Post #438,738
3/19/21 12:55:46 PM
3/19/21 12:55:46 PM
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The Soviet Union, maybe.
Trotsky and Marxist-Leninism, perhaps. But not Mother Russia. That's just disingenuous.
As a nine year old growing up in an all White working class neighborhood in Southern California in the 1960's, I was routinely beaten up going to and from school because we had Black friends who would come visit us for a week or two during the Summer. I never felt safe until I went to the Soviet Union. Fortunately, we moved out of that neighborhood just a couple of years after we returned to the US. Still, as we were about to return to the US, my brother and I both wept and begged our parents to let us stay.
Contrary to what Muricans are taught, a child naturally wants everyone to get along. They want the human race to be their community. That is most definitely not the case in the proto-fascist Capitalist nations. It's therefore obvious why (at least the dogma of the Soviet Union) would appeal so strongly to 6 to 10 year olds fortunate enough to have parents who were not "better dead than Red" fans. I'll admit those childhood memories caused me for a great many years to avert my eyes from the horrors committed by the Soviet state. Still, to the question of which system is more just I will always answer the Communist system. What's different now is that I recognize that the vast majority of human beings are unworthy of it. bcnu,
Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #438,742
3/21/21 9:23:50 AM
3/21/21 10:11:30 AM
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Oh so heartfelt. Oh so meaningless.
We have two countries. Both countries suck but both countries suck at different levels. One country will kill occasional person and will have riots in the streets. The other country will imprison a political leader and have riots in the streets and arrest thousands of people.
And while I say two countries there are many other countries who fell in the same trap. The Chinese are destroying the wiggers (Yes badly misspelled but I'm leaving it) by millions. They've separated the families, put the males in the camps and put default Chinese guys in charge of their families. I don't know how to spell the various people in this war. But this is by the millions. Genocide is the default.
Pretty much every communist revolution has turned into a dictatorship. Once you've got the idiots following then you have to have someone in charge to tell them what to do.
One country has had a dictorial leader (who rose up in the secret service ranks) in place for decades. The other country swaps them out every 4 to 8 years.
One country will happily imprison anyone they want at any time. Torture them in any fashion that the local jailer deems appropriate. The other country has levels of what they will pretend to do. they will definitely torture them in Cuba but if they end up in a US jail then someone's going to get in trouble for torturing them so they try not to do that there. I'm not saying it doesn't happen but I am saying it's not the norm.
Also, let's define torture. Water boarding? It's horrible but it won't kill you, but it'll make you think you're about to die and therefore you'll make s*** up. You understand we have defined various levels of torture. You think we got pliers against testicles? I'm sure the other guys do but I'm pretty sure we don't either. Go ahead defend pliers against testicles.
One country's leader has been known to execute in a very public fashion (But with stupid plausible deniability) anyone who opposes him. The other country gets an occasional death but nothing of this scale.
One country will have arrested a few dozen people and most of those will be let go in a short while. The other country who arrested thousands of people will put them away. Possibly in Siberia or their modern day version of it.
Navalni (or however you say/spell it, you know who I'm talking about) will disagree with you And I'd say he has current information. Too bad he probably won't survive his imprisonment.
Back to my original premise. Mother Russia sucks. You may have this unicorn and rainbow fantasy of communism but you know it'll never be implemented as initially designed because people suck and communism is worthless when applied to people. You said the vast majority of people don't deserve it now, but that really means that you're just willing to kill off the vast majority of people who don't agree with you and how the world should be run.
As an example. I'm one of many people who would oppose you on this political viewpoint. so therefore by definition I don't deserve communism. So what happens to me? Am I marked for death?
Oh and don't tell me what's so attractive to your child like self. That's a really s***** reason to have a political viewpoint. Tell me what's appropriate that allows you to survive to the future and for your children to move forward. F*** that child. That was b*******.
