Astonishing, I could say this word for word to you, and it would be no less correct.

Bullshit. First of all, I haven’t asked you any questions dumbass, nor have i picked apart every last sentence and feigned ignorance on your meaning. Especially not on anything having to do with semantics. I would rather take you in good faith than debate the meanings of words.

In case you need me to define my terms, “good faith” and “understanding things” means comprehending what was said in aggregate and being able respond to the argument’s essential points, as the writer clearly intended them, rather than taking issue with individual sentences and words used. The latter is what’s known as “looking for an argument” and generally indicates you’re just going to waste time and be contrarian about anything I say.

Like I could say the sky is blue and you’ll find a way to disagree. Good faith is assuming that yes, I must know that the sky simply appears blue only in certain weather and times of day and I must be using a shorthand for the sake of the format. We’re not writing policy here, we’re conversing on Lemmy. Well, more like trading insults at this point.

I also wanted to let you know I’ve stopped reading your diatribes so you can stop writing them. I’ll read it later. I’m not a morning person and I have a lot of other things I’m doing with my time.

You keep saying that, but what does that even mean?

You don’t know what legitimacy is? Our political system rests on the consent of the people, because the people have the power of collective action when they are organized and/or believe en masse that the pathways by which the system claims to represent them are illegitimate (re: not actually representing them). The ruling class wouldn’t work so hard to obscure their undemocratic nature if that wasn’t the case. People don’t just accept those kinds of things, they resist and build power that does represent them. That is demonstrable throughout history.

Voting is not only going out to vote on the day of, its all the time you and I are spending now debating it, it’s workers canvassing for bourgeois candidates and 24/7 campaign ads planting establishment narratives into the public, its people participating in democratic offices when they could be doing grassroots organizing, it’s minimizing anything that doesn’t help your candidate like the economic conditions of the working class or the fact the candidate is massively aiding a genocide, it’s throwing your hands up when your team doesn’t win and callously telling your class members “FAFO” when you could be rallying on a shared struggle. It’s fucking toxic, and don’t you dare pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about with your “no u” ass arguments.

I don’t refuse to understand anything.

lmfao…

You know what, I was pretty clear and concise with my language. I said what I wanted to say. I’m not going to play point-for-point semantics with you because it would take me writing a several-pages-long essay to fully get my meaning across to someone who is clearly digging in their heels and not willing to take me in good faith. There’s also theorists out there who have already done a far better job than I would at that but I doubt you would care to read them.

In short; try putting your ego aside, re-reading what I said, and thinking super hard about it. I’ve already answered all of your questions, you’re just blocking them out at this point.

The point is I’m not going to lend you any legitimacy by picking up the shit and eating it myself, then turning at the people around me and asking why they aren’t eating it yet. I’m going to make it impossible for the shit peddler to hide their willingness and ability to abuse their power. If I’m eating shit either way, why would I do it in a way that makes it apparent to outsiders that I’m choosing to eat shit?

And no, when you scold people for not participating in a system, you are not just not “refusing to acknowledge its legitimacy”. You are promoting it, whether you care to or not. You are promoting the idea that everyone is choosing these options out of complete and true support of complete and unbiased information. This is especially true when people like you misrepresent and refuse to understand the arguments of those who choose to abstain or vote third party.

You are saying, “if you participate in this system, you could change the way things are going; and if you don’t, then you implicitly consent to it”, which is simply not true. Interestingly enough, you know how little power a person has when acting as an individual, which is why you minimize the reach of individuals when it comes to forms of political action other than voting, but you never apply it to the situation of voting where the ruling class has vast numbers of ways to influence people’s behaviors in whatever direction they want.

The change can only come when we have built the ability to move cohesively as a class, or a voting bloc if you will, that can either take power for itself or force our leaders to come to our table if they want our compliance. We can only build this by overcoming the resentment we hold for other members of our class, and putting one foot in front of the other; turning one person at a time towards the inner workings of the machine that the ruling class works so hard to hide. Not by stoking resentment and wasting our energy trying to manipulate an illegitimate system while we wait around for the movement to build itself.

lmfao the notion that the feds would try to crush socialism by directly inviting us to study forces that have successfully fought off the US military is so funny to me.

Fascism provides a specific permission structure for genocide that isn’t present in other systems. That’s not to say genocide didn’t happen before the term was coined, but that the characteristics of fascism; nationalism, racial supremacy, military supremacy, victim complex, out groups, scapegoating, disdain for human rights, etc.; tend to be present anywhere that genocide is present, and genocide doesn’t just happen because some “genocidal regime” found its way into power.

