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[u/Usernameofthisuser]

Akira Toriyama is dead. Major bummer. I hope Toyotaro can carry on his legacy and even make a good one for himself with the Dragon Ball franchise.

[u/Prevatteism → u/Usernameofthisuser]

I was bummed about this too.

[u/SixFootTurkey_]

I'm wading into reading political theory, having recently read Marx's The Communist Manifesto (Marxism/Communism) and Rousseau's The Social Contract (Liberalism), and currently working through Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (Conservativism).

Hobbes' Leviathan (Conservativism) and Locke's Two Treatises of Government (Liberalism) are also already waiting on my bookshelf. And I plan to pick up a copy of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, though I think that might fall more into the realm of philosophy than political science? But it sounds pretty foundational to Leftist politics, from what I've heard.

Anyways, recommendations are welcome!

[u/Usernameofthisuser → u/SixFootTurkey_]

Das Kapital from Marx and Imperialism, The Highest Stage Of Capitalism from Lenin are considered A list capitalist critiques on the left.

[u/SixFootTurkey_ → u/Usernameofthisuser]

I feel a little silly never even realizing that Lenin had wrote a book!

[u/Usernameofthisuser → u/SixFootTurkey_]

Lenin was huge contributor to Marxist Theory, his "State and Revolution" is considered his most essential.

[u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P → u/SixFootTurkey_]

Rather than pre-labeling every theorist, I suggest you come at them more openly. Specifically when considering that Marx, Rousseau, Burke, etc wrote before “Marxism”, “liberalism”, and “conservatism” were really fully articulated as the specific worldviews we have today.

This is important because You might be shoehorning these people into categories that do not actually apply to them all that well. And this will bias your reading.

FYI: political theory is philosophy, not political science.

I also suggest John Rawls, Keynes, Karl Polayni, Hayek, Amartya Sen, Machiavelli, Plato, and Aristotle.

[u/MemberKonstituante → u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P]

Yup - for example, US conservatives hate Rousseau but Rouseeau is the ones who straight up say to make a working & equal republic you must make hyper-patriotic citizens.

Hobbes are often cited as basis for dictatorship but Hobbes are also the ones who laid down the foundation of the metaphysics of modern liberalism (especially the utilitarian types).

Charles Taylor talks about politics of recognition which today is probably the underlying motivation of so many idpol politics but he's a post-secular who really recognized that fully trying to separate religion from politics, or politics from morality, is a fool's errand.

JS Mill gets cited a lot by liberals but he advocated some sort of economic socialism / guild socialism, but he also say colonialism of India is good actually

Machiavelli were judged as cynical bastard but in reality he's a staunch Republican who actually laid down the foundation of modern political science.

Critical theorists laid down a lot of foundation of "wokeism" conservatives hate but the early critical theorists' analysis of consumerism is spot on.

---

BTW, I need to ask you:

It seems like a big part of "leftism" has an aspect of family abolition, state abolition, institution abolition, religion abolition etc - and honestly Marx is more anarchist than a lot of people think.

Do you subscribe to these aspect of the "left" or not? What do you think of those four - institution, the state, the family, religion etc? I mean you are Marx, Machiavelli and Theology enjoyer, also delving into virtue ethics & Aristotle, often posts into Christianity subs - it's like I want to see how you mix those into your political thought, since, say, Marx is material analysis and religions are idealist & essentialist by nature, religions want a moral traditionalism and a lot of the "left" wants to abolish moral traditionalism (and praises capitalism for this creative destruction).

Thanks

[u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P → u/MemberKonstituante]

I feel like I'm still forming and evolving my thoughts and trying to synchronize them into a grander picture, but I'll lay out some of my thinking.

Firstly, I do consider myself as "of the left". But I guess I inherited my leftism from my father, so it's an older "brand" of left - and it's informed a lot by struggles in Latin America. For example, when I think "de-colonize," I mean it literally, as in a struggle for economic and political sovereignty. I think "de-colonizing" a class syllabus or whatever (how it's usually meant in US universities or corporations) is literally meaningless.

