comfy

joined 3 years ago
[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 52 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As an aside, I've always found it hilarious when a Faux News host says 'the media', as if they're not one of the biggest media outlets in the world. It's an amazing disassociation and it seems to land somehow. The television screen tells you "the media doesn't want you to know the truth!", o fanged poet.

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I~~f I'm not mistaken, it was a US Libertarian who attempted the assassination. It's analytically pointless to group them in with the Republicans, even if they're both horrible. Infighting is serious business.~~ [redacted: see my reply]

But yes, they're still going to blame the Dems anyway lol.

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Everyone's blaming the guns, but for the record, I'll also blame the politicians they're shooting at.

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Maybe take the time to read

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 year ago

Heh, it's poetry.

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Someone else in this post made a good point, that a country flag is generally a symbol of a state, rather than an independent people. It represents the government, and there are many governments who earn disrespect even if their citizens don't.

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

Close, but rather, nationalism with a dash of red scare.

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

You're correct, but it's a non sequitur comment. There was no reason to point out the coincidental fact that "nationalism is part of fascism" and they're right to refute the suggestion that fascism is implied by nationalism. It's the other way around.

They may have been trying to implicitly claim that the US is fascist and that's why it's nationalistic. But... that's not what fascism is - fascism is not a collection of traits but a small group of distinct class-collaborationist ideologies. The USA is liberalist, and that has resulted in it being an ultranationalist, militarist, socially-stratified state easily compared with fascist states.

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

A flag is a symbol. Words aren't just a bunch of letters, there's social meaning in the unique message conveyed.

But yes, that nitpick aside, it's absurd nationalism at play. When someone burn the flags and books of my political alignment, I couldn't care less. Sure, it's an offensive gesture to burn a symbol, it's not crazy for someone to get mad at a burned bible or national flag. But at the end of the say, I see it as no different to someone saying 'America sucks', which is pretty common.

And the weird nationalism is pretty internalized to the point where it's just normal to most Americans. They point to the nationalist displays of other countries like 'Cult of Personalities' elsewhere and don't notice their local fixation with Washington and the rest, or reciting a daily oath to their flag, or flying them everywhere constantly all the time. But from an outsider perspective, those rituals are just... concerning. It's ingrained nationalist propaganda.

If you worship any flag or take offense to any flag, you need to get a life.

This I disagree with. A flag is a symbol, it represents concepts. And some flags can represent, among other things, "I want you killed" (consider the Nazi swastika being flown today). I think it's reasonable to be offended by a flag representing an offensive idea.

But a national flag flown by the world superpower? It's a bit fragile to flip out over that, isn't it?

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

Serious replies:

  • Developing alternate forms of power to 'vote once every four years'. Now, I realize it's probably not the answer you're looking for as obviously that won't just happen in time for this election, but it's necessary to understand the material power we hold as workers in society, unless you're actually happy with whatever candidates the Democrats run with. There have been times where worker action hindered genocidal regimes and wars by cutting off supply and pressuring our governments into pulling support.

  • Pressuring the Democrats away from running certain candidates

  • Somehow making a third-party popular enough to threaten your local seat [probably not feasible for most seats?]

  • Somehow abolishing the broken FPTP voting system ~~[probably not feasible?]~~

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

while right has fully consolidated

Well, apart from the literal assassination attempt.............

The right has so much infighting that it's dirty to even call them 'the right' as if it's a single group. If the US weren't using a FPTP system with the threat of vote spoiling, it would be much clearer just how split all political factions really are. Neo-Nazis have been calling Trump "Zion Don" for the past ten years and crying about all his links to da jooz and blags, the Libertarians disagree so much that about 2 million of them voted their own party instead of Rep or Dem in 2020. There's even PACs like the Lincoln Project.

The reason it's important to recognize this is that it's important to know their weaknesses. They're not all one homogeneous group, and many of them literally want to kill each other.

[–] comfy@lemmy.ml 49 points 1 year ago (14 children)

The organization is full of full blown vile Marxists who to “abolish capitalism” and establish socialism

Well, yeah, they're socialists. Why shouldn't they want to abolish capitalism and establish socialism? There's nothing vile about that.

They outright want the destruction of Israel.

The dissolution of the state of Israel. Their worldview understands it as a settler-colonial ethnostate, just like former apartheid South Africa was. Jews, Christians, Muslims and others co-existed in Palestine before the Zionist state of Israel was established, the two-state situation is segregation caused by the establishment of a Zionist regime.

They organized a tone deaf pro-Palestinian rally on Oct 8th right after the attacks when the world was still in shock

That is a perfectly-appropriate time to rally support. They are pro-Palestinian and wanted to make it clear that people believed the resistance was supported, regardless of whether they are critical of the methods. The mass media gets to have its voice immediately, so rallies should not wait either.

They condemn social democracy

Yes. Democratic socialists are not capitalists and would not consider liberal democracy (especially the US version!) a working form of democracy, and don't consider social capitalist parties within it to be effective because they must work within a broken system. Social democracy is a false hope to them.

And their interests are not with the US succeeding, they are nothing more than assets of our foreign adversaries.

Most socialists will understand the US as a settler-colonial imperialist state from day 1, so yes, their interests are ultimately that the US (as we know it) should stop being imperial terrorists that most of the world (including state allies) hate. But to call that being "nothing more than assets of our foreign adversaries" is ignorant of the very real and growing discontent with the US's own borders. A lot of US citizens hate the US governments and how they work, and to blame that on foreign adversaries will ultimately prevent them from being solved and prevent their numbers growing.

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