This is not a case of Trump having done bad things and Biden doing nothing. An analogue is if trump were firing a minigun on a bunch of people, he left office, Biden took over and resumed firing.

Also, sanctions by the richest country in history need to be proven to have adverse effects on the imposed in the same way the theory of gravity needs to be proven again: only flat earth type loonies need it so it’s merely an exercise, not an academic necessity.

Biggest reason, I can still use Boost after the api shit. If I were forced to use a browser or shudder the official app, I wouldn’t even consider it.

Most of my scrolling I do here, my Reddit use had become more specific even before I became more active on the 'grad. I don’t use twitter or any other social media, so Reddit is my only source of news on the series and mangas I follow.

For my part I don’t use the wider Lemmy either. I’ve got 2 subscriptions from hexbear and that’s it. Other instances feel like knock-off Reddit so I don’t browse them for the same reasons I haven’t browsed r/all in years.

I don’t believe either candidate is doing a bad job gutting the US on the inside, though as an outsider my perspective is limited.

On the diplomatic front, absolutely. During Trump’s term, most usian “allies” took the dumb shit he did as the temporary acts of some man-child. The corpse of Joe Biden is disproving the myth of the adults in charge in real time. He started a losing war in the Ukraine and now he’s practically overseeing a genocide. What’s more, he could’ve let Trump have sinophobia, but he chose to reveal that democrats could be just as sabre-rattling.

At this point anyone who isn’t as dignified as Obama is fine though. It’s all a race to the bottom with the bourgeois dictatorships and only an articulate, pretty face can mask that, and even that not for long.

I looked at only one comment, the highest actual comment on the first link. The cited books don’t lead me to believe this guy’s well-read at all, not only because of the weird format, but also they’re not the useful kind of citation that backs up central claims.

Parenti’s work speaks vaguely about “less inequality”, “public ownership of the means of production”, and “priority placed on human services”, but these statements say nothing about the real, systemic experiences of Soviet citizens, particularly industrial workers who were explicitly supposed formed the basis of Soviet society. Saying that there was “public ownership” of industry is a truism. It tells us nothing about what state ownership and management meant for ordinary Soviet industrial laborers in terms of wages, working hours, factory management, social mobility, and more broadly their participation in Soviet society. It’s a “socialist” history of the USSR with the working class’ real, material experiences written out.

I know this feels right to people who haven’t got a grasp on the fact that they live in a capitalist society. All manner of improvements can be made to the superstructure of a capitalist society, it won’t become equal. How do I know the USSR was socialist? For most of its existence it didn’t have a class of people with an overrepresented influence over its administration or the functioning of its society. Specific statistics and policies that indicate prosperity or democracy aren’t immaterial, but they are only ancillary.

Parenti spends no time engaging with the vast academic literature on Russian and Soviet workers and labor history. Most of these works are written by socialist scholars interested in examining the role of class and labor in Soviet society.

The poster has to know this ain’t true. Western historiography on the subject of the USSR and other worker states is notoriously devoid of first-hand accounts and documents. Grover Furr calls attention to this in many of his speeches and writings: a medieval historian who doesn’t have a good grasp of multiple languages used in the region they’re studying is rightly a laughingstock, yet how many historians of the USSR speak (or just read) russian? How many historians of seeseepee know mandarin?

… In none of these works is the Soviet state itself a producer or unfiltered transmitter of worker’s “class interests”, inasmuch as scholarship nowadays accepts the idea that such a diverse group - in terms of gender, background, geography, and profession - could have a coherent set of interests.

I’m not sure I’m reading this right, but I think the dimwit is proposing the proletariat doesn’t exist because intersectionality makes class interests too complicated, which would be as correct as the dodo population is numerous. We’re who we are here, we’ve at least skimmed Capital, we’re better than to believe added factors change the core of a system.

Parenti largely avoids engaging with the question of how “socialist” the USSR was in a substantive way. He skips description of what the USSR “was” for excuses about “why”. Certainly its leaders were convinced Marxists, and this set of beliefs pervaded every aspect of the USSR’s existence. …

And so on and so on. How someone could read Blackshirts and Reds and come away with the singular question “Why didn’t the author prove to my satisfaction that the USSR was communist?” is beyond me. I might be convinced they never read a word Parenti wrote considering their entire comment, it’s filled with stuff they may have gotten from reviews.

