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The gradual extinction of softness

hippocampusmagazine.com

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Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#91

Post by wonnage »

nickff wrote: post #76
anticodon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pol Pot came to power due to USA backed coup. USA spies tried to kill king of Cambodia multiple times but failed. So, they taught and financed guerillas to oust the king by means of military coup and install a pro-USA government. Pro-USA government didn't last long, and Pol Pot took its place. And, BTW, the most well hidden secret is that USA supported Pol Pot and even provided financial support to his government. US…

> ” And, BTW, the most well hidden secret is that USA supported Pol Pot and even provided financial support to his government.” According to Wikipedia, the USA did not materially support the Khmer Rouge, though they did vote in favor of certain UN resolutions which favored the regime. Do you have some evidence or support for your claims? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_s...

It's more that they spent the entirety of the Cold War period propping up any dictators they could find as long as they weren't communists, and it usually backfired.

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#92

Post by nickff »

wonnage wrote: post #91
nickff wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ” And, BTW, the most well hidden secret is that USA supported Pol Pot and even provided financial support to his government.” According to Wikipedia, the USA did not materially support the Khmer Rouge, though they did vote in favor of certain UN resolutions which favored the regime. Do you have some evidence or support for your claims? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_s...

It's more that they spent the entirety of the Cold War period propping up any dictators they could find as long as they weren't communists, and it usually backfired.

>” It's more that they spent the entirety of the Cold War period propping up any dictators they could find as long as they weren't communists, and it usually backfired.”

But the Khmer Rouge were the communists! They were officially the “Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK)”.

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#93

Post by wnkrshm »

nickff wrote: post #76
anticodon wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pol Pot came to power due to USA backed coup. USA spies tried to kill king of Cambodia multiple times but failed. So, they taught and financed guerillas to oust the king by means of military coup and install a pro-USA government. Pro-USA government didn't last long, and Pol Pot took its place. And, BTW, the most well hidden secret is that USA supported Pol Pot and even provided financial support to his government. US…

> ” And, BTW, the most well hidden secret is that USA supported Pol Pot and even provided financial support to his government.” According to Wikipedia, the USA did not materially support the Khmer Rouge, though they did vote in favor of certain UN resolutions which favored the regime. Do you have some evidence or support for your claims? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_s...

IIRC from [0] US politicians long regarded the horror stories out of Cambodia as exaggerated tales at best, enemy propaganda at worst, since the Cambodian regime was opposed to the newly formed Vietnamese government.

They couldn't politically support the cause of their former enemy, so Cambodians suffered for longer, until Vietnam got bold enough to invade and liberate them (Edit: I don't know whether the aim was to liberate, the aim probably was to invade but it resulted in liberation).

But yeah, I don't remember any material support either. But the political support was deciding in keeping the madmen going in the country.

[0] "A Problem from Hell" by Samantha Power

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#94

Post by bryanrasmussen »

prmph wrote: post #81
jokethrowaway wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call deaths in the USSR "accidental". Starving and executing kulaks was no accident, they were punishing the rich. People worked to death in the gulags were not an accident. They may have killed less people per year compared to Nazis but that doesn't make them less deadly. In terms of sheer human loss for society, they were 4 times worse than the Nazis (according to your estimate). If you consider how much…

The difference is that the nazis were killing people based on who they were; the communists purged people based based on their belief that they had committed crimes against the state or were working against it. One can dispute this belief, and no doubt they were both brutal, but there is a difference between a genocidal policy with the aim of extermination, and the state exerting its power to punish those it thinks a…

>you could, in theory, avoid punishment in the Soviet Union by avoiding certain actions (although I know this is stretching things quite a bit),

sure, as long as we admit that in practice you really couldn't because punishment, although supposedly for crimes, was irrational enough to be essentially random.

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#95

Post by SiVal »

bencollier49 wrote: post #33
SiVal wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implementation of the leftist utopian visions that torture and murder and silence and "re-educate" millions and send millions more desperate refugees fleeing out to die at sea in little, overloaded boats trying to escape is not usually described as "liberation" by those, such as my family and many friends, who managed to survive these visionaries.

What do you make of the current state of culture in the West?

