This video summarizes my feelings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKbEaZ-Jnws

Why!? Why, Combinator!?

Have you not seen the memes? Or are you saying that the Great Leaf Forward isn’t real, and I spent my life’s savings on pictures of Mao Zedong for nothing?

You’re extremely mistaken regarding the Korean war. The South was not the “legitimate government” of Korea, it was an American-installed dictatorship made up of collaborators from the previous Japanese occupation. The North had a much greater claim to being the legitimate government, and Kim Il Sung, having fought the Japanese rather than being a collaborator, would have won nationwide elections had the American occupation allowed them.

The 38th parallel was not an internationally recognized border, and didn’t become one until after the war. It was just the demarcation between the two occupation zones. South Korea made plenty of incursions into the North before the war, it’s just that the North pulled the trigger on an all-out invasion, and they had every right to do so given that half of their country was occupied by a hostile imperial power.

Nobody’s “stanning” North Korea, you dolt. We’re talking about history, and the history is that the United States pursued a campaign of genocidal terror-bombing against North Korea, destroying every city, town, and piece of civilian infrastructure. They used biological weapons developed by Imperial Japan’s Unit 731, they doused villages full of people with napalm. It is in no way inaccurate to say that it was a war of extermination that you undertook against them. To top it off, after the armistice, you imposed a perpetual economic siege and military encirclement, in their eyes threatening to resume hostilities at any time. Is it any wonder that they would end up “sooo craaaazy and evil”? All I said was that the US went a lot crazier per building destroyed than they did.

2 buildings vs. all of them. Incomparable.The rabid dog genocidaires of the United $naKKKes will assuredly be punished for their crimes

If the fine people of Minnesota have access to RPGs or high calibre machine guns, it may as well be made of butter

We very badly need air defences. We don’t have so much as a shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missile, let alone anything long-ranged.

After WW2, the various industrialists who financed and supported the Nazi party all got off scot free. I hope that isn’t the case this time around.

We sent a bunch of these to Ukraine. They didn’t perform well - got stuck in the mud easily, the armour wasn’t sufficient for the threats, and the height didn’t help with not getting hit. They’re appropriate for colonial policing operations, which is why they’re perfect for ICE, provided the Minnesotans start shooting back

How so?

They have no defined borders, the most extreme among them claim the whole middle east, and they just keep getting more extreme. The progression is obvious

At least it’s interesting to watch!

I agree, the separatists should go on down to the US

I got rid of it years ago, thankfully, but I’ve heard the talk. As it stands, we wouldn’t make it a week outside of a guerrilla war, and I don’t know if we have a strong enough society or motivated enough populace for guerrilla war. We could make ourselves a hard enough target for them to avoid if we invested heavily in expanding the military, but where are we going to get the weapons? America? They could turn them off remotely I’m sure. China would be a good option, but America might invade us right away once they found out we were doing that. It’s a big problem.

Even if we could get the Europeans to do anything more than write a strongly-worded letter, they don’t have much in the way of military might themselves. Frankly, I don’t trust them to help unless something changes, but the ticket is deterrence. We need to make ourselves a hard enough target that the Americans aren’t willing to try to take a bite, and it’s going to take a combination of alliances (we should ally with Mexico, since America is coming for them too) and armaments.

Regarding shifting social spending to defence, I think it’s a bad idea, at least without other major changes elsewhere. Part of our problem is motivation - we’ve had 40 years of neoliberalism telling us the state owes us nothing besides tax credits and we owe the state nothing besides paying our taxes and obeying the law. We’re already halfway to losing public healthcare, so we won’t even be able to fight for that. We need a fundamental paradigm shift to save this country, and I’m not sure if we have the will or the imagination.

The rest of the “democratic” world supported Israel as they bombed Gaza to rubble, and supported America in basically every murderous invasion and regime change of the last 80 years, right up until America threatened to take Greenland - suddenly it’s different if America comes for someone in the club. All the “democratic west” amounts to is a few rich countries run by rich pedophiles, but God forbid we do business with big bad China, right?

I don’t know how so many people are still falling for this. Sure, the Iranian government isn’t exactly “good”, but they’re the only major counterbalance to the genocidal Nazi imperialists that’s left in the region.

Sure, but perceived volume of people on the internet isn’t necessarily indicative of real life, and I would hazard a guess that a lot of the people boycotting were in safe blue ridings.

The thing is, I don’t think it’s so much that they see a progressive platform as a risk. I won’t say that isn’t part of it, but the main thing is they really, really don’t want to implement progressive policies. It’s anathema to them ideologically, at least for the true believers. More important, it would lose their major donors money, and therefore would lose them money as their donors went over to the Republicans.

As tho why progressives should in general (upcoming elections are arguable of course, given the situation) withhold their votes from the Democrats, it’s because it’s the only leverage they have. As long as the Democrats can win without offering people anything, they won’t offer anything.

The law only exists so far as it is enforced. Who will enforce the law against the state? Political power grows out the barrel of a gun.

Nothing is forever, even cold November rain

Nothing is forever, even cold November rain