submitted for discussion - the "woke" CIA recruiting ads

Yes, it is. One of us isn't being combative about something, that would be me, and the other one thinks they're Perry Mason.

Oh, combative, you say? LOL. Also you, in this very thread, and sentiments expressed multiple times prior.
The US is still a nation of colonizers. It's a big, nasty, imperialist nation that throws its weight around, and while holding the rainbow flag and the dove of peace, it sends its venom into the veins of other countries to kill them and make the host body more pliant toward the needs of the parasite nation that controls it. The US is still a slave nation, it's still a racist nation, and it has no problems killing men, women, and children to maintain its hold over global resources.

I'm sure that was intended to be mollifying and comforting.

You are one of the most disingenuous people I've ever encountered. I detest intellectual dishonesty.

But let me know when I'm too combative for you.

The US is a nation of colonizers. If I said Germany in the 1930s and 1940s was full of Nazis, you would have agreed. You'd have understood that it's not combative to tell the truth in recognizing a problem that needs addressing. Now you don't understand here because the nation in which you live is the direct target, and you have a very soft spot for the colonialism of the United States. You've been told since you were a child that the US is good, that it's a beacon of freedom. There are plenty of cheerleaders for the United States, people who wouldn't care if we turned other nations into a field of glass. The US doesn't need cheerleaders, it needs people who will hold it accountable for what it did, what it's doing, and what it wants to keep doing, and so I do my part, because I care about the people who live here, and the people we affect all over the world.

So a discussion between ideologies is fine, when it's a discussion. The problem is that you don't care what I have to say because you fill it in with what you want. I'm a prison abolitionist, anti-fascist, anti-imperialist, intersectional feminist, pro-LGBTQ, neurodivergent, transgender AnarchoCommunist, and your only answer is to say "Stalin! Mao!" on repeat like you're Joe McCarthy having an orgasm. I don't mind discussions, but one sided diatribes like yours are less than worthless to me, not that you care. You never needed me beyond wanting an object at which to direct your arrows.

I don't care if you detest intellectual dishonesty or not, because it's clear you don't even know what it looks like, which accounts for quite a few things, actually.

Ah, so you are just a truth teller, and if I disagree I'm combative.

As I said - telling. And I loathe intellectual dishonesty.

I can understand your view of the reality of the US while also understanding that isn't the only truth of it. Every nation is flawed. Many of the finer aspirations of the US are also true - extremists such as yourself never seem to understand that. They are so shocked when their illusions are disabused they reel from one fringe to the other.

It's true that capitalism as practiced comes at a very high price, that propaganda in the US is successful, that there are racial issues are pervasive and still have to be dealt with (though that's every nation on Earth, frankly) and that the US has often been a bad actor on the international stage.

It's also true that we've seen a march toward greater inclusiveness in our democracy, even if there are major issues at times such as the last 4 years. That we've helped bring forward a dramatic increase in the knowledge of mankind. That we've exported not only our propaganda but our knowledge, and innovations in the US being freely shared have led to great strides in combatting the curses of disease and starvation. Indeed, with our help nations such as India are food self-sufficient for the first time in modern history. We created most of the major vaccines in the world, including those for cholera, antrax, rabies, typhod, plague, diptheria, whooping cough, tubercleosis, tetanus, yellow fever, typhus, influenza, polio, and influenza.

We intervened in Iran which lead to the rise of fundamentalist Islam, and we violently put down people who wanted self-rule in the Phillippines. But we also freed the Phillippines from Japanese domination, were rightly seen as liberators from a much more oppressive government, and paved the way for their independence in a single year, while sending them billions to help rebuild. We fed Europe and created new, peaceful societies out of Germany and Japan.

There is good to go along with the bad.

And yes, the bad needs to be told. But that doesn't mean that much of the good isn't also true.

As to your personal politics, you clearly state you are anti-democratic and anti-violence without stating how you expect the country to change to your preferred ideology without either.

There is no way we give up democracy but then go onto communism without violence. And I'm sure everyone here but you understands that - you think you would as well, considering how evil you think this country is.

Which just makes you just another idiot.

Or more likely, an absolute liar.

And as I said, I detest intellectual dishonesty.

See? You don't need me at all, you just filled in what you think I believe, and added your own responses. Good work!

Then feel free to point out where I misidentified your beliefs.