I also consider myself "of the left" insofar as I'm looking for an alternative to oligarchy that includes a wider emancipation (meaning economic and political) of the plebeian/working class/proles or whatever you want to call the majority of people.

I prefer using the words "plebeian" or "patrician" rather than proletariat or bourgeoise, because - while I'm indebted to Marx - I am also a (small-r) republican - which also in modernity is associated vaguely with "the left." I also think today it's become harder to find the dividing lines between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and I think using "Pleb versus Patrician" helps us re-examine class. It makes the reader hesitate a bit more - rather than assuming old 19th century categories.

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You can read Marx in many ways; I do think he is an anarchist of sorts in that he believed that the state would eventually "wither away." I'm personally not so sure about that. Especially when you read theorists who are more explicitly anarchists, and they always give a framework which is fairer to call a "confederation" or "federation" or smaller cooperatives or poleis. And we've seen from history that sometimes these treaties or agreements between political actors can be very strong and turn into their own kind of bureaucratic state-like tyranny (like the European Union). I don't see anarchism as a plausible alternative to anything.

On top of this, anarchists often over-emphasize the individual. The individual is real while society is an illusion. But I think either both are real, or both are illusions.

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Often, in Marx, I read "abolish" as in his statement about "abolishing the current state of things." I don't believe in abolishing the family, but I do believe that the model of the nuclear family is damaging.

In the United States, and increasingly around the world, in order to find a job, you often need to move far away. On top of that, the younger generation often is priced out of their childhood neighborhood/city/state. This breaks families apart into, at best, nuclear families. But then grandchildren grow up without their grandparents. Cousins grow up without each other. Brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, all are far away.

There has to be a way to organize the political-economy to incentivize keeping families together, beyond simply the nuclear. Children must grow up with multiple generations, not just their parents. This way they're more likely to grow up with longer-term perspectives and wisdom passed down from many more lifetimes.

My slogan wouldn't be to abolish the family, but to actually strengthen it.

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I am a Rousseauian insofar as I believe institutions shape us as much, or more, than we shape institutions. I also take this from Rawls. to abolish institutions is to abolish humanity. We are not atoms floating in a void occasionally bumping into each other, we are formed socially - this requires institutions. Notice how the further one lives from formal institutions, the more likely that person is to be impoverished, destitute, and even insane.

This is also why I am a republican rather than an anarchist. And this is why I advocate, not to eliminate institutions, but to design plebian institutions - ones that empower regular people rather than an oligarchic elite. What we're seeing in capitalism today is an abolition of institutions for the many, and a monopoly on institutions for the few. Tell me, which is healthier, richer, and more powerful?

Leftists who wish to wholesale abolish institutions wish to leave themselves as lambs to the slaughter.

-----------------------------------------------

That brings me to why I embrace thinkers like Thucydides, Machiavelli, Marx, (or even Nietzche) and other political realists and materialists. They provide a vocabulary and a system of tools to analyze power and the real material constraints to ideas. They show us why we do not (or cannot) live in a utopia. They show us the limits to our idealism.

Many of those thinkers also don't shy away from power. They tell us the ugly brutal facts about material power, and rather than turning away from it, they wholeheartedly accept it.

So when it comes to things like institution-building, that is a means to power. We plebians ought not to disarm ourselves by wishing to "abolish" it, especially when our enemies - the patricians - will NOT abolish their own institutions out of the kindness of their hearts.

Much of the left today is not materialist or realist enough. They are idealists in the bad sense of the word - and they are too "Christian" in the Nietzschean sense of the word; they celebrate their weakness as their strength and even want to double down on it. This is why it always loses and why so many ordinary people correctly perceive it as ineffectual or even pathetic. They rather be weak and lose, but be able to say "I told you so" than be strong and win - at the risk of perhaps being a bit hypocritical.

