I’m on a mailing list for Claudia and got this today. Kind of funny since last week the Democrats tried kicking de la Cruz off of the Georgia ballot.

  • Onno (VK6FLAB)English
    -6•2 months ago

    I live in a country where, unlike the US two party system, political parties span the entire range. So much so that it appears that at the extremes there is little to differentiate between them.

    I’m familiar with their “solutions” to complex issues.

    I think H.L. Mencken captures it best:

    “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.”

    In other words, being a society is complicated, it’s messy and ultimately a reflection on human nature.

    So, pick your path as best as you can. This is what I try to carry with me:

    Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

    Source: https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html

    • Cowbee [he/him, they/them]English
      44•2 months ago

      I live in a country where, unlike the US two party system, political parties span the entire range. So much so that it appears that at the extremes there is little to differentiate between them.

      There exists no such country where Communists, Liberals, Anarchists, and fascists all compete in some grand electoral game.

      I’m familiar with their “solutions” to complex issues.

      These are?

      In other words, being a society is complicated, it’s messy and ultimately a reflection on human nature.

      Don’t see the point of this comment, you’re implying we have simple worldviews and yet you think Human Nature matters at all, as though it isn’t shaped by Material Conditions and changes with Mode of Production throughout history. You just say “it’s complicated,” shrug, and offer nothing, no suggestion nor critique of Leftism.

      I ask again, how familiar are you with Leftist Theory?

      • Onno (VK6FLAB)English
        -7•2 months ago

        There exists no such country where Communists, Liberals, Anarchists, and fascists all compete in some grand electoral game.

        Australia does, as far as I’m aware, have political representation for all of those alternatives and provided me the opportunity to vote for any of them, although we tend to dislike the fasists since they have a tendency to want to end society.

            • Cowbee [he/him, they/them]English
              37•2 months ago

              Okay, cool. So how can this party genuinely achieve Communism, within a state designed to prevent it? Even if they got voted in, how would they do it?

              • keepcarrot [she/her]English
                28•2 months ago

                CPA doesn’t really do electoral entryism (and is probably the most hexbear approved Australian communist party). Socialist Alliance (ex-trots) do earnestly run for government sometimes, but are part of a gaggle of minor parties whose preferential votes disappear often, though they’ve gotten to city council.

                This is just based on my local experience of being around them and volunteering, I haven’t gotten into a discussion about their paths to power. There’s a tacit acknowledgement that a dozen part time nerds is probably not changing much so while they occasionally scoff at each other, there’s also a lot of cross-pollination and protests etc organised between them (and a few others).

                Electorally, both of their voters generally wind up preferencing the greens, which are a big tent left party with the occasional embarrassing Malthusian, or Labor which is a blairite shit pit with the occasional left radical member.

                Recently, the Australian electoral rules changed which increased the requirements for a party to be on the ballot, but I actually don’t see that changing much in terms of actual electoral results.

                I think realistically Australia is going to be one of the last countries with a population over 10 million to go red, despite the efforts of my comrades. Wealthy, high minimum wages, white settler nationalism very strong, most rabid antiCPC reflex etc.

                I did meet a Cuban delegation through the CPA and Socialist Alliance, which was nice.

                • Cowbee [he/him, they/them]English
                  22•2 months ago

                  Oh, thanks! Genuinely was unfamiliar with the Aussie labor movement, so this is super helpful. Thanks comrade! heart-sickle

                  And yea, didn’t figure they did entryism either, haha.

                  • keepcarrot [she/her]English
                    25•2 months ago

                    Australia has figured out that having a high minimum wage and permanent (if low) welfare predicated on spamming job applications, and public healthcare tamps down the political radicalism a lot, while all the same being a rabid dog for US foreign policy, landlords bring the main class in parliament, and the majority of news viewership being Fox News or Fox News lite (or the state run one).

