I asked this a little while back (and posted this previously), so I’ll pass along the answer: because Nascar is typically not associated with these leftist political leanings, and by association of new ideas with familiar imagery you might gently help someone become more open to considering these notions in good faith instead of a knee jerk reaction against it.
It’s honestly pretty clever, and if it helps these ideas find new homes in communities they weren’t always welcome in then I’d say it’s worth it.
As per moderator request, a unique comment for you. Enjoy.
A time will come when humanity achieves victory in the war on drugs, granting everyone the freedom to decide what substances they put into their bodies. But in that future, will we witness drug users discriminating against those who choose sobriety? Will prisons be constructed for individuals who opt to remain drug-free? Will people face criminal charges for abstaining from substance use? Will drug users use force to impose their lifestyle on others, undermining constitutional rights? Absolutely not. Such actions are reminiscent of prohibitionists, and we are not among them. While marijuana legalization is a step forward, true harm reduction requires the full legalization of all drugs.
Dude just stick WSL on it. Makes the Winderps somewhat less torturous to deal with, though it’s not perfect because it’s still virtualized. Also your container performance is gonna absolutely suck due to the required virtualization layer.
Keep in mind that many Americans don’t know Socialism from Communism, as they’ve been schooled that everything responsible for happy Scandinavians is somehow bad.
Should I also keep in mind that most people don’t know how nice Communist counties were to live in? Seriously, give me one, just one country that did communism successfully and where all the people could live in freedom and pursue happiness. Just a single example.
Is there a Capitalist country where all people can “live in freedom and pursue happiness?” What does that even mean? What are the solid metrics by which you track that, so you can say a country passes or fails that?
Yeah, try just about all northern European countries. Are there people that have fallen off the band wagon? Of course there are, shit happens everywhere. However, everyone there loves better and more meaningful lives than in ANY communist country.
I don’t recall the last time in northern Europe (second world war aside) where literally everyone except a few elites (hello Russia) had to stand in line for hopefully some food
Why do you believe Northern European countries have it better than AES countries? Do you believe if an AES country copied the Northern European model, their metrics would match Northern European countries?
Why do you believe inequality is rising in Northern European countries and safety nets are being cut over time?
There’s no country where every single person lives in freedom and happiness. But there are numerous countries that have significantly improved the quality of life for the vast majority of people compared to what they had before, including Cuba, Vietnam, and China.
It may be true that in some cases the quality of life is higher in capitalist countries. But there’s a good reason for that! Historically, the countries most prone to socialist revolutions… were countries with some of the lowest standards of living in the world!
Despite this, China has recently eclipsed the United States in life expectancy. If you compare the two countries’ life expectancies before the Communists came to power, no one would expect that to happen! Why? Because for the average rural Chinese person, their way of life was virtually unchanged since ancient times with a life expectancy of 35, comparable to that of the Roman Empire.
Anti-communists would have us compare communist countries against either an imagined utopia, or against countries starting from a significantly higher level of industrial development. But those comparisons are not relevant to the question at hand! In order to evaluate the efficacy of socialism, the relevant comparison is the system that actually existed before, and what it was on track to do! And in cases like China, we can clearly see that the quality of life was miserable and stagnant for the vast majority of people, until the communists came to power!
Why do Westerners fail to account for this vital evidence? Because people used to a higher standard of living would take these improvements for granted! For a village tailor, being able to afford a sewing machine could be life-changing - but someone living in the imperial core would have no relevant experience to relate to that! The only thing they would notice is how poor the person still is, regardless of how much or how quickly their life is improving!
First of all, communism isn’t utopian. Even communists don’t think it will be some paradise where all worries disappear. You’ll still have to fight racism, sexism, bad weather, famines, etc.
But it’s often better for an average person from a country of a starting equal level of economic development. You’ve got to give it the “If I was reincarnated in a random person’s body, where would I want to be?” test. US is a good answer, but it’s got a way higher level of economic development with a big headstart. Even then, you could end up in the hood and die early and stressed. When you give the test comparing countries of equal starting economic development, it becomes a lot more muddled.
Like, would you rather randomly live in Cuba, or Somalia? The place where you get free education, health care, etc or a place that is also extremely poor but you don’t get that stuff? You could reincarnate as some rich, warlord there, but would you want to take that chance when you could reincarnate in Cuba as literally anyone and not be worried about ending up homeless? When giving realistic comparisons like this with proper historical context, and you do it over and over again, they tend to come out on top.
