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> basically every American literally voted for that by repeatedly saying no to the alternative (the communist party) in every American election. I had a good

> basically every American literally voted for that by repeatedly saying no to *the alternative* (the communist party) in every American election. I had a good laugh playing with this ridiculous framing, thinking about all of the candidates we've said no to. * "Get out of here Donald Trump! We don't want communism, we want the alternative; Joe Biden!" * "Hit the bricks secret pamphlet-loving marxists John McCain and Mitt Romney, we'll take the singular alternative: Barack Obama" * "We love Jimmy Carter, he's the opposite of communism! Nothing like the alternative, an all-star college football player and rabid communist manifesto adherent named Gerald Ford." * and "We hate Jimmy Carter who must be a communist because of how hard we voted for the movie man." * "Give us Teddy Roosevelt, he'll smash up all of these monopolistic robber barons, because TR is the alternative to Marxism." * "FDR, we love you so much we'll elect you to the Presidency four times! We all thought Herbert Hoover was in the pocket of gilded age capitalists, but when Hoover drove us into the great depression, we realized he must have really been a bolshevik! Thank you so much for the massive welfare state expansion, FDR, you truly earned your nickname 'FDR: cure for the common communism'" Ridiculous. But in all earnestness, the communist manifesto has never been even remotely relevant to any US election ever. And I mean this with no malice, but if you think lobbing the label "communist" at something you don't like is an argument, vary up your media diet and be recognize when you use logical fallacies in arguments so you can slow down and debug your thought process.

ben_w 4y ago
I think you misunderstand; when I said communists, that wasn't a spicy republican hot take about the democrats or whatever, it was literally the communists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA for example, or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party,_USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party,... or even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Alternative_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Alternative_(United_... I think it's really obvious that Americans don't want those things, so one way to rephrase my original comment could be "the rejection of communism is why rich people get to own and control businesses".
- modriano 4y ago
  You misunderstand. Saying > "the rejection of communism is why rich people get to own and control businesses". is as wrong as saying "the rejection of [pastafarianism | soccer/futbol | anarchocapitalism | mandatory left-handedness | manual transmission cars | etc] is why rich people get to own and control businesses". Communism and the communist party have never been part of the question. The closest "Communism" came to being part of the political landscape was when a power-hungry alcoholic grifter named Joseph McCarthy won a Senate seat in Wisconsin and then started a paranoid campaign of lobbing unsubstantiated accusations of secret communistic allegiance at academics, civil servants, members of the media, and of anyone he wanted. It whipped up a frenzy of anti-communist protestation, but not because people knew anything about communism, rather people rejected being called "communist" not because they knew anything about the economic theory of communism, but because McCarthyism made that term a career-killer. McCarthy starting attacking leadership of the US military, alleging that they were infested with communists, and organized hearings in the Senate that were essentially modern day witch burnings. From 1946 to 1954, McCarthy whipped up a massive panic while smearing the symbolic label "communism" with so much shit that essentially no one can think clearly about the ideas behind that system of social organization. In 1954, other Senators countered with a campaign to censure McCarthy for his invalid and unwarranted abuse of US Military Generals, culminating in a vote to condemn McCarthy (67 votes to condemn, 22 against condemning). After this humiliation, McCarthy wasn't decent enough to resign his seat and leave voluntarily, but fortunately he died of cirrhosis of the liver about 2 years later at the age of 48. In short, the claim that "the rejection of communism", something no one here spends any time thinking about, "is why rich people get to own and control businesses" is ridiculous and evidence of a broken thought process. I refer you to my prior advice about dealing about slowing down and recognizing when you've built your beliefs on logical fallacies.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    You're arguing against an imaginary totem instead of what I actually wrote. > Communism and the communist party have never been part of the question De facto/de jure. Nobody wants it (de facto), I've demonstrated by linking to the actual parties that de jure it's totally been an option. Those parties I linked, you could have voted for, but y'all didn't. Given I've explicitly said I'm not talking about dem/rep culture war nonsense, your over-detailed rant about McCarthy (who, you may be surprised to learn, was sufficiently relevant to your politics that his actions are well known on the other side of the Atlantic and his name is likewise used as a derogatory term) was a waste of your own time. I am specifically and literally referring the idea of private ownership of the means of production, which is in the actual literal Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei as written by Karl Marx in 1848. Which I have in fact read. Section 2, English translation, has the following passage: """ The proletariat will use its political supremacy, to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i. e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible. """ - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Manifesto_of_the_Communist_Party/2 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Manifesto_of_the_Communist_Pa... That, right there, is why not having Communism in the USA means that rich people get to keep their stuff out of public hands. Now, do you know some other political ideology besides communism that wants to remove control of factories from their owners? Because that would be an additional option beyond the dozen or so communist parties of the USA coming 7th-25th in a two-horse race, and the complaint being made against OpenAI is that it's not letting users do whatever with the tools that OpenAI made and own. So far as I am aware, none of > the rejection of [pastafarianism | soccer/futbol | anarchocapitalism | mandatory left-handedness | manual transmission cars | etc] Have any causal connection to > why rich people get to own and control businesses (Maybe anarchocapitalism?) But that's the specific point of communism. Which you as a nation reject, even though they're a thing you're not, AFAIK, banned from voting for. I mean, reading what you've written, you and I definitely agree 100% that communists are not politically viable in the USA. I'm just saying that the logical consequences of their non-viability includes "rich people can own and control businesses".

