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PrimeJunta

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Everything posted by PrimeJunta

  1. PrimeJunta
    I don't think a single root cause is even identifiable. Only contributing factors. Poverty is certainly one of the incredibly bleeping huge ones when it comes to social problems in general. Thing is, poverty too has causes. Ask yourself why American blacks are so much likelier to be poor than whites, and you'll be able to find a neat chain of causes going back a couple of hundred years, and more. And any chain of causes that goes so far back renders questions of justice rather problematic. I believe it would be more fruitful to focus on people alive today and what could be done to remedy the social injustices besetting us.
  2. PrimeJunta
    @archangel979 Keep telling the mods how to do their jobs and I'm sure they'll eventually see it your way.
  3. PrimeJunta
    In my view, a manageable amount of chaos and unreadability is to be welcomed. The alternative is just so terribly dull.
  4. PrimeJunta
    I believe we have exposed @Luckmann's secret identity.
  5. PrimeJunta
  6. PrimeJunta
    I'm a Trotskyite, not a Maoist, you peon. (Okay seriously: I would prefer to avoid violent revolutions unless all other options have been exhausted. They almost invariably end up falling to the counter-revolution or getting hijacked by authoritarians of one type or another. I believe gradual, democratic institutional change is the much better alternative.) I would also like to have a police force that's not corrupt and has proper checks and balances in place to stop it from abusing its power. Most of the American police force is clearly not that police force. It's more like just another armed gang on the streets, except it's backed by state power. Yes, that does mean that I think a cop getting shot by a gangster is more or less the same thing as a gangster getting killed by a cop, or a gangster getting killed by another ganster. I'm not particularly outraged at that. I am outraged when cops or gansters kill innocents.
  7. PrimeJunta
    @Sensuki, you're definitely trolling. I mean come on -- you've given up on the game. You see it as irredeemably, unsalvageably flawed. What else could you possibly be doing here at this point?
  8. PrimeJunta
    Yeah it's just funny that most of the people getting wrongly shot share a couple of particularly noticeable physical characteristics. Don't you think?
  9. PrimeJunta
    Curses, @Luckmann saw through my ruse.
  10. PrimeJunta
    @IndiraLightfoot I'm pretty sure Stun is actually a golem. That's kind of unfair.
  11. PrimeJunta
    @Luckmann :applause: That was good. We need to get it into the game. Here's the plan: Step 1: Find another offensive backer memorial rhyme. Step 2: Agree with the author that he -- probably he -- will change it if requested. Step 3:
  12. PrimeJunta
    The Implosion of Sensuki has been a depressing spectacle to watch. I'm sure there are lessons to be learned there, but damned if I know what they are. The Codex, as always, remains The Codex. Maybe some of you guys ought to check out the discussion on the topic there -- as most things in that place, it starts out sharp, intelligent, and occasionally witty, then everybody dials their opinions to the absurd extreme, and then it turns into lulz.
  13. PrimeJunta
    I was not referring to the entirety of the political system, only the "winner takes all" electoral system. Edit: I agree with you about the capture of government by the ruling class. It is a built-in feature of the American system: it was never intended to allow anyone but the propertied classes much power.
  14. PrimeJunta
    The American "winner takes all" system is only stable in a two-party system. There might be an interim where there are three, but it won't take many cycles for it to settle back to two. It could be that one or both of the two are new parties, of course. It's happened before in Britain which has the same system. (Which is why it's a bad system. A two-party duopoly results in a permanent governing class which is extremely hard to dislodge. You can't do it from within since it controls the party apparatus, and you can't do it from the outside since it's so incredibly hard to get a third party off the ground.)
  15. PrimeJunta
    Hey, it's the Internet. Since when did not knowing a damn thing about a subject stop anyone from arguing furiously about it?