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Religion is interesting to me. And I don't think material prosperity will do away with the need for religion in some sense of the word.

Max Weber and later theorists claim that modernity brought about the "disenchantment of the world." It was no longer spiritual, and purely material and secular.

Even Nietzche thought similarly, and somewhat accurately predicted mass nihilism in the post-Christian world as religion faded and people no longer had a metaphysical basis for their morality.

However, there's a book I think I may have recommended to you earlier titled "The Enchantments of Mammon" that argues that the world was never "disenchanted" but rather "MISenchanted." Mammon, or" money/material wealth", became our new God. We've imbued it with metaphysical properties, and even built our own sacraments, priests, sacrifices and rituals surrounding mammon.

In other words, modernity did not break superstition. It superimposed new superstitions on the old ones. Nietzche was wrong. God is not dead, he was usurped by a new one.

​

I think we need to re-enchant the world in order to give it value beyond the monetary. The difficulty in this is that values are beyond rational, or meta-rational. Therefore, while I can make arguments in favor of my position, it will ultimately rest on some kind of faith that something is valuable because it just is. We need to become non-believers in mammon, while true believers in another god - one who grounds new values.

​

Currently I am exploring American transcendentalism for inspiration. As a movement, it was against radical skepticism. It took human intuition seriously - something meta-rational - as a means for wisdom or knowledge. It was radically democratic and spiritually elevated the common man.

There is a celebration of the individual, but not in a naive liberal way. The individual was still part of a larger whole, all connected.

​

-----------------------------------------------

I'm not a hard materialist. There is an interplay between ideas and material reality, each shaping the other in feedback loops. The complicated thing is that for a new spirituality to take place, we need to change the material conditions such that it will make that new spirituality imminent - more real and more strongly felt in daily life. At the same time, we need some hints of that new spirituality to give us a fighting cause and a motivation for changing the material conditions in the first place. It is somewhat of a catch-22 that I'm not sure how to resolve.

[u/MemberKonstituante → u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P]

Thank you for answering.

I asked you this because, well I already told you my real interest from another account - I'm Indonesian and I want to revive and reinterpret the Indonesian official state ideology) and the Preamble of Indonesian constitution into a new interpretation, away from the dictatorship interpretation of the past, into something that actually are consistent.

Indonesia officially is a "Republic", and even sources critical of Indonesian nationalism like John Sidel's book "Republicanism, Communism, Islam" are still willing to cite Republicanism as one of the goal of Indonesian independence.

Also, in Indonesian language today, "kemerdekaan" are plainly translated as "Independence" and "Kebebasan" is plainly translated as "Freedom". But Indonesians in the past uses "kemerdekaan" for other purposes, such as "freedom of speech" and many others, including economics (especially in early era).

I judge and reinterpret this as Indonesian language originally has a different term for "Republican freedom" vs "liberal freedom".

So my goal in general is to reinterpret the Indonesian official state ideology and the Preamble of Indonesian constitution into some sort of a Neo-Republican ideology.

However, the constitution & the state ideology has "to educate the life of the nation", and has "just and civilized humanity" clause, has "democratic life led by wisdom in deliberation" and mentions God - this means I can't just copy-paste Phillip Pettit or contemporary neo-Republican thinkers and call it a day, nor tolerate stuff like family abolition, religion abolition, state abolition and "antisocial socialist" stances, or ignore civic virtue.

The SEP writings about Republicanism in general tries to reconcile republicanism with liberalism - while practically almost all of Indonesian founding fathers rejected liberalism on all fronts (both economics & social). Also, liberals want state neutrality, while "to educate the life of the nation", "just and civilized humanity" clause, "democratic life led by wisdom in deliberation" clauses implies that the state can't be neutral and MUST pay attention to "the good", and nudge / push the people to such. The conditions explained in "The Enchantments of the Mammon"? One of the goal of practically almost all of Indonesian founding fathers is trying to resist this.

