appletheclown wrote:
Republics, Democracies and Pacifistic Nationalist States are no where near as bad as Communist, Fascist,
or Imperialist States.
You can't substitute any form just because you say they can.
I live in Mexico. Now If you talk to most mexicans with an internet connection, facebook and twitter accounts, they will tell you mexico's current president is the worst and that he's a neoliberal who intends to sell the country bit by bit. They'll also tell you he's an idiot (which is true, but he isn't really significantly more idiotic than the average mexican politician) and other stuff that will tranform into a raging rant.
Now, while I think any sort of government opposition is healthy, this huge opposition led by college students and intellectual snobs is more of a reactionary movement than a smart opposition. By definition, to them, everything our government does is bad, sucks, and is the most capitalist thing ever. (More or less the kind of wording they would use). Raise in taxes? Capitalism! Having people who has earnings from stock market pay more taxes? Captalism! It seems like they don't even realize how idiotic their systematic opposition is.
The thing is, a lot of people in my country idealize socialism, without realizing we already live in a pseudo-socialist government. We have free health-care, free education in all levels. The basic things are heavily subsidized. Pensions are paid to everyone over 65, and every mexican has unemployment insurance. Public transport is ridiculously cheap,Mexico has high taxes as well and some of them are plain ridiculous (There's a tax for food high in colories, but it also applies in cooking oil, butter, chicken broth cubes and other stuff that isn't necessarily a cause for obesity itself) and the more you earn, the more taxes you get to pay. Of course rich people can work their way around the IRS so in fact is the middle class who gets to pay the most. Most of government infrastructure doesn't work or is inneficient and somehow people want more of that.
Another thing these people do is criticize any and all form of government action against protesting, even if the action makes sense or is a result of police defending themselves and other people of violent protests (Not always the case, but it doesn't matter since somehow protestors are entitled to break any law they want and nobody should make anything about it) I am in favor of freedom of speech and the right to protest, but when the protestors only purpose seems to be to disrupt other people's lives as much as they can I think they are over-reaching their liberties. And a lot of time these protests are violent, but if you ever point that out to them, they'll go with the true scottsman argument. Now there are times when the government outreaches its attributions and that really pisses me off, but it looks like two immature childs hitting each other when the grownups turn around and each trying to get the other blamed and punished when he is also the one to blame.
In the end, people may say you mexican government sucks, that is repressive, violent and against its people's interest. But in the end, the government always has acknowledged the existence of oppsosition and most pacific protests are uneventful. When you see what happens at Venezuela, where the opposition to the government is chased an incarcerated, where protests are met with armed men opening fire on civilians claiming they are trying to conduct a coup d'etat. I mean, in only a couple of videos of what happens in Venezuela I have seen more violence from the government that in any of the protests in Mexico, starting with the fact that I actually have seen people die in the Venezuelan videos instead of just complaining and making up things. (There's a video where some people claim the government is using lethal weapons against them and they present as evidence an OC grenade wich they claim to be a frag grenade, probably becuase they can't tell the difference)
I'd much rather lived in my country, where one of the biggest represenatives of opposition against government runs a political party and appears publicly without fear. Where pacific protests are mostly uneventful. Where media isn't government controlled (It's kind of the other way around, which for a lot of stuff is just as bad) and you can buy mainstream magazines that openly criticize government without any problem and where people have to make up stuff against the government just to make it look as bad and terrifying as a totalitarian regime (This guy called Ruy Salgado who had a podcast against government, staged a bogus government abduction. He later reappeared and came clean. Basically because people around him where so concerned that started doing research and uncovered a bunch of lies he had been telling. He claimed he had to disappear due to threats, but by that time nobody believed him)
The irony here is that socialists defend venezuelan government. And I just can't get it. And I can't understand how on earth do they think that is the true way.
So yeah, basically there are lots of things that are better than communism.
19 Feb 2014, 11:05 am
