I’m not an American either, buddy. But they’re our mutual imperial overlord. You can’t just silo off Australia and Canada and Europe as the “good democracies” that are totally separate from the flawed American quasi-democracy - we’ve been following them in lockstep since the end of WW2, and only once the idiot Trump decided that soft power was gay did we even start to think about doing something different.
You have at least one former prime minister in the Epstein files, plus other politicians and businessmen. The Euros have plenty as well. This thing was an open secret and what just part of doing business. Beria was one man (I mentioned he’s part of the bad 30% btw) and he got shot pretty much immediately after Stalin died. The Epstein thing is the entire political and business elite of the western “democratic” world.
Sure, in principle democracy is obviously better than dictatorship, but what democracy? I used quotations around “democratic” because we don’t really have democracy. This goes for the rest of the western “democracies” as well as the US. Popular will has little effect on public policy, and voting just usually means selecting the bad option over the worse option. The worse option still wins about half the time. When a genuinely popular and progressive candidate comes along, the party and media machinery is sure to sabatoge them.
Chomsky (Epstein associate, but this doesn’t invalidate all of his points) wrote about this in Manufacturing Consent - the media, despite all of our nominal free speech rights, despite not being state controlled, only presents a narrow ideoloogical spectrum, acting as propaganda just as surely as the state-run media in an undemocratic country does. Chomsky argues that this is due to market forces, internalized assumptions, etc. As he said during an interview “I’m sure you believe all that, but you wouldn’t be working here if you didn’t.” Chomsky could get away with this not just because he was an anticommunist who was good friends with the ruling class’s child pimp, but because a certain level of dissent is required to maintain the illusion that free speech matters. The system is built to tolerate dissent and subtly mold public opinion and public expectations. It’s a very sophisticated and very effective method of control compared to the crude methods employed by “authoritarian” states.
But let’s put all that aside for a moment. What good is democracy when it’s democracy for a few rich countries that exploit the world’s poor majority? Even in a social democratic fantasy where we all have democracy, human rights, and strong social safey nets, we’re still just sitting at the top, extracting wealth from and oppressing the majority of the world. As Lenin said, “freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.”
You’re just dripping with hypocrisy. You’re siloing off Stalin from his atrocities, and siloing the soviet union from other dictatorships, saying they’re good. But I’m not allowed to do the same with democracy? For shame, man.
And again, the hypocrisy: Kevin Rudd being in the files (despite Epstein contacting him and Rudd refusing further contact) apparently invalidates Australian democracy – Yet Chomsky being in the files is now exempt from being invalidated.
Though I can’t really be bothered arguing with a Stalinist, so I ask, do you prefer dictatorships over democracies? Simple yes or no.
I didn’t say that Chomsky was exempt from being invalidated, I just said that his theory about how propaganda works in a supposedly free press is by and large an accurate framework. Actually, I would argue that, although largely accurate, his theory is also in part chaff to cover up how deeply influenced by intelligence agencies the media is. Chomsky has always been very anti-conspiratorial, and the fact that he was also involved with a pedophile conspiracy should give one pause.
Anyway, you’re of course free to argue which “democratic” leader was whatever percent good or bad you like. You could argue that Churchill was 60% good because of WW2 but 40% bad because of the Bengal famine, something like that. My point is that bourgeois democracy is actually the dictatorship of capital, and however much they might buy us off (which is not very much, these days), they’re still operating an extractive/financial empire that enslaves most of the world, and their death toll is far higher than Stalin could have hoped to match in 100 lifetimes.
I’m not an American either, buddy. But they’re our mutual imperial overlord. You can’t just silo off Australia and Canada and Europe as the “good democracies” that are totally separate from the flawed American quasi-democracy - we’ve been following them in lockstep since the end of WW2, and only once the idiot Trump decided that soft power was gay did we even start to think about doing something different.
You have at least one former prime minister in the Epstein files, plus other politicians and businessmen. The Euros have plenty as well. This thing was an open secret and what just part of doing business. Beria was one man (I mentioned he’s part of the bad 30% btw) and he got shot pretty much immediately after Stalin died. The Epstein thing is the entire political and business elite of the western “democratic” world.
Sure, in principle democracy is obviously better than dictatorship, but what democracy? I used quotations around “democratic” because we don’t really have democracy. This goes for the rest of the western “democracies” as well as the US. Popular will has little effect on public policy, and voting just usually means selecting the bad option over the worse option. The worse option still wins about half the time. When a genuinely popular and progressive candidate comes along, the party and media machinery is sure to sabatoge them.
Chomsky (Epstein associate, but this doesn’t invalidate all of his points) wrote about this in Manufacturing Consent - the media, despite all of our nominal free speech rights, despite not being state controlled, only presents a narrow ideoloogical spectrum, acting as propaganda just as surely as the state-run media in an undemocratic country does. Chomsky argues that this is due to market forces, internalized assumptions, etc. As he said during an interview “I’m sure you believe all that, but you wouldn’t be working here if you didn’t.” Chomsky could get away with this not just because he was an anticommunist who was good friends with the ruling class’s child pimp, but because a certain level of dissent is required to maintain the illusion that free speech matters. The system is built to tolerate dissent and subtly mold public opinion and public expectations. It’s a very sophisticated and very effective method of control compared to the crude methods employed by “authoritarian” states.
But let’s put all that aside for a moment. What good is democracy when it’s democracy for a few rich countries that exploit the world’s poor majority? Even in a social democratic fantasy where we all have democracy, human rights, and strong social safey nets, we’re still just sitting at the top, extracting wealth from and oppressing the majority of the world. As Lenin said, “freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners.”
You’re just dripping with hypocrisy. You’re siloing off Stalin from his atrocities, and siloing the soviet union from other dictatorships, saying they’re good. But I’m not allowed to do the same with democracy? For shame, man.
And again, the hypocrisy: Kevin Rudd being in the files (despite Epstein contacting him and Rudd refusing further contact) apparently invalidates Australian democracy – Yet Chomsky being in the files is now exempt from being invalidated.
Though I can’t really be bothered arguing with a Stalinist, so I ask, do you prefer dictatorships over democracies? Simple yes or no.
I didn’t say that Chomsky was exempt from being invalidated, I just said that his theory about how propaganda works in a supposedly free press is by and large an accurate framework. Actually, I would argue that, although largely accurate, his theory is also in part chaff to cover up how deeply influenced by intelligence agencies the media is. Chomsky has always been very anti-conspiratorial, and the fact that he was also involved with a pedophile conspiracy should give one pause.
Anyway, you’re of course free to argue which “democratic” leader was whatever percent good or bad you like. You could argue that Churchill was 60% good because of WW2 but 40% bad because of the Bengal famine, something like that. My point is that bourgeois democracy is actually the dictatorship of capital, and however much they might buy us off (which is not very much, these days), they’re still operating an extractive/financial empire that enslaves most of the world, and their death toll is far higher than Stalin could have hoped to match in 100 lifetimes.
Though I can’t really be bothered arguing with a Stalinist, so I ask, do you prefer dictatorships over democracies? Simple yes or no
This is not how discussions work, my friend
you cannot have a discussion with an authoritarian since they don’t believe in discussions or common ground.
so I ask, do you prefer dictatorships over democracies? Simple yes or no
You cannot have a discussion with an “anti-authoritarian” because they are naive and deeply delusional about the world.
so I ask, do you think the brutal domination of the third world by the first world is justified by the fact that the rich countries are “democracies”?
do you prefer dictatorships over democracies? Simple yes or no
What democracies?