Yeah. It sounds cliche, but “listen with your heart” is really accurate. She’s saying she misses the old days when America worked. That’s not wrong (I mean for white people it’s not, I would recommend not to go down that rabbit hole lol). A lot of it isn’t about what you say to her, it’s how you say it. If everything you say sounds cold and factual and correcting her, of course she’s not going to want to listen and it’s just going to be a hostile interaction.

It is tough. My experience with stuff like this is that they just live in a whole different reality, so it is hard to get a foothold. I had to work really hard at having conversations with people for whom the tone of voice and emotional intent is a huge part of how they process the information (which I think is most people). That’s not how I operate, so it was hard to keep it in mind without coming off as fake or condescending, but if you’re genuine about what you mean and focus on sort of the core of why you came to your beliefs (not the facts but the reasons why you care about the facts so much), a lot of times it comes across better. And then on top of that, you’re dealing with someone where their factual understanding of the world is off in la-la land, so it’s hard to not just lecture them or tell them what’s what.

Like that kind of thing about Reagan, my first reaction to the answer is “Yeah, and have you wondered why that hasn’t ever happened since then? Why everyone was doing okay until the late 80s and then it all went to hell and hasn’t come back? Honestly that’s what I want, is to get back to when working people had a fair shake and people could make a living. Don’t you want that? It sure as hell is not happening now under Trump…”

But again, it’s not the words, it’s the intent behind them. If you’re reasonable and you care, then it’s hard for her to take your statements hostile even if she doesn’t agree with them (honestly I can guarantee you that one conversation or even several about it will not change her mind.) But you can sort of plant seeds and then she’ll come around on her own, or if she does not then oh well.

If she is being overtly hateful on her own then it’s different. IDK what you can even do then. But mostly in my experience it is people who are so twisted up that they think the Democrats are so hateful that of course things X, Y, and Z make perfect sense and are the only humane thing to do. Mostly.

I can’t really offer specific advice on this situation. I don’t know. But I will say, in general separating from the person who’s victimized by propaganda just helps the propaganda spread. A lot of this stuff actually has deliberate features and habits that it tries to instill into people, to make it drive away people who might talk sense into them and make it harder for them to hear sense if someone does say it to them.

I think you should view your MIL as a victim of propaganda, similar to a drug addict or a person with significant trauma in their life. A lot of them are victims. Of course, if she’s telling you “I’m glad they’re snatching all those US citizens and deporting them to hellish nightmare prisons in other countries just because they’re Hispanic,” then maybe you want to shun her. But usually what’s happened is that they’ve gotten so twisted up in their perceptions that they think that what they’re saying and supporting is something really good, and everyone should support it. The stuff that she is victimized by is incredibly powerful, it’s not surprising to me that a lot of people get taken in by it.

Like I say it’s hard to give general advice about what you should do. But this may help you to be more gentle with her even if you are aware of the hatefulness at work in the stuff she was victimized by and have some understandably big feelings about it.

The whole model is just absolutely stupid. I mean, I get how it was what Aaron and Spez came up with back 20 years ago, but the fact that nobody bothered to make anything fundamentally better at any point since then is just fuckin’ weird.

There are quite a few honestly. Team Fortress and DayZ are obvious examples, I also quite liked Natural Selection.

Yeah. I do see the point, Reddit moderation at this point is hilariously bad so I guess I shouldn’t assume that this person did any little thing wrong.

The whole moderation model which depends on volunteers with unlimited power and allows any random idiot to create an unlimited number of alts, is broken. Reddit devs and moderators have made a good go I guess of trying to make it work, but all they have done is demonstrated that it is not the way.

Yeah, it’s fair. I know the moderation on Reddit has gone entirely off the fucking rails at this point.

1. I am suspicious of your perfectly innocent story sir or ma’am
2. Modern web sites are very good at this sort of thing. From hearing from moderators on the small scale, it’s fairly easy to tell when someone who has been banned comes back, simply because they almost always start doing the exact same stuff that got them banned. At that point you don’t really need to do exact fingerprinting, you just look at the relevant dates / behavior / rough device fingerprinting and you have about 99% confidence that this is the same person. But, also, there is a whole technology of figuring out who people are on the web at this point, and it’s pretty comprehensive. Even if you change devices and IPs, your browser’s tracking cookies probably link your Reddit session with your other big-web-site accounts pretty much instantly and there is definitely some kind of API that shares that information back with Reddit. I’m honestly not sure even what I could recommend as a working way to do ban evasion on Reddit.
3. Bro why Reddit? I still read it periodically because there’s neat stuff there sometimes but there are far better federated social networks than modern Reddit out there, I think.

