Victoria 3.

It doesn’t really focus on killing enemies, but you can build communism somewhere in the world and squash the imperial ambitions of the US while also pushing the empires into decline.

Play as Britain, stop the US from expanding West while slowly guiding the UK towards a proletarian revolution.

That’s not a real photo. That’s an AI trying to draw hands.

Ok nobody panic but the Iroquoian and Algonquian script has been removed from the signage in the New York photo. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions or anything but maybe we should keep an eye on that area just to be sure there’s no cultural erasure happening. I don’t want to be dropping the big G word or anything rash like that but I haven’t seen any evidence of the indigenous population practicing their local customs and culture in the area, except in obviously-staged displays.

Depends on what you mean by ‘after the Socialist Transition.’

I don’t think they will become actively interventionist, because history has shown external intervention rarely does more good than harm and never results in lasting change.

Regarding how much they support and encourage other countries to change, I think their decision-making there is based more on the dynamics between states than on China’s internal condition. We can already see nations moving left and opposing imperialism as US power declines and a multipolar world arises, and China is facilitating those conditions.

I like how they think nothing’s changing. What a nice surprise they’re in for when their empires can no longer sustain the illusion!

Also quite telling is their use of a collective ‘us’ and ‘you (plural)’. Most libs try/claim to distance themselves from the actions of their ancestors, but the mask slips when their language shows where they draw lines and which side they picture themselves on.

BayArea415 got unwanted attention because what he said was true and often incendiary. BadEmpanada wants attention so he says incendiary things that are occasionally true.

Let’s try number of billionaires per capita instead of a flat number of billionaires.

It’s actually January and February that were added in. Before that, there was just this gap during the winter when they didn’t bother counting the passage of days until the start of spring was declared, in March. That’s also why February is the short month, as it was the last added and just used up the remaining days.

12 hours in half a day is fine for me. 12 can be divided into halves, thirds, quarters and sixths. That’s useful for planning out a day. Time is one of the applications where I don’t have a complaint about using base 12.

There’s a lot to be said in favour of federation, and the innate us-them mentality that comes with the federate-defederate border control is a thing. It looks and seems like a downside, but it’s far and away better than the centralized lib authority we had in places like reddit.

Just sharing a thought that reading this thread prompted.

I get the feeling their nine-dash-line reason for banning the movie isn’t the real reason they did it, because when you see the map it appears on it really is just… dumb.

I have no idea what an alternative real reason might be, except perhaps seeing the movie as a cynical appropriation of values by a company that objectively doesn’t hold them.

I love that he wants a Taiwan that values democracy and human rights. Those are two very good reasons to prise it from the grasping hands of Western imperialism.

I remember being sat in my classroom as a primary school kid with my teacher showing us that photo on the newspaper days after the event and him telling us to think about what happened to that poor brave man.

https://vimeo.com/849363043

We can still make them go away right?

What irritates me with the echo chamber accusation is that it’s impossible to be in a communist echo chamber if you’re an anglophone. Liberal values and tropes are so baked into every aspect of Western society that it’s impossible to interact with English-speaking societies without being constantly bombarded by their horseshit and the harmful effects of it.

Communities like this one are less echo chamber and more like a sound-proofed booth to get some respite from the constant torrent of brain shitfuckery that comes with existing as an anglophone.

Yeah I saw it.

It’s good. And worth watching. But there are so many people on social media saying this is going to be revolutionary for the feminist cause.

You’re right about the corporate puff piece part. And the rehabilitation of Ruth Handler’s image like she was anything other than a cynical capitalist whose creation played a huge part in calcifying the concept of gender roles in generations of children that came after her.

Mattel signed off on the movie. It exists with their permission and approval. They are not going to start or enable a cultural revolution against their own interests, and if they reinvent themselves so that it is in their own interests, they’ll be doing it for profit, not for the liberation of women.

But fuck if anyone will listen to the skeptic’s take. This thread is the first discussion I’ve come across where saying negative things about the movie (not even saying it’s bad, just criticizing) doesn’t result in a dogpiling of misogyny accusations.

The face of feminism in 2023 is a fictional character and it’s copyright belongs to Mattel.

