read assuming 1/2 the avg reading pace) to you 7 months ago (so that's less than 2 minutes a day or 15 minutes a week or 1 hour per month to finish) it was in this context: You're not an idiot. You know how to research a topic and develop a better understanding through at least traditional academic means. Reading Lenin's "Where to Begin?" and "What Is To Be Done" seems like a reasonable place to look. Not as gospel to be carried out unquestioningly, but as a reference point to bring to a dialectical engagement about what makes sense for one's own role in the struggle with respect to one's own material conditions.
That one struggles to find the time and energy is at least believable (and true for most of us). But that's a struggle with prioritization, not ignorance.
If someone is in an org, ingesting theory, and applying/refining that theory through praxis with the org, they're exponentially further along than the overwhelming majority of the country and even a lot of people that call themselves socialist. + Show Spoiler +When I recommended it again about 4 months ago it was in this context: I know surviving capitalist oppression is a struggle and a half, but in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (more specifically an introduction by Donaldo Macedo) there's something relevant, and as it's all I readily know you've at least tried to engage with to answer your questions, it seems appropriate. Basically it touches on the perceived complexity of Freire and how it's accessibility is probably less about language than it is ideology/identity (for lack of a better word). Show nested quote +I am often amazed to hear academics complain about the complexity of a particular discourse because of its alleged lack of clarity. It is as if they have assumed that there is a mono-discourse that is characterized by its clarity and is also equally available to all. If one begins to probe the issue of clarity, we soon realize that it is class specific, thus favoring those of that class in the meaningmaking process.
The following two examples will bring the point home: Henry Giroux and I gave a speech at Massasoit Community College in Massachusetts to approximately three hundred unwed mothers who were part of a GED (graduate-equivalency diploma) program. The director of the program later informed us that most of the students were considered functionally illiterate. After Giroux's speech, during the question-and-answer period, a woman got up and eloquently said, "Professor Giroux, all my life I felt the things you talked about. I just didn't have a language to express what I have felt. Today I have come to realize that I do have a language. Thank you."
Paulo Freire told me the story of what happened to him at the time he was preparing the English translation of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. He gave an African American student at Harvard a chapter of the book to read to see how she would receive it. A few days later when he asked the woman if she had read it, she enthusiastically responded, "Yes. Not only did I read it, but I gave it to my sixteen-year-old son to read. He read the whole chapter that night and in the morning said, 'I want to meet the man who wrote this. He is talking about me "
One question that I have for all those "highly literate" academics who find Giroux's and Freire's discourse so difficult to understand is, Why is it that a sixteen-year-old boy and a poor, "semiliterate" woman could so easily understand and connect with the complexity of both Freire and Girouxs language and ideas, and the academics, who should be the most literate, find the language incomprehensible?
I believe that the answer has little to do with language and everything to do with ideology. That is, people often identify with representations that they are either comfortable with or that help deepen their understanding of themselves. The call for language clarity is an ideological issue, not merely a linguistic one. The sixteen-year-old and the semiliterate poor woman could readily connect with Freire's ideology, whereas the highly literate academics are put off by some dimensions of the same ideology. It is, perhaps, for this reason that a university professor I know failed to include Freire's work in a graduate course that she taught on literacy. When I raised the issue with her, she explained that students often find Freire's writing too difficult and cumbersome. It could also be the reason that the Divinity School at Harvard University offers a course entitled "Education for Liberation," in which students study Freire and James Cone extensively, whereas no such opportunities are available at Harvard's School of Education. For me, the mundane call for a language of "simplicity and clarity" represents yet another mechanism to dismiss the complexity of theoretical issues, particularly if these theoretical constructs interrogate the prevailing dominant ideology
I promise it was at least as hard (in many ways harder if you look into what it took for various communities that have embraced Freire to even have access to Freire's work). As daunting as it might seem, you can dig into this stuff and find various answers to your questions from various socialists to develop your own perspective and understanding if you genuinely want to. Maybe Freire isn't where you personally should start, maybe for you Lenin's "What is to be Done" is better, maybe it's some sort of modern "socialism for dummies" book, hard for me to say much until you start reading/watching/listening/engaging with more socialist perspectives and develop an understanding of at least what's initially resonating with you and where you think there's a problem you need to dig into deeper. I do think we owe the most horrifically oppressed people around the world, and the people that sacrificed before us at least this much. The older the material the more socialists you'll likely find that noticed the same problems and had their own prescriptions for them. Then when you ask "how do we address X concern of mine" you're bringing your own perspective rooted in at least a perfunctory