                    Not bulletproof by any stretch, but seeing turnout at rallies, let alone active political participation regularly between big events is kinda depressing. Also talking to a lot of working class people and their whole-swallowing of nationalism. Your landlord is fucking you over right now, but at least he isn’t the Chinese Communist Party. The Loony Left wants windmills which will cause power outages. Gender.

            • axont [she/her, comrade/them]English
              21•2 months ago

              Yeah, so the Australian communists hypothetically get elected and then exercise state power to liquidate the capitalist class? Is that how you really think the world works?

    • CyborgMarx [any, any]English
      31•2 months ago

      I live in a country where, unlike the US two party system, political parties span the entire range

      No you don’t

      I’m familiar with their “solutions” to complex issues.

      So you’re familiar with Marx? What a coincidence, so am I CommiePOGGERS

      Ok, let’s confirm your “familiarity” with the most basic question imaginable…

      According to Marx how many sources of profit are there?

      In other words, being a society is complicated, it’s messy and ultimately a reflection on human nature

      Define human nature, use as many words as you need

      • @DamarcusArt@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        9•2 months ago

        Hey! Their country is completely different! Unlike the US, which just has a far right and right wing party, they have both of those and a centre party, and a vaguely centrist party that claims to be left that never gets elected! It’s completely different!

    • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]English
      31•2 months ago

      “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple and wrong.”

      omg i can understand the basics of general relativity without shitting myself to death. time to throw it into the trash!

      also if you think marxism or communism is simple and clear than you have absolutely zero clue about any of it

      • heggs_bayer [none/use name]English
        30•2 months ago

        I looked up the guy that quote was from, and umm…

        As an admirer of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, he was an outspoken opponent of… representative democracy… which he viewed as a system in which inferior men dominated their superiors

        He seemed to show a genuine enthusiasm for militarism but never in its American form. “War is a good thing,” he wrote, “because it is honest; it admits the central fact of human nature… A nation too long at peace becomes a sort of gigantic old maid.”

        Mencken recommended for publication philosopher and author Ayn Rand’s first novel, We the Living and called it “a really excellent piece of work”. Shortly afterward, Rand addressed him in correspondence as “the greatest representative of a philosophy” to which she wanted to dedicate her life, “individualism” and later listed him as her favorite columnist.

        In addition to his identification of races with castes, Mencken had views about the superior individual within communities. He believed that every community produced a few people of clear superiority. He considered groupings on a par with hierarchies, which led to a kind of natural elitism and natural aristocracy. “Superior” individuals, in Mencken’s view, were those wrongly oppressed and disdained by their own communities but nevertheless distinguished by their will and personal achievement, not by race or birth.

        Bufe [wrote] that some of Mencken’s statements were “odious”, such as his claim in his 1918 introduction to Nietzsche’s The Anti-Christ that “The case against the Jews is long and damning; it would justify ten thousand times as many pogroms as now go on in the world”.

        how-compellingsmuglordwall-flipped

          • Nakoichi [they/them]English
            8•2 months ago

            This has to be the funniest case of a liberal smuglord stumbling in here thinking they are the smartest person in the room about to educate us simple minded commies and getting absolutely shredded in recent memory, very old school r/cth vibes. I love you all

            rat-salute-2

            • roux [he/him, they/them]OPEnglish
              4•2 months ago

              I always wanted to start a dunk session. I just never imagined I would do it with a post in the_dunk_tank lol. The post was mostly meant to poke fun at the sign co-opting too. Didn’t expect an Australian trying to lib-plain US politics to those of us who are actively getting crushed by the US machine…

              I think this is probably my best post on hexbear now, but also the amount of info that other hexbears just bring with fire in dunk sessions has always impressed me.

        • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]English
          21•2 months ago

          A nation too long at peace becomes a sort of gigantic old maid

          i love this appears to be the harshest criticism he can come up with of peace. “ummm actually being peaceful makes you like an OLD WORKING CLASS WOMAN. owned yet?!??”