The one thing that this whole analysis is missing is this: There is a ton of work to do. The oceans are dying. The planet is boiling. The garbage is stacking up, endless and endless. There are crimes big and small going undiscovered, or un-processed and dealt with in a trustworthy fashion if they are discovered. There are wars, there are dangerous materials that need to be removed from the soil and the rivers, and the policies need to be set up and enforced to stop their cousins from replacing them within the year. WE’RE NOT FUCKING DONE. This illusion is wholly wrong that capitalism has created, that it is fine to drive the car off the cliff as long as we keep paying salaries and dividends up until the moment of impact comes

Yes, we’ve gotten more efficient and powerful in our ability to translate a human into an effective change in conditions at the earth’s surface. But the problems have gotten bigger, too, and more urgent to the point that they threaten our entire species. Just because we can now keep growing the food and doing layout for the advertisements with only 15 hours a week, doesn’t mean that’s all we need to fucking do.

There is a vital question coming up. When the machines do all the work, does that mean everyone eats? Or no one?

Right now it is “no one” roughly speaking. That must change. There is no future for anyone there, just nightmares unfolding and unfolding.

You don’t

• Went to army surplus store, got various stuff, also got peace buttons and a headband, took all my hair down (long hair), and wore the military gear all unbuttoned and disordered. There wasn’t really a plan for the costume beyond that, but people partway through the night decided I was Ron Kovic, which seemed like it fit even though I had no wheelchair. I had a photo from that night for a while with a friend who was going into the navy, who was dressed up as some kind of special forces man with a big hunting knife, with us standing together him looking like a psychopath and me smiling doing a peace sign. We were the before and the after.
• The day I cut off my long hair, I invested in a super-sharp suit, and went before work to get it all cut off and get a super-sharp short hair haircut instead. I showed up to work in full suit and tie, neatly shaved, looking like a completely different person. My coworkers kept getting startled because they would look over at my desk and see this suit guy sitting there for some reason instead of me.
• When I was in my mid 40s I dressed up as an old man. Powder in the hair, glasses, old man clothes, and moved around all slow and careful and looked over my glasses at things. People were alarmed a little bit by how effective and accurate it was lol… like “I don’t want to see you this way, stop stop doing that.”

Those three I all enjoyed quite a lot.

1. “Rubber” bullets are a massive metal ball wrapped in a thin sheet of rubber. They carry about half the kinetic energy of a bullet, they can still crack your skull or destroy a part of your body that they hit. There is a reason people started pushing for the terminology “less lethal” instead of “nonlethal.”
2. That said you actually raise kind of a good question I think. I suspect that a lot of the reason is nothing more than that the guns that shoot “rubber” bullets effectively are big and cumbersome. You can’t run fast while holding one, carry one around on your belt and then pull it out in a fraction of a second, et cetera. They actually do try to do what you’re talking about with Tasers, there’s a whole process, except that Tasers are unreliable so they have to have a second cop with a gun drawn most of the time.
3. Replacing guns with “rubber” bullets… a lot of the time when they are shooting they are thinking in terms of a gunfight with an armed suspect, so they don’t want to be in a situation where the “rubber” bullets aren’t penetrating a car but the bullets coming back at them are penetrating their car, something like that. If it is deadly force involved they don’t want to be at a disadvantage.
4. Replacing Tasers with rubber bullets… IDK, I think “rubber” bullets are probably more lethal than Tasers and you’re definitely going to fuck somebody up any time you hit them with one. The vast majority of the time, the Taser just sucks and then you take the probes out and you’re done, you don’t have any cracked ribs or destroyed eyeballs or anything. Most of the scenarios where they would be using a “rubber” bullet, US cops at least will use a 40mm “beanbag round” which won’t cause nearly the same type of injuries.

I won’t say your suggestion is automatically a bad idea but I think those are some of the reasons you so rarely see them except in “crowd control” type of scenarios where some of the existing nonlethal options aren’t viable, and also where they have some additional desire to cause injuries in the people they’re "control"ing. Basically you can choose a Taser which is unreliable, pepper spray which is short range and will fuck you up too sometimes, or a 40mm or rubber bullet which needs a big cumbersome launcher (and the “rubber” bullet may cause significant injuries anyway).

“The party cannot fail, it can only be failed.”

Anyway, like I said I don’t plan to have an extensive debate. I’ll leave you with this:

https://jacobin.com/2021/08/hitler-stalin-pact-nazis-communist-deportation-soviet

Edit: Fun fact, I’ve actually visited Trotsky’s house in exile in Mexico City.

AOC has caped for Israel and the DNC

Sure she has lol

https://www.wsws.org/en/special/library/foundations-ger/10.html

73 - The KPD had been established as a response to the betrayal of social democracy. But it proved just as unable as the SPD to weld together the working class and lead it into a struggle against the Nazis. A ten-year campaign against “Trotskyism” had politically corroded the party and transformed its leadership into a willing tool of Stalin. It repeated all the opportunist and ultra-left errors, against which Lenin and Trotsky had fought ten years before, and hid its paralysis and fatalism behind radical phrase-mongering. Until 1933, Trotsky tried relentlessly to correct the wrong course of the KPD. His writings on Germany from these years, which fill two thick volumes, prove his genius as a Marxist and political leader. Banished to a remote Turkish island, forced to rely on newspapers and reports from political friends, Trotsky demonstrated an understanding of German events and their internal dynamics that remains unparalleled to this day. He foresaw the events clearly and precisely and developed a convincing alternative to the devastating course of the KPD. The KPD responded not with arguments, but with slanders, violence and the entire weight of the Moscow apparatus.