This is a misconception. Cis people don’t choose their gender, nor do heteros their sexuality. All babies are born genderfluid bisexual. When they start teething, gender and sexuality fairies arrive and make the baby into something else. Babies too fabulous for heterosexuality are made homosexual. If the sexuality fairy doesn’t visit a baby, but they just love everyone so much, they can’t distingush someone[s] they particularly like to limit their love to, they end up identifying as asexual.

I know the gender fairy visited me, we have pictures and everything, but I not sure about the sexuality fairy. I’m told they arrived, but I’ve seen evidence they were elsewhere at the time.

Tell them in accordance with the principle “to each according to their need” the party would give them a good bahing every day.

I feel you’re looking at crime as a fact, and while it’s true that eradicating crime 100% isn’t feasible, a bare minimum if prosperity and stability goes a long way.

Let’s take a historical perspective. In times before capitalism, i.e. when the main source of value was still agriculture instead of production, there was no police. There were armies, and they were used to combat crime that was against the interests of landowners, e.g. banditry and revolts, but there were no brigades of armed men “solving” individual crimes. How exactly individual crimes were dealt with changes from place to place, often there’d be an adjudicator figure who’d hear complaints, conduct some sort of an investigation and meet out a punishment.

Mind you, this isn’t me saying we’ll make utopia with 0 crime or that a justice system is all bad, even if the capitalist understanding of separation of powers always creates perverse incentives. The separarion of police/prosecution/judiciary serves as sieves that filter through the interests of capital while blocking the interests of the people. That’s only a small part of the ewuation though. Most crime has some economic ties, from petty crimes committed due to hardship and organised crimes that capitalist system create room to exist. And of the crimes that don’t have a direct economic link, most will have a mental health basis, some being unresolved illnesses and other actually caused by the mental stresses of participating in capitalist society. These can be resolved in a system level, and suddenly (it won’t be sudden) most of the criminals we ought to deal with don’t even exist.

You’ll have to forgive me for not actually answering the question. It accept the liberal framing of needing to protect people from themselves, and even the transitionary stage of socialism after a point won’t need to protect the people from what capitalism makes of them.

How do we deal with them now? Do the police catch murderers, rapists, robbers and thieves? Even in the cases when they can, how often do they take the case?

You should look into whether these institutions work in the way they claim they do first. Some places are better and others are worse, but their main function is to be the running dogs of capital, not protecting the people. That’s why they excell at the former and are a net negative at the latter.

An actual chinese person calling it “The Great Chinese Famine” sounds quite suspicious regarding their intentions, much like tinyman massacre. That’s not what they call it, probably because despite the x approaching infinity estimates by western chucklefucks, it wasn’t even the worst famine of the century. (It sure as shit was the last though)

Of course they brought up the cultural revolution in the same breath as a famine. There were mistakes to be sure, but there was no intention to divide the people in such a way. Not to mention, these mistakes were learned from. As opposed to liberal regimes, which only learn from their mistake of not suppressing leftist movement enough to correct that. All else is a farce with them.

Guy’s telling us to live in China; fool, don’t threaten me with a good time.

Marx betrayed the revolution by using ugh french.

-Crakkkers when less than a third of the population is obese

Jesus fucking christ. It’s the “Am I allowed to participate in society?” all over again. No, it’s not some huge hypocricy to have an extra flat that you rent out, or to work a high salary job. It’s also not a crime to want some comforts and even luxuries.

The landlords in pre-revolution China were essentially feudal lords, not people with a bit of extra wealth that still laboured for their living. There’s no point in looking down on people over what is little more than pittance for an actual capitalist today, those arseholes take trips to the bottom of the ocean for the money your parents accrued over their lifetime.

I feel I would’ve been a lot softer if I hadn’t read the comments. I also struggled with this when I was younger. If you truly can’t fathom being petit bourgeois, just sell it when you inherit it, though be wary that the buyer may be another leech looking for investments. Otherwise I’d say it’s sufficient that you keep in mind that as a human being your interests lie with the preletariat. It might be even better if you used your money to support revolutionary activity.

He doesn’t acknowledge PRC’s achievements, doesn’t support AES except Cuba (I think) and doesn’t align himself with other anti-imperialists. He attacks journalists critical of the west, I faintly recall a bona fide NED spook quote tweeting BE to attack the Greyzone.

Insofar as he limits himself to attacking rightists, especially the ones claiming to be socialists, he’s fine.