  16. PrimeJunta
    (1) The ruling class is a self-perpetuating social group with long-standing hegemonic or near-hegemonic control over political, economic, and cultural power. (2) Start from the neighborhood. Make things work there. Then use the levers of power in municipal democracy to make your city work. While you're doing it, connect with like-minded people in other municipalities across the country and abroad. Share ideas, experiences, and eventually resources. Learn from each other. Once you start seeing positive results, build that up into a nationwide network with fraternal networks in other countries. At that point you will start to have the means to fix the country, and eventually the world. And be always on your guard for forces that want to co-opt or hijack the movement, and make sure any leaders you appoint are on a short leash and remember that they serve you, not the other way around.
  17. PrimeJunta
    Yeah. Yay for the Internet. http://www.clickhole.com/article/justice-last-when-girl-was-cyberbullied-classmate--2219
  18. PrimeJunta
    Yeah it's fairly amazing how the Republicans went from the party of Lincoln to the party of Nixon and beyond. But then I'm amazed about a lot of stuff in American politics. It's just so unrelentingly bizarre.
  19. PrimeJunta
    Stalin feared that the most Which is, of course, entirely relevant and applicable to the discussion. Of course. Authoritarians like anti-GG or Stalin hate idealists that go outside their narrative. Yes. It's much cleverer to craft a phony counter-narrative which is superficially radical but in reality completely non-threatening to the ruling class, and get the naive idealists to adopt that. Libertarianism, for example. Other thread please. But this one was so asking for it.
  20. PrimeJunta
    Stalin feared that the most Which is, of course, entirely relevant and applicable to the discussion. Of course. Authoritarians like anti-GG or Stalin hate idealists that go outside their narrative. Yes. It's much cleverer to craft a phony counter-narrative which is superficially radical but in reality completely non-threatening to the ruling class, and get the naive idealists to adopt that. Libertarianism, for example.
  21. PrimeJunta
    As I said, you have internalized a bunch of propaganda explicitly crafted to direct the dissent of people like you into safe channels, where it doesn't threaten the ruling class. You've even internalized the notion that there's something 'radical' about it. I really am amazed at how that actually happened. The Soviets never managed that complete thought control, not even close.
  22. PrimeJunta
    @Guard Dog and @Namutree, you would have to voice much nastier opinions before I'm tempted to start insulting you. As far as I can tell you don't wish ill on anyone, you've just internalized a bunch of propaganda designed to channel your discontent into areas that in no way threaten your ruling elite. That makes you naive, and me a little sad, but certainly not angry.
  23. PrimeJunta
    No, I haven't. I'm curious too, who is the comrade you're thinking of?
  24. PrimeJunta
    A libertarian has introduced legislation on favorite libertarian issues, ergo, he cares about blacks. Gotcha.
  25. PrimeJunta
    If I had seen him staring down the riot cops in Ferguson, then I might think he actually cares. As it is, all he cares about is libertarian issues. He just thinks he might be able to sell them to black voters. Not the same thing at all. What would staring down riot cops accomplish? Nothing. But it would go some way to convincing me that he cares about issues relevant to African-Americans, as opposed to merely caring about their votes. (That part I can certainly believe.) Had you asked me what I think a genuinely unifying GOP figure would look like, though, I would've answered something like this: He—or she—would have a significant career in local and state politics: say, as a mayor of a medium-sized or larger Southern city, then as state governor. During this time, the concrete, immediate conditions for blacks and Hispanics would have materially improved: much less police violence and harassment, much better odds of getting treated justly by the courts, much more and better jobs, much better schools, much less crime, and so on. Consequently, racial tensions would have dropped significantly: as things got worse elsewhere, this figure's city and state would have gone against the trend. Due to these concrete accomplishments, he or she would enjoy genuine grass-roots support across racial lines in his or her city and state. He or she could then point to these accomplishments in his or her campaign in national politics, and model his or her program on them. Rand Paul just isn't that figure. He's a good example of everything that's wrong with the American political system these days -- second-generation politician riding the party machine directly into national office, then repackaging his talking points to whoever will listen. With a nice dollop of populist Tea Party pap for seasoning, and a good many reversals along the way depending on which way the wind blows. (Also, libertarian, which is the biggest con the American corporate-political elite has managed to pull on the electorate. I mean, damn -- they've somehow engineered it so that the only viable alternatives to the corrupt Dem/GOP+corporate duopoly are even more corporate-friendly. How did they do that?)
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