understanding of the framework you and your comrades are attempting to use to address your concerns. Then they can say "I tend to agree with Y when they say Z about X" and you can have some idea what that means in a larger socialist context and eventually some of the common critiques of "Y and/or his Z" as well as other popular ways socialists address your concerns. Like many things in life, if you want the results you have to put in the work. If folks went back to their professors or even k-12 teachers and told them something to the effect of "I think there might be something important I need to learn about" and proceed to describe their efforts to learn about socialism (particularly their reliance on someone like myself) their professor/teacher would probably be some blend of concerned and confused, don't ya think? That's not to say I'm not trying or willing to keep working together on this stuff (or don't think it's valuable for all of us), but people have to remember I'm busy surviving capitalist oppression too and they know better when it comes to learning about something they think is important. It's also not like I'm talking to people that haven't been hearing about socialism as an alternative to capitalism for years and this is their first time encountering the idea or me presenting it to them. Then you're going to show up all these months later saying: I know for GH the answer is “revolutionary socialism” but I’m pretty unconvinced that Lenin has the answers for us. I tend to look at non-governmental solutions (stuff like unions and mutual aid) as promising alternative routes Which makes sense when you acknowledge you struggled to get past the introduction of either of the two (out of dozens of) suggested readings/figures: I started into “What Is To Be Done” a few months ago. Didn’t get that far, I’d like to read more of it, although I will say the intro written by other socialists that clearly love Lenin and were lovingly summarizing the work didn’t particularly persuade me. But stands as a stark contradiction with your repeated insistence that: If they’ve got ideas for what to do next I’m happy to hear them! So get into your reservations, or into the socialists you happily listen to and why they haven't convinced you to call (or more importantly comport) yourself (as) a socialist, or bury your head in the sand or whatever, just don't stand there pissin in my face trying to convince me it's rain and get indignant about me calling it out. Danglars used to have this quality where it was really hard to talk to him and understand what his motivations were until I realized that most of the time, there was something I had said several pages ago, probably not even addressing him, that he was still steaming about. With that context, it got a lot easier to understand what he was upset about. I started taking a mental inventory every time I started talking to him of what I had said recently that he would probably disagree with, and it got a lot easier to understand what his oblique hostile remarks were actually about. Useful lesson, although it was kind of exhausting, and one of the bigger reasons I didn’t make more fuss when he got banned. Thing is, I was actually doing that same thing *in this conversation* – I just guessed wrong which thing you were holding a grudge about! I thought it was because I said I still think people should vote for Democrats; turns out it’s because several pages ago DPB asked me What Is To Be Done, and I essentially said “I don’t really know, here’s some (mostly leftist) ideas I think are promising; GH would say ‘revolutionary socialism’ but I’m not convinced Lenin has the answers.” I should have realized *that* was why I was getting brief, curt responses calling me a white moderate gaslighter. Here’s the thing, I’m not expecting you to like me. At the end of the day I’m a white kid raised by rich conservative Mormons who went to school for chemistry, got a job in the pharma industry, bought a house I couldn’t afford to live in and rented it out to other people. I’m checking boxes for “rich white parents,” “pharma industry worker,” and “landlord;” if you start liking me I start worrying I’ve misrepresented myself somehow. But you have ideas you want to promote that I think are worth considering, so I discuss with you, and try my best to engage sincerely and honestly with them. Sorry I haven’t done my homework. It’s probably true that I could block out 6 hours with a microphone and read that whole book aloud, and you could check the recording and confirm my brain had processed every word enough to verbalize it. Since I *haven’t* done the reading, I wasn’t jumping out of my chair to discuss my reservations with you, considering for all I know, they’re addressed on the next page. If DPB hadn’t asked me directly where I’m at on pretty much exactly this, I wouldn’t have brought it up at all.But political theory isn’t my area; I have a lot of trouble finding time to read it, and even more feeling like I understood what I just read enough to move to the next paragraph. I don’t think at the end of that 6 hours I would feel any more confident in raising whatever objections I have to what Lenin wrote. As for socialists whose opinions I value, I’m not particularly proud of the list, but: Austin Walker, formerly of Giant Bomb and Waypoint Radio. The whole Waypoint/Remap crowd, too. Robert Evans is more of an anarchist, but I’m usually interested in what he thinks. David Shor is clearly very smart, even if I don’t always agree with him. And, well, you! I don’t find a whole lot of time in my schedule for *any* books, not just socialist ones, so people that can be heard on podcasts or read online tend to make it into my information diet more readily – not ideal, I know, but whatever, I’m doing my best with what I’ve got. I’m thinking I should probably take a break from this thread for a few days, so, uh, don’t expect too many quick replies from me. But hey, I’d rather get called a white moderate gaslighter by you than just read page after page of tirades how terrible trans people are. So thanks for that I guess.