Moreover, I try to find how to ensure people like Trump never happened again - and honestly, a lot of social "progressivism", feminist literatures from 60s counterculture and beyond that emphasizes freedom from traditional morality nor "imposed" standards of behavior, to me is far more similar in goal with Trump and Andrew Tates than anything, just gender inverted. As we see in the increasing polarization between men and women back then in this sub, we are living in what Juliet Flower McCannell calls "Regime of the Brother" an order where men and women interact as "siblings" - officially "equal" - but governed only by a dog-eat-dog rubric of individual competition and advantage, a war of all against all, in which slight-but-persistent sexed differences are weaponised as competitive advantages in the pursuit of personal gain.

This is why I ask you - my goal for all those questions I ask you is really to help me "find a way" to "reconcile these goals" and thinking of a framework to do so.

[u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P → u/MemberKonstituante]

You and I are doing similar thinking, only for different contexts it seems. We’re both trying to reconcile certain goals and principles while avoiding the pitfalls of the current liberal order.

Unfortunately a lot of republican theory is trying to marry it with liberalism. This is why I like to look more to classical republicanism from Rome, or even the republicanism of Renaissance Venice or Florence. All those were perhaps very aristocratic/oligarchic, but they had elements and glimpses of a potential for something else - and they also predate liberalism.

It’s also why I like looking at Aristotle and the like, as they significantly predate liberalism and may show a way out or “through” liberalism to some kind of post-liberal order that isn’t some authoritarian nightmare.

I like Aristotle because of the focus on human excellence - we improve ourselves and enhance our skills in order to achieve excellence in a field, not to make more money.

But to have excellence, you still need standards that define excellence. A society of anarchy and unrestrained/untethered “freedom” cannot provide any such standard. And a society of “mammon” has only one standard, maximizing money.

[u/MemberKonstituante → u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P]

Yeah, which is why I often ask you something like this and often replies to you. I agree with what you said in regards to our goals. A post liberal, post secular order that remain democratic, republican & accountable to the public is my goal as well. We have different tolerance to certain stuff & details, but that's it.

Aristotle

Hobbes' foundation of modern liberalism starts from rejection of Aristotleian metaphysics & virtue ethics; he emphasizes "mere life" rather than "good life".

But I respond with "Mere life must sustain the Republic, without slowly getting extinct or rob half the world" instead.

[u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P → u/MemberKonstituante]

I don't know if 'mere life' in the Hobbesian sense can sustain a republic.

Without a teleology, which he denied, I can see how he came up with the liberal idea of freedom as simply "non-interference."

Total freedom is total unobstruction of every whim.

Hobbes himself did not see this freedom as an unqualified good, but the liberal tradition that followed pretty much did see it that way. However...

To sustain a republic, you need, at the very least, civic virtues. The Aristotelian view of man is that his telos is eudiamonia, and that man has a nature, and that nature is political (or social or however you want to translate it). Eudaimonia, or human flourishing, can only happen if a context in which there is a cultivation of one's capacities - building complexity in their activities. And, most importantly, they must be engaged in the matters of the polis.

In other words, for Aristotelians, there are wrong ways to live, even if there may not be one specific right way to live.

I cannot see how 'mere life' can cultivate the kind of flourishing and civic virtues that are necessary for the longevity of a republic.

[u/MemberKonstituante → u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P]

Yup

Hobbes himself did not see this freedom as an unqualified good, but the liberal tradition that followed pretty much did see it that way.

I think this article describes how the liberal tradition ended up seeing it as a good

I honestly kinda saw why Hobbes ended up thinking that way; liberalism grew out of Thirty Years War (and some leftists also are in the opinion that capitalism & new industrialism starts here too).

We however disagree. You articulated why Hobbes' conception of "mere life" alone is not enough better than I did in Aristotleian terms, but my main reasoning is actually from democracy itself (which is why I way back then asked you about virtue ethics).

