Lmfao pragmatism is when you continue doing the thing that every generation leading to this point has done to either stalled or negative progress, and shit on your fellow classmen for not doing it as hard as you. Real winning strategy, you are definitely a qualified arbiter of who is “up for real change” and not. Abandon all substantive arguments, cast aside that stinky old historical materialism. internetcitizen2 is here to tell us what’s what! Thank heavens!

Sorry that happened I guess? Don’t really know what it has to do with me or anything I said.

do you have anything of substance to add?

If those “other factors” were legitimate why would china be investing anything into infrastructure? If they could simply unilaterally repress discontent, why would they invest so heavily in the experience of their working class? Doesn’t that imply a huge impossible level of benevolence, in your version of events, to do these things with absolutely no mechanism for the people to enforce it?

So you recognize that our voting system features heavy disenfranchisement, but you use that as a reason for why it works?

The lesson here isn’t that voting alone is all that significant; it’s that the bourgeois will claw away even the most insignificant crumb they can get, and that’s precisely why democracy does not work under capitalism. The difference in that distinction is that; rather than fighting many small one-step-behind fights in the name of voting, in hopes we get to vote for some of the change that our people need 10 years down the road; we organize and build our capacity to directly fight the big fight for our people.

This is one of the many contradictions of capitalism; democracy is how the system maintains its legitimacy, but democracy itself is a threat to capital interests. Too much and too little democracy are both against ruling class interests. Too much, and the working class can influence politics in a way that threatens the ruling class and their power. Too little, and the system loses legitimacy, opening itself to the possibility of revolt.

The ruling class maintains the balance by minimizing the possibility of a coordinated working-class resistance; guaranteeing only the minimum amount of democracy, only for as long as they recognize the working class’s ability to organize and overthrow them. Making a show of what little faux democracy we have is a tactic to that end; the carrot hanging from the stick. It sows division, keeps us occupied, keeps our attention in one predictable place, and attempts to convince us of the system’s legitimacy; all of these being obstacles in organizing an effective resistance against the guy holding the stick.

No it’s definitely the latter

But also, since you’ve been so pleasant and asked so nicely,

A single molecule of water is not wet but as soon as more than one molecule is present the water is then wet. If there are a substantial number of molecules, then you have the substances that we know as water and ice.

The molecules themselves also are not solid or liquid, that has to do with the behavior of the molecules in dimensional space. At the level of everyday language, we are talking about substances, and generally when we refer to water we are talking about it as a liquid substance.

Most liquid substances you could easily mix with water are themselves water-based and therefore would be totally dried up into a powder or perhaps a jelly without their water content. To add water is to make them wet, and then they exist as a wet incorporated substance. In fact, they could not dry up if they were not wet in the first place; to become dry is to transition away from the state of being wet.

You know what else dries up? Water.

I stand by what I said? Just letting you know that I did so in a playful manner. Go troll somewhere else pls thx.

lmfao if you took this seriously I’m sorry for you but also gfy

I think this is why certain games very much overwhelm and overstimulate me. Luckily it’s a time sink that I don’t really need to have in my life anyways, beyond random occasions when I find something that pulls me in.

You don’t “know” shit, you just made that up to feel smart. Water as a substance is fucking wet, and before you challenge me you should know that we both have the same disorder.

Yeah that tracks

The people who stand to lose the most in a situation will always act with the highest clarity and urgency. It’s true in general that we must save ourselves and can’t expect the ruling classes of other nations to step in to stop even the highest crime against humanity.

At the end of the day, the global ruling class is self-interested and only acts against that when there comes to be very few alternatives. That said, the discontent around the world is growing and it’s only a matter of time until it reaches a tipping point.

As for the non-west, nobody wants to start a war or draw the ire of the west without having much capacity to change what is happening. That’s my speculative opinion, at least. At this point I’d ask someone more knowledgeable on global politics to chime in.

no more fake than October 7th

wow, what a great time to bring this article up https://electronicintifada.net/content/how-israel-killed-hundreds-its-own-people-7-october/49216

The war machine generates power and wealth by wreaking devastation onto far away lands, then uses that power and wealth to create more war. Netanyahu is and has always been powerless without the international community enabling him. Israel and its colonial project are wholly western inventions. The western nations backing Israel wouldn’t suddenly shut it down now that it is executing its intended purpose while also absorbing most if not all of the generated backlash. Not without major resistance.

It’s a touchy subject. Pretty understandably, I might add.

I don’t think nukes (re: literally triggering armageddon) would ever seriously be on the table so I don’t really care to argue that point either way. It’s satire, I took it as hyperbole.

tbh I was really only going off the down votes

but also, uno reverse! I was also being unserious!

It’s not about “taking the assholes out”. It’s about showing the Israeli government officials, and the constituents who are actually able to pressure those officials and exert collective power, that you can’t just indiscriminately murder people without inciting the exact same violence onto your own people. As long as bombs are falling, why should they be contained to the side that is completely powerless to stop them?

You can’t just suggest kim jong un is tying people to rockets and launching them into oceans like a cartoon villain and expect to be taken seriously