Sorry! Although I don't have the time to participate in the current conversation, it's still been a good and interesting read 
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On July 14 2023 08:16 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2023 07:52 GreenHorizons wrote:On July 14 2023 07:29 ChristianS wrote:Is socialism the Grandmaster League of political opinion-having? Shit, I didn’t know it was *that* ambitious. What’s the Diamond/wants-to-get-into-Masters-but-doesn’t-practice-enough-to-macro-properly equivalent? That might be more my speed. I’m trying to learn and ponder in my spare time, I’m not trying to Be The Very Best (Like No One Ever Was). Is that anarchism maybe? Please don’t say libertarianism. It seems you don't have a firm grasp on the reasons you aren't(/objections you have to being) gm in SC2 a socialist and until you do I don't think there's much anyone can do to explain why they're wrong. Couldn’t agree with this more. Like I said, if DPB hadn’t asked I wouldn’t have said anything until I’d gotten around to reading enough that I was confident even posing a question. To be honest, I read the intro and like 10 pages like a week after we talked about it, forgot about it for a month, picked it back up from the beginning, lost access to the app I was reading it on, and haven’t tracked down another means of reading it since. + Show Spoiler +@JimmiC: I haven’t been, but I’m not surprised there’s a big LDS population up there! It’s not just Utah, there’s a lot of them in a big swath ~north of it, too (a lot of my family is from Idaho, for instance). Also I realized I probably should have said “LDS” – when I was growing up in the church they tended to say “ ‘Mormons’ isn’t our official name, but we don’t mind the nickname.” Apparently since then it’s changed; the new prophet is more of the opinion that “Mormons” is a slur and the devil wins when people call them that. I’ve been trying to switch it in my head. No. It's like a playstyle or maybe race (Pretty sure Zerg is intentionally a caricature of communism). You can be a gold league socialist (that's probably about where I'd honestly place myself). But whining on a forum that you're still bad at it after practicing a couple hours in 7 months (after ~7 years of being told you have to practice to improve) and they aren't helping by telling you that you have to do the work isn't how you get better and you know that. You improve by doing the work. You don't have to do the work, but if you don't, then you don't get the credit for it being a pursuit that you take seriously. EDIT: I know all this can come off as harsh so let me say I think your contributions have been among the most valuable in the thread for months. Thanks (for the edit)! Not to worry, though. When I said “If you start liking me, I start worrying I’ve misrepresented myself,” I was thinking specifically of that conversation (apparently) 7 months ago. I genuinely was interested in what reading you would recommend, but was kinda worried I’d given you the impression I was going to be a diligent student of socialism now. Sounds like that’s exactly the impression you’re criticizing me for not living up to. Which, I mean, fair enough! What else is there to say? There’s stuff around the house my wife asked me to fix like 3 years ago I keep forgetting to do. It’s not a virtue, I’m not gonna act like people should praise me for it. Funny thing is, I know it’s an analogy but this isn’t far from the relationship I had to Starcraft when I still played. Liked the idea of putting in the time to get better, but couldn’t really bring myself to do it. Even if I was finding some time to ladder or watch Day9 stuff or something, I wasn’t actually sitting down and practicing making an SCV every 17 seconds even though I knew that’s what it would take. Oh well. If I do actually read enough socialist theory to feel up to having a discussion about it, then we’ll *really* make the thread hate us. So look forward to that, I guess.