Edited by crazy
March 21, 2021, 09:32:09 AM EDT
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March 21, 2021, 09:35:30 AM EDT
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March 21, 2021, 09:46:58 AM EDT
Edited by crazy
March 21, 2021, 09:49:29 AM EDT
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March 21, 2021, 09:56:10 AM EDT
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March 21, 2021, 10:04:35 AM EDT
Edited by crazy
March 21, 2021, 10:11:30 AM EDT
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Post #438,743
3/21/21 12:08:37 PM
3/21/21 12:18:35 PM
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+1
MM should realize that being the child of a diplomat in a foreign country is a very rare, protected position. It's kinda like being in the royal family and saying that, hey, things are pretty good for me and everyone around me, why change? Kinda. ;-) It boils down to this for me: Which system did people plan for years (on pain of death) to leave? [eta:] - https://twitter.com/DPRK_News/status/1373552405460189184(DPRK News is a satire site run by an associate of Popehat) Cheers, Scott.
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Post #438,744
3/21/21 12:51:41 PM
3/21/21 12:51:41 PM
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Thank you and now you've given me a chance for an I told you so moment.
You use North Korea as an example of badness. I wholeheartedly agree.
Do you remember when Junior came into play? You said give him a chance and I said he's going to be far worse than what came before and then he started executing relatives with rockets. And it's only been worse since.
Do you agree with my side by now?
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Post #438,745
3/21/21 12:56:39 PM
3/21/21 12:56:39 PM
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That was my optimistic side taking over.
Yeah, you were right.
:-)
I briefly tried to find that thread, but Google's search of any blog-like thing over 10 years old is pretty broken. Maybe Google does forget, eventually??
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #438,746
3/21/21 1:02:45 PM
3/21/21 1:02:45 PM
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So you're saying my memory is better than Google's?
I actually remember my physical location as I was typing and interacting back and forth and posting during that time frame for that particular post thread. I knew someday I would come back and post just like I just did. But I had to wait.
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Post #438,756
3/22/21 10:15:29 AM
3/22/21 10:15:29 AM
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On the other hand on bit confused on the Google comment
I use the site: syntax all the time to search various sites including this one. I've learned most sites don't actually have to have a site search function because Google just do it for you. I don't claim to care to the level to actually find that historical post. I played for a moment and then realized that I really didn't care and stopped. But I'm sure I could track it down if I really had to.
I tried to explain the Way Back Machine to M a couple days ago. There is this resource that attempts to snapshot web pages at various stages to allow us to go back and see the historical versions of them. That is what the way back machine is.
The reason you really want this is to determine when people are lying to you. They claim s*** didn't happen and we know better because we look at the way back machine. The way back machine guards against propaganda.
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Post #438,757
3/22/21 11:28:29 AM
3/22/21 11:28:29 AM
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I only got 3 hits when I did a "site:..." search.
I did: site: forum.iwethey.org "Another Scott" Kim or something like that. I know there was much more out there... The Wayback Machine is great, but I can't figure out how to use it except by date. I can't seem to tell it to search a site for something in, say, 2006. I have to go through the snapshots one by one and click and read and click and read and hope I get lucky. I understand that an index of sites there would be impractically huge and CPU intensive, but still it's unfortunate that it's not easier to pick out stuff that you know is buried there. Cheers, Scott.
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Post #438,785
3/27/21 9:19:58 AM
3/27/21 9:19:58 AM
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Found the thread
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Post #438,786
3/27/21 9:59:29 AM
3/27/21 9:59:29 AM
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Heh...
You may end up being right, and history tells us you're likely to be right, ... Seems like I learned to put enough qualifications in my comments! Hehe. Cheers, Scott.
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Post #438,791
3/27/21 12:02:28 PM
3/27/21 12:23:31 PM
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We should review old arguments and tally up points.
Assad is still in charge of Syria. We were both wrong on that.
North Korea is still saber-rattling. That's my win.
Burma / Myanmar has swapped back to a military junta dictatorship. Not sure what your position on that was but I considered that country one of the few that escaped from a military junta. I was wrong.
Edited by crazy
March 27, 2021, 12:23:31 PM EDT
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Post #438,792
3/27/21 6:51:30 PM
3/27/21 6:51:30 PM
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Myanmar *almost* escaped from a military junta.
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Post #438,748
3/21/21 1:08:49 PM
3/21/21 1:08:49 PM
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Also: did you listen to music or did you just bounce along on the post?
Please: listen to the music.
Tell me if you like it or not. I consider this band amazing and I would like to expose other people to it.
Not all of their music is this depressing but it is usually this beautiful.
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Post #438,749
3/21/21 1:27:35 PM
3/21/21 1:27:35 PM
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I only rarely have the sound on.
