CleverOleg

joined 2 years ago
[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 31 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (2 children)

I like he says factual things but leaves the implication of “well of the kids are wrong because they are young and not wise and smart like us”; as if everyone didn’t know that boomer brains are fried and the entire public support for Israel has been built on lies over the decades.

Go ahead fuckface, what exactly did Mamdani get wrong that you would have “debunked”.

Edit: actually, his comment about “being pro-Palestine isn’t incompatible with being anti-Israel” is wrong. The under-40 pro-Palestine Jewish people I know all uniformly anti-Israel.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 13 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago)

Did those who advocate for abolition of slavery have intensely detailed plans for how an economy would function post-slavery, complete with successful examples of societies that built some other economic system after slavery?

Marx and Engels spoke just enough about future socialism to provide the framework. They didn’t fill in the details because that is not possible, there is no one-size-fits all blue print for socialism. Each time and place has its own specific context that must be accounted for. Ignore that and you will likely fail.

Also, Marx and Engels whole point was to describe the history of all hitherto society, and how class struggle defines that history. To try and authoritatively say “this is the precise next step” would be undialectical and anathema to their entire approach.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 20 points 22 hours ago* (last edited 22 hours ago)

I’m speculating but… Israelis don’t actually like American Christian Zionists. They put on a face and act the part but they at best grit their teeth and tolerate them, if not outright despise them.

It’s my opinion that American Christian Zionism is actually not important at all to the existence of Israel. Meaning, evangelicals could stop supporting Israel today and you’d still get 98% of congress to overfund their genocide. Israel serves a critical purpose for American hegemony and international capital; the evangelical support just provides a cover, it’s not strictly necessary.

What the Israelis have learned over the last 21 months is that nothing matters. It doesn’t which party is in power, it doesn’t matter how evil they act, they will get their support from the West. So fuck it, why do they need these evangelical losers. They can tell the evangelicals to pound sand and it will change nothing, so why not keep those nutjobs out of the country.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 10 points 1 day ago

Pre-Oct 7 it was around $3 billion per year, but probably higher in this bill.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 32 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I don’t even think this stripped all funding, or even a majority of it. Just reducing it by $500 million.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 20 points 1 day ago

Yes. Honestly there’s still quite a few good leftist subs with a lot of activity (like TrueAnon, TheDeprogram, ShitLiberalsSay, Hasan’s sub) and others that are also really good for more “highbrow” discussion but a lot less activity (Marxism, InformedTankie).

I don’t really get the idea of staying off Reddit, but then again I’ve never really engaged in arguments with liberals on there, so I guess I’ve had a much better experience.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 6 points 3 days ago

It’s incredible how much software has migrated to browsers. I work in an industry and job that, 10-15 years ago, I would have needed a whole bunch of programs installed. Now I could essentially do my entire job from any computer since everything I work in is either browser-based or could be browser-based if needed (the Office suite)

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 5 points 3 days ago

If this helps… I just set up Linux Mint on my parents computer. They were unsure about it at first. Then I told them, with all sincerity, they will probably find this easier to use than Windows 11 just from the simplicity aspect.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 9 points 3 days ago

Yeah I recommend against dual booting. I did it, and I still have my Windows partition because I’ve found it’s not all that easy to remove a partition safely.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 25 points 3 days ago

I’m an American, so probably the #1 reason I’m here is to get news from other places around the world. It doesn’t even have to be major news like this.

[–] CleverOleg@hexbear.net 19 points 3 days ago (4 children)

I’m pretty sure you can buy Coke without HFCS and with cane sugar instead. It’s not as prominent but it’s out there.

 

It goes without saying that capitalism sucks and corporations suck. I don’t have loyalty to any “brand”. But I do care about me and my comrades being able to afford to live.

There’s that phrase that “it’s expensive to be poor”, which I think is very true. When you’re poor, you can only afford the cheapest commodities. These inevitably break, so you have to spend more money on a replacement.

