Walter Water-Walker
Human psychology suggests that major life changes require a lot of time to process the internalization we have while going through them. We have to unpack things and question our own assumptions and be honest with ourselves on things we thought we’d never have to be honest with ourselves about.
I think that most people becoming socialists are coming from the toxic ideology of liberalism. Liberalism is a mental cage, designed to keep people captive in the predominant mode, all while thinking they’re actually free! When becoming a socialist, it’s a real struggled to free oneself from the shackles of liberal thought. It’s really, really tough. And it takes a lot of time, just like any change.
During a transition period from liberalism to socialism (technically, Marxism), people go through large periods of doubt and frustration and pessimism. But don’t let that get you off track. It’s natural and normal. You’re just starting to see the world for what it is, rather than what the powerful want you to believe it is. And the world is confusing and wild and lots of ugly. So it’s alarming.
Keep the course. Stay steady on. You’ll get out of the murky waters eventually. Once you can use material dialectics to analyze news and current events and history and movies and … then you’ll start realizing that the world was always this way and there’s no real sense in getting down about it. Live your life, do your part and push things a little further along.
None of the timings of things are up to us. It’s only on us to be ready for when the moment’s right. And to be humble enough to also be ready for that moment to be after we’re gone. Regardless of the circumstances, a socialist’s job is always the same: educate, agitate and organize.
Why not ask the Chinese government?
To be clear, capital - the value produced from society that is cycled back into society to develop further surplus - isn’t the problem, it’s capital within capitalism. Capital doesn’t have the “insatiable appetite” but rather capitalists, who control most of the capital, do. How we handle capital is a large part of what defines the system.
It also depends on what “two state solution” actually means. Traditionally, Israel has made such solutions impossible. The “you go your way, we’ll go ours” has been off the table because Israel doesn’t want that, they want the entire land and the expulsion of Palestine entirely.
A two-state solution, where there’s a kind of federation between them might actually work. The federation would have to abide by international committees and violations by either state would be subject to some kind of punishment (be it trade deals or even military action in severe cases).
The first problem, though, is the weapons supply and military training from the West. If that were cut off, it would take maybe a year of bloody gorilla fighting, but the playing field would be relatively equal at that point and then it’d be anybody’s guess who’d win out. Getting the USA to slowly wean away support would mean negotiating partially on their terms.
In other words, Xi could just be giving the USA a peaceful “out” here, if they take it. The USA can save face and support a ramp down of the situation instead of escalation. I don’t see that happening near-term, but lots can change in the next few years and this play by China might just be the thing that allows a better situation to happen here.
Don’t assume the readers/hearers of the propaganda all believe it. The military must maintain recruitment numbers and they’ll spend a lot of money to do so. So we’ll hear a lot about how great they are. The DOD even spends a lot of time and money providing props and such for Hollywood movies. They even help edit the scripts to ensure the US military isn’t put in a bad light.
It’s not that the brainrot runs deep. It’s more that the propaganda does. Don’t blame the people for the stuff they didn’t consent to.
A rehash of “the devil made me do it” trope.
However, we must remember these people are people
Correction: these people are proletariat. We have the same enemy. Mostly, the only difference between us and them is that we’re a little better at identifying the enemy than they are.