I don't think I've heard them before. They're good, but not quite my cup of tea.
She's a looker and has a great voice.
Thanks for the pointer.
Cheers,
Scott.
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Post #438,750
3/21/21 2:06:12 PM
3/21/21 2:06:12 PM
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If you wish to give another one a shot
https://youtu.be/m8xXJ6CnvdQThis is a trip to the fair. we started every trip with this song approximately 45 minutes in. Beginning of peak. And then we did a decompress and discussion on the song. Then we moved to the artist of the experience. But trip to the fair always was the beginning. an oddity of the song is that it is essentially an anti-psychedelic experience song. But is done so well for people under the influence that is incredibly enjoyable if you can suspend the level of doom in the background. that in turn goes for a great discussion after the song while you're just starting to peak.
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Post #438,751
3/21/21 2:19:33 PM
3/21/21 2:19:33 PM
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A looker? That's Annie dammit have some respect
Hehehe.
So here's the deal. I've seen Annie so many times in concert. And Annie is just like my mom. Annie has the same insane laugh, the same insane shrieks, my mom just couldn't put those notes together in the same way. But Annie is just like my mom.
I took my father to see Annie. It was a Father's Day present. My brother and I bought tickets to see Renaissance to take my father to see them. And as we're waiting in line my father says see if we can get better tickets than the lawn seats then we have. So my brother goes and manages to turn my tickets in to box seats 20 rows out.
Why would we take my father to see Renaissance?
Because a couple months before that my father sat in my room while the song I just posted, a Trip to the fair, played on my stereo. It was a 35 w marantz and in those days that meant some serious s*** and my father sat between those speakers while it was on 7/8. He was taking my temperature so he had to sit there while that laugh came out and then blew him away.
So when it became apparent to me, this guy that loves mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy, kind of guy, is grooving to this we have to get him to a concert.
Have you ever taken someone to a concert that has never been to a real concert? I mean where the base notes vibrate your guts out and if you're not ready for it you're going to s*** or puke but if you are you're going to love it?
I took my dad to a real concert.
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Post #438,752
3/21/21 2:25:55 PM
3/21/21 2:25:55 PM
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And back on subject
Annie would have been killed in Mike moffett's dream political world. Can't have those singers talking about those things.
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Post #438,753
3/21/21 5:55:57 PM
3/21/21 6:06:31 PM
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No laugh on the linked song.
Edited by crazy
March 21, 2021, 06:06:31 PM EDT
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Post #438,759
3/22/21 4:32:18 PM
3/22/21 4:32:18 PM
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I understand crazy is, well, nuts.
He rants about Russia even after I explicitly stated I would not defend Russia. Fist in the air cursing the clouds again. But I expect a little better from you. MM should realize that being the child of a diplomat in a foreign country is a very rare, protected position. First, I wasn't "the child of a diplomat." My father was never a diplomat. I was, however, an American in the Soviet Union which caused me to be almost worshiped by every Russian I encountered. You think *you* can school me on the Soviet Union? How many people do you know personally who were sentenced to the Siberian Gulags by Stalin for being convicted of the crime of saying "There is no free speech in the Soviet Union?" How many times have you been followed by a KGB officer? How many times have you had to speak about "my friend" and dare not use his name? Then, when the family member you were talking to was unsure as to the subject's identity you had to go to the bathroom, turn on all the spigots, have them put their head in the sink with the water running so you could whisper their name directly into their ear? You think you (or anybody on this board save Alex) knows something about the Soviet Union that I don't? You think you're the first one to notice that an American in Soviet Russia was treated extraordinarily differently than a Soviet? What, pray tell, do you think I meant by, "I'll admit those childhood memories caused me for a great many years to avert my eyes from the horrors committed by the Soviet state."? Give me a fucking break. Both of you. bcnu,
Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #438,762
3/22/21 6:20:02 PM
3/22/21 6:20:10 PM
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Sorry for the mistaken recollection.
I realize that there is nuance in your positions that do not often come across in short posts here, but you don't make it easy sometimes. Just one example: #391087: I've never been afraid to stand alone if I believed my positions were well reasoned. For instance, I never believed the Soviet Union was a threat. I never believed the Mujahadeen were our allies. I never believed communism was a bad thing. I held those positions despite almost my entire country saying I was wrong. When only a handful of countries in world history have claimed to be "communist" and in most/all of them many, many people died trying to escape, then saying something like Stalinism =/= Communism is a dodge. And not even a stylish Dodge. My $0.02. Cheers, Scott.
