Moderates don't Exist.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Yuka that kind of IP isn't a very practical way to dress your diplomatic detail.

[CmdrKing]

The Communists were saying none of those things.

Well, you have to remember, the average person doesn't get that Stalinism is a variant of fascism, not communism. we have completely failed in teaching history you see.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

The Communists were saying none of those things.

Well, you have to remember, the average person doesn't get that Stalinism is a variant of fascism, not communism. we have completely failed in teaching history you see.

Do you mean precisely theoretical communism or a modern rationale of such?

[CmdrKing]

I more mean that Stalinist policy is gobbledygook that's meant to sound like Marxism to a barely-literate peasant but is actually a long-winded justification for ethno-nationalist empire building.

[Mecha82]

It's well know that Stalin was driven need to protect Russia by other invading countries because of his paranoia that also led him to kill so many of his own people. There is reason why Lenin warned others not to elect Stalin as head of party. So Stalin wasn't into whole global Communist revolution thing.

[Darth Wedgius]

Socialism has a perfect track record. When the bodies are dug up, the country was suddenly never a "real, existing socialism."

[CmdrKing]

Ehh, I would be perfectly willing to say that, on the whole, Castro or Guevera were actually socialists and the systems they founded are recognizably actually socialism to some degree. They're still riddled with problems, and on the whole I think actual revolutionary socialism is ultimately unfeasible for several reasons that they illustrate.

But Stalin and Mao were a whole other league of monster and any cursory examination of their legacies reveals them as usurpers who perverted the work of their allies and contemporaries to seize power for themselves because autocratic rule was always the goal, not any actual belief in socialism.
It turns out the methods and goals of fascists can be cloaked under almost any nominal political brand.

[Robovski]

Communist countries earn quotation marks becoming "communism" after they do bad things and become some other form of government. Communism is just some transitional state to another form of government like Kleptocracy, Totalitarianism, or Facism apparently.

[CmdrKing]

Quite the opposite. Communism denotes a stateless society, and the revolutionary socialists (usually this is called Leninism and offshoots of it) devised various, usually absolutist, governments in order to organize society such that eventually communism could emerge from it. Shit, on paper, right now, the CCP in China claims it's doing exactly this.

But it turns out when you do an armed revolution and rally the people against the current government, the people tend to support the guy who'll inflict the most pain on the perceived enemies of the people, not the guy who'll do the most material good for the people. And fascists are really good at promising to hurt your enemies. Also usually really good at following through if they get the power.

[Yukaphile]

The big problem here, LittleRaven, in candidates like Biden and Sanders, is their advanced age. They are choosing their successor. It strikes me as an out of touch and tone-deaf white guy attempting to shore up bases with blacks and female voters. A few years ago this would have been written off as the chauvinistic pandering it is. Now as I had said, Democrats are OBSESSED with beating Trump at all costs. And yet, the cost seems to be cheating women out of their right to make it to the White House on their own. With the GOP, we can just write off candidates like McCain because they are the old-fashioned party of chauvinistic views. And yet Democrats seem to think that's what's needed to win. Come on, you have to surely admit, if Biden were to win, the chance he'll make it eight years is pretty damned slim. So just handing the position to a black woman, from a white man, is entirely condescending, and it flies in the face of true female empowerment. The first woman President will be riding off her male boss's coattails. Who knows when we will ever see the chance for a woman candidate to make it to the White House on her own, none of this patriarchal bullshit? I think given the way things are going, I'm not gonna live to see it, which is just disgusting. I am 32. Democrats feel pragmatism is most important this year than anything, not "making history," but making history speaks to not just a generation, but many generations, and is a voice that will be heard to get discussion going. It feels like in every possible way, we are heading backwards at lightning speed, and Democrats themselves have embraced this merely to stop Trump at all costs. Dark times, very dark times... it's why I gave up. I could see this shit coming in 2016. I was right. So fuck the Democrats, they don't deserve my loyalty anymore. If this is how it's going to be, that we are moving back to the era of tokenism and pandering and outdated views, then let this country burn.