So they are literally forced labour camps? How can anyone in the US still complain about Russia? (Just as a disclaimer, this is not a defence of Russia. I think the conditions there are terrible, but the US doesn’t seem far behind, if at all)
The US has way better propaganda - the marketing strategies invented in the 60s by the nephew of Freud were put to very good use at bypassing people’s reasoning and not just at making them feel needs, fears, and short-term endorphine jolts related to products and services being sold.
Also the US has way better circus and more bread than Russia.
Cuz different rule sets apply to different parts of the world. That and the clever naming scheme the US usually applies to make things sound not as bad or marginably better than they actually are.
Of course i read the thread - you have to be aware of how absurd that question is from the outset. And no, they didn’t support anyone claiming this is not the fault of capitalism.
It’s definitely going to be the far right who will throw people into camps if we get there. The most far left politicians in the US rarely if ever advocate targeting individual right wingers, but I can name a few far right politicians with substantial followings that suggested punishing people who disagree with them. I don’t have a lot of love for democratic politicians in the US but they don’t seem like a possible near term threat to people’s safety, they just won’t stand in the way of the people who are.
“Most far left politicians”? We don’t have any real far left politicians. All we have are lefty wannbes who just care about furthering their careers within the Democratic party.
We need a third party and we need it now. A party that holds true leftist values and not what the democrats claim to support. We have had enough lip service by the so called leftists in the Democratic party.
I think we’ve seen how far the Democrats will go down the authoritarianism path during the lockdowns, which was horrific and corrupt, but you’re right, it’s not nearly as bad as what the stupid fucking Republicans will do if they get their way next year.
How far did they even go? Forcing people to stay home and wear masks during a pandemic is not the same as saying you want to exile leftists(which FYI trump did say). They are not equivalent and being unaware of that is dangerous.
They forced people to accept vaccines they didn’t want under pain of losing their jobs.
Which is inherently destructive and abusive to the working class.
Actually shit like that is what empowered dipshits like DeSantis and Abbott, and why Florida and Texas are so especially hard-nosed against the Democrats and left-wing culture in general.
The left doesn’t want to admit that what they did was wrong, which will keep them from being able to win over enough moderates to stop the right, so I suspect the right will ultimately win and impose their horrific flavor of authoritarianism on the rest of us.
The LGBTQ+ community, women and minorities will suffer the most. Especially the kids. They’re the ones I feel the worst for.
Also, let me be clear that I am not drawing any kind of equivalency; actually my point is that Democrats at their worst (which we saw the past few years) is not as bad as the Republicans at their worst is going to be, and it’s partly Democrats’ fault for empowering the hard right by giving them something legitimate to oppose.
While there were issues with the way things were done with vaccination, you have to understand why it even got there. We had a situation where people were unreasonably made scared of vaccines which were by every metric substantially safer for the general population than the side effects. If right wingers convinced the population that they should do 150mph in a school zone and this is fine behavior because speed limits are a conspiracy and crashing into someone else doesn’t actually hurt them, how would you deal with this? I don’t think there are any good answers here, but the vaccines were better than not, and you need herd immunity for things to get better. And again, forcing people who can get vaccinated to get vaccinated, with overwhelming evidence that this was safer for everyone involved, is not the same as exile or imprisonment based on political beliefs.
Where he crossed the line was in helping Chelsea Manning to bypass security mechanisms to get access to documents she would not have otherwise had access to. Otherwise, you would have had a situation much like The New York Times and the Pentagon Papers where the US government was constrained by the First Amendment.
IIRC, unless you’re lucky enough to have someone outside of jail putting money into your commissary, you kind of have to if you want half decent living conditions.
Want more shampoo or feminine hygiene products? You have to buy them. Want more food than you were alotted? You have to buy it. It even includes things like toothpaste.
Y’all are making some weird arguments based on not much.
Let’s have a look at TB as a marker for prison population health. It will exist for a long time without killing someone and will spread quickly in poor conditions.
Prison colonies in Russia are indeed worse than in USA. People die from sickness and malnutrition there who’d come there healthy. And, of course, because of beatings with broken bones etc which somehow nobody knows about until the prisoner dies.
Things like rape and unofficial hierarchy seem to exist in US prisons too, but in general seems just uncomparable.
Source is living in Russia for 27 years and talking to people, also reading stuff from various leaks etc. And obviously mass media. If you are asking about Russia.
If you are asking about USA, then my only sources are mass media and Reddit.
So they are literally forced labour camps? How can anyone in the US still complain about Russia? (Just as a disclaimer, this is not a defence of Russia. I think the conditions there are terrible, but the US doesn’t seem far behind, if at all)
The US has way better propaganda - the marketing strategies invented in the 60s by the nephew of Freud were put to very good use at bypassing people’s reasoning and not just at making them feel needs, fears, and short-term endorphine jolts related to products and services being sold.
Also the US has way better circus and more bread than Russia.
Cuz different rule sets apply to different parts of the world. That and the clever naming scheme the US usually applies to make things sound not as bad or marginably better than they actually are.
And it seems to have worked on you too since you agreed above that it actually has nothing to do with capitalism.
I never said it has anything to do with capitalism.
Did you reply to the wrong person? The person you replied to didn’t mention capitalism.