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Post #438,764
3/23/21 10:25:59 AM
3/23/21 10:25:59 AM
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Capitalism is not as humane as many believe.
Don’t get me wrong: regimes that took the name “communist” – from Stalin’s to Pol Pot’s – committed unspeakable, monstrous crimes. But for the right, a revival of interest in Marx’s pre-Stalinist vision of communism is the most striking and chilling example of its own collapsing ideological supremacy: “communism” is synonymous with tens of millions of deaths and nothing else. Capitalism, by contrast, is presented as a largely bloodless, blameless engine of human prosperity.
The story of capitalism is more complicated than that. If you want to read effusive praise of capitalism, you’ll find it in Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto: the revolutionary dynamism of the capitalists, they wrote, had created “wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals”. But capitalism is an economic system drenched in the blood of countless millions.
Capitalism was built on the bodies of millions from the very start. From the late 17th century onwards, the transatlantic slave trade became a pillar of emergent capitalism. Much of the wealth of London, Bristol and Liverpool – once the largest slave trading port in Europe – was made from the enslaved labour of Africans. The capital accumulated from slavery – from tobacco, cotton and sugar – drove the industrial revolution in Manchester and Lancashire; and several banks today can trace their origins to profits made from slavery.
Even when the international slave trade began to crumble, the blood money of colonialism enriched western capitalism. India was long ruled by Britain, the world’s pre-eminent capitalist power: as Mike Davis’s Late Victorian Holocausts explores, up to 35 million Indians perished in needless famines as millions of tonnes of wheat was exported to Britain in times of starvation. Here was a cash cow for British capitalism, becoming the country’s main source of revenue by the end of the 19th century. The west is built on wealth stolen from the subjugated, at immense human cost.
It was the 20th century when capitalist Europe began to import the mass horrors it had previously inflicted on others. The Great Depression – still the most severe crisis of capitalism – helped to create the conditions of popular discontent that led to the rise of the Nazis. In the early period of Hitler’s regime, big business, fearful of the power of the German left, made its grubby compromises with National Socialism, seeing the Nazis as a blunt instrument with which to bludgeon both communism and trade unionism. German businesses made huge donations to the Nazis both before and after their rise to power, the industrial conglomerate IG Farben and Krupp among them. Many businesses profited from Nazi slave labour and the Holocaust, including IBM, BMW, Deutsche Bank and the Schaeffler group.
It is possible to believe in capitalism passionately, or simply be resigned to it as the only viable system, but also acknowledge that it has its own dark shadows and complicities with murderous episodes in human history. It serves a useful political function, of course, to suppress the idea that there is an alternative to capitalism, resting on different principles and values. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/26/communists-capitalism-stalinism-economic-modelbcnu,
Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
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Post #438,765
3/23/21 12:20:11 PM
3/23/21 12:20:11 PM
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Whataboutism isn't productive.
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Post #438,767
3/23/21 1:36:40 PM
3/23/21 1:38:33 PM
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Also, talk about your "dodges". That was Charger 500 R/T.
bcnu,
Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
Edited by mmoffitt
March 23, 2021, 01:38:33 PM EDT
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Post #438,770
3/24/21 5:34:20 PM
3/24/21 5:34:20 PM
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Google Lens tells me...
that it's a 1959 Dodge Sierra station wagon.  But it also looks like the 1959 range had about eleventy-seven different names (Custom Royal, Custom Royal Lancer, etc.). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Cheers, Scott.
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Post #438,774
3/25/21 3:01:32 AM
3/25/21 3:01:32 AM
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403 Forbidden
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Post #438,775
3/25/21 8:40:26 AM
3/25/21 8:40:26 AM
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Sorry, I think it's the "no https images here" thing.
(Same reason, as I understand it, that most avatars aren't showing up any more.) :-( Maybe this will work. HTH! Cheers, Scott.
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Post #438,776
3/25/21 8:51:35 AM
3/25/21 8:51:35 AM
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That worked
Christ that's an ugly car.