Just remember the consequences of not doing the work to understand the preexisting work done by others and our own informed work to help shape a viable/equitable alternative to the status quo are immeasurably more dire (global ecological catastrophe for one) and condemns countless people to oppression, prison, torture, death etc every day folks put it off and prioritize other activities.
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There is no less persuasive argument in all of politics than "You need to do the reading ". The sheer arrogance and elitism to tell people they need to do homework before their opinions and thoughts are valid are only rivaled by what happens after you do the reading and get told "You just don't get the reading you need to do more reading".
You are not going to convince anyone you are right by simply insisting that you're right.
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On July 14 2023 03:51 Magic Powers wrote:
Just because someone is guilty of a crime doesn't mean they deserve death by police execution, even if their crime is murder. Do you agree with this statement oBlade?
NO! no! NO!
This is not how violence works. And when people talk about it like this it grinds my gears. It is a sentiment brought on by watching too much tv/movies and maybe even the UFC and thinking that is real life.
I'll use the UFC to demonstrate, because I think at their heart of hearts, everyone knows TV violence is fake AF. Well, what if I told you that just about everything you see in a UFC Octagon is considered deadly force outside of the Octagon? Well, by most martial arts experts, it all is. Why don't people die like flies in the Octagon?
1) The whole ground is softer than concrete. The walls are a springy fence. The whole environment is dozens of times safer than your average sidewalk.
2) Weight classes. Simple enough, 125 lb guys have no chance against 250 lb guys in the real world, and that amount of extra force can turn one good punch into a dead guy.
3) The ref stops shit. If you are confronted with a violent person on the street, you have no idea if and when they will stop. If I am on the subway and some guy starts shoving me, how do I know that if I fall down he won't go American History X on me and stomp my skull. I can't. Thus I have to go all out to avoid every being knocked into a vulnerable position.
4) No extraneous weapons. There are know knives or guns in the octagon. But there also are no pens, no bedpans, no marble side tables with a square edge, in other words nothing that can escalate.
So what does this mean in reality? That people who say, "something doesn't deserve execution" are living in a fantasy world. The NYC prosecutors seem to be particularly toeing this line lately. Charging all sorts of people who were pushed into a corner by crazy people, only to walk a lot of them back after the public backlash.
I do expect more out of our cops, but the classic is the "hands up don't shoot" lie. If we recall that actual situation, the person shot was attempting to wrest the police service weapon from the cop. The cop has a right to use all possible force to stop that, because one cannot count on a violent person to not use their newly procured handgun on you. What do we need out of our cops? I simply think they need to be in cars less, and travel in larger groups. 3 or 4 man beats make much more sense because 3 people can almost always subdue 1 person with low(ish) risk. Two fatties eating double bacon cheeses all day can't do shit.
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On July 14 2023 13:14 Sermokala wrote:
There is no less persuasive argument in all of politics than "You need to do the reading ". The sheer arrogance and elitism to tell people they need to do homework before their opinions and thoughts are valid are only rivaled by what happens after you do the reading and get told "You just don't get the reading you need to do more reading".
You are not going to convince anyone you are right by simply insisting that you're right.
They could start by reconciling this: On July 14 2023 08:07 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2023 07:57 Djabanete wrote:+ Show Spoiler +GH, most people don’t read this thread as a rational and concerted effort to solve the world’s problems (re: “you read plenty of this thread”), we read it because we need a break and it’s interesting enough and we’re screen addicted.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t bring valuable thoughts to the thread. It just means that if you want to use it as a venue to change anybody’s mind, you have to get a lot better at explaining things in your own words, a few paragraphs at a time.
You’re far more likely to make a socialist out of ChristianS by outlining an example socialist solution to a real-world problem — and then outlining more examples over the following weeks — than by assigning him outside reading. What’s more, you’re also more likely to make socialists out of the rest of us in that way than by assigning reading to ChristianS. If somebody wanted to know what was so good about calculus, you wouldn’t tell them to go read Newton. You would walk them through the solution to a worthwhile problem that couldn’t be solved without calculus. As I mentioned earlier, basically all the remotely good things Democrats have accomplished going back to the New Deal were coopted/bastardized socialist policy they had to be dragged to kicking and screaming by socialists* and basically all the parts people (that don't identify as centrist Dems/on the Right) don't like are direct results of said cooption/bastardization. I think that's pretty plainly obvious with even a rudimentary comprehension of socialism, the history, and/or the social democrat thinking that ostensibly guides the Democrat party.
with their refusal to recognize socialism as the "lesser evil" framework to work within and the necessity to comport themselves as socialists to change the status quo instead?
