Just the whole country or is the a specific movement you’re referring to?

Only to avoid the humiliation of being impeached. He waited until they informed him they had the votes, so I don’t think this is the best example.

What evidence is there that violent protest works?

Another thought I had is what if he was still writing it?

Very surprising. I have the same car and drive mostly on electricity from a trickle charger. I hate gasoline so I probably wouldn’t switch even if it was more expensive, especially since I only drive about once a week, but still. My garage is extra cold too due to my heat pump water heater, so that could make things worse.

I think it’s more helpful to identify that the issue is boots on our neck, not who is wearing them. What’s the point of fighting for a new government that’s hardly better than the last?

Even if there’s no clear alternative focused on human liberation today, it’s better to build consciousness so that one can be created than tug of war back and forth between tyrants with different colored flags.

The US has many flaws and these incidents were terrible. But these largely didn’t involve the modern intelligence apparatus we are discussing. We have large numbers of people here on Lemmy actively calling for a socialist revolution but they’re completely safe as long as they follow the law.

Try calling for revolution in China and see how it goes. Leaders of even relatively non-political protest movements or advocates for minority rights are frequently disappeared or executed. In the US, there may be isolated incidents of this nature (typically by local law enforcement) but largely social critics are free to organize legal resistance to the state without repression.

Of course, there are reasons to worry we might be headed in that direction. All the more reason to organize and resist while you still can.

To be clear, I don’t ascribe these actions to communism. China is not communist by any reasonable definition. I ascribe these actions to authoritarianism. While the US is somewhat authoritarian, it is less so than China (at least within its borders—foreign policy is a different can of worms).

There has been some debate about exactly what Marx intended by this phrase but regardless his intentions, in my view it was always doomed to be abused in this way. This was pointed out forcefully by Bakunin and other contemporaries of Marx in the socialist movement, and it came to pass exactly as they predicted. Who decides what constitutes “bourgeois interest” or “false consciousness”? The party of course, and who controls the party? The party leadership, or in other words, Lenin, Stalin, or whoever else manages to connive their way onto the throne. This is far from a proletarian democracy, and if that’s what Marx wanted, he ought to have chosen his words far more carefully.

This also dovetails with another key flaw in Marxism which is its class reductionism. Political leaders can and do have distinct interests from the proletariat, even when they may have once belonged to that class. We see this tension clearly in every supposed proletarian government in history, and many others besides. So in addition to the problems of top-down hierarchy, the decision to have Bolshevik leaders be full-time revolutionaries was also a large contributor to their alienation from the people whose interests they claimed to pursue, and the horrific violence they soon inflicted in on them.

The US may collect as much or more information as China but their enforcement actions taken based on this information are far far more limited.

Authoritarians everywhere: “You need my boot on your neck, because the other guy’s boot will be even worse!”

Thank goodness that would never happen in the enlightened, democratic West.

There is some truth to this but it overlooks the fact that the Bolsheviks were distinct from other socialist parties from the very beginning by their top-down, authoritarian party structure, with Lenin in control. As soon as they gained power, they immediately worked to impose this type of management on the entirety of Russian society by crushing first the Duma, then the Soviets, and finally eliminating any autonomy exercised by their own supporters, the labor unions. They also immediately began engaging in electoral chicanery and postponing or rigging elections in their favor. By destroying or subsuming every other institution in society, the party structure became the primary structure of governance, and Russia became a totalitarian state. Most of this took place even before the civil war and was arguably a major contributor to it.

So why did Russia become a dictatorship? Because the Bolsheviks decided it was desirable based on their understanding and development of socialist theory, and other forces failed to stop them for various reasons. It’s pretty much that simple. The civil war and foreign pressures probably strengthened this tendency but I don’t believe it was the primary cause.

And of course, almost every other socialist revolution since that time was inspired by the Bolsheviks since they “succeeded”. So they largely sought to impose dictatorships as well.

Ultimately it all goes back to Marx and his idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat which is one of the crucial flaws of Marxism in my view.

Haha the first half of this is actually good advice.

Yes but not for the reasons people are stating here. Dead people are dead. They don’t deserve a damn thing, whether saint or sinner.

Burial is for the living. So it’s up to the next of kin how to go organize it. Since those people are typically innocent of the crimes of the deceased, their behavior has little or no relevance to what sort of burial there will be, unless it affects how those people might wish to go about it.

No. I think it’s a pretty shitty thing to do unless you had a reason to feel unsafe, which I personally never have.

3/3, at least according to the realtors. Although one of them really is not a bedroom by any reasonable definition since it doesn’t have a real door or closet. It’s more of an office.

If you need some hairy male nipples to show off then let me know, I’ll contribute to the cause 😂

I was wondering but I guess I don’t understand why say it that way instead of the other way around.

Why ban male nipples? Fuck that all nipples should be allowed.

Yes, but less than I did. Mostly to visit my local sub. The one one Lemmy is just me shouting into the void it seems…