Just remember you have a record of posts here.

"Surely you can prove your innocence," says the man who DETESTS intellectual dishonesty.
Would you also like a list of the people I organize with? Maybe my associations? Little Joe McCarthy.

Another dodge, and the person who keeps calling out 'STRAWMAN, STRAWMAN' keeps chopping down the hay and putting up scarecrows.

I just asked you to show where I was wrong about your own stated beliefs.

And that was too much for you to honestly engage in.

Like I said, disingenuous, dishonest.

I'll try again, Amaris.

How do we get to this communist utopia in the US without using democracy or violence?

Your question is inherently flawed. There is no such thing as a utopia, nor have I ever made the claim communism would create one. You honestly, truly, after all this time, have no idea what I believe despite piles and piles of posts where I discuss it. Go back through that history and look for yourself, if you genuinely care. You seemed ready to dig up old posts of mine, well, have fun and enjoy your research. If, instead, you want me to lay everything out for you, here in the Red Room, hoping to bury me in paperwork as I exert massive effort to try and convince oh-so-special you, someone who clearly has great influence outside of the hallowed halls of Wordforge, then you are about to be disappointed. Well, no, vindicated. All you seem to want is some kind of Dayton-esque win, so have at it, L'il Joe. Enjoy your "intellectually honest" victory.

For any outside observers, look at it like this: You know how when oldfella will demand someone prove that racism exists in US culture? Same thing here. The goal isn't to learn, it's to wear people down and gather more fodder. It's about winning some imaginary point, not about learning or sharing information.

I'd say the point is you can't defend your point of view.

Welcome to the Red Room. It's kinda expected, otherwise just STFU.

But I will say this, you certainly have your dogma down.

Enjoy your valuable time.

Oh, wait, that was a lie too.

You really are bad at reading things, assuming you're actually reading what I'm writing rather than skimming half and formulating your response.

Yet I've explicitly called on you to explain to me what I'm not understanding about your point of view.

Then you say it's useless because I'm just trying to wear you down, but you continue to post after saying what I'm doing is dickish and your time is too valuable.

Clearly, your time is not more valuable than responding to me, as you've done a dozen times since making that assertion.

So I'd say you are bad at either thinking or again, just completely dishonest.

No, you're just bad at reading.

Do tell.

Ah, I see.

The problem is you are bad at writing.

Regardless, here you still are, responding, when you could have just responded in kind a dozen posts ago.

Which just goes to show that all of these assertions were in bad faith - you are willing to quibble over wordplay endlessly.

But actually defend your principles? Your time has too much value for that. LOL.

Let's face facts - you simply don't want me to have the last word.

But to claim a higher motive for that, yeah, that's pretentious douchebaggery.

I'll be the bigger man, because you are going to HAVE to reply.

I said you won your internet point a little while back. If you're pursuing this, that's on you, not me, to be quiet. You don't get to decide when I'm done speaking.
I'm a woman, so feel free to be the bigger man.

Oh, and you sound like you're cribbing from Ben Shapiro. You going to talk about emotionalism next?

Be the rational one.

"You know how when oldfella will demand someone prove that racism exists in US culture?"

I never fucking said that. Not even close. What I did say (and I'll say it again for the thinking impaired) was that not everything is racist in the U.S.
That said when people are obsessed with racism, they will see racism everywhere they look. But it's like the boy who cried wolf in that regard IMHO.

BTW "neurologically divergent?" I think I said that right. Regardless it sounds made up, like a lot of terms lately.

Is absolutely everything racist? Of course not. But racism does affect a lot more areas of life in the U.S. than some people want to admit, and that's where the "you think literally everything is racist" strawman comes from.

Something being unfamiliar doesn't mean it's "made up." Neurodivergent is a term that encompasses a lot of people with conditions like autism for which other terms are inadequate.

Dictionary.com Definition:
Neurodivergent

[ noor-oh-di-vur-juhnt, dahy-, nyoor- ]
adjective
relating to or showing atypical neurological behavior and development, as in autism spectrum disorder or dyslexia. Abbreviation: ND
noun
a neurodivergent person.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/neurodivergent

OF might be more familiar with another form of neurodivergence: being a dumbass.

got it! In layman's terms it means you are wired a little differently. I can relate to that! It's part of my VA disability which encompasses several psychological/mental conditions.

you seem to be the SME on it.