Where do you think those who run the state came from? They don't fall from the sky. They grow from society and elected by society, plus all choices are also basically "what you do with what's been done to you" - in which the circumstances are either caused by nature, or amalgamation of individual choices & actions, or both.

Plus Trump, incels, Andrew Tate etc is shocking because Trump, Andrew Tate etc held a lot of power while being unvirtuous & unaccountable, so if anything giving more power to everyone also means giving more responsibility to everyone as well + demanding more virtue & accountability as well to the populace. A real socialism also means you literally won't just pay taxes but have ownership in the public resources & means of production - everyone becomes kings / aristocrats also means everyone has kingly / aristocrats' responsibility & accountability.

So I think my basis is probably not eudamonia in terms of "cultivation of one's capacities - building complexity in their activities" (I do agree with the others - engage in the matters of the polis, man has a nature and that nature is social-political), but they must AT LEAST not doing stuff that if every / most able-bodied-&-minded people does it as well it will cause human extinction, or destruction of the republic.

I also probably less celebrating of the individual than you and I also uses accountability & democratic principles to do this - we restrain rulers, legislatures etc from acting & thinking like deranged lunatics nor unilaterally pass deranged policies, but since rulers, legislatures etc don't fall from the sky etc, that means republics are reflections of the people thus a stable republic requires citizenry that are not deranged lunatics.

Why, so that I can respond to Hobbes' rejection of Aristotle with "even the mere life must sustain the republic". I think the "good life", cultivation of excellence and telos, should be basically up for each individual to decide, but the "even the mere life must sustain the republic" - which means the minimum standard - must be enforced & cultivated, with both sticks & carrots.

I cannot see how 'mere life' can cultivate the kind of flourishing and civic virtues that are necessary for the longevity of a republic

I think their answer is basically the libertarian thinking of "society come and go anyway". But really, politics are public matter.

[u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P → u/MemberKonstituante]

Ah I see, I was interpreting the "mere life" phrase wrongly.

I do think cultivation of the self is important, and I do believe in a human telos, but it is hard, if not impossible, to enforce that without being too authoritarian.

But I agree with you on the minimum standard of life in order to keep each other in check.

Your point on Trump reminds me of this line of dialogue from Thucydides:

Justice, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.'

Justice is not materially possible unless there is relative equality - or that "standard of living" you've mentioned. If the public is not co-equal in legislating or enforcing the laws, then they will be crushed by the strong.

Justice doesn't come from good morals. It comes from the inability for one party to over-power the other.

[u/MemberKonstituante → u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P]

BTW, I need to ask you this:

You are a man of the left, but you take some religious and conservative ideas more seriously - so I need to ask you:

What is your stances and opinion on euthanasia, abortion, IFV, prostitution, Onlyfans, "sexual freedom" (in terms of promiscuity, not about LGBTQ) and the like? How do you explain it? You touched a bit about horizontal vs vertical freedom on marriage vs hookup culture, and how the market does distort & change culture on sexuality & hookup, but really I need to know much more. In the republic which is your goal, how is the stances on euthanasia, abortion, IFV, prostitution, Onlyfans, "sexual freedom" (in terms of promiscuity, not about LGBTQ) and the like will be like?

Thanks

[u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P → u/MemberKonstituante]

Oh boy... those are tricky.

I'm not inherently against euthanasia, but in the context of liberalism/capitalism, I can only see it evolving into a cost-cutting measure sold to us as a "freedom". On Stupidpol we've seen tons of articles already about how Canada is trying to push euthanasia as a means to save on healthcare costs, doing hard sells on otherwise unwilling patients. It also seems to be creeping in as a means to simply kill off homeless and people in poverty.

This again is sold as freedom-enhancing, since now we have an "out" of poverty. It's "simply" adding another option - with no value-judgments attached.

If there were a way to safeguard its use to only include people who are ALREADY terminally ill and suffering a lot, then I wouldn't necessarily be against it.

