"One reason we're disgruntled with the current left is its abandonment of peace" -- anyone who advocates corporate violence is not "the left" by any standards I've ever used. But I guess if you take the Soviet Union as a model for the left, ok. That would be fair, maybe, but to me the Soviet Union was a variant on authoritarianism, somet…
"One reason we're disgruntled with the current left is its abandonment of peace" -- anyone who advocates corporate violence is not "the left" by any standards I've ever used. But I guess if you take the Soviet Union as a model for the left, ok. That would be fair, maybe, but to me the Soviet Union was a variant on authoritarianism, sometimes loosely called fascism. No one I have ever spoken to has tried to seriously support anything the Soviet Union ever did.
"That would be fair, maybe, but to me the Soviet Union was a variant on authoritarianism,"
Ah, yes. The Soviet Union is the ONLY example of communism we have to learn from.
I'm pretty sure you watched Michael Moore's documentary about universal health care in Cuba. He was like, "hey, this asthma inhaler only costs 25 cents in Cuba!"
Yeah, well, he was visiting something called a Potemkin Village in Cuba. That is, the pharmacy was fully stocked, unlike 99% of the pharmacies in the country that sold inhalers for 25 cents but had none to sell.
When I went there for a week on a resort vacation with my extended family in 2006, we did some research. You know, you want to know what the customs are about things like tipping. We were told don't bring money. Bring Tylenol. Bring Advil. Bring Benadryl. Bring pencils. Bring baseballs and baseball mitts. Bring hair ties, clips, pins and barrettes. Bring panty hose. Bring disposable razors. Bring 5-packs of cheap toothbrushes. Bring socks. Bring lined paper.
The websites also recommended you leave all your toiletries behind for housekeeping. Antiperspirant, soap, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, everything.
Why? Because they can't get that shit there.
My sister got a massage while we were there. She asked if the masseuse wanted $10CAD or a pair of dollar store panty hose. The woman opted for the panty hose. I asked a server once if she had daughters. She said no. I said, "oh, that's too bad, all I have are these barrettes or cash." She said her sister had daughters and took the 50 cent barrettes.
Two of the bartenders and one of the towel guys I got talking to were medical doctors. Being a bartender or a towel guy at a tourist resort paid them more than doing surgery.
But yeah. Only the Soviet Union showed us how communism failed.
Since you have apparently blocked it out of your mind, the term "Left" goes back to the French Revolution, and designated those who wanted to overturn the monarchial/aristocratic/theocratic system. They did overthrow it, violently.
Since then, many other Leftists have come to power violently.
And though your circle of acquaintances must be terrible small, I can assure you that many people seriously supported everything the Soviet Union did. You'd find out if you read the relevant history. E.g., one U.S. ambassador to the USSR praised the purge trials (see MISSION TO MOSCOW).
The Left =/= pacifism, and never has. And pacifism has never been a subset of the Left either. There have been many right-wing pacifists.
Yes, I know about the origins of Left and Right. I also know that there were some Americans who supported the Soviet Union, including Stalin. I was speaking of present-day Democrats or any American I've spoken with. No one I have known did so. Also, I never said I was a pacifist. I am just opposed to war. I would support using force if and only if there were no other way forward, and survival depended on going forward.
Well, if you don't call it communism then it's obviously not communism. It's just the Justice Democrats. Or the Squad. Or the Green New Deal. Or the Bernie movement. Or free college tuition for all. Or a guaranteed basic income for everyone.
Catherine McKinnon (radical second wave feminist) said, "socialism, communism and feminism are one and the same."
She advocated the dismantling of the cis-heteronormative, white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. The first step toward that goal, would be eliminating marriage and the nuclear family, and having the state raise the children. And we're not talking just, "make people send their kids to public schools". She wanted parents to have no rights over their children. She wanted the children literally to be raised by the state.
Why? Because marriage and the nuclear family were the smallest but most ubiquitous and universal lego block that upheld the capitalist patriarchy. Women would never be "free" if they were "forced" to raise their own children within a consensual arrangement with a man. They could only be "free" if the state took on the burden of raising their children. Then they'd be "free" to work in factories and share in the fruits of the means of production.
If you really want to get down to brass tacks, she argued that a woman should care about money more than her own flesh and blood. And that the money handed to them on payday by their husbands in exchange for the "unpaid domestic labor" of nurturing their own children was somehow less noble than the money they could earn screwing the caps on toothpaste tubes 100,000 times a day.
And the ONLY reason McKinnon is frowned upon these days by the intersectional feminist community is because she's a TERF and a SWERF.
Now go read BLM's "about" page. Would you agree that "the community" has as much right to dictate how your child will be raised as you do? That's what BLM is espousing.
And that can work in a community that doesn't exceed Dunbar's number--where cheaters, dictators and free-riders are easily detected and deterred. But in a population of millions? Do you really think a network of strangers can be a better parent to your child than you are?
