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Welcome to Soviet States of America. You can feel now exactly how it was back in those days in USSR.

rich_sasha 6y ago
Weeeell... do people keep packed bags by the door, for when political police comes to deport them to Siberia (Alaska?), or maybe shoot them in the head and dump in a ditch? That’s still a stretch.
- sigsergv 6y ago
  USSR existed for over 70 years and people there have seen a lot of varieties of oppression. “Silence is Violence” is one of them. “Kitchen Talks” too (you cannot say anything to random people and only to closest friends/relatives at home). Be ready for a new life, comrade.
  - tandr 6y ago
    Now that you have mention that... Add some unquestionable 3-letter agencies, "national security concerns" and "spies and outside-funded agitators are everywhere", and we are getting quite closely to what I remember from end of 70s/beginning of 80s. sigh
    - rich_sasha 6y ago
      Well, funnily enough, I’m sure America’s opponents are helping to stir the mess. I’m sure roubles or yuans flow in via crypto or whatever to help stir trouble. Of course not out of support for a noble goal, or a low desire to watch a fight, but to destabilise the situation. Still, it’s America’s fault for getting to this point...
      - wherewillitlead 6y ago
        I'm sure they are, but the opposite is also true: every disordered regime or pressured state points to foreign interference as the reason for strife. There are distortions in both directions and not really any reliable information.
  - rich_sasha 6y ago
    Good point. Still, even now in Russia (never mind USSR), political opponents are put into psychiatric hospitals. In USSR there was a total state monopoly on media (propaganda), you could have your life ruined for not toeing the party line or not turning up at Communist fetes. Things in the US look very ugly to me as an outsider, but still they got nothing on proper totalitarian state. Getting closer though!
  - wherewillitlead 6y ago
    The mainstream media seems shockingly Soviet now, too, perhaps with the difference that more people still believe it. Do you agree? I'd like to hear your comparison. One difference from the USSR is that there remain plenty of alternative sources on the margins. They're shut out of the mainstream, but they're a lot more accessible than samizdat. It will be interesting to see if they get shut down. I don't think they will. I don't think the future is full-Soviet, but it may be neo-Soviet. We've come further in that direction already than anyone expected. Another difference from the USSR is that it's a binary system (Dems vs. Repubs, CNN vs. Fox) rather than a monolithic one.
    - sigsergv 6y ago
      Well, history doesn't repeat itself exactly, so current situation is very different in details but it's basically the same. Samizdat of these days is much more accessible indeed. To me Dems/Repubs, CNN/Fox look the same, just different wings of the same bird.
robotron 6y ago
So how do you think it's been for people of color this whole time?
- sigsergv 6y ago
  People of color are oppressed in the US, but “socialist revolution” is not a solution. This is a deep cultural problem that must be solved from kindergarden-age. Well educated people can defend themself.
  - Yetanfou 6y ago
    In what way are 'people of colour' - between quotes because as far as I'm concerned they're just people [1] - oppressed in the US? I don't just blindly swallow the narrative espoused by BLM nor do I just blindly accept the opposite. For more than 2 weeks I've been listening to interviews with people who say that the narrative is in fact incorrect, that they themselves lived in the areas where the oppression should have been rife but - again according to them - did not seem to be. Many of these people put the blame for the disparity in income and outlook on social programs which have led to the dissolution of the family which is supposed to have led to the majority of children growing up in a single-parent household combined with the fact that schools are paid directly using local taxes which leads to poor neighbourhoods having underfunded schools. The lack of fathers, according to them, leads to a lack of male role models which in turn leads to boys finding their role models elsewhere, often on the street where they see gang bangers sporting fancy goods and gaining status. Many of the people I listened to found other role models to follow - one of their grandparents, a retired police officer, their own parents who came to the USA and built and existence for themselves and their children, a teacher in school, etc. Some of them ended up in academia, some of them started a business, some did well in sports in one way or another, some went into politics. Some are religious and pull that factor into the mix, others are secular or atheists. None of them seemed to be dirt-poor, nor did any of them seem to be rich, they all seemed to be part of the middle class. All of them are, to use the term I dislike, 'people of colour'. It can not be the case that both sides have it right here - either there is systemic oppression against people based on their skin colour or there is not. They claim this not to be the case and they back up their claims with data. They do not claim that there are no occurrences of discrimination based on skin colour but they do claim that these are just that, individual occurrences. What makes it possible for these people to succeed and thrive where so many others fail to do so? Either the people I mentioned have it right and the cause lies in the negative effects of social programs which keep people tied to the state as the source of handouts, keeping them alive but in poverty, or those who claim that 'people of colour' are oppressed in the USA have it right and the ones I have been listening to for the past week live in a fantasy. The people I listened - and listen - to do not get heard in the media for some reason, probably because their point of view does not fit the preferred narrative. They get called bad names like 'Coon' and 'Uncle Tom' in the cesspit of social media. When I hear them talk they sound convincing, when I check the statistics they cite they seem to corroborate their position. To me it seems they have a better grasp on the actual situation than those who makes claims about systemic racism but, not being an American, I can not be sure. I can just observe, read, listen, compare to similar situations in my own experience and my own environment and draw my own conclusions. Those conclusions lead me to believe they are closer to the truth than the loud voices heard in the media. They do not claim that there is no discrimination, they claim there is no systemic racism. I know discrimination and racism exist, they even seem to be on the rise - there are not many Jews left in the city of Malmö for this reason - but that is not the same as systemic racism. I tried to table this subject before [2] and got a number of links related to what is claimed to be systemic racism related issues in reply. I followed the links and found that most of the mentioned issues were either not indicative of systemic racism or are mentioned as not being related to such in the interviews I've been listening to. My conclusion still stands, either those folks I've been listening to are deluded or the ones on the front pages of the news magazines are. [1] Why I dislike that 'people of colour' term: From when I went to primary school it has been drilled into me that skin colour is not important, that it is merely superficial, that we're all people, that you should look beyond such things like you look beyond hair colour. That culture is what binds us no matter what colour we have. This seemed to work, things were getting better in my country (the Netherlands), culture did seem to be the binding factor - and in other cases the dividing one. Culture, not colour. And then... things changed. Where before it was not done to be focusing on that superficial aspect of skin colour suddenly a movement made itself heard which did nothing but focus on skin colour. And, lo and behold, there actually is more discrimination and racism in society now than there was before that movement got started. The cause-and-effect of this is unclear since this event more or less coincided with the arrival of a large number of migrants from the Middle-East and Africa but to me it certainly feels like this renewed focus on skin colour certainly did not make things better, nor does the expletive-laden simplistic rhetoric and labelling espoused by proponents of this movement. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23421551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23421551

