Zuzak

None of the theoretical disagreements are actually important. If Trotsky had wound up in charge instead of Stalin, then all the Trotskyists would be Stalinists. It's the rhetorical position of opposing AES states in practice while extolling the purely theoretical merits of socialism which defines them.

Basically, they have this perfect vision in their heads of how things could've gone and then they look for whoever lost and assume their loss is the reason things didn't go perfectly. The reality is that material conditions impose restraints on these perfect visions and the results were always going to be grittier than what they imagine no matter who was in charge.

Maoists and Trotskyists seem to differ mostly on vibes. They both hate AES states for not being ideologically pure enough but one positions themselves more as high-minded intellectuals and the other as more radical. But the powers that be don't really care either way so long as they primarily focus on criticizing their geopolitical enemies.

Ngl, the fact that the US lied about masks and had such a clusterfuck response while China listened to the science was a major step in me becoming China-pilled.

That was part of why I eventually read up on it, but I assure you I'm a tiny minority in that regard. Most Americans see no problem with getting involved even with extremely little knowledge of a country.

Most people here have zero knowledge beyond the news (if that). I didn't know anything about it at all (even that it used to be called Persia for example) until it caught my interest one day and I read up on it.

Tbf you can't expect every person to be informed about every country, but that's also a good reason why people on the other side of the world shouldn't be meddling.

Yes that's correct. Libs will defend this with, "The communists were trying to overthrow the democratic government!" But the reality is, the German government had collapsed at the end of WWI and it was an open question what they'd end up with when the dust settled. The communists wanted to set up a state where the political power of the right and the bourgeoisie would have been subordinated, and the SPD sent in the freicorps to destroy them, in order to defend a fledgling system they created where they would have "no choice" but to form a coalition with the bourgeois parties and enact austerity policies to "maintain the coalition." They set up the system where their hands would be tied, and did so while being violently hostile to the only other possible coalition partner, who could've allowed them to do something other than austerity.

This was, of course, after they spent WWI supporting the war effort and betraying the Basel manifesto and the second international, which before the war called for socialists to work against their own governments in the event of a great war. German entry into WWI was expedited by the SPD voting in favor of war credits and the declaration of war. They completely betrayed their principles and the proletariat because it would have been bad for their careers.

So I find it very appropriate that libs today project onto them and glamorize them.

The SPD, just wanting to stabilize the Republic while doing nothing to address the economic crisis, while punching left and not suppressing the far-right, when the far-right takes advantage of the economic crisis and infighting to seize power:

American libertarianism is fundamentally grounded in chauvanism. The logic at the root of it is:

• The US is the greatest country on earth, and has the best chance of succeeding at anything out of every country (unstated)

• The US government sucks

• Therefore, all possible governments suck

It's a difficult brainworm to dislodge because they aren't even conscious of their chauvanism. They'll happily criticize the US government, but it'll always be in the style of, "What are we, a bunch of Asians?" and every bad thing they see here will just be assumed to be even worse in other countries, "If it's that bad here, imagine what it must be like in China!"

life back then mustv been crazy people just thought whatever

People still just think whatever tho.

They're just pointing out the underlying logic behind the argument, and how applying that logic to other situations produces absurd conclusions. At no point did he claim the two were equivalent. In fact the whole point of the comparison is that the settler-colonialism is indisputably bad.

Let me make a similar argument to demonstrate. When I was in school, sometimes certain teachers employed or threatened collective punishment, if one person did something wrong, and no one confessed, then the whole class would be punished. Collective punishment is pretty awful and unjustifiable as a concept, like, the exact same logic behind it has been used to justify a lot of terrible war crimes, it was even used during the Holocaust, and it is explicitly prohibited by the Geneva Convention.

Now obviously, whatever punishment my class had to deal with in school is in no way comparable to the Holocaust. I don't think it would be fair of you to get angry at me for "comparing" the two, because my point wasn't that the scope of harm was the same, only that if we can clearly recognize that collective punishment is a horrible war crime when the stakes are high, then we're left wondering why, in this other situation with lower stakes, would it suddenly become valid?

Likewise, we can see in the high-stakes context of settler-colonialism that if someone says, "Yes, it was bad to kick the Palestinians out of their homes, but now that it's done I might as well move in" that logic is obviously not valid. Why then, does the logic suddenly become valid when it's applied to the lower-stakes situation of someone saying, "Yes, it was bad to kill this animal, but since it's already dead, I might as well eat it?"

What part of that reasoning do you take issue with? What part of that "makes vegans look ridiculous" or makes you want to say something rude?

Logic generally isn't enough to convince people to become vegan because it's contending with other mental forces much more powerful than logic. The force of habit. The unwillingness to accept you've been doing things wrong. The fear of potential conflicts, judgement, or awkwardness, of potentially becoming part of an outgroup. Just one of those is difficult to overcome, but with all of them all at once, it can become insurmountable for a lot of people.

This is what I realized like the week after going vegan - that every reason and justification that had previously held me back was just an incredibly flimsy excuse. Like, when I made the decision it felt tough with some reasonable points both ways, veganism being just a bit more compelling, enough to try it out - but once I took the plunge and the arguments no longer had those psychological forces behind them, it become abundantly clear how idiotic they were, and how foolish I had been to let them hold me back.

Meat eaters employ bad arguments because there are no good arguments, and their minds desperately want to find some argument that can hold enough water to push it aside and thing about something else as quickly as possible, to eliminate the threat the question poses to the psyche.