I disagree, it’s just a divergence in belief in what America truly is. The sad fact is that their portrayal of America may be closer to the truth.

America was primarily built by rum running slave owners who hated paying taxes. It was founded by rich men to protect the interest of rich men, and not a lot has changed over time.

I like to remind them that during the revolution the Founding Fathers would have been called radical left lunatics by the conservatives of the day.

Maybe if you only read the popular history about people like Benjamin Franklin or Hamilton. In reality most of the founding fathers would be seen as rabid libertarians by today’s means. Some of their ideas about religion would seem liberal, but you would have to ignore issues like slavery, the brutality towards native populations, women’s suffrage, voting rights for the poor, and taxation to label them as leftist in general.

It’s just the economics of late stage capitalism. Companies are mandated to increase profits year over year. In the beginning stages of capitalism this can be achieved by cornering new markets by out competing/taking over your competition. Once the market is cornered you can do things like innovate and streamline. Once this is tapped out the only real way to continue the profits is to conglomerate, monopolize, and racketeer.

We are pretty much past all of these options, or at the final stages, so the only option on the table is to reduce cost, and the largest cost of just about any company is labor. This is why all the mega corps are sinking their hopes into ai, it’s their last way to squeeze as much money out of their organization as possible.

The hilarious thing is that the American voter is supposed to be thinking of themselves when he says “we”. I would kinda understand the logic of continuing the forever war as a voter if everyone got a fat check once we ended the Iraq war. At least then I could understand that it is pure greed driving people to vote for war mongers.

In the end “we” is a small group of oil barons who made billions while footing the multi trillion bill to the tax payer. Unfortunately this just means that the average voter is greedy, but to stupid to actually benefit from their own avarice.

My super power… Being to dumb to not be an ally.

All gender affirmation will be supported via my innate ability of being an oaf.

Great… Another year of me being completely oblivious and unable to tell people what year it is.

I think I have something akin to face blindness but for gender. Not too long ago I was in a groomsmen for my buddy and his sister was one of the bridesmaids. Im told she was trans, but I had no idea, and he ended up making fun of me for not being aware of it.

Like what do you people want from me? She was in a pretty dress, how am I supposed to know?

The increase in energy demand vastly outpaces the supply of green energy, so the gap is filled by fossil fuels. Unfortunately a lot of the green energy marketing is just aimed at alleviating people’s fear about the environment in order to curve criticism aimed at overconsumption.

Realistically to adequately control climate change we would have to both increase green energy supply and reduce consumption.

Yeah… It’s kinda the entire problem with Bitcoin as a concept. It’s the bastard child of a commodity and currency, featuring the worst aspects of both its parents.

It’s a commodity with no inherent value, and a currency with no guaranteeing partner or oversight. Tbh the only real values it can express are all highly detrimental towards society at large.

You might be able to do it by yourself, but it would prob be a lot easier if you have a helping hand when spanning the supports.

It also depends on what you’re wanting to do with it. If you’re just parking a car or a boat in there I’ve seen people just use a gravel foundation with concrete footers. But, if you are wanting to make it a functional workspace you may want to pour an actual foundation.

Sarcasm

My favorite was “no more politically correct wars”… So I guess the only option moving forward is politically incorrect wars? I don’t think I can keep up with the Machiavellian minds of this 4d chess administration.

Lol living in the US means 99% you’re living on land that was genocided from under the natives.

Kind of my point? Like any western nation it’s all built on imperialism to one degree or another.

It’s just funny to worry about ‘harm reduction’ wrt one more wedding or girl school being bombed

The alternative option being?

It’s unfortunately hard to find out the sum total of spending spurred by executive orders. Which you think if we had a real free press would be something someone was tracking.

Yeah… Unfortunately a dictatorship of the proletariat tends to be hard to define outside of theory.

Tbf there isn’t really a way to avoid having blood on your hands as an American without going to jail. Simply abstaining from election doesn’t stop the violence, nor does it isolate you from the societal benefits of imperialism.

If you pay taxes to a country making war, you are by default funding that war. The great illusion of our bicameral Congress is choice, when in reality our government has always been beholden to the senatorial class.