Deeply disturbing. Some people in China have enjoyed a bit of schadenfreude. (This isn't a literal quote, just a merger of assorted accusations that in most cases were not meant in a friendly way--it was a matter of national pride--but which ironically I agreed with, and it answers your question.): "You Americans [sometimes directed at me] are so arrogant, talking about our violent Cultural Revolution and Red Guards as if they couldn't happen in an enlightened, open, free culture like yours, just a primitive society like ours. But Red Guards weren't ordered to act that way by Party leaders. They were like religious fanatics inspired by propaganda to do evil enthusiastically while being told they were heroes, enjoying the feeling of power. And now that same Red Guard religion controls your universities. Your baizuo [white leftist] campus Red Guards decide what can and can't be spoken and enforce it on campus with threats of violence just like ours then spread out and take over the media, Hollywood, and [Big Tech] enforcing it on everyone else. [I would add K-12 schools, but the Chinese never seem to know about that part. Maybe with what has been in the news in Virginia, now I'll hear about that, too.] They use their power to decide what information needs to be hidden and who needs to be silenced so that the promoted stories can convince people that they are heroes and to give them more power to control their enemies. And lots of those who hear only the promoted stories become Red Guards and riot and burn and beat people in the streets, while the officials stand back and watch."

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#96

Post by jesussaves »

fxtentacle wrote: post #86
emodendroket wrote: post #62

> I’ve often wondered why, in a poor country where women work as hard as men to feed their children, feminine softness is so highly prized. As for me, I no longer consider it a valuable attribute. Isn't this its own answer? It's prized precisely because it is unattainable for most.

That explanation doesn't work for me. Women in Germany at my age never had a shortage of anything. Yet most of them present themselves as strong and fiercely competitive. It's rare to see a German woman embrace her softer side or act playfully in public.

Funny reading your comment I can totally understand why. the world would be a better place if people like you could realize why you should keep your mouth shut.

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#97

Post by wonnage »

nickff wrote: post #92
wonnage wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more that they spent the entirety of the Cold War period propping up any dictators they could find as long as they weren't communists, and it usually backfired.

> ” It's more that they spent the entirety of the Cold War period propping up any dictators they could find as long as they weren't communists, and it usually backfired.” But the Khmer Rouge were the communists! They were officially the “Communist Party of Kampuchea (CPK)”.

Yeah they supported the right-wing dictator that deposed the king who then joined Pol Pot and enabled his rebellion to succeed. And policy shifted after the 70s when they decided communism was ok, as long as you opposed the USSR. This was the justification for normalizing relations with China, who wound up supporting the Khmer Rouge, since they opposed post-war Vietnam (who they had just supported in the Vietnam War), which was a USSR ally.

It was a complicated time to be deciding who to coup.

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#98

Post by adwn »

prmph wrote: post #81
jokethrowaway wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call deaths in the USSR "accidental". Starving and executing kulaks was no accident, they were punishing the rich. People worked to death in the gulags were not an accident. They may have killed less people per year compared to Nazis but that doesn't make them less deadly. In terms of sheer human loss for society, they were 4 times worse than the Nazis (according to your estimate). If you consider how much…

The difference is that the nazis were killing people based on who they were; the communists purged people based based on their belief that they had committed crimes against the state or were working against it. One can dispute this belief, and no doubt they were both brutal, but there is a difference between a genocidal policy with the aim of extermination, and the state exerting its power to punish those it thinks a…

No, you're seriously misrepresenting history there. First, the Nazis were also convinced that the Jews and certain other minorities had committed crimes against the state and the German people, so there's not a meaningful difference between Hitler's and Stalin's motivations. Second, calling the murdering of the kulaks

> the state exerting its power to punish those it thinks are working against its interests

is as bad and wrong as saying the same thing about the Holocaust.

> Put another way, you could, in theory, avoid punishment in the Soviet Union by avoiding certain actions

No, you couldn't. You're implying that the millions of people murdered, tortured, dispossessed, and imprisoned in gulags under Stalin somehow had it coming and could have avoided their "punishment" by just behaving better. Stop spreading lies, and stop trivializing the crimes against humanity committed by the early Soviet Union.

Re: The gradual extinction of softness

#100

Post by netcan »

bsanr wrote: post #56
netcan wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a first person recollection of a nine year old girl's experience surviving two revolutionary civil wars and a genocide. Not incidentally, the sentiments you express were the precise sentiments weaponised to fuel and justify this bloodbath. Stopping at paragraph one to " yeah but she's a bouge.... " is a mark of zealotry. As to "sightedness," which I take as meaning obligatory mentions of class issues, imperia…

[flagged]

I know, and that is precisely the problem. The zealot perspective is that every story is the same story. It's always a story about capitalist greed or always story about moral impurity or always a story about market interventions going awry. It's beyond bias. It's total tunnel vision.

In any case, this is her story, her perspective. Write your own story, and it'll be the story you want.

Meanwhile, how dare you, who wrote what you wrote demand that others read your comment carefully and generously for nuance... especially when you are taking the position of the kmer rouge yourself.

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