FrogFractions [he/him, comrade/them]

Comrade War Thunder is a valued ally in the struggle against imperialism

No that’s some kind of internalized orientalism. When you say you’re Chinese do you perhaps mean an ethnically Chinese person from Taiwan?

When I say China is Democratic I am referring to

• their elections are not corrupt and reflect the votes of the communities
• their elected officials have a high rate of turnover when compared to the west demonstrating the people are choosing and importantly changing their minds about who they want in power. Compare to the US where 90% of elections are not competitive and so it’s the political patronage network of the Dems or GOP that decide 90% of elections, before we even discuss how meaningful a choice the 2-party system offers
• fully a third of elected officials are independents, and the faction system within the CPC plays the same function as party politics within the west
• the faction system within the CPC is actually more diverse than the party system in the west with factions ranging from die hard Maoists to neoliberals, so to say it’s a one-party state is superficial since factions play the same function within the CPC and to say the 2-party system of almost all of the west presents political diversity is laughable since in the west the political spectrum is one neoliberal party that is homophobic and another neoliberal party that isn’t homophobic; this accurately paints the picture of political diversity in the west which is fucking nothing compared to the diversity of political voices in China
• their elected officials are mostly not lifelong politicians such as in the west meaning in the west we really have a permanent oligarchy (such as Biden who has been part of the ruling oligarchy long enough that he voted against desegregation) whereas in China they elect people who are from the people
• that is to say, Chinese democracy is mostly of the people with some who then climb higher whereas western democracy is a set of lifelong permanent appointments and a remarkably high proportion of them are the children of lifelong politicians
• Chinese democracy is mostly devolved and local, eg city and provincial politics are what matters most, whereas western democracy is mostly centralized
• Chinese people report in poll after poll they see that their government is responsive to their will whereas westerners report the opposite
• Chinese people report a very high level of confidence in the integrity of their democratic processes and representatives when westerners report the opposite

When I say China is a democracy I mean it in the full sense of it, not some orientalized “China is very very mysterious and sinister” sense of it.

It’s not a perfect democracy at all and I won’t make that claim but it’s a very good one and it far outstrips the west in terms of being actually representative of the people in terms of voting patterns resulting in changes of public policy and in terms of diversity of political voices and in terms of actual integrity.

Not some orientalized “benevolent dictator” bullshit but that the people ELECT their leaders for the local politics that matter most and then those local politics elect the national body leading to a system of politics that represents the will of the people based on their right to vote.

Democracy.

It’s not the 1960s anymore. Chinese democracy is more representative, responsive, and more power is locally devolved to communities than in the USA or any large western democracy.

I wouldn’t even call the USA a democracy anymore due to how gamed it is. I definitely would call China a democracy.

To add to the irony, Canada is actually the global center of the illegal organ trade.

It’s mostly Indians selling their organs to rich westerners in Canada so of course the narrative the west perpetuates is exactly the opposite of reality.

How can the Waffen SS be antisemitic when Zelenskyy applauded them?

Literally just “but what if he wasn’t a Nazi?”

Did you protest arming Nazi militias like Azov that posted videos of themselves crucifying people and burning them alive or giving them electric shocks while making them dig a grave?

Any civilization advanced enough to travel the cosmos must surely be communist so I’m rooting for the aliens

The peak of the internet was Friendster, Geocities, MySpace, and the chat with a random stranger button on ICQ

We all acknowledge what the CIA did exactly 25 years ago was bad.

But thank god the force of freedom and democracy put a stop to that 25 years ago.

Modern activities are classified for 25 years but you can trust us we stopped doing that stuff 25 years ago.

I’m a 20 year programming veteran and let me assure you that NOT ONCE has my work experience been verified.

Just lie. Fuck it.

As we mark the 50th anniversary of the horrific coup in Chile, we must make clear that we regret our involvement and commit to supporting Chilean democracy

Apologize for the coup in Pakistan last week or fuck off

I bought a monkey and the pros told me I had to put my monkey on a usb stick to make it safe but I didn’t know how to do that so I just saved my money to my computer and turned my computer off but then I needed to keep using my computer for things I was really worried whenever I visited a website that the website would steal my monkey.

how USSR despite its flaws did and exponentially better job at elevating the lives of the common person even while defeating a Nazi horde

I’m a western cracker but this is such a major thing for me.

All the accusations of corruption and self-interest etc are so obviously false. It’s so clear that the communists, or at least the revolutionary generation of Lenin and Stalin, and Che and Fidel, they truly believed in what they were doing.

Yes they cracked some skulls. They were ruthless and as philosophers they explained why they needed to be ruthless.

But they were not corrupt. They absolutely weren’t. They believed in communism and they were seeking to build it. They believed in equality, evidenced by the more equal society they created. They believed in anti-imperialism, evidenced by the personal sacrifices they made to fight it.

They were not corrupt.

Compare to someone like Churchill or Roosevelt or Truman. What were they fighting for? They were wealthy patricians fighting to maintain and build empires.

I want to stand with the communists. They’re more noble than the patricians.

I am a history nerd tragic and as a teen I couldn’t stop reading pop-history which was mostly chauvinist and ideologically pro-western / anti-communist.

Then I gradually progressed into more academic works which is when I discovered - to my genuine shock - how dramatically incorrect the popular account of history is and how much ideology shapes it.

Discovering that the popular western account of the eastern front was written by Nazi generals was an actual shock to me, and then reading David Glantz made me realize how skewed our account of history is in the west.

That opened my eyes wide open and I started reassessing everything from a perspective of “ok, what really happened?”

NFTs are a great technology with enormous promise. Once we find a way to stop people being able to right click then it’s to the fucking moon.

It’s been in full swing since Thatcher.

Don’t be smug about it though. Cooking might seem like an innate ability if you were raised with it but intergenerational poverty is associated with a lack of education about things like this and also a lack of access to quality food.

If you’re time poor from working shifts or multiple jobs

If due to social class or race or intergenerational poverty you lacked an education about food

If contemporary race and social class segregation means you live in a “food desert” that simply doesn’t sell fresh produce

Have empathy. Obviously this person is suffering and needs help.

The US military kicks a ball over the fence into the neighbors yard and comes up with a series of increasingly elaborate schemes to get it back.

Gorbachev “admitted” to it but this admission wasn’t based on archival records. Rather the evidence the admission was based on was of an “indirect” nature.

Gorbachev might have believed it to be true or maybe it was a political decision to demonstrate a clear break with the former USSR and a politically opportune gesture of goodwill to a neighboring country that was going through a nationalist moment of anti-soviet sentiment.

Whatever his motivation, he wasn’t speaking from personal knowledge or even archival records but from “indirect” evidence that he professed to believe.