I’m trying to break out of this cycle myself as much as possible. Instead of buying the cheapest replacement, I’m trying to save up my money to buy a replacement that will last. Unfortunately, researching this is hard. There’s so much astroturfing and “sponsored content”. So I figured I’d ask my fellow hexbears, what products do you know of are made in a way that they will last and actually cost less than buying replacements? There’s a few suggestions I can offer:

I used to work in a pretty solid outdoor gear store, and I was really impressed with the Deuter backpacks. They were always really durable and cheaper than Osprey. I have one I bought in 2007 and I still use it regularly today.

I own a Casio G-Shock watch. The “squares” are usually relatively affordable. The bands and batteries can be swapped out. I’m pretty tough on mine and it still looks mint. I do expect I’ll be wearing mine for a very long time. Or if you don’t want to spend money the F-91W is like $10 and still works well even though it’s not ruggedized. Worn by Bin Laden, too.

Something in the ideal category of durable and cheap are Sungait sunglasses. They’re like $15-$20 each and have UV400 protection. Mine have lasted a while and have handled a lot of being thrown around

As a parent, we have some Hape toys our kids beat up and they stay together well. My wife bought some Primary dot com clothes thinking they would last but they don’t seem any better than the super cheap clothes at Walmart or Target we normally buy.

 

That post about some neoliberal momo not understanding what Marx said about value got me remembering something back from my undergrad econ program. One of my primary professors was a true libertarian. And the way he viewed Marx was... something.

On one hand, he of course tried to shit on Marxism. I remember in one of the first classes of Macro 101, he brought out the "labor theory of value is wrong because mud pies don't have value" line (this is something Marx specifically addresses and debunks within the first few pages of chapter 1 of Capital). He would unironically say "the problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other peoples' money". He praised Pinochet for being an "economic miracle worker" and said that high unemployment at the time in Europe was due to "socialist policy".

Yet at the same time, he also had this weird admiration for Marx and Capital specifically. I don't think he ever read it or even bothered to understand it. But he did see Capital as the logical conclusion of 19th century political economy - an unbroken line from Adam Smith to Marx. Despite being a libertarian and someone who did read philosophy, he just thought that Smith, Ricardo, Marx et al were wrong to focus on "value", and it's origins in labor. So while he admired Smith as the guy who put down on paper a lot of the first ideas of how an economy works, he ultimately saw him as "wrong". And Marx just inadvertently showed how silly it is to come up with theories of value. According to this professor, Marx "killed" political economy. Marx was somehow "wrong" and also a giant of political economy.

I remember he squared all this by thinking it was the marginalists/Austrians who got it right by focusing on supply and demand. That the forces that push supply and demand are all that matter, and that we only need to understand what drives prices because prices are the very way that the gods of capitalism speak to us. Since price movements are all that matter, he thought economists should focus on what are the "rules" that drive human behavior because behavior drives prices. And this is why (according to him) he was a libertarian: it was guys like Friedman and Hayek who truly understood hUmAn NaTuRe. Humans are always self-interested, we seek to maximize utility, etc. Start from those first principles and you can figure out your economy.

So it was eye-opening to me when I actually read Capital, how it showed how someone I looked up to really didn't have a clue about what he was talking about. Marx DID bring political economy to its logical conclusion, it's just that the capitalists didn't like the conclusion he arrived at. So instead, they do what my old econ prof did: don't bother learning what Marx said, just shit on it with pithy quips and just say SoCiALisM dOeSn'T wOrK. No one will challenge you because no one reads Marx. Because as people like Hilferding and Bukharin showed many decades ago, the economists who think they can actually take on Marx and defeat him only end up embarrassing themselves (not to mention how Marx knew what he detractors would say and specifically addressed their points in Capital). But if you never engage with Marx in the first place....

(fwiw he also shit on Keynes who I do think had some correct ideas. IIRC he thought Keynesianism worked for a couple decades during and after WW2 because reasons but that the last few decades showed that monetarism and libertarian economics is the one true gospel. This was before the GFC in 2008/09 of course...)

