mazdak [any]

To quote flight of the concords:

🎵 They’re turning kids into slaves just to make cheaper sneakers
But what’s the real cost?
‘Cause the sneakers don’t seem that much cheaper
Why are we still paying so much for sneakers When you got them made by little slave kids
What are your overheads? 🎵

in terms of the ‘strength’ of US soldiers, they’re regarded by other militaries as being big, roided up morons that get gassed out ridiculously fast and are useless for anything that requires endurance type fitness

We grow up in a toxic and deeply confusing culture. When you get older you realise you can’t impose ownership over another person, you either accept them as they are or you move on. It’s easy to torture yourself when your young, youth and egotism usually go together, but if you don’t wise up fast life will beat the egotism out of you anyway.

Whenever I’ve listened to him speak he’s sounded solidly anti-capitalist and very well informed in terms of geopolitics at least, obviously some chuds love him and I imagine he takes what he can get since both liberals and the left were pretty quick to abandon him. I’m not really sure how I would describe his politics, he’s kind of like a materialist rad-lib

I agree. The argument that Nazi’s should be allowed to out themselves is also not entirely wrong, at least in societies where they have little to no power. For example, there was a minor political scandal in this Australian state not long ago, when politicians attended some kind of terf rally that Nazi’s also showed up to and saluted at. It’s likely the media would have ignored the rally (and the larger counter-protest) if not for the fact that politicians were photographed hanging out with Nazi’s. The whole thing turned into a massive self-own precisely because the Nazi’s showed up and saluted.m, which in turn brought a lot of media heat on the rally and it’s attendees

Consider the Xenomorph (but only in Alien 1, not the woke collectivist Xenomorphs in the sequel)

None of us support Trump, just as none of us support Putin. But there is a sort of overcompensation in reaction to naieve and simplistic liberal narratives that might make it seem like we do.
Leftists get frustrated with the worldview that imagines, to steal a phrase, that Trump is Voldemort and Biden is Harry Potter. Anti-capitalists oppose the Bourgeoisie and Trump and Biden are both in service to them. It isn’t even simply that they are both capitalists - they are both neoliberals, who enthusiastically pursue the goals of neoliberalism - the transfer of wealth and power from the working class to the bourgeoisie, the enforcement of Western imperialism on a global scale, the withering away of society through austerity and privatisation, etc.
Of course it’s fine to support the democrats with the aim of harm minimisation. But liberals are wilfully blind to the fact that the system itself is not ‘rotten’ but rather functioning as intended, and that the scale of change required to have any hope of addressing climate change, wealth inequality, the descent into fascism and so on, cannot come from within liberal ideology at all let alone from the democrat party.
Trump is kind of funny too in the way that he infuriates liberals by openly unveiling reality. For example, no-one cared when Obama was putting children in concentration camps, because it was hidden away behind a bunch of shiny rhetoric about hope and change. But when Trump does the same thing and celebrates it, when he brings the racism and inhumanity of the US state into the light and declares fuck those kids, liberals are forced to see the true nature of their beloved country which their ideological fantasies would usually repress. The blatant hypocrisy of their rage is, from the perspective of cynical leftists, both amusing and bewildering.

High rises in the sense of skyscrapers are never necessary or useful, because they have enormous upkeep costs which mean they will never really be affordable. I think medium density housing as is common in Europe, with communal yards, nearby parks and situated along public transport lines, is the ideal for cities, although these rowhouses do look beautiful - we don’t really have them in my country for some reason.

My partner won’t walk around the neighbourhood at night by herself because she’s been repeatedly harassed by men.
Liberals are either totally insulated from reality by wealth, or else they live in a fantasy world where they have associated themselves so much with the Bourgeoisie that they practically imagine they are one.

‘Live by the coin, die by the coin’ That’s great. 😂 It sounds like a kind of nihilistic embrace by someone that feels like they have no agency anyway. Certainly something I noticed working in developing countries is that people who haven’t had a lot of control over their lives and have suffered for it, often tend to take a fatalistic attitude towards life. Given the onset of climate change and decreasing living standards, I wonder if that’s what’s happening here. Or maybe it’s just kids being kids, I dunno.

I know this will sound patronising, but have you read Engels ‘Socialism: Scientific and Utopian’ and Lenin’s ‘State and Revolution’. If not, these would basically answer your implicit question as to why we can’t just wish a perfect society into existence.

