Doubledee [comrade/them]

The point of the comparison is that the two aren’t actually alike in scale though. Stubbing your toe and getting shot are both painful but it would be odd if someone with a gunshot wound was loudly complaining about their stubbed toe.

I think it’s more likely they’re just a USian, they deliberately elect these kinds of governments over and over.

I mean maybe it’s just an American values thing but I actually don’t think scientists are as bad as Epstein associates.

You don’t understand, western nations helped defend one side of the civil war and propped them up as part of a global ideological conflict they wanted to engage in with countries on the other side of the globe from them. Not agreeing to allow their proxy to act with impunity is textbook imperialism.

Imperialism is when you don’t concede that a bunch of fascists who fought and lost a civil war and then fortified themselves on an island with the help of foreign powers and violently purged dissenters get to claim to be the government of both your country and other neighboring countries. The more that you spend decades seeking reconciliation diplomatically instead of through military ventures, the more imperialist you are.

There are a lot of more knowledgeable comrades who I hope will elaborate at greater length than I can.

My understanding is that the Chinese experiment is basically “can a Marxist-socialist government keep its capitalist class at heel?” I think there’s room for debate as to the level of danger/success they’ve had but the ‘China is socialist’ side would basically argue that the means of production is under the control of a genuinely worker-controlled government.

They tolerate their capitalists but their capitalists do not operate with the same degree of freedom as their counterparts in the west. Since globally the proletariat is still not in a position to restrain their bourgeoisie, the state cannot yet wither away into communism, so the task that modern China has taken up is to develop the productive forces in the state they control and outlast/overpower the capitalist states in the long run.

Of course you could reasonably question whether their commitment to the project is genuine, or how much worker control there truly is, etc. But I think that’s the basic position of the pro-China camp.

Lewis gets a weird amount of play for a man primarily known for writing children’s literature. His best stuff is not widely read in my experience and people really want to make him into some sort of Christian philosophical genius that I think really doesn’t do justice to him or to philosophy.

2.) Lewis (and Tolkien and a lot of British guys from the first half of the 1900s) really did get totally brain broken by the world wars. He fetishizes military service, thinks dying in war and fighting for nations is inherently admirable, real late imperial brainworms. In my experience with his work he almost always goes out of his way to valorize being at war. (Edit: I think he even praises German soldiers because they were doing a noble thing even if their leaders were evil)

3.) God, the answer is probably secretly Christian God. He has a sci Fi book series that ends with revealing that universities are controlled by a demonic death cult trying to remove God from all topics of study because they’re evil humanists.

5.) Christians often believe that contraception is inherently wrong because it rejects the supposed purpose of having sex. It’s a weird insider baseball thing that will often not make any sense if you’re not already on board.

For sure, there’s an unhealthy internet thing of just hating stuff, I hope it’s obvious I’m not doing that. I actually think the books for younger kids are overall better and a lot of the worst stuff could have been avoided if she just stuck to writing fun mysteries for children. She was pretty good at snarky irreverent kid stuff.

The biggest fans in my life hate the epilogue too, so you’re in good company there.

It’s literally in the book. Harry becomes a wizard CIA agent. They still have slaves at the end. The book ends with Harry wondering if his chattel slave will bring him food. They don’t help the muggles, they don’t rectify the injustice of their tiered society.

I think the anti fascist angle is a nice thing to get from it but it’s not really supported by the text. Riddle is ontologically evil for no reason, he’s bad Dumbledore. Dumbledore controls the entire society and can act with impunity. I don’t even think all this stuff is intentional. It’s just not that deep.

No her issue is with those people because they aren’t competent. None of the issues that make the ministry an evil neo liberal monstrosity are fixed by the heroes who enter the government and maintain it. The books suck as political texts.

Hey I know you’re getting a bunch of responses so I don’t want to be unhelpful and pile on, but I am curious if you actually dispute either of the claims this meme makes (Churchill blaming the famine on India, Mao personally taking steps to cut his consumption during a famine and being critical of his own policy). Because if you don’t think it’s wrong I’m not sure why you are posting this response. The Chinese don’t care if you vote for Churchill or Mao, neither are even candidates for election in the United States. This could not be less about what you’ve posted.