 

Just sharing this as a "does anyone else ever feel this way?" post

I am fortunate to have a number of friends I have kept close most of my life, and a lot of family members who I am close with. I am unfortunate in that most of these people skew reactionary.

When I was a lib, it was easy for me to just write off political differences as inconsequential, especially since politics was a very minor part of my relationship with them. But now that I'm a commie, I've found it harder to not only keep up these relationships, but to actually feel love and care for people who I have loved and cared for for decades. Now in general, this isn't much of a problem with friends because I moved away from my hometown, and these relationships are kept on life support by group chats. These chats are largely just meme shit or talking about sports. But I've been surprised by an actual changing of feelings for two people who were my closest friends at one point.

But there is one person in particular for whom I am struggling with this. This person is my oldest and closest friend. This person knows I skew left but not as far left as I actually am. And I knew this person had libertarian leanings, but politics was something they never actually cared about in the past. In the last 6-12 months, they've gotten more strident and vocal with the libertarian crap (for example, telling me yesterday that they think it's ok that 16 million people will lose Medicaid coverage because the government shouldn't be in the business of healthcare). And as they have begun to be more serious and into their libertarian ideology, I find myself not feeling those same feelings of love and care, and really not sure I want to be this person's friend anymore. Someone I went to grade school with and really is like a brother. It's like, there's something about the libertarian ideology that if someone holds to it, I find it so repugnant that I can't be in a relationship with person. Not to mention this person has all sorts of anti-communist brainworms, which is why I've held back telling them how far left I've gone. They're genuinely not racist or anti-LGBTQ, I don't really think they are a "bad" person... but I just am so against their politics that I find I am starting to lack those feelings of love and friendship you should have for a close friend now.

This just feels jarring to me as I have always had very stable affections for people, and have always held love for people despite disagreements and seeing things differently. It feels like there is this massive gulf in how we see the world (because there is ofc) and that just sorta kills how I feel about this person.

Anyone else?

 

Link

I think it’s a good statement, short and to the point. The replies are absolute poison though, hasbara bots really honing in on them. Feds will try and make something stick but it doesn’t sound like he was even a member.

 

(I want to preface this by saying my problems are of course absolutely nothing compared to what Palestinians and especially Palestinian parents must go through. I am only expressing these feelings in case there are others who feel similarly and don’t want to feel alone).

I have little kids. For over a year and a half now, I cannot shake this feeling. I don’t really know what to call it. But I cannot accept that my kids have this happy, comfortable life while there are little kids just like them being tortured to death under rubble, in fire, and by IOF bullets. Why am I in this position while Palestinian parents are in theirs? How can reality be this warped? I look at my kids, I can see them experiencing what thousands of kids in Gaza have had to endure, and my brain kinda shuts down. And in those moments it’s actually hard to be around my kids. This isn’t all the time - most often I’m able to be a good, present parent. But in that state it’s like I don’t want to be reminded that children even exist in this world.

It’s like, sometimes when my kid is laughing I can only thing about how there’s another kid half a world away who is screaming in pain, or experiencing terror and sadness in a way I cannot comprehend.

I was raised as an evangelical Christian. The main reason I deconverted years ago was I could not accept the idea of eternal conscious torment in hell for all unbelievers. I could not accept that that was how the universe worked. That was nearly 15 years ago. I hadn’t even thought about it much until these last 19 months. But I recognize the feeling since it’s all coming back. I see kids being tormented and killed, and it’s like my brain cannot accept this is reality.

Seeing that little light inside my children, and know that thousands of little lights are getting snuffed out… I don’t know, I just don’t have any more words or tears.

 

Ever since the election, there seems to be a torrent of polling that shows Americans in their late teens and early twenties are fairly reactionary (young men overwhelmingly so). I’m old so I don’t know anyone IRL in that age bracket. But something about what the media has been claiming for months now doesn’t seem to sound right. Idk maybe it’s 100% true but it’s something I have a hard time taking the media’s word for. I know we have quite a few users here in that age bracket. What are your real-life experiences (i.e. not online) with this? Do you think this age demographic is actually trending reactionary?