Did you actually read the thread? Because they supported a reply that did earlier.
Of course i read the thread - you have to be aware of how absurd that question is from the outset. And no, they didn’t support anyone claiming this is not the fault of capitalism.
The naming schemes he’s talking about are taken from marketing.
Russia’s actively committing genocide and threatens nuclear war against anyone who directly intervenes, so there’s that.
I agree with you though. The U.S. is just a third world country with a nice coat of paint at this point.
And in Russia, they toss people in prison for disagreeing with the state, so there’s that.
They’re gonna start doing that here soon, when either one camp or another takes control of state or federal governments.
Fucking Florida bans books now. 🤦
It’s definitely going to be the far right who will throw people into camps if we get there. The most far left politicians in the US rarely if ever advocate targeting individual right wingers, but I can name a few far right politicians with substantial followings that suggested punishing people who disagree with them. I don’t have a lot of love for democratic politicians in the US but they don’t seem like a possible near term threat to people’s safety, they just won’t stand in the way of the people who are.
“Most far left politicians”? We don’t have any real far left politicians. All we have are lefty wannbes who just care about furthering their careers within the Democratic party. We need a third party and we need it now. A party that holds true leftist values and not what the democrats claim to support. We have had enough lip service by the so called leftists in the Democratic party.
I think we’ve seen how far the Democrats will go down the authoritarianism path during the lockdowns, which was horrific and corrupt, but you’re right, it’s not nearly as bad as what the stupid fucking Republicans will do if they get their way next year.
How far did they even go? Forcing people to stay home and wear masks during a pandemic is not the same as saying you want to exile leftists(which FYI trump did say). They are not equivalent and being unaware of that is dangerous.
They forced people to accept vaccines they didn’t want under pain of losing their jobs.
Which is inherently destructive and abusive to the working class.
Actually shit like that is what empowered dipshits like DeSantis and Abbott, and why Florida and Texas are so especially hard-nosed against the Democrats and left-wing culture in general.
The left doesn’t want to admit that what they did was wrong, which will keep them from being able to win over enough moderates to stop the right, so I suspect the right will ultimately win and impose their horrific flavor of authoritarianism on the rest of us.
The LGBTQ+ community, women and minorities will suffer the most. Especially the kids. They’re the ones I feel the worst for.
Also, let me be clear that I am not drawing any kind of equivalency; actually my point is that Democrats at their worst (which we saw the past few years) is not as bad as the Republicans at their worst is going to be, and it’s partly Democrats’ fault for empowering the hard right by giving them something legitimate to oppose.
While there were issues with the way things were done with vaccination, you have to understand why it even got there. We had a situation where people were unreasonably made scared of vaccines which were by every metric substantially safer for the general population than the side effects. If right wingers convinced the population that they should do 150mph in a school zone and this is fine behavior because speed limits are a conspiracy and crashing into someone else doesn’t actually hurt them, how would you deal with this? I don’t think there are any good answers here, but the vaccines were better than not, and you need herd immunity for things to get better. And again, forcing people who can get vaccinated to get vaccinated, with overwhelming evidence that this was safer for everyone involved, is not the same as exile or imprisonment based on political beliefs.
Assange?
Criticize the US all you want, but he didn’t get targeted for disagreeing with the state.
He published evidence of US war crimes and is being persecuted for it. How is that not disagreeing with the state?
Where he crossed the line was in helping Chelsea Manning to bypass security mechanisms to get access to documents she would not have otherwise had access to. Otherwise, you would have had a situation much like The New York Times and the Pentagon Papers where the US government was constrained by the First Amendment.
Russia is a terrible place as is, but the US is too.
Regarding the 3rd world country: That is totally true.
IIRC, unless you’re lucky enough to have someone outside of jail putting money into your commissary, you kind of have to if you want half decent living conditions.
Want more shampoo or feminine hygiene products? You have to buy them. Want more food than you were alotted? You have to buy it. It even includes things like toothpaste.
It’s so horrifically abusable too. You can easily lose the “privilege” of slave labor just because someone felt like it or didn’t like your face.
Y’all are making some weird arguments based on not much.
Let’s have a look at TB as a marker for prison population health. It will exist for a long time without killing someone and will spread quickly in poor conditions.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(21)00049-9/fulltext
Now I accept the argument on relative abundance of TB and would welcome an alternative marker.
Prison colonies in Russia are indeed worse than in USA. People die from sickness and malnutrition there who’d come there healthy. And, of course, because of beatings with broken bones etc which somehow nobody knows about until the prisoner dies.
Things like rape and unofficial hierarchy seem to exist in US prisons too, but in general seems just uncomparable.
But people die due to e.g. bad ventilation, missing cooling and failing disease control in the US too.
Just have a look at how great the US prison systems have handled Covid.
The mortality in US prisons is ~40% than in the general population, and that is not counting 2020, where it was ~60% higher.
I’m not arguing it’s bad, but really still not Russian levels.
Source? Is it Hollywood movies?
Source is living in Russia for 27 years and talking to people, also reading stuff from various leaks etc. And obviously mass media. If you are asking about Russia.
If you are asking about USA, then my only sources are mass media and Reddit.
Fair enough, I believe you.
The difference is, it’s often a news story when it happens in the US.
In Russia, it’s a Tuesday.