Man, so wokeism really does come right before civil wars, huh?
To be fair it’s not excactly a conspiracy theory, but it is a false claim. Sure, Russia had motives for invading Ukraine, but descripting them ”good” is a straight lie.
About the upcoming negotiations. Overall I think it is a positive thing that the peace is on the table. If you think it from a realpolitik standpoint, some kind of compromise is the only solution (like in Korea).
I just hope Trump does not under-estimate Putin. He did it last time. Putin is a ruthless liar, and how he thinks is different from our perspective. Just that Trump called him and asked for negotiations is seen as a act of weakness in Kreml. This kind of situations are where Putin excels, so US is playing in Russias field now.
I’ve studied Russia and Putin a lot, he is a Ruscist who should never be trusted too much.
^^^^
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Rebuplicans blame liberals Woke, Democrats blame conservatives fascists. I have a strong doubt that either of these claims are actually true. Sure, there are some people who’ll take the modern liberalism top far, and there are some far-right actors too in US politics, but the average US citizen (or politician) is not probably too ”woke” or ”far right” as far as I can tell.
US political rhetorics are so polarised these days, that it looks absurd from the European point of view.
I’m very curious as to how you’ve come to a point where you feel that your opinion on this is educated.
For 4 years I was waiting for a reason, and I’m NOT the only one.
It’s not educated. It just does not resonate to what I’ve seen while following US situation and while visiting there. I might be wrong, but rarely people are so extreme politically. Most of us just want live in relative prosperity and peace.
The political discussion during elections seem really toxic thought.
Ps. There are some political parties in my country who try to raise similar topics up where I live (talks about woke or fascist), I’d rather not see it here.
No offense, but your perception is due to your European view, beginning with the ever-twisted notion of “left/right”.
The European right never really aligned with American conservatives.
There’s more overlap today, but still a lot of differences. We’ve never had monarchists here, which is what “the right” was in Europe. We have always had social and economic mobility (for the most part) unlike anything in Europe, so our “aristocracy” isn’t nearly as fixed as it was during the French Revolution, when these terms came about.
There were no American conservatives to align against in any meaningful numbers in Europe. Our ideas about government are incompatible with both old-school European left AND right.
In America it is probably best to look at politics along the state vs market spectrum, with a whole series of social and cultural issues bolted on, mostly coming from the left. Control vs. freedom would be another way of thinking about it.
Our left wingers share the same base of Socialism, mostly Democratic Socialism. Even your “right wing” in Europe appears pretty left to me.
100 years later, the Socialist propaganda to label National Socialism as “right wing” and then suggest that American conservatives are somehow similar remains effective. National socialism is equally incompatible with American political traditions as Democratic Socialism.
Race-based public policy instead of equal protection under the law, “restorative justice” based on distorted historical narratives, price controls, rent controls, centrally-planned economy, no firm concepts of private property, censorship, inserting your ideology into all aspects of public life, childhood indoctrination into the ideology, characterizing those who disagree as existential threats and many, many other KEY characteristics are shared between National Socialism and Democratic Socialism.
The idea that the concept of citizenship and the concept of vetted, controlled immigration are somehow “far-right” and thus similar to National Socialism seems absurd to me, and is absolutely one of the left’s long-term successes in propaganda.
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Overall, the European point of view makes me LOLLL.
Europe right now is where we’d be if Kamalalala DingDong had gotten elected POTUS -trucking on down the highway to hell.
Except for Italy, of course. And Poland too, I’ve heard.
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The language about government has become so murky in the last 100 years. That’s pretty unsurprising when I reflect on the kind of thought processes and rationalizations that come about through applying dialectical materialism. It not only leads you to wild public policy conclusions, but its embrace of contradiction also justifies any level of deception needed to get to your public policy future place.
Anytime you hear a Democratic Socialist talk about “Subverting power structures”, they’re just talking about lying.
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I agree. To us both parties (Dems and rebs) are right wing.
I also agree that the term ”right” is often misused. How I to see it is quite similar of yours.
Political right = economical right. So economical right values economical freedom over economical equality. More we go left, less freedom and more aim for equality there are.
Then we have liberal (non economical) values and conservative values.
Of course these correspond and mix up. Liberalism these days is not classical liberalism (Smith etc), or conservativism is not Burkes classical conservatism.
European are definitely more leftist than US. In values there is more difficulty to point out any general guidelines.
Isms are fascinating thing. I love this short text, and recommend it for everybody: https://edgeryders.eu/uploads/short-url/hZV8OTRoPrt6JO6KfePZBxVeWgZ.pdf
What I’m trying to say, that different political spectrums should try to understand each others, and have a fruitful dialogue of how’s and why’s. That’s of course an academic utopia of mine, since in politics it is much more efficient to demonize the opponent, not understand it.
Maxine Waters is perhaps one of the stupidest politicians in the swamp, so it is unsurprising that she accidentally lets the cat out of the bag.
