In what universe are any of these people going to be held accountable??
The safest route for sure is to just follow the pack and not stand out. Unless you think that the average Republican has a serious risk of ending up in prison, in which case you're more delusional than she is.
I'm old enough to remember when people (including my young and naive self) thought that the Bush administration would be held accountable for illegal torture and spying and all that. Democrats got a supermajority and didn't touch them, and even continued a lot of the shit they'd been doing. The rule of law simply doesn't apply to you if the only people who could enforce it against you are these soft, civility-obsessed careerists. It's pure cope to think otherwise.
I'm genuinely curious if you really believe that they were never arguing that Trump was a Maoist, as they're now suggesting. Like when you read where they said:
I’m not trying to be mean but how in practice is this substantially different than Maoism?
They may sell it to you in a different package but the contents are essentially the same and I’d argue the result would be largely the same.
So in practice they aren’t functionally different
Have I actually "misread" or "misinterpreted" that? What other interpretation exists?
They're just playing games and acting coy because they know they can't actually defend what they said. It's clear bad faith, and I tend to react with hostility towards that. They're just good enough at operating in bad faith to muddy the waters.
I'm always impressed by the level of effort people will put into mental and rhetorical gymnastics to avoid admitting they don't know what the fuck they're talking about rather than putting half that effort into actually studying the thing they're talking about.
You wouldn't have to play these games if you just read a fucking book.
Oh no, I'm not happy about the US falling apart, because the military strength is still there, and that creates a very dangerous situation. We could see a situation where a president starts WWIII and nukes China or something, just to distract from internal problems. The right is much better equipped and has more clarity of vision, while the left is weak, disorganized, unarmed, and confused. In the event of chaos and a breakdown in government, it's hard to imagine that anything good would come of it.
In my ideal world, the US gradually draws back from international commitments while refocusing on domestic problems, accepting a smaller role and (after addressing domestic issues) competing with China through soft power, regarding who can offer developing countries the best deal.
Unfortunately, nobody seems to like my approach (people even call me an accelerationist despite my perapective being pretty much the opposite of that), so we're going to crash at full speed. Hopefully the rest of the world survives.
I think it's just American culture, we can't accept potentially being #2, or not being Superman, or not pouring all our money into bombs.
Where does it say trump is a maoist you fuckin buffoon.
You said, "you haven't quoted me once." I have, in fact, quoted you, so that's blatantly false.
So when you said, “I’m not trying to be mean but how in practice is this substantially different than Maoism?” you weren’t implying that Trump is a Maoist?
Obviously, this whole time you've been arguing that position, and even when I directly asked this, you refused to answer. You're still refusing to answer.
You're just playing games, and I have no interest in it. Say what you mean and mean what you say. Don't spend this whole conversation arguing something and then say, "Well, I never actually said it outright" when you can't defend it just to save face. It's pathetic and dishonest.
So when you said, “I’m not trying to be mean but how in practice is this substantially different than Maoism?” you weren’t implying that Trump is a Maoist?
I literally already did, before you even asked. Apparently you don't have the reading comprehension and need to reread the thread.
Or rather, you can read and do know that you're wrong and are just trolling.
And you haven't shown anything that I've actually failed to comprehend.
You still missed the key word ie. In practice.
That doesn't change anything. Unless Trump has redistributed land to the poor while I wasn't looking?
You’re either a troll or a legitimate fucking moron
Says the person who just claimed that Trump is a Maoist on the basis that Maoism is when you industrialize. I genuinely hope you're a troll because otherwise, Jesus Christ.
Forgive me for expecting an extremely basic level of political literacy.
No, all I have to ask is how in practice they are functioning differently.
How is a penguin different from Neptune? Clearly the assumption should be that they're the same until proven otherwise. This is how conversations work.
Lol no we haven't. We have not even begun a serious discussion about it.