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On July 14 2023 03:51 Magic Powers wrote:
Just because someone is guilty of a crime doesn't mean they deserve death by police execution, even if their crime is murder. Do you agree with this statement oBlade?
I think there’s a lot of bad faith arguments you’re offering
An execution looks like putting someone on their knees and shooting them in the back of the head. It doesn’t look like some scared shitless cop full of adrenaline firing at someone because they have a gun. Calling these types of police shootings “executions” is incredibly disingenuous.
Another argument you’ve offered is “if a private citizen did this they would be in prison.” Well duh. Why would an armed private citizen be on someone else’s property responding to a domestic violence dispute? None of that makes sense. It’s like saying of a surgeon that amputated the wrong leg they should go to prison because if a private citizen did that they would be in prison. We don’t just lock up everybody that makes mistakes in the function of their duties.
Third, it’s funny that all the videos you offered involved officers responding to calls requesting assistance for domestic violence or other things. The argument is whether the US is a police state. In a police state the police should already be there to harass you instead of people having to call to summon them as public servants.
Finally the most ironic part about your arguments that the US is a police state that also overwhelmingly targets black people is that polls show for example 81% of black people want equal or greater police presence in their communities. Because of course the one thing you want from being repeatedly and frequently brutalized by racist armed thugs is a lot more of that… /sarcasm
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On July 14 2023 03:51 Magic Powers wrote:
Just because someone is guilty of a crime doesn't mean they deserve death by police execution, even if their crime is murder. Do you agree with this statement oBlade?
In an existential sense, no, I don't agree, I think murderers deserve death and don't feel bothered much if they meet it. In the legal sense, I agree, because that's not congruent with a working justice system. Which, buddy, I live hundreds of kilometers from countries where police summarily execute "criminals." It's not legal in the US and it's prosecuted when done.
On July 14 2023 04:03 Magic Powers wrote:
Also, I notice you took my statement out of context. When I talked about preventable deaths, I was talking about how officers are practically creating the circumstances for their victims to get shot. I've only shown you cases where innocent people get shot to death without sufficient reason. I wasn't talking about a case like that of Sturgeon where the officers can expect a great level of violence from the perpetrator (edit: or suspect rather).
Furthermore, the woman who shot at the officers was completely within her right to fire at any of the invaders. They were on her property, meaning they were infringing on her castle doctrine, and her husband was just murdered in front of her. I don't know if you're aware of the legality? By that point it doesn't matter that they're cops, because she had no way of discerning whether they're cops or regular criminals. The officers had no right to be there.
Castle doctrine doesn't mean that citizens have an inherent right to murder anyone who is simply present on their property any more than police have a right to summarily execute any citizen in possession of a firearm. Your understanding of US law is wildly distant from reality.
You have a recognized right, police or not, to go to someone's porch and knock, and if you don't linger and leave when they ask, they can't just smoke you. This is known legal precedent.
The fact that she didn't know they were cops because of the circumstances in which they did or didn't announce themselves properly, and they shot her husband, is a strong argument for not charging the wife with any crime (which as far as I know they haven't). Nevertheless the guy himself appeared to brandish a gun at them (I'm not judging the case I'm just saying it's not black and white), which whether they were police officers or not would have been assault in most or all jurisdictions.