Actually the government response is extremely agile if it wants to be, but it absolutely will not rush social change because you literally can’t. All political power is vested in the National People’s Congress, and the NPC reflects the will of the people. The NPC or any organ of government it delegates power to serves the will of the people and that means it can’t tell the people to change their will. It can only influence through education.

But their response to COVID-19 shows how quick the government can be at responding to emergent situations. In a matter of days they were establishing quarantine rules and regularly refining them as their understanding improved, in a matter of weeks they were producing surgical masks and PPE in such vast quantities that they were exporting some, in a matter of months they had designed quarantine centers that could be built and in service in a few days.

Yeah, this is another thing that liberals struggle to wrap their heads around.

Also it’s not just about building consensus, it’s about arriving at a compromise.

Take a situation where 52% of the country says “Let’s do plan X because it would benefit us in many ways”, and 48% says “if you do X that will harm us, we want to continue current implementation Y”:

Liberal democracies divide the nation over the issue and attach X and Y to parties A and B. Then you vote for A or B, and whoever wins gets to have their way and whoever loses gets a big fat bowl of “too bad, so sad.” The result? A nation divided, compatriots wishing death upon one another, partisan private media dehumanizing ‘the opposition,’ and oftentimes actual harm done to some of your people.

It gets to the point where it isn’t just about getting things your way, but people in your nation take actual pleasure in seeing other groups in their nation denied. This 👏 is 👏 by 👏 design. A brave and noble land of “Fuck you, got mine,” divided and easily ruled.

In whole-process democracy, taking an action that leaves 48% of your people completely disenfranchised (or even harmed) is completely unacceptable. It’s unacceptable to the 48%, it’s unacceptable to the government, and if it’s not also unacceptable to the 52% then you’ve failed to educate them. Instead of exacerbating any decision, a group like the National People’s Congress either tackles the issue directly or forms a committee for it. Instead of going straight to a vote they ask questions like “How is X harmful? Can we make it not harmful?” They’ll either synthesize a new plan Z at best or they’ll not change anything at worse. And then there’s a vote.

Everyone involved knows that genuine effort has been made, consulting with the best expertise the nation has available, to create plan Z. Citizens know that if they’re asked to compromise, whatever they’re asked to give up is giving to their compatriots more than it’s taking from them. If a proposal polls at a 60-40 split that doesn’t mean you push it through, it means you go back and find out how to bring more of that 40 on side. The vote is an official record of consensus; a formality in a successful and functioning government and a constitutional protection in one that has failed and become disunited.

No sentient, compassion-capable mind would choose the immediate line in the sand over the process of consensus. But that’s how fucked Western culture is, that protagonist, antagonist, conflict is seen as a better expression of government for and by the people than thesis, antithesis, synthesis.

AFP: A coup happened in Niger, an African country. What’s your comment?

Mao Ning: We are closely following the development of the situation in Niger, and have noted the statements by the African Union and the Economic Community of West African States on this. China calls on relevant parties in Niger to act in the fundamental interest of the country and its people, solve differences peacefully through dialogue, restore order at an early date, and safeguard the overall peace, stability and development of the nation.

From Ministry of Foreign Affairs Regular Press Conference 2023年7月27日

That’s the most recent published official comment on the matter on the MFA website.

but I feel we ought to engage, just a little.

I agree with pretty much everything you said; I think where we differ is in how engaging just a little should be done.

We each of us has a finite amount of effort to give, and in my view one of the biggest factors in how fruitful that effort will be is who you spend that effort on.

I think that Liberals who have taken it upon themselves to troll, sealion, castigate or enlighten us are one of the worst kinds of people you can spend that effort on. The Liberal mindset has a staggering amount of inherent arrogance, and when that’s paired with a determination to either vex or ‘save’ you, you’re better off sowing seeds on concrete than trying to turn them around. They already decided they were right long ago. And they’re certainly not going to give any credence to a list of sources or an FAQ, if they even bother to look at it.

I don’t disagree that we have a responsibility to educate, rather I think we have an additional responsibility to be discerning about who, when, and how to reach out with that education. It’d be interesting to see how many of us that converted from liberalism were set down that path by arguing with a Marxist compared to how many of us were prompted by questions, doubts and contradictions raised from reflecting on our material conditions.