After this's all over, I hope the U.S. gov't bills Trump for the damage he's done to our reputation

[D.o.S.]

On the flip side to that you can make a video about any group of people asking them about anything (Kimmel's late night show does this a bunch) and if you ask enough of them you'll get the required footage for a 3 minute youtube short.


I mean, I don't think a majority of people really think 'Che' is their favorite member of One Direction (Juan Direction?) but if you give me a crew and a week's budget and an E! business card, I'll make it happen.

[psychic vampire.]

Problem is, while communal living is ideal, I don't agree with communism or Communism as an idea. In most cases it turns into State Communism, which historically, has been a half-viable machine for militarism and genocide and, humorously enough, economic disparity. In "better" cases on smaller scales, "the commune" as an idea ends up becoming the new authority, and its members the enforcers. I am sure it can be done, just haven't seen any good examples yet and lots of bad ones.

I don't have a practical solution to the police, but whenever I propose that prisons are wrong people scream "What about the rapists and axe murderers?!" But a few hundred years of the US Prison System has not ended rape or murder, but it has created a ton of privately owned, free labor, so probably this isn't working? Not to mention solitary confinement is recognized as a form of torture, but is regularly used against gay and trans inmates "for their protection."

I don't know. I am past nihilism, it isn't that interesting, but I don't think answers are needed to know that "hey, shit is More than a little fucked." But also I grew up listening to crust punk, so whoops, I am irrelevant.


Also "people are stupid" is one of the main media tactics of division. It's why the whole country hates the south for being racists even though I saw more confederate flags on cars and lawns in New England than I ever did in Virginia or North Carolina. It's just scapegoating.

[psychic vampire.]

And I just went way past the deep end, so I am sorry. How about Jeb Cruz tho, amirite?

[D.o.S.]

I would posit that good examples of communal living are rarely newsworthy, which may be why they go underrepresented in the common consciousness.

And because there is a hefty part of the population inoculated with a fear of communal anything.

[Invisible Man]

Welp, there's certainly no good answer here. Anarchy and its hybrids just don't go as far as we need them to; self-governance turns the world into a shitfest; different gradations mean that things get complicated, and that the donut effect means a lot of people don't get to have any shot at a sustainable life.

I am not a communist, though I spend waaaay too much time reading Lenin and shit. I am very grateful when payday comes, and I wish I could afford to pay someone to mow my fucking lawn. There are some people who claim that ideology and faith in it have killed more people than all of history's wars combined, and that we should place our faith in empiricism and science, which I think is a stupid idea. What I'm getting at here is that there's an argumentative cultural tendency to kick the pendulum back and forth here (not in this thread, really, but in the public sphere), citing increasingly radical examples to make sweeping statements. "So, you're saying you want X? THAT'D NEVER WORK, BECAUSE HISTORY." Can't tell you how many times that comes up in seminars, or just in regular joe life.

Ah, fuck it. I know that I too rarely think about incremental change from the bottom-up. Our attention gets drawn to ribbon-cutting ceremonies, and those people aren't doing any of the real work. I think it's easy to lose track of the good work people are doing that is invisible, and this thread is kinda devoted to deconstructing the baby-kissing ribbon-cutting maniacs and their 'philosophies' or policies.

So yeah, the last page seems good to me. I'm rambling, because I haven't slept in a little too long, but all I hope to express is that maybe we can just do the fucking work ourselves, and live out our politics without subscribing to policy. Not gonna say a lot about what they means for me personally, nor how it might be different from anarchos (leaderless states), but I'll say that it's working surprisingly well, and has rewarded me in ways I didn't expect it to.

[Sparrow]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2mjs_gdMAI[/youtube]

ALL the Candidates .. are shapeshifting reptilians

[gnomethrone]

[Inconuucl]

I'm for mandatory voting. At worst, we end up with a bunch of hilarious joke candidates.

While intriguing; I think there should be a test like there is for citizenship that measures knowledge, intelligence.