“We don’t know what they have on us.”
Well Maxine, something tells me you will be finding out soon.
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As someone who has my head around all of the ideologies fairly well, I completely agree with your notion.
As someone who hasn’t been through much higher education but has been a lifetime reader on a variety of topics, I definitely value academics. Academia, however, strikes me as a major contributor to the rot. We’ve been being taxed to pay for that to be done to us as a population, as well.
Again, I see a similar dynamic with higher learning that you see with other popular ideas that are compatible with American government. A concept with broad appeal gets hijacked by Socialist ideology. Nobody on the right is anti-education in the least. We all value STEM, business, and the humanities and learning new things to make life better.
We just don’t want anything to do with the cult of Socialism. The entire priesthood class who props this nonsense up should no longer be funded by tax dollars. Put it in the trash heap of ideas and let academics study it on their own dime.
It has been in the last couple of years that I’ve been homing in on this bizarre and nonsensical way of thinking that underpins all of Socialism, dialectical materialism. You don’t need to spend four years of university study to see all of the ideas this has produced in academia, which then get imposed on other aspects of academia, like STEM.
It has made its way to my local school board, and the results are a disaster. I’m not being hyperbolic when I say I’m deeply, deeply concerned for the children coming out of that institution, which has been radically changed in the last 6 years of Democratic Socialist rule in Maine.
Dialectical materialism and it’s open embrace of contradiction gives its adherents permission to endlessly reason with themselves with academic approval from other people who also believe in the dialectic’s ability to transcend contradiction and “progress” to new ways of thinking.
It all works great when the only test for success is the approval of other cultists. As a regular guy who lives in a city, I don’t appreciate the foisting of these ideas on me or my neighbors.
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@SepCalla I’m not sure why you deleted your post, but here’s the answer to your question.
Dialectical materialism is obviously a road to nowhere at best, and disaster in every case it has been applied. It also explains how fascism is quite different than all forms of Socialism, including National and Democratic Socialism. Hegel’s dialectic didn’t have the same level of nonsense, but it was still a bunch of nonsense, at least when you’re applying it to public policy. Marxist critique produces many valid criticisms, but completely and totally fails at its solutions. This I believe is due to dialectical materialism as the underpinning thought process.
It also explains why fascism as it was in it’s early implementation in Italy was so much different than National Socialism, and didn’t really include any of the race-based public policy or more radical redistributionist ideas of “social justice”. It was trade unionism, found right in the name of the movement. It was also militaristic and nationalistic, which I think were the two main common denominators with National Socialism.
Marx’s dialectical materialism inverted Hegel, giving us this wild idea of “synthesizing” the thesis and antithesis and transcending contradiction. Hitler took it off in his own direction, as did the rest.
It also explains how the ideas are able to shift and adapt over time, always incorporating new ideas that pop up in society, responding to local conditions.
I mean, these guys all went on and on about it. All of them. Gentile (Hegelian father of fascism), Marx, Engels, Hitler, Mao, Stalin.
You can sniff the dialectic out in all kinds of other unexpected places, too, like the ramblings of Socialist Jim Jones. He’s a very curious case to me, especially considering that after the slaughter Walter Cronkite told America he was a “power-hungry fascist”. Jim Jones was a hard-core Socialist. He was appointed chair of the San Francisco Housing Authority, for Pete’s sake.
The tax-funded academic circle jerk of Socialists continues, and you can see that Democratic Socialism is constantly and rapidly evolving. It’s a new fucking flag each month, all new ways to arrive at nonsense public policy.
What socialists haven’t realized is that even people who don’t share my interests don’t need to be experts to instinctively sniff it out and detect it. That’s because they try to foist ideas on us that don’t make sense and people recognize it. They label it socialism, and Socialists come along and say “You don’t understand”, usually citing an academic member of the priesthood class as proof.
Muddying up the waters with a method that finds criticism under ever leaf in the forest AND suggesting that the concept of public schools, police, fire, etc constitute Socialism, when they do not. The dialectic does not underpin those ideas at all, and they are compatible with American government.
The long line of academic approval that can be cited is a big mechanism for foisting these ideas on society. Somehow, “experts” are the reason why students in my public schools now face discipline for speaking out against transgenderism or “demonstrating a pattern” of misgendering incorrect pronoun usage.
Experts in dialectical materialism, who are experts in nonsense, got us here.
@jshaving I believe this is how Russel Means was able to correctly discern the inbred nature of all of the European ideas being foisted on him. A lot of it makes no sense at all, and unindoctrinated people often instinctively reject it out of an innate sense of right and wrong.
In conclusion, dialectical materialism is the common denominator I’ve observed behind all of these massively destructive political movements. I’m a fairly bright bulb, if the bright bulb tests of the 1990’s are any indication. I’ve tried to make sense of it. I’ve read a lot of explanations for it.
