TiredTiger

I think USian communists are at a disadvantage, given how little foreign languages are taught in our schools. Not that it's an excuse, but it does mean finding free time on our own as adults (a less ideal time for learning languages) while working to support ourselves.

I hope to at least eventually brush up on the ones I learned in school. Learning Mandarin would be really useful, but I don't know when I'd find the time if I'm being honest with myself.

Meanwhile they pay a huge portion in premiums only to be denied coverage when they actually need it. Somehow the 'death panels' are a-okay as long as they're the boards of for-profit hospitals or insurance companies. The contradictions are sharpening though (see the doctor shortage) and I think all but the most brainwashed are waking up. You only have to look at the overwhelmingly positive reception Luigi got to see that.

The message that this is as good as it can possibly be is hammered into people from all sides. It is, I would argue, one of the key tenets of all forms of idealism, and serves the interests of the powers that be. People who don't believe that better is possible are much less likely to try to rise up and make things better.

Voting helped install people who at least rendered some degree of aid, which again is better than the literally nothing that refusing to vote accomplishes.

I sure hope you're not referring to USAID here. It was a weapon, not a charity organization.

Honestly, that's probably even more cringe than being a fed.

The average westerner has their entire concept of reality built upon the idea that capitalism is "as good as it gets" and that people are divided roughly 50/50 into two separate camps, therefore a government with broad approval is impossible. They can't see that their culture wars are manufactured precisely to keep them from ever questioning that system. They throw aside any high approval rating as manufactured. (Nevermind the fact that those states that do have manufactured approval ratings are imperial puppets and China is obviously not one of those.)

To those libs who love to talk about the 99%, I posit the following: if a government actually were made by and for the 99%, wouldn't you expect it to have high approval ratings?

TIL. Somehow, I never realized yerba mate has caffeine. I'll have to try some eventually.

How exactly do you expect a country of any significant size to effectively enact communism without anything resembling a state apparatus?

All idealism regardless of type can be summed up in one belief: that it is not possible to improve the world. Materialism, on the other hand, posits that it is possible. Is it any wonder that Capital goes to such lengths to keep materialist thought out of its public discourse? The worker who believes they cannot improve their lot poses little threat to Capital.

Of course. I wasn't suggesting otherwise. I just hope CIA propaganda loses any appeal it may have outside of the imperial core. As for inside the core, it's hard for me not to feel 'doomer' about the state of the working class. I think there would have to be a sudden, extreme change in material conditions before the working class would start to 'wake up' en masse here.

I'm impressed. The US legal system is incredibly anemic when it comes to punishing corporations for violating workers' rights. I hope we really can achieve a multipolar world, one where a standard like this is upheld to emulate, and not the rotten neoliberal legal morass of the West.