But, you know. It's worth it, because that's the only way women will ever be "free".
"One reason we're disgruntled with the current left is its abandonment of peace" -- anyone who advocates corporate violence is not "the left" by any standards I've ever used. But I guess if you take the Soviet Union as a model for the left, ok. That would be fair, maybe, but to me the Soviet Union was a variant on authoritarianism, sometimes loosely called fascism. No one I have ever spoken to has tried to seriously support anything the Soviet Union ever did.
"That would be fair, maybe, but to me the Soviet Union was a variant on authoritarianism,"
Ah, yes. The Soviet Union is the ONLY example of communism we have to learn from.
I'm pretty sure you watched Michael Moore's documentary about universal health care in Cuba. He was like, "hey, this asthma inhaler only costs 25 cents in Cuba!"
Yeah, well, he was visiting something called a Potemkin Village in Cuba. That is, the pharmacy was fully stocked, unlike 99% of the pharmacies in the country that sold inhalers for 25 cents but had none to sell.
When I went there for a week on a resort vacation with my extended family in 2006, we did some research. You know, you want to know what the customs are about things like tipping. We were told don't bring money. Bring Tylenol. Bring Advil. Bring Benadryl. Bring pencils. Bring baseballs and baseball mitts. Bring hair ties, clips, pins and barrettes. Bring panty hose. Bring disposable razors. Bring 5-packs of cheap toothbrushes. Bring socks. Bring lined paper.
The websites also recommended you leave all your toiletries behind for housekeeping. Antiperspirant, soap, toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner, everything.
Why? Because they can't get that shit there.
My sister got a massage while we were there. She asked if the masseuse wanted $10CAD or a pair of dollar store panty hose. The woman opted for the panty hose. I asked a server once if she had daughters. She said no. I said, "oh, that's too bad, all I have are these barrettes or cash." She said her sister had daughters and took the 50 cent barrettes.
Two of the bartenders and one of the towel guys I got talking to were medical doctors. Being a bartender or a towel guy at a tourist resort paid them more than doing surgery.
But yeah. Only the Soviet Union showed us how communism failed.
Since you have apparently blocked it out of your mind, the term "Left" goes back to the French Revolution, and designated those who wanted to overturn the monarchial/aristocratic/theocratic system. They did overthrow it, violently.
Since then, many other Leftists have come to power violently.
And though your circle of acquaintances must be terrible small, I can assure you that many people seriously supported everything the Soviet Union did. You'd find out if you read the relevant history. E.g., one U.S. ambassador to the USSR praised the purge trials (see MISSION TO MOSCOW).
The Left =/= pacifism, and never has. And pacifism has never been a subset of the Left either. There have been many right-wing pacifists.
Yes, I know about the origins of Left and Right. I also know that there were some Americans who supported the Soviet Union, including Stalin. I was speaking of present-day Democrats or any American I've spoken with. No one I have known did so. Also, I never said I was a pacifist. I am just opposed to war. I would support using force if and only if there were no other way forward, and survival depended on going forward.
Well, if you don't call it communism then it's obviously not communism. It's just the Justice Democrats. Or the Squad. Or the Green New Deal. Or the Bernie movement. Or free college tuition for all. Or a guaranteed basic income for everyone.
Catherine McKinnon (radical second wave feminist) said, "socialism, communism and feminism are one and the same."
She advocated the dismantling of the cis-heteronormative, white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. The first step toward that goal, would be eliminating marriage and the nuclear family, and having the state raise the children. And we're not talking just, "make people send their kids to public schools". She wanted parents to have no rights over their children. She wanted the children literally to be raised by the state.
Why? Because marriage and the nuclear family were the smallest but most ubiquitous and universal lego block that upheld the capitalist patriarchy. Women would never be "free" if they were "forced" to raise their own children within a consensual arrangement with a man. They could only be "free" if the state took on the burden of raising their children. Then they'd be "free" to work in factories and share in the fruits of the means of production.
If you really want to get down to brass tacks, she argued that a woman should care about money more than her own flesh and blood. And that the money handed to them on payday by their husbands in exchange for the "unpaid domestic labor" of nurturing their own children was somehow less noble than the money they could earn screwing the caps on toothpaste tubes 100,000 times a day.
And the ONLY reason McKinnon is frowned upon these days by the intersectional feminist community is because she's a TERF and a SWERF.
Now go read BLM's "about" page. Would you agree that "the community" has as much right to dictate how your child will be raised as you do? That's what BLM is espousing.
And that can work in a community that doesn't exceed Dunbar's number--where cheaters, dictators and free-riders are easily detected and deterred. But in a population of millions? Do you really think a network of strangers can be a better parent to your child than you are?
But, you know. It's worth it, because that's the only way women will ever be "free".