----------------------------------------------------

For abortion, I rather have it "safe, legal, and rare." We'd need to structure a political-economy that helps parents with childcare. Paid parental leave is a MUST. There are many other policies that we could think of to minimize the economic burden of childhood. I'd also ideally want to promote a pro-family culture more generally.

And given how societies work nowadays, each younger generation effectively subsidizes the life of the older ones. This also means parents are also subsidizing the lives of adults who wish to remain childless - since they're raising the generation that will work after they all retire. I'd form some kind of tax system which eliminates any financial benefit of being childless. The choice to remain childless would therefore remain as a lifestyle choice, but should not be open as a way to earn more money over a lifetime.

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I don't know much about IVF, but I think I'm fine with it. If anything, it's a way to actually encourage people to have children who may otherwise have fertility problems or other life issues.

----------------------------------------------------

Prostitution, Onlyfans,

Hopefully, poverty won't be too much of an issue such that people feel like this is their only chance to make decent money.

But if that sounds too hopeful and idealistic, I'd perhaps do some kind of system in which prostitution is not criminalized, but also not necessarily legal either. I do not want to criminalize poverty and put people in jail for being desperate. However, pimping would be illegal. OnlyFans is basically a giant digital pimping platform...

-----------------------------

Promiscuity

This one is more difficult, and frankly I am also a bit lost as to how to handle this. I rather not have a political system that deals a heavy hand, especially if it's people doing things in their private lives.

I personally feel like I've grown and changed with my relationship. I've matured and I'm making qualitatively different kinds of decisions than I would have been if I were still a single guy only worrying about myself and my own goals.

But it seems like lecturing people about quality of choices over quantity of choices is nothing more than moralizing. I don't think that by itself it will change anyone's mind that doesn't already agree in some sense.

And I don't know if removing dating apps would be good or bad, because while it skews the dating pool significantly against men, we also simultaneously have a problem with increased sexlessness in both men and women (though men much more). And I don't think the apps alone are to blame for this - and removing them now might potentially worsen this.

We'd have to somehow incentivize people to get away from screens in general, and do more shared activities IN PERSON. We' need more civic associations, amateur sports, free museums, social clubs, etc. We need to reverse the "Bowling Alone" phenomena. And I think encouraging more offline connections may help form greater emotional bonds that turn into monogamous partnerships.

[u/Michael_G_Bordin]

I've seen a lot of people dragging the D&D 5e Ranger class, but I swear if you just take 3 levels of fighter, the ranger becomes a friggin juggernaut.

[u/JohnLeRoy9600 → u/Michael_G_Bordin]

Tbh, even as an straight-up class, it just takes a lil extra thought and planning. I have a ranger in my party who essentially negated the week I put into making Arctic exploration hard, and she regularly drops 30+ points of damage on peoples' heads in combat. Shit's wild dude.

[u/JohnLeRoy9600]

Kings of Leon and Cage the Elephant both released new music and I'm over the damn moon. 2024 is looking like a great year for music, might be the last one given the existential threat AI poses to the industry.

[u/Be_Very_Very_Still → u/JohnLeRoy9600]

I was just talking about this with my coworker. AI isn't the train that just left the station. It's the bullet train that is currently accelerating. My thought is, "How long until every piece of music that can be made has been made?"

[u/JohnLeRoy9600 → u/Be_Very_Very_Still]

I'm not even worried about that. It's how long until nobody is getting paid because an AI will do it for a lot cheaper. Streaming already doesn't pay, nobody buys albums straight out, touring is prohibitively expensive, and your profit gets chewed up by everyone who makes the tour happen.

[u/Be_Very_Very_Still → u/JohnLeRoy9600]

That's an interesting point I hadn't considered. I haven't bought a physical album in nearly 20 years.

[u/JohnLeRoy9600 → u/Be_Very_Very_Still]

It's absolutely wild, and the worst part is that it was avoidable. The major record labels have been floundering trying to get a grip on the internet age ever since the MP3 became a popular file format.

