Yugoslav1945 wrote:
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They live in a world where you can somehow achieve a just society while still having gross economic inequality. Questioning capitalism would move them away from their mainstream, centrist comfort zone. It could cost them friends or respect and those things are more important apparently.
No wonder why I can't get friends due to my views. Then again, if they're gonna live in mainstream ignorance that is blissful for them, then let them be, they're sowing their own destruction anyway. Communism can work practically if we eliminate liberals and reactionaries.
Kinda off topic, but this is why I am hesitant to make friends, and why I am reflexively suspicious of people who do have friends. People will believe all kinds of nonsense if it will help them fit in. People will throw away just about any principle if it helps them keep "friends".
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Now I'm confused. Most self-described liberals consider themselves that as opposed to being leftists.
And yet they're the ones who lick the boots of the Democrat party, part of the capitalist two-party system. A necessary evil is to get rid of Trump but even then one way or another, America will sow its own Balkanization from the amount of polarization it got from the elites making people get angry at each other over petty differences. That's the same that was for Yugoslavia when Serbs made people get angry over ethnic differences and break down Yugoslavia within a decade after Tito died. Communism abolished in 1990 with the end of SKJ and nationalists winning elections and Yugoslavia collapsing in 1991 in a violent way with Serbs committing genocide and massacres from 1991 to 1999 and yet they wonder why NATO bombed them in 1995 and 1999.
Leftists had to basically settle for the Democrats given how politically impotent the actual Left is in the US. We haven't had a socialist candidate run for president since Eugene Debs over 100 years ago.
I am also unsure why you blame "elites" for making people dislike each other. I notice this often, where people act like "identity politics" is a product of the wealthy upper class. This is far from the case. Women, queeros, non-whites, and non-Christians had to fight tooth and nail from the grassroots up for the respect and acceptance they have today. The "elites" have sided with the left on cultural issues, because the elites are nothing if not obsessed with making themselves seem virtuous and educated.
I think your and others' tendency to blame "elites" for culture wars comes from the fact that many people only hear about these things from celebrities running their mouths on TV, media pundits looking for brownie points, and politicians looking to brown-nose their base. Ignore them. They are late to the party. They rarely even know what they are talking about, and often say things that are ignorant and harmful without realizing it.
Americans are not being ""divided"" the same way South Slavs were. South Slavs were encouraged to set aside their differences and embrace an identity that went beyond nationalist fixation on ethnicity. This was unity in the name of acceptance and internationalism. Americans have historically been pressured to discard their non-English culture, language, and identities so that we can all be obedient American nationalists. This was unity imposed through social-political pressure and the constant denigration of non-American, non-English-speaking peoples. Those who reject assimilation are branded radicals, anti-American, terrorists.
Americans are being "divided" (a word mainly used by capitalist-nationalists) in that they are increasingly speaking up about persistent inequality and injustice between advantaged groups and disadvantaged groups. When the American nationalist calls for "unity", he is saying, "Shut up about problems your community face! Capitalism says it's their fault! Maybe if you conformed more to Anglo-Saxon American norms, you wouldn't be so impoverished and persecuted!"
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I'm not sure if a majority of 'liberals' support affirmative action. Many of them believe in it to some extent. I don't really consider that a bad thing. I am not sure what all it means outside America, but here affirmative action is about making up for centuries of minorities having virtually no access to power. I can understand it being perceived otherwise in the former Yugoslavia, where there is relatively more equality between ethnic groups than in America. Emphasis on "relatively".
Relatively yes. Socialist Yugoslavia fares better than America in terms of equality because Yugoslavs (Bosnians, Croats, Serbs, Slovenes, Macedonians, Montenegrins) and Albanians didn't whine about others being different in terms of religion, culture, and nationality. This was only during the Tito period. The 1980s and 1990s were when the Serbs started to slowly tear down Yugoslavia by whining about how they were "oppressed" and how Croats and Muslims were the biggest threat to Yugoslavia. Thankfully Tito did the necessary in 1974 by adding to the constitution that the republics may secede so that the Serbs never bring Yugoslavia back to its royal dictatorship.
America and Yugoslavia are interesting to compare given their similarities and differences. To give you an idea, white American nationalists are reacting much like how Serbian nationalists reacted to the idea of losing their stranglehold on power. To them, the minority calling for rights and dignity is oppressing them. To them, anything less than domination over others is unacceptable. Unlike Yugoslavia, most minorities in America do not want to split the nation up into ethnostates. There are certainly small numbers of, for example, black separatists who want several southern states to secede so black Americans can have their own ethnostate. People have different ideas of what the country will look like when we finally tear down the USA as we know it, but very few people are advocating a post-Yugoslavia-like situation where whites get a country here, blacks get a country there, etc.