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On July 14 2023 13:35 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On July 14 2023 03:51 Magic Powers wrote:
Just because someone is guilty of a crime doesn't mean they deserve death by police execution, even if their crime is murder. Do you agree with this statement oBlade? NO! no! NO! This is not how violence works. And when people talk about it like this it grinds my gears. It is a sentiment brought on by watching too much tv/movies and maybe even the UFC and thinking that is real life. I'll use the UFC to demonstrate, because I think at their heart of hearts, everyone knows TV violence is fake AF. Well, what if I told you that just about everything you see in a UFC Octagon is considered deadly force outside of the Octagon? Well, by most martial arts experts, it all is. Why don't people die like flies in the Octagon? 1) The whole ground is softer than concrete. The walls are a springy fence. The whole environment is dozens of times safer than your average sidewalk. 2) Weight classes. Simple enough, 125 lb guys have no chance against 250 lb guys in the real world, and that amount of extra force can turn one good punch into a dead guy. 3) The ref stops shit. If you are confronted with a violent person on the street, you have no idea if and when they will stop. If I am on the subway and some guy starts shoving me, how do I know that if I fall down he won't go American History X on me and stomp my skull. I can't. Thus I have to go all out to avoid every being knocked into a vulnerable position. 4) No extraneous weapons. There are know knives or guns in the octagon. But there also are no pens, no bedpans, no marble side tables with a square edge, in other words nothing that can escalate. So what does this mean in reality? That people who say, "something doesn't deserve execution" are living in a fantasy world. The NYC prosecutors seem to be particularly toeing this line lately. Charging all sorts of people who were pushed into a corner by crazy people, only to walk a lot of them back after the public backlash. I do expect more out of our cops, but the classic is the "hands up don't shoot" lie. If we recall that actual situation, the person shot was attempting to wrest the police service weapon from the cop. The cop has a right to use all possible force to stop that, because one cannot count on a violent person to not use their newly procured handgun on you. What do we need out of our cops? I simply think they need to be in cars less, and travel in larger groups. 3 or 4 man beats make much more sense because 3 people can almost always subdue 1 person with low(ish) risk. Two fatties eating double bacon cheeses all day can't do shit.
You're really trying to one-up the craziness of your last post after seeing how well received that was, huh?
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@ clutz
Analogies to the UFC don't work. Real life shootings and the octagon are not comparable scenarios, as you explain quite aptly yourself. So I don't know why you bring that up.
In real life when police approach a suspected murderer in his home, they send a whole swath of cars, they stake off the entire scene so no one can escape, they make sure no bystanders can enter the scene, then they coordinate their actions, and only then do they begin their pursuit of the suspect. I've watched a lot of footage of how this is done from various perspectives. It's very methodical and they make a big scene about it.
At least that's how they do it when they take their job seriously.
So that's not comparable to knocking at someone's door because of a call they receive about noise or suspicious behavior. In such a case they have no reason to suspect that someone might come out guns blazing.
Many American citizens protect themselves against home invaders by arming themselves with guns. Police officers are fully aware of this, so they know that they need to be careful in how they approach people in their homes. This is why I posted the footage of cases where officers acted in reckless ways, resulting in the death of three innocent citizens.
These deaths were preventable if the officers had conducted themselves properly, and if they were trained better. The reason why they acted like that is because of poor training and poor hiring practices.
Also, again, the castle doctrine allows citizens to shoot home invaders, it doesn't matter who the invaders are. If they can't identify the invaders because it's dark, but they know that the invaders are armed because they just shot someone at the door, then that gives the home owners free reign to shoot at the invaders on their property. The woman was completely in the right. Her husband who was shot was also completely in the right. The officers were in the wrong. They were in the wrong a total of three times.
1) they entered the wrong property, 2) they shot the husband who had not opened fire, 3) after shooting the husband they stayed on the property.
It's a miracle they didn't shoot the woman to death as well. And all of that was preventable if the cops had been trained better and if they had made absolutely sure that they're at the right house.
It can also be argued that police should never enter people's property at night to begin with. I've seen enough footage to know that these wrongful shootings happen at night almost every single time.
@ oBlade
You say murderers deserve death?
I could not disagree more. All people deserve to live unless we don't have any ethically reasonable means to keep them alive. Note that my view is in fact the golden medium. The radical opposite to your view would be that murderers deserve to rule the world.
Between these three views, you're on the far end of two sides. That's way too extreme for my taste, so I don't see how we can have a productive discussion. Sorry. I don't enter discussions with people who hold such radical beliefs.
@ BJ
You clearly didn't watch the footage, or you don't understand what happened. The officers were in the wrong in all three cases. In all three cases the officers executed their victims.
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EPT
