Yeah... that's how we ended up in this situation. How do you think these giant corporations became so powerful? They "reformed" laws until they could do whatever the hell they please - that's what "reform" gets you.

[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Finally somebody sane.

[–] masquenox@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's really simple... the people with money get to dictate how these "reforms" work - that's it. It doesn't matter if you get a Bernie Sanders into a position of power - the "vested interests" will dictate all the little loop holes in the small script that allows for "business as usual" to continue, and that's if they bother to hide it at all. It's literally how we ended up in this terrible situation.

[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org -3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yes, which is why you should hit where you are not expected.

Which is why statism always works for the stronger side.

I don't get why leftists don't usually understand this. I'm not a leftist, but this should be a very simple conclusion.

[–] masquenox@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't know what kind of "leftists" you have been talking to... the ones I talk to understand this very well. It's pretty much been the bedrock of anarchist thought for more than a hundred years now.

[–] Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s pretty much been the bedrock of anarchist thought for more than a hundred years now.

And anarchists are a rounding error, numerically. You're in a bubble.

[–] masquenox@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is that some secret code between you and the aliens that will be coming to fetch you "any day now," Clyde?

[–] Aesthesiaphilia@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

...whatever drugs you're on, I want some

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

I'm not the one speaking gibberish... I'm just trying to be nice and speak to your level.

[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I live in Russia so most leftists here are Stalinists in one way or another, or at least Trostkyists, which still means centralism.

[–] masquenox@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Stalinists are right-wingers with red flags - there's nothing leftist about them at all. Trots are barely any better. People forget that leftist ideas are popular - that is why there are so many political racketeers in the world pretending to buy into those ideas while actively distorting the same ideas to suit their political agenda. Even old Adolf did it - but no-one is as guilty as the charlatans that ran the USSR and is currently running the PRC. The USSR was about as "socialist" as the US is "democratic" - ie, their (respective) "socialism" and "democracy" only exists in the minds of propagandists.

[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

USSR was "democratic" too ; still much less than USA.

I may agree about Stalinists, at least modern ones. Some of the older generation may mix it with actual Marxism.

[–] masquenox@lemmy.ml -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Modern-day Stalinists do not have an excuse... the truth is perfectly available to them. They are no different to people who deny the Holocaust or climate change.

[–] vacuumflower@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 year ago

Well, I know a little country under genocidal threat from a couple of neighbors (one of which is in NATO) which "the west" is completely fine with. Those neighbors are even getting some green energy investments, simultaneously doing modern-day Nazi propaganda, cause nobody cares about brown people.

So - that little country has an "elite" which not only comes from the most ignorant, must dirty levels of society, but that elite has also robbed it for 30+ years. Its politicians and military people are incompetent, cowardly and immoral, they spend more effort on defending against competition or immunity in their own nation than on defending against genocidal neighbors. And they've made the judicial system and the military into their pocket tools.

If one could massacre all that elite, about 10k people, things would possibly change for the better. That little nation does have intelligentsia, it does have educated people, it does have very patriotic and passionate patriotic people still tolerant to dissent (something this community doesn't have).

Some people would say the solution of massacring this group of people is Stalinist. Though there is no communism involved here, just when any legal means of fighting a virus are neutered, only violence remains.