(I do remember digging into the details of one poll, and while it seemed there was more affiliation with Republicans than previous, it also seemed like there were an also very large segment that were openly showing to be further left than the democrats? So maybe more reactionary sentiment but also more genuinely leftish sentiment?)

 

I am so conflict-avoidant that I’m now at the point that most people in my life don’t actually have any idea I’m even close to being a commie. I really want to start expressing myself more openly and honestly - especially since I feel like I’m actually harming my mental health by not saying how I feel - but I always feel held back. Any tips on improving this are appreciated.

 

As in our comrade Karl Liebknecht, co-founder of the KPD? All these years I’ve been saying “LEEB-necked”, two syllables. But the I heard Matt Christman say “Leeb-KUH-neck-et” (four syllables). And I realized I don’t really know why I was saying it like I was. Anyone know how to actually say it?

 

I identify differently depending on the context.

When around comrades, I will identify as a Marxist-Leninist, as this is the most precise definition of what I hold to. I generally don't use this other than around comrades because no one else has any idea of what it means.

If I'm around people who at least sort of know what Marxism is, I'll call myself a Marxist. But in my experience this is pretty rare. Or this is what I will default to around people who I know are leftist broadly. I feel like "Marxist" is accurate enough where getting into the details of M-L isn't really necessary.

But when I'm around most normies, I will identify as a socialist. I think it's accurate enough to convey to people who do not have a very developed political understanding what I hold to. "Socialist" at the same time conveys a commitment to radical change well beyond the current Republican/Democrat paradigm, while not, for example, putting my job in jeopardy if I call myself a socialist to co-workers.

So the obvious question is why I don't call myself a communist very often IRL, even though I am one. I have before and used it a bit interchangably with M-L among comrades, but I don't use it around people I don't know well and know they are down with it. What I have found with the people in my broader social circle is such a huge lack of political understanding that calling myself a communist only shuts people down. When it comes to Americans, I think it's easy to overestimate their political understanding. I used to think most Americans just think communism is when "everyone is equal". What I've found is worse than that: it's more like people just have this vague notion that "communism = evil". They have no idea what it's about other than decades of propaganda that just equates communism as the ideology of our enemies and those who want to destroy America. So to most Americans, a communist is just someone who is "very bad person" who wants to destroy America (I mean, death to Amerikkka of course, but it's so much more than that). My own parents just think that communism means atheism and can't explain it more than that.

I totally understand the idea that we shouldn't shy away from calling ourselves communists. We need to normalize the idea because communism specifically is what's needed to save the planet. But idk, at this time and place in the US it feels like trying to do this just closes more doors than it opens, at least with the politically ignorant (most people).

 
 

I’ve tried to educate myself more about Palestine, decolonization, and the one-state solution over the last year and a half. It seems intuitive to me that ethnostates should not exist and that no, it’s not valid to carve out a land for the exclusive use of a certain people (especially but not exclusively when someone else is already there). So it’s not just about Palestine, but also about places that seek balkanization along ethnic or religious lines.

So while it’s intuitive to me, I realize that it’s not intuitive to nearly everyone around me (in the US, for reference). There seems to be this very pervasive understanding that of course the Jewish people should have their own exclusive land. Or that if two or more groups of people don’t like each other, it’s better to “divorce” and split up the country.

I struggle with explaining why all this is bad and not a real solution, though. Is there any more in-depth resources (books, articles, academic papers) that articulate a theory of why ethnostates are bad, and why splitting up places isn’t a solution?

 

It’s been long enough, I find myself really missing Matt’s voice. I never really followed his CushVlog - mostly because there was other stuff I wanted to get through when he was putting those out, and I’m also not great with sitting down and listening to YouTube videos.

So I’d like to watch some episodes, but I also don’t really want to slog through all of them. Do you all have any episodes that you like and can recommend?

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