Generally your options are to engage in harm reduction by voting for the lesser of two evils, or to engage in civil disobedience and be imprisoned.

, of course, thus making it completely understandable to coup a democratic government and start a civil war.

When did I claim it was?

arguing that the Bolshevik decision to start a civil fucking war with the government which replaced the Romanovs has very fucking little to do with the Romanovs, yes.

I think that’s a reductionist view of the times.

Because they believed in a narrow vanguard party that could be easily controlled by a small elite which would TOTALLY work for the people?

They didn’t majic their way into power… They had an awful lot of miserable people with generations of anger behind them. Why did those people support the Bolsheviks?

I don’t really think we’re getting anywhere, especially when you are busy tilting at strawman arguments. I never said I supported the Bolsheviks revolution against the provincial government, just that I understand how it could happen, and that the environment created by generations of Romanov rule is largely to blame.

The simple fact that you aren’t willing to acknowledge that is too far of a stretch for me to really validate engaging with you in any kind of reasonable debate.

Have a good one.

I wonder why they were demanding freedom of speech for, specifically, left-socialist and anarchist groups?

and… Meaning they weren’t a commune of just anarchist. Just a year before they were all congratulated by Trotsky himself for being such ardent communist. As I said in the first place they were disgruntled with the system, but that doesn’t automatically make it an anarchist rebellion. No one claimed there weren’t anarchist among them… It was the early 1900s in Russia, you couldn’t throw a stone without hitting an anarchist.

isn’t backed by Soviet archives, which cites ~3,400 dead of their own.

Ahh yes, the soviet’s… Famous for accurately archiving their casualties…

Dead or wounded" is a much broader category than “Dead”

And this is the reason for your dramatic rebuttal, or are we just being pedantic now?

Yeah. Again, would you like to remind me what power the Romanovs had when the Bolsheviks decided to start a civil war against a democratic government?

Again… 6 months does not wipe away over a hundred years of history. The general public’s lives did not significantly improve in less than a year.

Are you arguing that the Romanov family are completely disconnected from the Bolsheviks revolution?

what was the Romanov role in that? Existing while under house arrest?

Creating the environment in which it happened…?

I’m sure you have GREAT context for rebelling against a government that was born in a revolution and existed for a few months before the Bolsheviks decided they preferred to take power by force and dismiss democratically elected socialist legislators.

Why did the Bolsheviks exist in the first place? How did they gather soo much support in such a small amount of time? Why were people still so angry…?

No, your claim was that it wasn’t the Bolsheviks who caused mass violence, despite the Bolsheviks being the entirely-unprompted trigger for the actual civil war after Russians had seemed content to decide things through democratic elections.

"I would say that the Romanov are the party who are largely responsible for the deaths during the revolution. "

Okay, but the problem is that the Bolsheviks didn’t revolt against the Tsar, but against the provisional government.

The Bolsheviks anger didn’t build in a vacuum, nor did it happen in 6 odd months the provisional government exists. That’s ignoring over a hundred years of context.

would you like to remind me what the second point in the demands made by the sailors was?

Demanding freedom of speech doesn’t really make you an anarchist?

Fucking what

“Both sides suffered casualties on par with the civil war’s deadliest battles. The American consulate at Vyborg estimated 10,000 Bolsheviks dead, wounded, or missing, including 15 Congress delegates. Finland asked Russia to remove the bodies on the ice, fearing a public health hazard after the thaw. There are no reliable reports for rebel deaths, but one report estimated 600 dead, 1,000 wounded, and 2,500 imprisoned”…Faced with the prospect of summary executions, about 8,000 Kronstadt refugees (mostly soldiers)[200] crossed into Finland within a day of Kronstadt’s fall, about half of the rebel forces.

Would you like to remind me what kind of mass violence there was between February and October in 1917

My claim didn’t say that the Bolsheviks didn’t engage in mass violence… Are you claiming that the Russian revolution can be boiled down to between February and October in 1917?

Would you like to remind me what provisional government and elected legislature the Bolsheviks actually performed their revolution against?

I was more referring to the Romanov history of utilizing secret police to do horrific amounts of violence.