SeventyTwoTrillion

#Tradle #823 3/6
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https://oec.world/en/games/tradle

The liberal tendency to put the cart before the horse and insert their idealized concept of revolution into what they think revolutionary times might look like is what I personally see as one of the greatest divides in thought between them and some of the older relatives in my family I have had the chance to talk to.

the young-adult dystopia novel industry has been a disaster for the human race

I think they're the single most frustrating type of liberal. They're the closest to "getting it" among all the liberals because many of them are queer and/or women and so have experienced real oppression unlike many in the Reddit crowd, which is largely male and techbro-aligned. When I occasionally interact with them, I just want to make them read State and Revolution (or the equivalent anarchist text, both Marxism and anarchism are superior to liberalism) because many of them do just need that final push out of liberal orthodox thinking into a better and more explanatory ideology.

But their closeness to the truth in terms of how society is patriarchal and this needs to be changed and a more queer society created (albeit without a Marxist feminist understanding) makes it all the more frustrating when people like those in the image above come along and confidently assert that revolutions shouldn't be done because they lead to innocent people dying because they haven't even heard of the concept of structural violence, or other excuses for not adopting a revolutionary approach. Their automatic dismissal of totalitarian tankies who want to redistribute your toothbrush as well as the dismissal of anarchists for having too lofty/unrealistic a goal, ultimately leads to them navel-gazing uselessly in a corner somewhere or, at best, attempting the entirely pointless task of pushing elected officials to the left, and thus they're on the side of the fascist status quo.

I do wonder if they think similarly about potential revolutions in the state-designated Bad Countries like Iran, Russia, China, the DPRK, etc. They'd still be dipshits, but I could at least give them a small point for consistency if they also believe that, say, we shouldn't try and create a revolution in Iran or Russia because innocent people would die. I very much doubt they would, though; that's probably "different" to the situation in the US (read: the lives of foreigners and minorities are worth so little to them that even incredibly violent revolutions where millions die would be worth it to install a comprador regime friendly to Western megacorporations)

always kinda awkward when the libs on other instances are talking about how Hexbears are SUPPORTERS OF TERRORISM AND GENOCIDAL RUSSIAN IMPERIALISTS when referencing posts outside the news mega that I now consider kinda milquetoast and unoffending like "Hamas's actions on October 7th weren't great but Israel is so much worse and we need to overthrow Israel for peace in the region"

meanwhile in the news mega, there are people who (sometimes half-jokingly) say stuff along the lines of "Hamas could kill my grandmother and I'd still let Sinwar use me as a footstool, 72 trillion dead settlers, please carpetbomb Tel Aviv, free Palestine" and "fuck yeah Putin bomb the fuck out of those Azov Nazi scum, don't end the war until the fascists are all dead"

it's simultaneously great and a little disappointing how the news mega has remained essentially conflict-free (in terms of other instances obviously, there's still regular mini-debates/arguments in there between us, which is good; it shouldn't be a total echo chamber) since we federated, even during the weeks where we were federated with a bunch of lib instances. I, like many others, expected a tidal wave of "have you no shame, sir?!" libs coming at me and others in the news mega but it literally never happened. I can count the number of libs that have entered the thread and commented at all, not even necessarily in a hostile way, on one hand.

for some reason the megathreads just seem to completely repel liberals, like they're vampires and we have a bunch of garlic in there. maybe it's just intimidating? maybe they assume it's mostly "hm, the Sri Lankan economy grew X% in the last quarter, simply fascinating" boring political/economic analysis in there and don't bother to check?

you know that one Simpsons episode where the advertising mascot giants come to life?

the West just loves signing peace deals with itself and then being utterly confused and shocked when the other side, who they didn't involve in the process, hasn't gotten the memo that they were supposed to stop fighting.

my hypothesis for a while has been that it's one of those USSR-esque guaranteed employment initiatives but for government officials. just keep them working on Russia/Palestine peace deal documents so they have something to do and stop bothering people at the water cooler

really a historical L for the BJP if only in terms of mainstream media predictions. I know the whole media apparatus is bought off by the BJP but like, in other countries, upsets are usually not by massive amounts like we see here. it's usually that a seemingly unpopular candidate actually was popular and won (by a relatively small number of voters pushing them over the edge), not that the predictions were off by a staggering 100 seats out of ~530.

the postmortems of how the BJP went from predicting/hoping for 400 seats for the NDA from failing to get a majority by a not-insignificant margin will be interesting to read

One of the funniest geopolitical facts I know is that AMLO was voted Tyrant of the Year by one of those Index of Censorship western thinktanks... in 2022. The year where everybody online was posting psychoanalyses as to why Putin was such an authoritarian totalitarian communist fascist tyrant who was the first person in recorded history to ever invade another country illegally (as history began in February that year, as opposed to early October in 2023 and early April this year) and wanted to resurrect the USSR so he could, personally, become a dictator over millions more people because it's his fetish or something - that year was the one where they said that AMLO was the most tyrannical person.

it demonstrates the difference between rhetoric ("we have to stop Putin to save democracy!") and the actual material interests ("if AMLO continues to institute worker-friendly programs on our border then we'll be approaching a crisis as we rely on exploited Mexican labour") very well

well, I'll fucking be. that Indian elections analysis I posted last thread really did have credence

obviously Modi will still be made leader for a third term and the NDA will keep an overall majority but that was already baked in, that was virtually no universe where that didn't happen, so meaningfully reducing the BJP's margins especially to the point where they have to rely on coalitions to push things through is the next best thing, and that seems to be what's happened if trends hold. looks like reactionaries have made big inroads in Kerala though, so that sucks

India's stocks have been hit hard by the election results. I hope those Indian billionaires are taking a mental health day and doing some self-care and that the people they love are checking in with them right now

I think the people saying this haven't caught on to how Yemen has specific terminology for these things.

when they say "targetted", it usually means "the drone/missile didn't actually make contact (but presumably they had to waste air defenses to counter it)". there's been numerous occasions where they've targetted a ship and people are like "uhhh, acshktually, it wasn't damaged", and - yeah! that's what that means!