That's it, yes. It just means your wiring might be different from someone else's, and outside of what's considered "normal." There's even a word for it: neurotypical. That's what you are if you fall within the majority of thinking brains. Neurodivergent means you diverge from the typical wiring.

It's one of the reasons why I stopped pointing out spelling and grammar mistakes. I realized that if you're (general you) dyslexic, you may misspell something, or flip words around. If you're autistic, or have ADHD, you will focus on something to the exclusion of other things, and communication can sometimes be poor between someone who is neurotypical and neurodivergent, because for you A = Red and B = Blue, while for me A = Green, and B = Purple. I mean, just as an example. It doesn't mean either person is wrong, it's just information is processed differently, some things are ignored while others are given more weight, and things that some people focus on, like the aesthetic aspects of something, a neurodivergent person may ignore completely and vice versa.

It's not good or bad, it's just different.

I smell a tangent thread coming on.

What is "organizational doctrine", and why does anarcho-whatever necessarily risk a descent into Stalinism? They're pretty much opposites.

For full disclosure, I have always had sympathies with that kind of philosophy, and my misgivings are chiefly with regards to how it could prevent itself from being destroyed from without, which is what has in fact tended to happen.

Pretty much what I'm talking about - there's basically two types of these societies, one in which it's protected by an external polity, and those have been known to be successful at the local level while that relationship lasts.

And the other because in terms of defense it's always been unable to create the hierarchies needed to be successful.

The 'better, more humane' form of communism has historically had problems dealing with the authoritarian version. It wasn't just that the bolsheviks, the actual minority, were successful at beating the Tsarists, they also ruthlessly exterminated other communist groups that didn't follow their quite demanding hierarchy. The Kronstadt rebellion in Russia where even relatively organized navy sailors were destroyed by the Red Army. The Soviet intervention in the Spanish civil war which totally co-opted then destroyed the anarcho-communist movement.

And of course even large syndicalist movements were destroyed by the rise of fascism in Europe, notably in Italy and Germany, but also in Spain.

After Franco's death, there was a rise in power of the CGT and CNT in Spain, but this is one of the few anarcho-syndicalist groups in the world that have anything approaching political power, and they are a small minority in their own nation.

I like the idea of anarcho-syndicalism, but it doesn't seem possible to implement.

A more realistic outlook in my view is social democracy as espoused in several western nations, ones that actually were communists but realized that it was largely incompatible with non-violent authority, as no one willingly hands over their stuff. So they focused the same principles on a welfare state that prioritized it's people, and keeping the capitalist structure while mitigating much of it's worst impacts. And we've seen it be successful now for decades.

Personally, given any choice in the matter at all, I don't give up on democracy. And I find the conceit that we'll somehow magically get from democratic capitalism to anarcho-syndicalism without democracy or violence to be laughable.

These are situations directly arising from the particular situation in revolutionary Russia. I don't think it at all justifies the fear that anarcho-communism tends to always come with an attendant risk of Bolshevism - if one makes any attempt to understand that Bolshevism is not actually any form of socialism at all.

And who's saying that we can...?

I have a hard time seeing the inherent weakness of any anarchistic community not ultimately creating the seeds of its own destruction. Whether it's by better organized and more ruthless communist societies, or by nationalist fascists. So we have Kronstadt, some regions in Spain, the Ukraine in 1919 which was destroyed by Lenin in '21, and Korea in 29 which was divided by nationalist China and Imperial Japan by 1931. That's about it for anarcho-communist groups that managed self-rule, none of them lasting more than 2 years.

Is it possible for conditions to change? Sure. But the hierarchical nature of ordered power structures has historically always won out. The first job of the state is to protect its own existence. If you believe social theorists such as Hobbes that is the reason they exist in the first place.

So this is one of those 'good in theory' concepts.

Maybe conditions will exist someday in the future where this is different, but IMO that would require a change in the nature of humanity itself.

Even if an anarcho-communist state existed with nuclear weapons to ensure no external threat would be willing to risk outright military dominance, it still would have to protect itself from within from any group that was better organized.

To this point, it's never been viable, and quite frankly, I don't see that changing in my lifetime.

And the conceit that late-stage communism fully formed will spontaneously arise throughout the world is the stuff of complete infantilism.

Well, I agree with most of that but I'm not sure it had anything to do with my point about Bolshevism.