Tell me about it. When I first learned that the website developed and run by Communists had Communists on it, I couldn’t believe what was happening.

The only moral stance is to post about the US election in lemmydotEthiopia, the Australian election in lemmydotSuriname, the Bolivian election in LemmydotAlbania, and so on, but only if it’s months out of sync. Anything else is suspicious.

That fits nicely because it’s always people who have and will continue to have enough food in their belly that they can indulge in an extra meal while indulging in fantasies like ‘one more election cycle, pleeeease, I trust them to stop murdering millions of innocent people, just one more election cycle and then they’ll fix everything, pleeease’.

What’s non-wealth-based fascism?

Fr when I’m filling in my spreadsheet for the people I have to watch, it’s a lot easier if everyone goes in column A or column B.

Column A is titled ‘Radical speech but thinks that voting will change anything – no action required’.

Column B is ‘Radical shitposter – maintain eyes, no immediate action required’.

The other columns, though – damn it’s a lot of paperwork.

Column O, ‘Organising their community, feeding people, and providing healthcare’ is the worst. Luckily for me, the agency’s action means they don’t stay on the list for long so the paperwork is finite. I probably shouldn’t be saying all this as it’s top secret. But we do know what’s up in our department.

Monsieur 'andprint

The big question is whether they will realise it’s the same/worse with China before or after decoupling/starting a war.

And failed at that latter task, too lmao

Ever have the bourgeois cried. It was all protectionism until other countries started to do protectionism. And then it was, no, not like that. The protectionism was just for us. You need to do free market.

Your Marxist dog may have inspired them to give you a lecture through D&D.

Congratulate them on their creativity of accurately depicting a world based on the British empire and ask if the democratic state is the Haudenosaunee confederacy before the Europeans arrive.

If you keep playing, brush off the insult and play along. Organise the proles and tell them how bad it is that in this alternative universe Trotsky or Zinoviev managed to seize power. Luckily, you will go to a bar and hear about a train robber known only as The Zdahllin, with whom you might decide to join forces. Spread the word that under current leadership, the Union will not be prepared in time to fight another enemy that is on the horizon.

Rationality and reason are overrated, I think. They have their place but not on their own. People like Richard Dawkins iirc make appeals to rationality and reason and their work can still be riddled with problems. It seems that everyone since the enlightenment calls themselves rational. It’s a la mode. They seem to sometimes mean that there’s a rationale. But there’s one of those for everything if you think about it hard enough.

But sentient brings can make decisions, right? Unlike an ice cube. You can choose to have toast or oats for breakfast. You can’t choose to live in a mansion unless you have the credit score or cash. The smaller the decision, the more control you have, the bigger the decision, the less control, but the latter doesn’t discount some freedom to choose; it just means that at some point you come up against the limits of reality.

The idea that whether I chose toast or oats is pre-determined seems strange. We can’t ever prove or disprove it.

One way of looking at it could be between an idealist and a dialectical materialist conception of free will. From the idealist perspective, free will means unlimited free will. Like free expression or abstract ‘freedom’. But from a materialist perspective, if there’s free will, it must be understood as fettered and dialectically related to material conditions.

That is, we make history, but not under conditions of our choosing.

All this said, I’ve not thought about this question since becoming a Marxist and I’m somewhat persuaded by the above answer that the question may rely on something of a category error. I’ll be thinking more about that. Still a great question to ask, btw!

The blueprint for bombing Libya, then.

The ruthless criticism of all that exists. Israel doesn’t exist. Ergo, its Times is exempt from criticism.

Never sure how much weight to place on ‘public’ even in the best of bourgeois dictatorships.

Is it something that foam rolling would sort out?

There are different intelligences, I think. Not being a douchebag requires some level of emotional intelligence. That can come with maturity but not everyone matures as they age.

I was something of a reactionary douchebag and I would not have matured ‘on my own’ because I got many of my views from family members. I wasn’t horrible and neither are they. I’m talking about things like thinking that everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That perspective doesn’t leave much patience for people who have less privilege. So a relatively innocuous view at home becomes douchebaggery in public, when people are telling you how hard things are and you reply that they need to work harder. Or they tell you about ill health and you tell them they shouldn’t have let themselves get ill in the first place.

I only noticed the problem because friends called me out. That might not work for everyone. I’m incredibly grateful for those friends!

Anyway, my broader point is that ‘intelligence’ is hard to define, so let’s talk about knowledge instead. Someone can know a lot about math, science, literature, caring, etc, etc. All knowledge is socially constructed in one way or another. (The type of social construction is up for debate—there are different theories.) The education system focuses on subject specific knowledge. This leaves people feeling or seeming very ‘intelligent’ about their subject.

But learning one thing doesn’t mean you automatically learn everything else, except for some crossover skills and knowledge.

Unfortunately, class society doesn’t create an abundance of opportunities for learning much about care/empathy/emotional intelligence. Apparently, people who read a lot of fiction have greater emotional intelligence but I don’t know how you’d measure that.

It seems to me there are a few ways to avoid being a douchebag. Being social with good people (and avoiding toxic masculinity), because society will kick you in the teeth when you say the wrong thing to the wrong person, metaphorically and/or literally. Studying a curriculum of care, which could be standalone or woven into another subject’s curriculum. It’s standard practice for marxist and anarchist knowledge, I’d say. Otherwise, it’s an afterthought.

Two conclusions. One, the fact that someone is a douchebag suggests they haven’t yet had the fortune to learn otherwise. Two, the fact that someone is not a douchebag means they have had that good fortune. Which maybe suggests that you could see the douchebag as less privileged in some respects than the non-douchebag. But maybe this is me continuing to be a douchebag by other means, turning the logic off ‘intelligent douchebag’ on its head.

Or these are the ramblings of a very tired redtea.

Is this one of those condemnents?

They know exactly where the money is and the weapons are. It’s only the public records that lose track of the data.

Wishing you the happiest of happy birthdays.