To everyone who’s tried to understand it and felt frustrated by it, let me say. You aren’t stupid. It actually doesn’t make sense, and that’s what makes it a cult.
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Interesting takeout, thanks. I’ll try to reply when I have more time (I’m training currently, heheh).
Europe aint my rope to swing on?
JD Vance gives a brilliant speech in Europe about exactly what I am talking about here, but without going into the philosophical weeds. He is waging ideological battle.
What he is calling out are all of the ideas currently implemented in Europe that are incompatible with American ideas about government, human rights and freedom. These ideas all spring forth from the poison fountain of dialectical materialism, where the solutions to never-ending Marxist critiques are dreamt up.
Of course, it is very, very convenient that people believe in Socialism as a solution to society’s problems, as it enables a wealth extraction racket unparalleled by all but war and slavery.
At the end of the day, Socialism is REALLY about “Put the money in the hat, comrade.”
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Super excited to see DOGE hit the IRS.
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Dialectical materialism is a scientific-philosophical thought process, like logical deduction and so on…
If we speak about dialects (different models go far back to ancient greecr) as a philosphical concept, and it problems, the question is much more epistemological and theoretical. But your thought process is intriguing.
If I understood correctly, you criticise how Marx’s materialism is affecting socialism and how it is applied to the society. I think comparing philosophies and how they’re applied (often poorly) is a fascinating topic.
You descripted well the problems of socialism. In Marx’s context the socialism was well needed ism, since 19th century workers were basically slaves. It also enforced the idea of welfare state, public education and so on.
But socialism do has its darker side, utopias turns to dystopias, and the original ideas get molded constantly to something new. It’s interesting question how much modern transgender activist who claims him/herself as marxist even understands core principles of his books.
So I understand your criticism, but the reality is more complex than Marxsism rotting academics etc. At least in the broader picture, local actors can be whatever. Science is never value free after all.
Just to reinforce my point. Same has happened to other philosophers too:
Look Adam Smith, the father of capitalism. He would be too leftist for the majority of (economically) right wing thinkers these days. So when people claim they’re ”classical liberals”, they’re actually neoliberals, or whatever term you want to use here.
Other, even cliché, example is Nietzsche. One of his main point was to criticise Christian morality. But soon after he got twisted to all kind of nasty stuff, specially the National Socialists used his thoughts differently in new enviroment.
So criticising philosophical ideas and their applications are two different topics. I would not directly blame Marxist philosophies for US ”culture wars”, like I would not directly blame Nietzsche for the birth of nazism. They might have a role, but there are much more things to consider here.
I appreciate the thoughtful reply. Part of what I can see in academia looking from the outside in (with plenty of high-achieving academics in the family) is the tendency to muddy up the waters with “yes, but”.
That’s not what you’re doing here at all, but from a political ideology standpoint I believe people need to understand what these philosophies were actually about on a fairly fundamental level.
Part of the appeal of American ideas about government is that they are pretty easy to understand, for the most part. We’ve got our own weeds in the court systems, and ever-expanding bureaucracies, but the foundation is pretty damn stable, and that’s by design.
It doesn’t take much to get your head around core concepts like equal protection under the law, which the concept of equity is incompatible with. Freedom of speech has easily understood limits, and the concept of hate speech evolves with the times and is completely incompatible with free speech. Our right to keep and bear arms has likely played a bigger role in keeping us out of capital S Socialism than anything else, although Maine is an exception to that nationwide trend.
The concept of citizenship itself has been under attack from Democratic Socialism in an unbelievably aggressive way. That’s not rhetoric, that’s fact. That’s the lynchpin of everything. They have been chopping at our very root, using emotional blackmail backed up by a priesthood class of experts.
Maine is 6 years into unobstructed Democratic Socialist policy implementation, and if you’ve read what I’ve written about Lewiston you know how I feel about that.
I don’t blame it per se. I can only observe dialectical materialism to be a very significant common denominator that doesn’t seem to be present when I look into American political reasoning.
It is also very clearly a grift machine. Far more so than Italian fascism was, in every form Socialism has taken. We are being further squeezed as I type here in Maine while this mad agenda burns the last of its fuel.
None of the people can explain themselves in the Maine Democrat party. Not a one. They ALL cite the “experts” who insist that these policies must be implemented, and now our parks and library are for drug addicts first, anyone who wants to be around drug addicts, second.
The “why” is buried in academia, far removed from the practical application or any consequence for being wrong about your idea. The embrace of contradiction allows for an Orphic sort of mysticism about these high priests. It allows them to always first find the problem and then have the answer.
Hell, even Pol Pot couldn’t get his head around Marx.
This surely sound bad policy making.
Like you said: base values and ideas about society are (or should be) rather simply. Even in academia. I’ve studied many different branches of science and scholar studies, and politics or even societal philosophy is not generally very complex.