I was in my early 20s when the Soviet occupation collapsed here, the victims here were everyone not high up in the party.
Sure, capitalism fucking sucks but pretending the USSR was anything other than just bourgeoisie rule is delusional. The oligarchs were just called the communist party then.
Not really. You’re talking about what happened after the USSR. Which yes, was horrible for the quality of life of people who lived in numerous countries all over the globe, but that’s more of an indictment of capitalism than communism. The looting of the government coffers to privatize everything and create oligarchs was a result of the post-USSR shock therapy.
Ah, I misinterpreted you. Sorry about that. But it’s hard to tell exactly what you’re talking about without more details. Afghanistan, maybe? I get if you don’t want to dox yourself, as someone privacy minded, but it’s hard to know how to respond without more context.
Estonia but it’s not like that was not the case elsewhere in the occupied areas. Russia mostly exported resources out of there to benefit itself which is a large reason how it raised quality of life in Russia itself.
Oh ya, I should have guessed. There are a couple Baltic states that did increase in living standards and make some rapid industrialization improvements, but they also made some definite mistakes with handling some things there and trying to do some Russia centralization. It made some of those places very right leaning, which is unfortunate.
At least it generally shared technologies improvements and such with those places. It doesn’t make the USSR worse than the US, for example, which ruined basically all of South and Central America even worse than the USSR did for its neighbors. I want to emphasize that it made some big mistakes, but for some reason people contribute those mistakes to communism, when the US and other capitalist countries had even worse occupations with even worse exploitation, but for some reason that never leads to people saying capitalism is terrible and awful, etc. The world is just too propagandized by the West. The difference is that imperialism and exploitation is basically required by the capitalist system, while it’s a side effect of militarization under a siege mindset for communism. It happened, and will probably continue to happen as long as communism requires capitalism characteristics to jumpstart production, but it’s not a constant requirement of the system like capitalism’s necessity for the line to go up leading to always finding new markets and resources to take.
I never said the US was better than the USSR, I don’t really give a shit about the US. One shit country being slightly better than another one does not make it good.
I like how you characterised it as “some mistakes” . The whole famine business that ravaged the USSR was caused by sheer incompetence. A guy appointed by Stalin to manage agriculture came up with a fun idea of “communist crops won’t compete for resources” and forcing farmers to plant crops way too close. I’d say that was one of the greatest mistakes. There was also some killing the gays and some ethnic minorities but I think those were intentional.
I also don’t attribute anything to communism, only the USSR, communism hasn’t existed. I also attribute being the worst advertisement imaginable for communist to the USSR. They kinda ruined it for everyone else by calling themselves that.
You should look into south america in the 70s and 80s. The CIA’s unrestrained human experimentation in the regiom perfected this ideological soft power superweapon or “strategic ideological construct”. Trying to find exactly what these kinds of things are called.
I don’t understand why anything anti capitalism these days is automatically communism. It’s such a large swing from one side to the other. I just want my taxes to pay for healthcare, infrastructure, and education instead of wars and prisons. I want to stop getting fucked by corporations that have infinitely more money than I can ever imagine. I don’t think that makes me a communist. I’m just anti-fucking-the-people. Capitalism can fuck people. Communism can fuck people too. I support Corpo-Politico-Celibacism. Stop the fucking.
Edit: Okay, fuck the people. You guys must have this figured out.
If you are dissatisfied with the free thing I gave you, then I am happy to send you a refund of your purchase price. 🤷♂️
That’s my preferred strategy.
UPDATE: Before any angry cards and letters, let me clarify. When I reply this way, I learn a lot about the person I’m talking to, including whether they are prepared to have a reasonable conversation about this complex matter. The response I’m hoping for is “Well played.”, because that tells me that they recognize how ridiculous we are both being. I can work with them.
If they are merely having a tough time and needed to vent, then they’ll notice that and we can move forward.
If they are truly that entitled, then I don’t mind what happens next, because they would probably never have accepted any help I could offer them, anyway.
Not only is it normalized, but it’s being weaponized. See, for example, the recent XZ backdoor which was equal parts hacking and a psi-op against the maintainer.
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