“Authoritarian”, like so many other liberal concepts, is an idea that - while not completely without reality - is designed to obfuscate how power really operates. For example, non-authoritarian states have freedom of the press. But that press is owned by and will only give the point of view of the Bourgeoisie. The point of Communism is to put power into the hands of the proletariat rather than the parasitic Bourgeois.

‘Tankie’ has been somewhat effective in that its associated Marxists with right wing Russian nationalists and weirdo online cults like ‘maga-communism’. This doesn’t matter because reddit doesn’t matter, but if it somehow makes the jump to mainstream consciousness it could potentially be damaging. With increasing crises and declining living standards more people are going to be looking for alternative narratives to the one liberals offer. If Marxism is associated with social conservatism in particular, most people won’t give it a second look.

“ anything that can’t produce evidence of efficacy.”
This in itself is kind of a minefield. It’s very easy, for example, for pharma companies to prove that their meds can make more people feel better than random chance. It may be much harder to prove that other types of therapy, - particularly those that involve long term work - are more successful, even if they have the potential to have a much more significant impact on a persons life than just temporarily improving their mood a bit. Not disagreeing that the profession needs a purge, but unfortunately it wouldn’t be as straightforward a task to evaluate outcomes as it is in other forms of medical treatment.
Really what is needed - within the confines of capitalism - is to make therapy free and readily available so that people can find what works for them. I mean it even makes sense for capitalists to do that, in the sense that a happy worker is a good and content one. But neoliberal austerity will never allow it. To that system the working class are unthinking cattle to be herded with a club.

In an ideal world I think most mental illness could be treated in a similar way to how the rich used to treat it back in the 19th century (probably still do) - basically go off to some resort in the countryside, have your basic needs like food and washing taken care of, have immediate access to social groups and spend some time every day working on your problems with someone. Spend the rest of the day swimming or drawing or playing music or whatever. Just give people some breathing space to work things out. Obviously this is not feasible for the majority under capitalism.
Personally I’m pretty cynical towards therapy’s ability to help people who are suffering from their environment. Of course there are mental illnesses that are unconnected to this, but I think they are the exception really. I actually see a psycho-therapist (not specifically Freudian but works along those kind of lines), and if nothing else, at least it’s more interesting than my experience with more conventional therapy, and certainly no less useful.

I don’t think the worry that Marxists sometimes have about therapy - that it tries to make people content with an unjust and fucked up world - is particularly valid. Even if the root of our problems is capitalism, the point of therapy should be to adapt oneself to the world as it is, and that doesn’t mean you can’t be discontent. I do think there is a problem, with psychiatric treatment in particular - and I’m not opposed to meds, I’m on them myself - but it can inculcate a feeling that one has to be feeling good or happy or safe all the time, which (speaking as a former addict) is the same mode of thought that people have in addiction, and can often lead to total stagnation and an inability to confront the pain of life.

It’s funny how the use of the term has made a bunch of millenial and gen z libs incredibly mad about the fuckin Prague spring

That’s why we have an obligation to educate Cuban communists on this matter, because they haven’t spent enough time on Internet forums to have a proper understanding

If the purpose is to convert people via federation, it’s good to remember that nobody likes being told what a fucking idiot they are and how selfish they are and that their whole worldview is wrong. I’m not trying to defend libs here, but it’s very rare that arguments are won on the internet. If someone makes a false claim then correct them and leave it for other people to read, but there is no point getting caught up in debates with people who probably don’t have much interest in politics anyway.

Nuclear weapons are as big a threat to human civilisation as climate change, albeit less stupid. But on a long enough timescale there will be a global nuclear war eventually. Consider how many close calls there have been in the last 70 years, with reasonably rational people and systems in charge. It only takes one mistake or one psychopath and civilisation is over, forever.

Whenever nuclear weapons are brought up, I can’t help think about how much Jeremy Corbyn was exorciated for refusing to state whether he would launch a retaliatory attack in the event of the UK being the target of a first strike. I.e. a hypothetical scenario where literally everyone there is going to die, would he launch Britains nukes in the minutes prior to certain annihilation, just to make sure the people sending them died as well. The outrage about his refusal to answer is a great example of Chud psychology/ideology.

I feel the same way. I’ve experienced violence living in various cities, but I’d still take it over the suburban shithole I live in now. Anyway the point is not really that conservatives are wrong that cities can be violent (obviously they exaggerate the danger a lot, but still). It’s that they live in such fear. They are cowards, bullies and fantasists.

Rules-based order