74 - At the heart of the policy of the KPD was the thesis of social fascism. From the fact that both fascism and bourgeois democracy were forms of capitalist rule, the Comintern drew the conclusion that there was no contradiction between them, not even a relative one. Fascism and social democracy were the same―in the words of Stalin: “not antipodes, but twins”―the social democrats therefore were “social fascists”. The KPD rejected any collaboration with the SPD against the rightwing danger and, in some cases, even went so far as to make common cause with the Nazis―for example, when it supported the referendum initiated by the Nazis in 1931 to bring down the SPD-led Prussian state government. Occasionally it called for “a united front from below”. But this was not an offer to collaborate, but an ultimatum to the SPD members to break with their party.

75 - Trotsky decisively opposed this form of vulgar radicalism. He recalled that Marx and Engels had protested fiercely when Lassalle had called feudal counterrevolution and the liberal bourgeoisie “one reactionary mass”. Now Stalin and the KPD were repeating the same error. “It is absolutely correct to place on the Social Democrats the responsibility for the emergency legislation of Brüning as well as for the impending danger of fascist savagery. It is absolute balderdash to identify Social Democracy with fascism”, he wrote. “The Social Democracy, which is today the chief representative of the parliamentary-bourgeois regime, derives its support from the workers. Fascism is supported by the petty bourgeoisie. The Social Democracy without the mass organizations of the workers can have no influence. Fascism cannot entrench itself in power without annihilating the workers’ organizations. Parliament is the main arena of the Social Democracy. The system of fascism is based upon the destruction of parliamentarianism. For the monopolistic bourgeoisie, the parliamentary and fascist regimes represent only different vehicles of dominion; it has recourse to one or the other, depending upon the historical conditions. But for both the Social Democracy and fascism, the choice of one or the other vehicle has an independent significance; more than that, for them it is a question of political life or death.”[3]

76 - Trotsky fought untiringly for a policy of the united front. This would have made it possible for the KPD to use the contradiction between social democracy and fascism to unite the working class, win the confidence of the social democratic workers and expose the social democratic leaders. In an article written at the end of 1931, entitled “For a Workers’ United Front Against Fascism”, he explained: “Today the Social Democracy as a whole, with all its internal antagonisms, is forced into sharp conflict with the fascists. It is our task to take advantage of this conflict and not to unite the antagonists against us.” One must “show by deeds a complete readiness to make a bloc with the Social Democrats against the fascists” and “understand how to tear the workers away from their leaders in reality. But reality today is―the struggle against fascism.” It was necessary to “help the Social Democratic workers in action―in this new and extraordinary situation―to test the value of their organizations and leaders at this time, when it is a matter of life and death for the working class.”[4]

77 - The refusal of the KPD to accept such a policy led to the German catastrophe.

I won’t say I agree with 100% of the analysis on that page but a lot of that last part of analysis seems completely spot-on to me. And, of course, how Trotsky predicted is exactly how it played out.

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I feel like we had this conversation before at some point lol… I will summarize my point of view on it and then probably dip from it:

• KPD in 1917: We’re going to seize all the guns and overthrow you and make Communism because Communism
• German government + German people and unions + SPD: Fuck no you’re not (gunfire)
• KPD in 1918: Wooooooowwwwwwwwww okay fuck you, I see how it is
• Germany: Hey KPD you still can have a seat in government, you have to get the votes though, no shooting your opposition, no seizing
• KPD: Woooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
• SPD in 1932: Hey we’re going to make an alliance with you because this guy is dangerous, we don’t care about the whole “trying to overthrow thing” that happened a generation ago
• KPD: Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
• Hitler: (wins)

And then much later:

• KPD (ones still alive): Hey we’re going to need all the trade unions to do what we want instead of what the workers want, because that’s leftism
• Germany: Lol fuck OFF

That is my summary. I realize you may have a different one but I don’t think I really want to get in an extended argument about it today. But yes, Germany in the 30s is a relevant example on this topic, I absolutely think.

(Oh, also, the KPD was being murdered by the Nazis with the aid of Stalin. The KPD was coordinating with Stalin, and he was selling them out because of course he was. I have absolutely no idea where you got this idea that the SPD was involved in what Hitler was doing to his opposition.)

Haven’t you heard? Shitting on liberals and not voting is all you need to do to defeat fascism. It’s literally the most important thing.

It’s too bad the Weimar Republic didn’t think of that. I feel like if only the German Communists had been spending all their energy shitting on the center, they might have had a pretty good chance of stopping Hitler from coming to power. Well, at least now we have the chance to try again, with the benefit of hindsight, and make sure we do that known successful strategy…

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