> basically every American literally voted for that by repeatedly saying no to *the alternative* (the communist party) in every American election. I had a good

ben_w 4y ago

I think you misunderstand; when I said communists, that wasn't a spicy republican hot take about the democrats or whatever, it was literally the communists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Party_USA for example, or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party,_USA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutionary_Communist_Party,... or even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Alternative_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialist_Alternative_(United_... I think it's really obvious that Americans don't want those things, so one way to rephrase my original comment could be "the rejection of communism is why rich people get to own and control businesses".

modriano 4y ago
You misunderstand. Saying > "the rejection of communism is why rich people get to own and control businesses". is as wrong as saying "the rejection of [pastafarianism | soccer/futbol | anarchocapitalism | mandatory left-handedness | manual transmission cars | etc] is why rich people get to own and control businesses". Communism and the communist party have never been part of the question. The closest "Communism" came to being part of the political landscape was when a power-hungry alcoholic grifter named Joseph McCarthy won a Senate seat in Wisconsin and then started a paranoid campaign of lobbing unsubstantiated accusations of secret communistic allegiance at academics, civil servants, members of the media, and of anyone he wanted. It whipped up a frenzy of anti-communist protestation, but not because people knew anything about communism, rather people rejected being called "communist" not because they knew anything about the economic theory of communism, but because McCarthyism made that term a career-killer. McCarthy starting attacking leadership of the US military, alleging that they were infested with communists, and organized hearings in the Senate that were essentially modern day witch burnings. From 1946 to 1954, McCarthy whipped up a massive panic while smearing the symbolic label "communism" with so much shit that essentially no one can think clearly about the ideas behind that system of social organization. In 1954, other Senators countered with a campaign to censure McCarthy for his invalid and unwarranted abuse of US Military Generals, culminating in a vote to condemn McCarthy (67 votes to condemn, 22 against condemning). After this humiliation, McCarthy wasn't decent enough to resign his seat and leave voluntarily, but fortunately he died of cirrhosis of the liver about 2 years later at the age of 48. In short, the claim that "the rejection of communism", something no one here spends any time thinking about, "is why rich people get to own and control businesses" is ridiculous and evidence of a broken thought process. I refer you to my prior advice about dealing about slowing down and recognizing when you've built your beliefs on logical fallacies.
- ben_w 4y ago
  You're arguing against an imaginary totem instead of what I actually wrote. > Communism and the communist party have never been part of the question De facto/de jure. Nobody wants it (de facto), I've demonstrated by linking to the actual parties that de jure it's totally been an option. Those parties I linked, you could have voted for, but y'all didn't. Given I've explicitly said I'm not talking about dem/rep culture war nonsense, your over-detailed rant about McCarthy (who, you may be surprised to learn, was sufficiently relevant to your politics that his actions are well known on the other side of the Atlantic and his name is likewise used as a derogatory term) was a waste of your own time. I am specifically and literally referring the idea of private ownership of the means of production, which is in the actual literal Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei as written by Karl Marx in 1848. Which I have in fact read. Section 2, English translation, has the following passage: """ The proletariat will use its political supremacy, to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i. e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible. """ - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Manifesto_of_the_Communist_Party/2 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Manifesto_of_the_Communist_Pa... That, right there, is why not having Communism in the USA means that rich people get to keep their stuff out of public hands. Now, do you know some other political ideology besides communism that wants to remove control of factories from their owners? Because that would be an additional option beyond the dozen or so communist parties of the USA coming 7th-25th in a two-horse race, and the complaint being made against OpenAI is that it's not letting users do whatever with the tools that OpenAI made and own. So far as I am aware, none of > the rejection of [pastafarianism | soccer/futbol | anarchocapitalism | mandatory left-handedness | manual transmission cars | etc] Have any causal connection to > why rich people get to own and control businesses (Maybe anarchocapitalism?) But that's the specific point of communism. Which you as a nation reject, even though they're a thing you're not, AFAIK, banned from voting for. I mean, reading what you've written, you and I definitely agree 100% that communists are not politically viable in the USA. I'm just saying that the logical consequences of their non-viability includes "rich people can own and control businesses".