To establish that they are at all similar, you need to establish the similarities between Trump's actions and Maoism, beyond, "They both made plans to industrialize" which is true of countless countries around the world that had nothing to do with Maoism. As I said, by your standard, Emperor Meiji would be a Maoist, which is absurd.
Since you have not, and refuse to do this, then obviously you have no real basis for making that claim. They are so different that it's utterly bizarre that anyone would ever compare the two.
On the one hand, someone who came to power via a revolution in a poor and undeveloped country with the support of landless agricultural workers who then redistributed land from the landlords to the peasants and then moved to develop the economy. On the other hand, a billionaire landlord who came to power in a rich developed country through a bourgeois election with the support of the wealthy who has, rather than giving poor agricultural workers their own farms, has been deporting them en masse to foreign prisons.
They are opposites in virtually every respect and the only similarities you've found are entirely superficial or are true of virtually everyone. This comparison is baseless, ignorant nonsense, and anyone making it has zero understanding of anything.
So when you said, "I’m not trying to be mean but how in practice is this substantially different than Maoism?" you weren't implying that Trump is a Maoist?
So you’re going to be rude instead of making a point?
I am making the point. The point is that you can't just take a handful of things Mao did, that tons of other people have also done, and say that anyone who does those things is a "Maoist." Whether it's "making a plan to promote industrialization with government involvement" or "writing words."
Virtually every country that went through a period of industrialization would be "Maoist" by this standard.
I didn’t define anything dipshit
Yeah and that's part of the problem. Because you have no understanding of what the label you're using actually means.
I asked how they were different not the same
The onus is on you to demonstrate how they're similar. It's like if someone said, "In what way is a raven different from a writing desk?" They're so different that it's virtually impossible to convince of any line of thought that would see them as similar.
You're absolutely right. Any country that makes long term plans, seeks to develop it's industrial base, and "has socialist aspects" (which I assume mean, "the government does stuff") is Maoist.
Emperor Meiji was a Maoist.
This is a very reasonable and coherent worldview. You've definitely read plenty of theory to know that one of the core tenets of Maoism is "making plans."
Well, step 1 would be doing something about the US. The US wields enormous power and influence around the world despite having a relatively small population (compared to how much influence it has). What you're proposing is that every person in Africa, China, Southeast Asia, etc, should have equal say in what happens in the world as an American - I agree with that, as anyone who believes in democratic ideals should. But countries like the US that benefit from the current arrangement would never allow it, and are well armed enough to be a serious impediment to that goal.
No, it is not. "The government doing stuff" (including seizing property) is not communism. Lots of governments seize property for all sorts of reasons. Another example, when the US was building the transcontinental rail system, there were times when it seized land that was in the path of the planned railway and gave it to the rail companies. If that made a person or system communist, then I don't think I could name a single non-communist country in all of history.
A communist system can mean either a classless, stateless, moneyless society, the ideal that communists pursue, or it can mean a system run by communists in practice, since most communists would say that such a system cannot be implemented overnight. There is no universal, standard set of policies that makes a system communist, because communists (at least, Marxist-Leninists) believe that policies should be developed based on an analysis of a country's specific material conditions.
Trump is not seizing parts of businesses because he's applying some kind of Marxist analysis to conclude that that's the best way to advance the interests of the proletariat. He's just taking shit because he wants it and nobody can stop him. At that point, it's like pointing at two wild animals fighting over a kill and calling them communists.
Communists may be known for nationalizing corporations but that does not mean that anyone who nationalizes a corporation is automatically a communist.
In what universe are any of these people going to be held accountable??
The safest route for sure is to just follow the pack and not stand out. Unless you think that the average Republican has a serious risk of ending up in prison, in which case you're more delusional than she is.
I'm old enough to remember when people (including my young and naive self) thought that the Bush administration would be held accountable for illegal torture and spying and all that. Democrats got a supermajority and didn't touch them, and even continued a lot of the shit they'd been doing. The rule of law simply doesn't apply to you if the only people who could enforce it against you are these soft, civility-obsessed careerists. It's pure cope to think otherwise.