Dystopian Science Fiction only reinforces the real world Status Quo

[KuudereKun]

No, Dystopian fiction is about the PRESENT.

And my whole point is that's fundamentally a mistake, if you want to talk about the present set your story in the present. As long as it's The Future or even Futuristic in universe no casual viewer will see it as applicable to the present.

[Madner Kami]

Science Fiction always has been an allegory about the present disguised as a vision of how things could be and making observations about how we would act under these changed circumstances.

[CharlesPhipps]

And my whole point is that's fundamentally a mistake, if you want to talk about the present set your story in the present. As long as it's The Future or even Futuristic in universe no casual viewer will see it as applicable to the present.

And since my Grad Degree is in Literature, I'm like, "I find that as about as relevant as saying comic books shouldn't be political. Since they're not valuable as political allegory, they should just stick to being mindless entertainment."

Because it's the same gross trashfire argument that professors use to dismiss allegorical fiction and fantasy in general.

This isn't the kind of thing you can Judge solely by Body Count, When you're trying to complete restructure the society of the largest country on the Planet your genuine honest mistakes cna result in the deaths of Millions of people.

What makes Hitler unique and special is that killing Millions of people wasn't a byproduct of what he was trying to accomplish, it was the states Goal. In fact of he'd succeeded the death toll would have been over 100 Million.

The argument that Hitler was worse because he was carrying out mass executions of Jews, Romani, homosexuals, the mentally ill, and political enemies as the goal of his activities versus the fact a larger percentage of Stalin's deaths were due to the deaths resulting from his use of starvation tactics as well as slave labor is, honestly, not a remotely credible argument.

Not the first being because Hitler and Stalin BOTH used slave labor as well as mass executions to the same ends. The purpose of slave labor was not the ends either (i.e. say, "I want to build a bridge and if I use political prisoners to build it, I'm not wasting resources") but the fact that it is a life sentence that if the people involved die in the process, you're not wasting a bullet but grinding them to death from.

Which is to say it's a distinction largely without a difference.

I can also come off like Stalin's biggest hater depending on who I'm arguing with. I assure you I am no Tankie. I believe it's the SRs who should have prevailed in the Russian Revolution.

Most of Stalin's Death Toll is based on the Holodomor, his mishandling of a naturally occurring Famine. Not at all comparable to intentional Genocide. I Absolutely believe Stalin handled that Famine badly, for reasons tied to his Lennist ideology, but it wasn't a Genocide.

Starvation tactics are something that can certainly be debated and Stalin did in fact implement many grossly incompetent policies in the path of modernization. However, I think the fact that starvation tactics were actually tools of political oppression is something that we'd be greatly incorrect to ignore. We don't have to look past our own lifetimes to note that Assad used them very effectively in his suppression of Kurdish independence by simply cutting off supplies to towns and locations then forcing them into submission. This is a tactic as old as Babylon and Stalin using it to crush Ukraine and other opponents should not be considered an accident but a deliberate tool of staecraft.

Similar defenses were used against the British Empire and the Irish famine where it was viewed as a tragedy when, in fact, it was actually a deliberate attempt to exterminate the Irish once it got going.

Which is why it's called a Terror-Famine.

The fact is the core point of my OP is proven by the very fact that so many people see it as so unspeakable to be even mildly apologetic of Stalin but wouldn't dare put Truman on the same level when he dropped the damn Bombs.

No, I actually have often attempted to talk about Allied atrocities and how the West should attempt to deal with its legacy from that period but no sooner do I do than I have to deal wiht the fact that everyone assumes I'm a Crypto-Fascist. Apparently, the well is so poisoned in political discourse that being an Anarchist Pacifist in RL means that any conversations regarding WW2 means you have to pick a side (I pick the Allies, no fucking shit, but that doesn't mean they're beyond reproach) and sing glory about them.

I'm very much of the people that absolutely believe the Japanese were ready to surrender before the use of the atomic bombs. Though I am from the group that also adds the caveat that I believe the Japanese were attempting to surrender to STALIN and that was one of the greatest errors of judgement in statecraft history.

[KuudereKun]

No, I actually have often attempted to talk about Allied atrocities and how the West should attempt to deal with its legacy from that period but no sooner do I do than I have to deal wiht the fact that everyone assumes I'm a Crypto-Fascist. Apparently, the well is so poisoned in political discourse that being an Anarchist Pacifist in RL means that any conversations regarding WW2 means you have to pick a side (I pick the Allies but that doesn't mean they're beyond reproach) and sing glory about them.

I'm very much of the people that absolutely believe the Japanese were ready to surrender before the use of the atomic bombs. Though I am from the group that also adds the caveat that I believe the Japanese were attempting to surrender to STALIN and that was one of the greatest errors of judgement in statecraft history.

Then we are mostly in agreement.

[Riedquat]

Science Fiction always has been an allegory about the present disguised as a vision of how things could be and making observations about how we would act under these changed circumstances.

