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Talkin’ about a Revolution

drb.ie

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Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#171

Post by bilbo0s »

nozzlegear wrote: post #148
baxtr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I talked to a history professor recently and asked him how he viewed the whole situation. He leaned back, thought for a bit and answered: It’ll be all fine on a 200 years perspective, democracy will continue to increase its footprint, people will lead better lives. It’s the next 30 years I’m worried about. PS: ofc, I have no clue if he’s right or not. But I thought it’s an interesting take to share.

I have no comment on what your professor said, but reading the replies here just confirms to me that cynicism, pessimism and doomerism are certainly the mood of the current zeitgeist. Optimistic outlooks are too often met with a kind of reflexive dismissal or despair in a "I feel like things are really bad right now, have never been this bad before, and thus can never improve" diatribe. There's a pervasive sense in o…

Meh.

It's not really cynicism.

It's just that people today only care about the next 20 or 30 years. They don't really care if, over the course of the next 200 years, two nations can rebuild from annihilating each other in a nuclear exchange. The nuclear exchange is a lot more pressing concern for them.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#172

Post by sofixa »

alabastervlog wrote: post #143
sofixa wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you are of a different opinion then we are, you are either badly educated (read, stupid) or a nazi Depending on where you are from, this could absolutely be true, as "elitist" and insulting as it might be. Well, fascist is more appropriate than Nazi because Nazi is superset of fascism with a heavy anti-semitic element, and I'm not aware of many rabidly anti-semitic parties in the mainstream in many countries.

> Well, fascist is more appropriate than Nazi because Nazi is superset of fascism with a heavy anti-semitic element, and I'm not aware of many rabidly anti-semitic parties in the mainstream in many countries. Scratch a little deeper on the things popular Republican politicians and members of the current administration have been saying and promoting for the last few years. Conspiratorial movements almost always end up…

True, but other than the "Jewish space lasers" brain worm lady, the others aren't outwardly anti-semitic. Unlike the Nazis who were very very much so.

So for now, I'm billing them as fascist.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#173

Post by nouripenny »

lynx97 wrote: post #38
dudefeliciano wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not stupid, just lacking class consciousness

I would love if the public discourse would allow for more diversity of opinions. Unfortunately, where I come from, the left has simplified the rhetoric to "If you are of a different opinion then we are, you are either badly educated (read, stupid) or a nazi." Unfortunately, this elitist attitude has only contributed to the divide of the people.

I agree, it's a huge trap. The right exploits leftists who insult normal people as dumb. It worked when they insulted George W Bush, who people identified with and found likeable, and was probably coached to bungle sentences despite likely not talking that way at Yale and Harvard; and when they insult Trump and his ideas, though he's perceptive and effective.

Many say it works because liberals now represent the professional-managerial class, who often come across to workers/poor as infuriatingly patronizing, slick and humiliating. Whereas many don't know who owns their big corporation, so they don't inspire such visceral feelings.

While some may argue that liberals aren't leftists (but are rather good-cop), nevertheless many leftists do this too. The dynamics are explained in Thomas Frank's book "Listen, Liberal", David Graeber's essay "Army of Altruists: On the alienated right to do good", and Participatory Economics's coverage of the coordinator class.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#174

Post by hedora »

jjice wrote: post #159
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have certainly heard people say that they couldn't support Harris because the Biden administration was too close to Israel, so instead didn't vote at all. I know it doesn't make sense to hand the election to somebody objectively worse on an issue they claim to care about, but there it is. I suspect that whole thing was driven by some clever folks trying to get Trump into power.

I have multiple people in my life that followed this mindset as well, to offer some more anecdata. I never got a rationale when asked, which still perplexes me considering these people weren’t fans of the republicans in this past race.

No need to rely on anecdotal evidence:

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/03/nx-s1-5249686/arab-muslim-vot...

Trump was an isolationist in his first term, and his campaign used this to convince muslim voters that he'd continue this in his second term and withdraw support for Israel.

Instead, he announced a US funded ethnic cleansing campaign in the region, and the cornerstone of his budget is funding to illegally deploy the US Military in the US. One of their main goals is rounding up "anti-semetics" which seems to mean anyone that's against genocide, especially this exact group of Trump voters.

My suspicion is that they fell for it because they're less familiar with US politics, either due to a language barrier or due to being 1st and 2nd generation immigrants without grandparents that remember the McCarthy trials, or the US deporting jews back to Nazi Germany.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#175

Post by alabastervlog »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #150
davedx wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that makes sense to me; how do society's moral rules change (slowly) but peoples' moral rules don't/change little? I mean I can think of some isolated examples like pirating video content, but generally a society's moral rules reflect its constituents; where else do those rules come from, if not its people?