Weeeell... do people keep packed bags by the door, for when political police comes to deport them to Siberia (Alaska?), or maybe shoot them in the head and dump in a ditch? That’s still a stretch.

sigsergv 6y ago
USSR existed for over 70 years and people there have seen a lot of varieties of oppression. “Silence is Violence” is one of them. “Kitchen Talks” too (you cannot say anything to random people and only to closest friends/relatives at home). Be ready for a new life, comrade.
- tandr 6y ago
  Now that you have mention that... Add some unquestionable 3-letter agencies, "national security concerns" and "spies and outside-funded agitators are everywhere", and we are getting quite closely to what I remember from end of 70s/beginning of 80s. sigh
  - rich_sasha 6y ago
    Well, funnily enough, I’m sure America’s opponents are helping to stir the mess. I’m sure roubles or yuans flow in via crypto or whatever to help stir trouble. Of course not out of support for a noble goal, or a low desire to watch a fight, but to destabilise the situation. Still, it’s America’s fault for getting to this point...
    - wherewillitlead 6y ago
      I'm sure they are, but the opposite is also true: every disordered regime or pressured state points to foreign interference as the reason for strife. There are distortions in both directions and not really any reliable information.
- rich_sasha 6y ago
  Good point. Still, even now in Russia (never mind USSR), political opponents are put into psychiatric hospitals. In USSR there was a total state monopoly on media (propaganda), you could have your life ruined for not toeing the party line or not turning up at Communist fetes. Things in the US look very ugly to me as an outsider, but still they got nothing on proper totalitarian state. Getting closer though!
- wherewillitlead 6y ago
  The mainstream media seems shockingly Soviet now, too, perhaps with the difference that more people still believe it. Do you agree? I'd like to hear your comparison. One difference from the USSR is that there remain plenty of alternative sources on the margins. They're shut out of the mainstream, but they're a lot more accessible than samizdat. It will be interesting to see if they get shut down. I don't think they will. I don't think the future is full-Soviet, but it may be neo-Soviet. We've come further in that direction already than anyone expected. Another difference from the USSR is that it's a binary system (Dems vs. Repubs, CNN vs. Fox) rather than a monolithic one.
  - sigsergv 6y ago
    Well, history doesn't repeat itself exactly, so current situation is very different in details but it's basically the same. Samizdat of these days is much more accessible indeed. To me Dems/Repubs, CNN/Fox look the same, just different wings of the same bird.