Sometimes, but I think it's a bit much to say "disguised as a vision..." There are plenty that seek to look at current issues, thoughts, technologies and explore where they'll take us. Some will be positive, some negative, which is why the argument that dystopian reflects the real world status quo isn't entirely invalid. The same applies to utopian ones too.

[TGLS]

I'm very much of the people that absolutely believe the Japanese were ready to surrender before the use of the atomic bombs. Though I am from the group that also adds the caveat that I believe the Japanese were attempting to surrender to STALIN and that was one of the greatest errors of judgement in statecraft history.

I don't know, but I will add:

1) They weren't trying to surrender to Stalin, but instead get Stalin to mediate a conditional surrender between Japan and America.
2) Japanese discussions and speeches about the surrender make reference to both the Atomic Bombs and to the Soviet invasion of Manchuria.
3) The Japanese faced a military coup in response the decision to surrender.
4) The focus on the Atomic Bombs distracts from the overall bombing strategy employed by the Allies. Once the bombs were built, it was inevitable they would use them under the same terror bombing doctrine they had.

Would Japan have surrendered without the Soviets invading Manchuria? How much impact did the atomic bombs alter thinking of Japanese High Command? Did the terror bombings accomplish anything? These are all counterfactual questions and I don't think we can adequately answer them.

[CharlesPhipps]

I'm not going to make a larger issue of it than it needs to be given the amount of atrocities going on in the conflict and the fact that it was just another escalation in a series of attacks designed to break Japanese will (see the fire bombing of Tokyo). Indeed, the fact the bombing of Tokyo left just as many dead in general as the atomic bombs with 100,000 killed. Even if the nuclear weapons hadn't been deployed, the United States would have simply used conventional ordinance to achieve the same effect.

Whether it was necessary at that point in the war is a worthy topic of discussion as, yes, there were plenty of people fully willing to continue the fight pointlessly even if larger numbers of people were seeing the writing on the wall.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Science Fiction always has been an allegory about the present disguised as a vision of how things could be and making observations about how we would act under these changed circumstances.

Sometimes, but I think it's a bit much to say "disguised as a vision..." There are plenty that seek to look at current issues, thoughts, technologies and explore where they'll take us. Some will be positive, some negative, which is why the argument that dystopian reflects the real world status quo isn't entirely invalid. The same applies to utopian ones too.

I don't think the stories are supposed to be predictive of anything, that's missing the point. History is made up of democratic or diplomatic conflict between parties that at the same time have worlds of similarities and worlds of differences. The similarities are more temporal and reflect simply what we know as the shared physical space, time, and biology. The cultural aspects can be hyperbolized to degrees of age, irreconcilable experience, or any understandable difference in circumstance that complicates a direct comparison. Future "technology" can highlight the inner conflict of two cultures that the rest of the world is not privy to in concept.

[clearspira]

I'm very much of the people that absolutely believe the Japanese were ready to surrender before the use of the atomic bombs. Though I am from the group that also adds the caveat that I believe the Japanese were attempting to surrender to STALIN and that was one of the greatest errors of judgement in statecraft history.

I don't know, but I will add:

1) They weren't trying to surrender to Stalin, but instead get Stalin to mediate a conditional surrender between Japan and America.
2) Japanese discussions and speeches about the surrender make reference to both the Atomic Bombs and to the Soviet invasion of Manchuria.
3) The Japanese faced a military coup in response the decision to surrender.
4) The focus on the Atomic Bombs distracts from the overall bombing strategy employed by the Allies. Once the bombs were built, it was inevitable they would use them under the same terror bombing doctrine they had.

Would Japan have surrendered without the Soviets invading Manchuria? How much impact did the atomic bombs alter thinking of Japanese High Command? Did the terror bombings accomplish anything? These are all counterfactual questions and I don't think we can adequately answer them.

I don't think your flag counter is very accurate. Apparantly Chuck is outstandingly popular in Singapore all of the sudden.

[clearspira]

I'm not going to make a larger issue of it than it needs to be given the amount of atrocities going on in the conflict and the fact that it was just another escalation in a series of attacks designed to break Japanese will (see the fire bombing of Tokyo). Indeed, the fact the bombing of Tokyo left just as many dead in general as the atomic bombs with 100,000 killed. Even if the nuclear weapons hadn't been deployed, the United States would have simply used conventional ordinance to achieve the same effect.

Whether it was necessary at that point in the war is a worthy topic of discussion as, yes, there were plenty of people fully willing to continue the fight pointlessly even if larger numbers of people were seeing the writing on the wall.

I know two things.

1) Hiroo Onoda. I've mentioned him before. He is the Japanese soldier who was still fighting WW2 in the 1970s. If he is in any way representative of the Japanese Army then they would not have surrendered anywhere near as easily as the atomic bomb critics claim.

2) I think its very easy eighty years later to judge people who had just fought a war for six years. You are sitting on a perfectly comfortable chair with a coffee in your hand. They had just witnessed sixty million people die. ''They should have done this, they shouldn't have done that.'' I don't care. You weren't there. Your brain is not in that moment. The only people who can truly be retrospective are the men who fought it.