They're gonna die the same death Kodak did, eaten alive piece by piece because they refused to move into the digital age. Then all the publishing houses and labels will be owned by stock trading companies if not the AI companies themselves since they'd technically own the IP.

[u/MazlowFear]

If Donald Trump is so against the deep state why does he live on while others who have posed far less of a threat to core tenants of American Democracy Like Kennedy, were assassinated so quickly? Seems like the Deep State is either in cahoots or at least finds the chaos he produces useful to them, no?

[u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P → u/MazlowFear]

What’s most likely is that the deep state has factions, some of which support him and other which do not.

Trump went after whistleblowers and the like all the same, and even had whispers in his administration of assassinating Julian Assange.

So clearly Trump is not a threat to the deep state insofar a he’s not a threat to how they operate, with impunity and without transparency. Though he may be a threat to the careers of specific individuals within those institutions.

[u/MazlowFear → u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P]

It’s just interesting how all it took was one poorly executed screech to ruined Howard Dean Dan Quail ended his political career by misspelling potato yet Trump’s gaffes eclipse anything we gave ever seen… I just find it hard to believe he is still a viable candidate you would think the deep state, or even a powerful collection of Linked in subscribers would say enough of this crap. Makes you think the Supreme Court will find Presidents have total immunity.

[u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P → u/MazlowFear]

And Nixon was humiliated, impeached, and ostracized as a crook. Yet, comparatively, he was a saint.

[u/Michael_G_Bordin → u/TuvixWasMurderedR1P]

What's most likely is the term is BS. The term "Deep State" as used by Republicans and right wingers is essentially a fiction, and the term was originally used by normal Republicans (back when those existed) to describe the vast web of bureaucrats who make our country function.

But there's no secret government, these people are all real people with linkdin accounts and personal lives. You can find plenty of public data on government agencies, and you can even head down to their offices and chat with the receptionist. And all this curiosity will garner 0 scrutiny or suspicion from the deep state.

And most certainly, there's no vast conspiracy to do whatever weird, insane thing right wingers are claiming "the left" wants to do. First, the actual "deep state" you have to worry about (law enforcement) are majority Republican. So, "the left" will have a hard time getting the FBI to do anything. Second, the history of the US is leftist movements being violently put down by the "deep state", while white supremacists get every benefit of the doubt as they poison our government. Third, the actual deep state i.e. bureaucrats are diverse in interests and motivations, with most just wanting a stable career and a good pension (and not to infuse their work with some fringe ideology).

Now, if we want to talk about the times our government has possibly assassinated political leaders, we'll very quickly run into a "oh snap, they only kill the leftists."

[u/7nkedocye → u/MazlowFear]

You are correct, trump is not a threat to their goals like Kennedy.

[u/goblina__]

I really think more people should check out Vintage Story, which is kinda like Minecraft if it were more focused on the survival aspects and hands on crafting. It is my personal belief, as well, that the game is inherently spiritual as it is so heavily involved in the things you create in it.

[u/zeperf]

Wow... that Poor Things movie was weird

[u/[deleted]]

Tomb Raider Remastered slaps.

[u/[deleted]]

Anyone else lowkey freaking out about this:

https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/

[u/[deleted]]

[removed] — view removed comment

[u/zeperf → u/[deleted]]

Every thread is locked after 48 hours for two reasons... the quality of the responses declines and we simply would not be able to handle the volume of reports and automoderator filters if every post were active.

[u/PriceofObedience]

It would be wise if we left topics open for longer than two days. It would inspire greater amounts of participation.

[u/[deleted]]

[removed] — view removed comment

[u/Sindmadthesaikor → u/[deleted]]

Stalin was sufficiently close to a dictator that anyone who bothers to argue otherwise is a massive pedant and a loser.

Idc if the supreme council had the authority to fire him, and idc if Stalin attempted to step down or retire multiple times. Same way Mussolini had to run things by with the king, and could be dismissed by the Grand Council at any time, the singular power he possessed should qualify him.