Doubledee [comrade/them]

Whenever I find out about the next movie Disney is doing it feels like they’re just dabbing on their fans. I quit following this shit years ago and have adblocked my life pretty thoroughly so I don’t usually know what’s going on, but every time I get a glimpse I feel vindicated for checking out.

I thought the Poppy War was pretty bad. Killed my motivation to read anything else from her.

oil prices are high because that’s what putin can use as leverage against the developed world after his failed annexation of Ukraine and it’s clear he’d rather die than accept Ukraine is an independent country.

… is this “Putin” in the room with us right now?

I like to think about the historical perspective. It’s not much consolation but systems like these can’t maintain themselves forever, cracks are showing and the US really is more vulnerable than people would like to admit.

Once things start changing there will likely be a lot of problems, things will probably get worse in some ways, but I think even if I don’t survive to see what people come up with in the aftermath of the US I can get satisfaction from seeing it burn.

When you read history you learn humans are very resilient, humans will not end when the empire does. Maybe the failure of this place will be good for the world.

I think there was a culture shock when federation first hit. We had a ton of ‘engagement’ from people who were using ableist, racist, and transphobic slurs, which brought out strong reactions from our community because we believe its important to shut that stuff down on solidarity with our comrades. And as things got heated I think our willingness to believe people wanted good faith debate eroded.

We do love a good dunking though, and I think overall the community has a lower threshold for going full pig poop balls on people than I would prefer.

Then why do it? You’re the only one in this whole thread with any issue, unless you can point to someone else who has had it. The most desperate form of deflection was using upvotes/downvotes as a point like populists always do.

But they aren’t the only person here with an issue. My comment wasn’t as confrontational but I also clearly raised a red flag at the question being asked and the reasons people start asking these kinds of questions. I also see what you’re doing. I just don’t want to spend the next week doing this thing you’re calling a debate.

Because the two things aren’t actually the same and because of what it means in context to oppose a culture vs. a cult. You might oppose scientology in a variety of ways, they have a leader, buildings, staff, bank accounts, a documented history of infiltrating the government and harassing people, a curated list of members etc.

A cult may or may not have all of those but they’re a different kind of thing than a culture. Cultures are social categories that encompass a much wider range of human behaviors for one, they include things like sport and art and language. Festivals and practices and food and manners. They’re things a human can’t really help having even if you can choose to adopt parts and change others. Religion, which is a thing you seem to be conflating with culture, is just a part of culture. Egyptian Copts have Christianity like many Americans. They are also very different culturally.

But the bigger reason people should be very careful when people start criticizing culture is because we know what that means. What does one do about “cultural Bolshevism?”

What do conservatives actually want done about “Black culture?” What did bringing “culture” to the “savages” mean? How does someone stop being from a culture?

We know how those questions get answered. And that tells us something about why those questions might be asked in the first place.

What the fuck even is this question? Is it a joke I don’t understand?

Look further up this comment chain. Momo said something I won’t repeat that your mods removed, that’s what I called ableist. Your mods agree with you that ‘crazy’ isn’t a slur so they didn’t remove the comment for that. It was worse.

You really don’t have to come to the defense of a post your mods removed for being bad.

You didn’t actually say any of my takes were wrong, you asked clarifying questions or moved from what we were talking about to another related issue that bothered you. It’s truly unfortunate that you’ve blocked the community and can’t go back to see the context, I felt like we were getting somewhere. I’m sure you had your reasons though.

You really don’t have to come to the defense of a post your mods removed for being bad.

I can’t tell how serious you’re being but I read a really good book on this subject- The History of White People

The TL;DR on that is that whiteness is a social category, not an objective observation of human beings and their differences. For most of American history, as an example, Anglo-Saxons, Dutch/Low Germans and Scandinavians were considered a superior race to the ‘alpine’ and ‘mediterranean’ races of High Germans, Spaniards, and Italians. Irish weren’t Anglo-Saxon, they were Celtic and were thus considered inferior. The racism people observe when they see ‘Irish need not apply’ signs or slurs directed at Italians in the 1800s were because those people were not considered ‘white’ at the time. It’s an over-simplification, but these groups needed to be incorporated into the dominant group before they would be given the treatment we generally think is normal for white people.

Which is very jarring to us, since obviously Irish and Italians and Bavarian Germans are ‘white’. But it literally does vary, and the entire purpose of the category is to render people inside of it superior by virtue of belonging to it, it’s a category that exists to express supremacy.