robotron 6y ago

So how do you think it's been for people of color this whole time?

sigsergv 6y ago
People of color are oppressed in the US, but “socialist revolution” is not a solution. This is a deep cultural problem that must be solved from kindergarden-age. Well educated people can defend themself.
- Yetanfou 6y ago
  In what way are 'people of colour' - between quotes because as far as I'm concerned they're just people [1] - oppressed in the US? I don't just blindly swallow the narrative espoused by BLM nor do I just blindly accept the opposite. For more than 2 weeks I've been listening to interviews with people who say that the narrative is in fact incorrect, that they themselves lived in the areas where the oppression should have been rife but - again according to them - did not seem to be. Many of these people put the blame for the disparity in income and outlook on social programs which have led to the dissolution of the family which is supposed to have led to the majority of children growing up in a single-parent household combined with the fact that schools are paid directly using local taxes which leads to poor neighbourhoods having underfunded schools. The lack of fathers, according to them, leads to a lack of male role models which in turn leads to boys finding their role models elsewhere, often on the street where they see gang bangers sporting fancy goods and gaining status. Many of the people I listened to found other role models to follow - one of their grandparents, a retired police officer, their own parents who came to the USA and built and existence for themselves and their children, a teacher in school, etc. Some of them ended up in academia, some of them started a business, some did well in sports in one way or another, some went into politics. Some are religious and pull that factor into the mix, others are secular or atheists. None of them seemed to be dirt-poor, nor did any of them seem to be rich, they all seemed to be part of the middle class. All of them are, to use the term I dislike, 'people of colour'. It can not be the case that both sides have it right here - either there is systemic oppression against people based on their skin colour or there is not. They claim this not to be the case and they back up their claims with data. They do not claim that there are no occurrences of discrimination based on skin colour but they do claim that these are just that, individual occurrences. What makes it possible for these people to succeed and thrive where so many others fail to do so? Either the people I mentioned have it right and the cause lies in the negative effects of social programs which keep people tied to the state as the source of handouts, keeping them alive but in poverty, or those who claim that 'people of colour' are oppressed in the USA have it right and the ones I have been listening to for the past week live in a fantasy. The people I listened - and listen - to do not get heard in the media for some reason, probably because their point of view does not fit the preferred narrative. They get called bad names like 'Coon' and 'Uncle Tom' in the cesspit of social media. When I hear them talk they sound convincing, when I check the statistics they cite they seem to corroborate their position. To me it seems they have a better grasp on the actual situation than those who makes claims about systemic racism but, not being an American, I can not be sure. I can just observe, read, listen, compare to similar situations in my own experience and my own environment and draw my own conclusions. Those conclusions lead me to believe they are closer to the truth than the loud voices heard in the media. They do not claim that there is no discrimination, they claim there is no systemic racism. I know discrimination and racism exist, they even seem to be on the rise - there are not many Jews left in the city of Malmö for this reason - but that is not the same as systemic racism. I tried to table this subject before [2] and got a number of links related to what is claimed to be systemic racism related issues in reply. I followed the links and found that most of the mentioned issues were either not indicative of systemic racism or are mentioned as not being related to such in the interviews I've been listening to. My conclusion still stands, either those folks I've been listening to are deluded or the ones on the front pages of the news magazines are. [1] Why I dislike that 'people of colour' term: From when I went to primary school it has been drilled into me that skin colour is not important, that it is merely superficial, that we're all people, that you should look beyond such things like you look beyond hair colour. That culture is what binds us no matter what colour we have. This seemed to work, things were getting better in my country (the Netherlands), culture did seem to be the binding factor - and in other cases the dividing one. Culture, not colour. And then... things changed. Where before it was not done to be focusing on that superficial aspect of skin colour suddenly a movement made itself heard which did nothing but focus on skin colour. And, lo and behold, there actually is more discrimination and racism in society now than there was before that movement got started. The cause-and-effect of this is unclear since this event more or less coincided with the arrival of a large number of migrants from the Middle-East and Africa but to me it certainly feels like this renewed focus on skin colour certainly did not make things better, nor does the expletive-laden simplistic rhetoric and labelling espoused by proponents of this movement. [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23421551 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23421551