Culture. Humans have pretty stable moral intuitions about the basics - fairness, reciprocity, value of life; AFAIK they're consistent throughout time and space as far as history goes[0], and form a common base from which more complex morality stems. In short: "theft is bad" is something people are born with[1]; "pirating media is bad" isn't; the former will be universal wherever you go, the latter depends strongly on…

My experience is there's also a fundamentally inborn notion of "fair price" and "fair pay" that people are born with, that they have to be educated out of to operate successfully in the modern economy. It's one way in which our system is kinda anti-human—it assumes a kind of game-playing that's seen as wrong by people, naturally, and you have to play that game or you can't succeed. "What the market will bear" doesn't feel fair to people until they're made to see it as fair.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#176

Post by bilbo0s »

DeathArrow wrote: post #95
hagbard_c wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the wrong way - the way of the likes of 'fascists' and 'anti-fascists' alike - to go at that problem. A better way is to point out where Hegelian thought can lead and has led in the past. No books need to be burned, more books need to be published and read while educational institutions should stop pushing books which promote the destructive aspects of Hegel's thoughts. Yes, that means that Howard Zinn should…

Exactly my view. People should be more educated, not less.

while educational institutions should stop pushing books which promote the destructive aspects of Hegel's thoughts

Well, I mean, you are kind of less educated if you only learn from books that are..

um..

"consistent with scripture" so to speak.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#177

Post by alabastervlog »

bilbo0s wrote: post #171
nozzlegear wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no comment on what your professor said, but reading the replies here just confirms to me that cynicism, pessimism and doomerism are certainly the mood of the current zeitgeist. Optimistic outlooks are too often met with a kind of reflexive dismissal or despair in a "I feel like things are really bad right now, have never been this bad before, and thus can never improve" diatribe. There's a pervasive sense in o…

Meh. It's not really cynicism. It's just that people today only care about the next 20 or 30 years. They don't really care if, over the course of the next 200 years, two nations can rebuild from annihilating each other in a nuclear exchange. The nuclear exchange is a lot more pressing concern for them.

I'm at the age where 30 years may well be the rest of my life (even assuming a fairly normal old-age sort of death) and 50 almost certainly is, so while I do care about what happens after for my kids, they'll also be quite old by then, so "the whole rest of your life during which you're still significantly active, plus all of your kids' lives up to as late as late-middle-age, by which time they're firmly set on their life courses and family planning and such, will suck" is... pretty bad.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#178

Post by code_for_monkey »

dudefeliciano wrote: post #3
resurrected wrote: post #2

[flagged]

How did it contribute to bringing trump to power?

it was a huge anchor around the dem's neck, it was a huge conversation during the entire election. They were unable to convince people that Trump would be worse for Gaza than them.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#179

Post by code_for_monkey »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #46
dudefeliciano wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument is not really credible to me, saying that democrats did not vote or voted republican because Harris (and Biden before her) were too favorable towards Israel, ignores the fact that it was glaringly obvious that trump would be even more favorable towards Israel.

I have certainly heard people say that they couldn't support Harris because the Biden administration was too close to Israel, so instead didn't vote at all. I know it doesn't make sense to hand the election to somebody objectively worse on an issue they claim to care about, but there it is. I suspect that whole thing was driven by some clever folks trying to get Trump into power.

I think this take comes from a place of western privilege. Biden has always been extremely pro Israel, more than even the average politician here. Biden refused to recognize the ICC war criminal ruling's on Bibi and Israel and also gave them whatever weapons they wanted. It doesnt really make a difference if Trump is more rude and annoying about it, neither of them like Alive Palestinians.

I mean, the whole thing went down under the Biden Presidency. If he thought getting those votes was important he couldve shut it down, it wouldnt even be the first time a president did that. Reagan reigned them in all the way in the 80s.

Re: Talkin’ about a Revolution

#180

Post by js8 »

sepositus wrote: post #166
js8 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Karl Marx isn't responsible for anything that happened in the 20th century. People have individual responsibility for their actions, it doesn't matter where you got the idea from. Ascribing e.g. crimes of stalinism to Marx is actually terrible idea, it absolves the people who did these crimes of their own moral agency. Ideas do matter (as Gramsci has shown by example), but the moral responsibility is on the implement…

> Everything that exists deserves to perish. Well, we can start with this problematic statement. Taken to its literal conclusion, it's not surprising to think it could end up with mass graves. Granted, it originated from Mephistopheles, but Marx wasn't being poetic in his recitations.

I am not really interested in a bad faith debate. I take it you're quoting this passage:

The constitution, the National Assembly, the dynastic parties, the blue and red republicans, the heroes of Africa, the thunder from the platform, the sheet lightning of the daily press, the entire literature, the political names and the intellectual reputations, the civil law and the penal code, liberté, egalité, fraternité, and the second Sunday in May, 1852 – all have vanished like a phantasmagoria before the spell of a man whom even his enemies do not make out to be a sorcerer. Universal suffrage seems to have survived only for the moment, so that with its own hand it may make its last will and testament before the eyes of all the world and declare in the name of the people itself: “All that exists deserves to perish.” [From Goethe’s Faust, Part One.]

Can you explain, in your interpretation, what was Marx trying to say?

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