Oh hey! You never got back to me on whether you felt that the discussion we had exposed some more nuance on the subject of the war in Ukraine, I assumed you must have gone to sleep or something. But I was really enjoying our discussion and was genuinely curious if you felt it had been productive. Maybe you just wanted to argue with other people more, but it seemed like we were making progress.

For what it’s worth, I didn’t say Russia was justified, I said the war was bad and the US made decisions that lead to this situation. I’d appreciate it if you would represent me fairly. I certainly hope you’re representing everyone else fairly too, I didn’t really read the other discussions you were having.

I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand. Liberals don’t believe that countries exert influence on other countries around them? You think Joe Biden objects to the concept of spheres of influence? You brought up Kissinger, you don’t think US foreign policy is operating under the logic of realpolitik? I’m not sure what the alternative is to believing that countries act to pursue their interests in other countries. That just sounds like a description of the concept of foreign policy.

Could you be more specific?

I think, for example, that most alt-right types oppose the war either because of chauvinistic beliefs about American boys and American blood and treasure being spent on foreigners, or because they would like to work together with Russia to counter China and think a war with them hurts the white struggle against the eastern hordes. No one on hexbear would defend either of those positions.

It needs to be more specific than “both of you are against continuing the war.” Just like it wouldn’t be fair for me to accuse you of being alt- right because you and them both agree that there weren’t WMDs in Iraq and that that invasion was sold on false pretenses. You might both technically agree but it would be missing the point.

Honestly your best bet is probably to do some reading first, unfortunately. A lot of Hexbear dialect is that way because it’s tied to concepts that come from books and thinkers we’re broadly familiar with.

If you’re more into video stuff you could try this guy. I think he’s pretty approachable.

Actually if you went into the megathreads and asked most people would probably give you suggestions too. We are fiesty but in my experience we also like to be helpful to people with questions.

In my experience alt right folks are pretty anti China, to the point where that is often the reason they oppose the Ukraine war, as it is dividing the attention of the Christian west from the rising, menacing Tigers that threaten white society.

Hexbears are often skeptical of Adrian Zenz who is usually the source of claims about China. Most that I’ve seen acknowledge that there are camps (China openly says it is running programs to deradicalize separatists and fundamentalists in the region), but disagree that they are as bad as western media depicts them, and would probably argue that western nations are concern trolling about the issue regardless because it is easy to question whether American foreign policy is motivated by concern for Muslims. Genuinely curious, who is an alt-right guy who doesn’t think there are camps in Xinjiang? I’ve never encountered a pro-Chinese reactionary.

As to Korea I thought MAGA types just memed about Kim Jong Un because Trump sort of got along with him. Hexbears think that the Korean War was bad and that Korea is acting predictably given that a nuclear power is constantly threatening them with annihilation. There are a variety of positions in Hexbear on the DPRK though, and I can’t really account for all of them, but I think they arise out of a genuine anti-imperial and anti-war sentiment, and a healthy doze of skepticism of western narratives of a state enemy. I don’t think you could say that for the alt right.

Could you provide an example of Hexbears agreeing with the alt-right about something specific? I think a lot of people conflate “disagreeing with the liberal consensus” with “thinking a MAGA thing” when they’re really pretty different.

It’s alarming how I can tell when I’ve left Hexbear by the ableism and slurs.

The postal service runs functionally craft unions that don’t negotiate together, Rural Carriers bargain separately from City Carriers, who also are separate from the APWU which covers clerks and maintenance folks. There are upsides to this, for Rural Carriers specifically it let them get certain contract items that would be a huge ask to get for other carriers due to the specificity of their job requirements, but it’s led to a problem where regular rural carriers are in a pretty unique bargaining position relative to virtually everyone else. Importantly, they’re also divided into full time regulars and part time RCAs, which I think creates an engagement problem. When I was an RCA I paid dues, but I rarely interacted with or cared about the union because it was pretty clear pretty quickly that the union was mostly concerned with the regulars who had been there a long time. It was likely to be upwards of 5 years before I became a regular (I knew people who had been working part time for 7 years) and almost all the perks and benefits were negotiated to benefit the regular carriers.

I think over time new regulars are becoming less engaged, especially since there have been recent changes to the craft that undermine a lot of the promises that were ostensibly the reason you waited in line to become a regular in the first place. So the leadership is getting increasingly detached from the actual workforce, and the union is already one of the smaller and weaker ones to begin with.

EDIT: A bigger problem which I probably should have mentioned to begin with is that all postal workers are legally barred from taking a strike. So the unions have something of a more collegial relationship with management than you’d like, because you can only play hardball so far before you run into legal trouble.