Whether or not you need the people’s permission to make the policy, you need their permission for it to stand because ultimately you need the people in order to carry it out. Otherwise you undermine your own system and generally incite resistance against it.

I’d say that’s a ridiculous choice and it’s time to organize with the masses against the system that presented it to us; rather than undermine that effort by treating the system as legitimate and shaming others for not seeing the candidates and their futures the way I did.

Hand me two cups of shit, I still have free will to throw them back in your face. The system can force feed if it wants but you won’t see me voluntarily picking a shit cup and eating shit.

You literally could have just read the sources posted by the OP when someone asked, 3 whole hours before you posted this

immediately after you flop

Where did that happen??

Press should be free period, and the audience should hold them to a higher standard than they do

These are mutually exclusive demands. You cannot have a “free press” that is also “held to a higher standard”. Either they’re free to report what they want and be influenced by outside interests, or they’re held to a standard of fact-based and unbiased reporting. The two are almost never going to coincide, especially in a system driven by capital. Whether you want to face that reality or not is your prerogative.

You’d rather western press where they can publish any lie and denial of reality that suits capital interests? There are certain lies propagated by the west for the purpose of destabilizing the DPRK, which I don’t believe the DPRK is obligated to let float around in order for me to respect their democratic sovereignty.

You just won’t convince me that it’s a bad thing to enforce a shared observable reality which can be questioned and improved upon but not invented out of whole cloth to serve imperialist interests. The people don’t need to be told what their interests are; they’re the ones living their daily lives to observe that, and should be the ones doing the telling. Anything reported to them should be a plain factual recounting of events.

A democracy based on lies and manipulation is no democracy at all, which ironically happens to be what we have here in the west. For as “free” as our media purports to be, good luck getting any reach without a capitalist backing you in some form (especially before social media but even today; now that they’ve captured a large enough audience; the capitalists behind big tech are tightening up on what is allowed to have a platform). Which explains why you always see westerners project that onto any country they consider worse off and “authoritarian”, as if that is the sole reason why and actually “the free press” makes us immune to it.

I’ve never played the game. Been meaning to for a while but so far have really only heard third-hand accounts of it. From the very little I know though that seems like a real possibility and honestly I prefer that interpretation.

@Jayjader@jlai.lu 's explanation gave me the impression it was nature’s way of fighting back against unsustainable practices. Like it lets you play as a bad guy and see the consequences of doing so, rather than pitting you against some diagetic evil and painting everything you do in a morally justified light.

I might have to eat crow on this one though, like I said I don’t even have entry level knowledge here.

Liberals arent a singular group

They are when your definition of a liberal is material rather than aesthetic.

ass

I can’t. She’s a puppet for Washington. An heiress of the Venezuelan oligarchic elite whose only intention is to destabilize the government so she and her cronies can sell off Venezuela’s natural resources, notably oil, while cutting public services and pocketing the cash for themselves.

This is literally just “Maduro bad, opposition good.” This is like putting a healthcare CEO’s granddaughter up in the US as we’ve only begun to recover, 25 years after removing Trump from power, and a powerful enemy state; let’s say Russia; sabotaging any recovery, pointing at the results of their sabotage as proof recovery has failed, and awarding Ms. Thompson numerous prizes and recognition for being hated by the public and rightfully prevented from holding power. And that’s to say nothing of whatever leader would actually be in power in that scenario.

The problem is that a capitalist system will not allow itself to be reformed in this way, as the “reforms” that Marx poses are antithetical to the very foundation of capitalism.

To give some accessible examples; you can’t house homeless people or give people healthcare and higher education because homelessness and debt is a whip to keep the workers working for whatever wage and conditions are offered by a capital owner. You can’t deconstruct racism because it was invented in the first place to keep the working class at war with itself rather than struggling against the conditions set by the ruling class. You can’t stop imperialism because infinite growth requires infinite and unrestricted expansion into new territories.

The system of capitalism manufactures its own required conditions through cruelty and social inequality (and yet, it’s these very things that lead to resistance), and without those necessary components the whole system collapses. The ruling class will not allow this to happen, because this system serves their material interests, and thus fundamental change cannot happen until the working class; whose material interests are directly opposed to those of the ruling class; is in power. The ruling class will pay lip service and the occasional half-measure in order to obscure this reality and make “reformism” seem possible, but 1) that is all they will do especially in the absence of a real threat to their power and 2) they will always eventually claw back even the smallest and hardest-fought of crumbs. Crumbs are good and all but there comes a point where our energy is better spent fighting for the whole cake.