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Again, I'm confused. Here, you say liberals spread info and ideas that support the right, yet before you said liberals are (sort of?) leftists. I do agree with the idea that capitalist liberals are unwitting allies of the nationalist-capitalist status quo--especially given their distaste for radicalism
You didn't get the point. They're self-proclaimed leftists, not true leftists. They're puppets of the right-wing who want to disorganize the leftists by pretending to be allies of the leftists. As there were reactionaries and totalitarians in communism such as Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the Juche, there are now reactionaries in a more covert form which they proclaim themselves as "liberals" and claim to support the social issues but that's not the common cause they're talking about. They're talking about their own need to increase power just like the Serbs!
I do not think the liberals you are referring to are savvy or cunning enough to be doing what you suggest. Mainstream liberals are rarely socialist, but they are rarely closet nationalists who want to hijack leftist causes in the name of reaction. They don't put that much thought into political struggle. Many of the liberals you describe are so fixated on being polite and acceptable that they won't advocate anything too crazy nationalist.
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Individualism as it is understood for most of American history was built around a fixation on property rights. "Individualism" is about not questioning the right of the property owner to gain as much property as they wish and to do whatever they want with that property. This is why things like taxation, business regulation, and wealth redistribution as seen as anti-individual. To these capitalist liberals, individualism is not about making sure everyone gets to achieve individual fulfilment so much as it is about making sure a small minority of individuals can accrue as much wealth and property as they can, regardless of justice or the cost to society.
Truly the definition of practical individualism. Individualism means that a small minority can self-manage but the rest are to suffer because they're not "successful" and therefore must be slaves to the victors.
Pay attention if you are ever watching a Republican politician talking to their base. When white conservatives fail economically, it's because they have been "left behind" or "let down by your leaders" or "forgotten by the system". Yet when other groups struggle economically, they need to "work harder" or "pull themselves up by their boot straps" or "not fall into a victim mindset". An excellent way to shut up this kind of capitalist is to point out that states that vote republican are almost all poorer on average than states filled with democrats. Maybe those capitalist patriots should work harder and stop blaming elites and immigrants? Wouldn't want to fall into that helpless victim mindset.
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I'm unsure what kind of things you're referring to here. Are you suggesting liberals are more likely to drag their personal issues into public? I'm confused.
Ah. I was referring to private things such as fetishes and kinks. Pride parades organized by the capitalist class usually have public displays of fetishes and kinks as a means of demonizing LGBT and profiting from the culture war between the Democrats and Republicans in America. LGBT are not horny people. LGBT are normal people but liberals and reactionaries are making them uncomfortable. The current LGBT movement needs to get rid of its bad apples which are the liberals who are manipulating the movement with their own agenda so they can profit from the misery of that minority.
As I said before in this message, you need to not attribute the LGBT to the wealthy or elites or anyone besides common regular people. As I said, the elites have thrown their weight behind us queers because they can tell who is going to win, and because being tolerant of queers is a great way to seem educated and virtuous and open-minded. They are late to the party. Do not give them credit for the decades-long struggle of queers for respect and acceptance.
Plenty of us are horny. I'm not that horny, but I can understand and support someone at a pride parade loudly proclaiming their love of sex lol. This is not egotism or carnal lack of self-restraint. This is an extension of the Sexual Revolution that started in the 1960's. America's Puritan culture has caused us to be massively sexually repressed and ashamed as a country. People are flaunting their sexuality as part of the effort to erase the backwards Christianity-based hatred of all things sex. Those who advocate sexual repression and silence are much more detrimental to society than someone walking down the street talking about how much they love to suck d-cks.
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As I said before, part of conforming to American society means identifying as an 'individualist'--specifically, 'individualist' in a very narrow sense that benefits property owners and almost no one else. In America, we are taught that capitalism and this kind of individualism are the results of "free thinking". "The Founding Fathers (blessings and peace be upon them) were enlightened, virtuous free-thinkers, and they agreed that capitalism is good and economic equality is bad! If you question those free-thinking Founding Fathers (BAPBUT), then you must be anti- free-thinking!" Therefore, conformity is framed as a sign of being a free-thinker. Ironically, questioning this conventional wisdom often causes one to be branded a sheep-like conformist who can't think for himself. Goodness! If only I were a brave individualist, then I too would loudly advocate the most socially acceptable economic and political ideologies!
It is a paradox which few Americans seem to notice.
America, the Land of the Free. However, to be free in America, you must conform. If you think that non-conformity is also freedom then you are anti-American and a sub-human and an illiterate peasant who must be exterminated. Pretty much for any imperialist regime that's how it works.
It's amusing watching American nationalist propaganda from the 50s and 60s talk like this. "You're an American! You're an individual--not some member of a collective! Now think and dress and talk and act like everyone else or else you're a dangerous radical!"
_________________
Diagnoses: AS, Depression, General & Social Anxiety
I guess I just wasn't made for these times.
- Brian Wilson
Δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν.
Those with power do what their power permits, and the weak can only acquiesce.
- Thucydides
08 May 2024, 10:10 pm