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Post #438,777
3/25/21 10:05:09 AM
3/25/21 10:05:31 AM
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Sorry. I meant your Dodge was a 500 R/T.
It's a popular thing to condemn Communism with a misleading (at best) claim about how "every country that tried it turned into a dictatorship while committing uncountable atrocities." I don't think the atrocities committed by Capitalists are any less evil (particularly in the US) and it is hard to listen to that sort of statement from anyone who lives in the luxury of the evils perpetrated by Capitalism criticize Communism for the very same types of things that Capitalists did. I'll stick with the US. I think it is beyond dispute that the success of Capitalism in this country is built on a foundation of slavery, genocide and outright terror that has not been equaled. For example, many nations have developed nuclear weapons but only one has demonstrated the willingness to use them against the elderly, men, women and children and that nation did so twice and threatened to do it a third time. How's that work with the "morally superior" argument Capitalists often astonishingly try to make? Perhaps we could try to find some of the handfuls of indigenous who survived the Capitalists attempt to wipe them out and ask them if they see any parallels with what Stalin did or even Capitalist Germany in the late 30's and early 40's.
You'll forgive me if I cannot take seriously complaints about how evil Communist doctrine has been deployed from a Capitalist. Without the child labor, slavery, maltreatment of the masses and theft from other nations, no Capitalist nation could exist. It's unwise in the extreme for a Capitalist to start talking about crimes against humanity committed by nominally Communist nations. A Capitalist doing that is engaged in the most hypocritical whataboutism. bcnu,
Mikem
It's mourning in America again.
Edited by mmoffitt
March 25, 2021, 10:05:31 AM EDT
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Post #438,778
3/25/21 10:53:12 AM
3/25/21 10:53:12 AM
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The only thing I mentioned was people dying trying to flee. HTH.
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Post #438,779
3/25/21 11:05:56 AM
3/25/21 11:05:56 AM
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Some of those things are orthogonal
When you say capitalism has only worked because of the exploitation of minorities, that's a reasonable argument. The labor of the subjugated is a direct input to the capitalist system.
But when you tie that to military strategy and the use of nukes, I don't see how that was inherent to capitalism. We used them first because we made them work first, and it happened while we were engaged in a huge bloody war. I'm not saying that makes it right or wrong, just that the unique circumstances weren't about the economic system.
If anything, given the number of German refugee scientists on the Manhattan project, it would make more sense to attribute development of nukes to fascism.
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Post #438,780
3/26/21 12:21:23 PM
3/26/21 12:21:23 PM
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I'm not asking you to defend a specific end result, ie: Russia
I simply use that rant to do a compare and contrast. I could do it with any communist revolution country that eventually turned into a dictatorship, since I think it's all of them. I could be wrong, maybe a couple tiny countries brought democracy back but that's not typically how it happens.
The Russian block slave satellites come to mind but they're going to be fighting generations of fascist opposition as well. But a significant portion of their population had to risk their lives to revolt against Russia to allow them to break free. And then they went to capitalism.
So that's a matter of me pointing out that your preferred political solution on how to run the world inevitably leads to millions of deaths and slavery for the vast majority of the people who live under it. No matter how bad capitalism is, it ain't nothing like that.
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Post #438,783
3/26/21 10:26:18 PM
3/26/21 10:26:18 PM
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Right on!
Over the life of the Soviet Union they killed 60 million of their own people. Alex
"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
-- Isaac Asimov
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Post #438,784
3/26/21 11:28:43 PM
3/26/21 11:28:43 PM
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Or as attributed to Stalin . . .
. . "f only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics" (rephrased somewhat in later reports).
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Post #438,760
3/22/21 5:17:28 PM
3/22/21 5:17:28 PM
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May want to fix that Uighur thingy
The other word has meaning, and I'm pretty sure its not what you intended.
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Post #438,781
3/26/21 12:39:31 PM
3/26/21 12:39:31 PM
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Picky picky
Here's my favorite wigger. https://youtu.be/CDJ8ocSN5GE4-minute YouTube video from True Romance. Definitely not safe for work. Christian Slater channels Jack Nicholson. He's amazing. And Gary Oldman just hits it perfectly. How would I know? Jail, drug court, rehab, years and years of in the system with dealing with these people. And I'm allowed to say wigger. I'm not allowed to say the n-word but wigger's mine. I say we take it back.
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