Saw a video about university students that did not know who won the civil war or who the VP is. Imbecile like them is who the majority of campaign ads are targeted to; "vote for Joe McSausage because he is for the children".... bunch of damn idiots.

Oh god no, this is such a horrible idea. It sets such an easily abused boundary for voting that it would only make the problem you are describing worse. Shit like what you're describing was a common tactic post Jim Crow to disenfranchise ethnic minorities from voting. I rather have 20 ignorant dickcheeses vote over barring a single person because they didn't jive well with those currently in power.

[Iommic Pope]

We have mandatory voting.
It has done nothing to raise anyone's political awareness, if anything it has jaded people against the whole idea.
Keeping in mind though if voting was deegulated here, we would somehow end up even more conservative than we are, and I imagine candidates would be pretty extreme, because it's only those sort of voters who'd show up here under that system.

Then I guess we'd be more like you guys.

Although we keep having leadership spills so I imagine we aren't too far away from some kind of Caesarean Emergency Powers being executed.
If we have to have a dictator seize hold of the senate, I hope it's Xenophon.
His name rules.
First Citizen Xenophon.

Plus he has some great policies.

[D.o.S.]

Yeah I'm less in favor of mandatory voting than I am of an intelligence test towards voting -- as mentioned, the problems with any sort of standardized testing are doubled down when you're talking about elected officials.

Luckily I'm in a position to say that most of the things I don't like about the current system affect me on an ideological level, so I'm hesitant to bitch too loudly.

[Chankgeez]

Did someone say "McSnausages"?

[snipelfritz]

I'm for mandatory voting. At worst, we end up with a bunch of hilarious joke candidates.

While intriguing; I think there should be a test like there is for citizenship that measures knowledge, intelligence.

Saw a video about university students that did not know who won the civil war or who the VP is. Imbecile like them is who the majority of campaign ads are targeted to; "vote for Joe McSausage because he is for the children".... bunch of damn idiots.

Oh god no, this is such a horrible idea. It sets such an easily abused boundary for voting that it would only make the problem you are describing worse. Shit like what you're describing was a common tactic post Jim Crow to disenfranchise ethnic minorities from voting. I rather have 20 ignorant dickcheeses vote over barring a single person because they didn't jive well with those currently in power.

Yeah. Anything towards disenfranchisement is bad. Very bad. And we actually live in a time when disenfranchisement is a real thing (Voter ID).

Bad.

[psychic vampire.]

Welp, there's certainly no good answer here. Anarchy and its hybrids just don't go as far as we need them to; self-governance turns the world into a shitfest; different gradations mean that things get complicated, and that the donut effect means a lot of people don't get to have any shot at a sustainable life.

I am not a communist, though I spend waaaay too much time reading Lenin and shit. I am very grateful when payday comes, and I wish I could afford to pay someone to mow my fucking lawn. There are some people who claim that ideology and faith in it have killed more people than all of history's wars combined, and that we should place our faith in empiricism and science, which I think is a stupid idea. What I'm getting at here is that there's an argumentative cultural tendency to kick the pendulum back and forth here (not in this thread, really, but in the public sphere), citing increasingly radical examples to make sweeping statements. "So, you're saying you want X? THAT'D NEVER WORK, BECAUSE HISTORY." Can't tell you how many times that comes up in seminars, or just in regular joe life.

Ah, fuck it. I know that I too rarely think about incremental change from the bottom-up. Our attention gets drawn to ribbon-cutting ceremonies, and those people aren't doing any of the real work. I think it's easy to lose track of the good work people are doing that is invisible, and this thread is kinda devoted to deconstructing the baby-kissing ribbon-cutting maniacs and their 'philosophies' or policies.

So yeah, the last page seems good to me. I'm rambling, because I haven't slept in a little too long, but all I hope to express is that maybe we can just do the fucking work ourselves, and live out our politics without subscribing to policy. Not gonna say a lot about what they means for me personally, nor how it might be different from anarchos (leaderless states), but I'll say that it's working surprisingly well, and has rewarded me in ways I didn't expect it to.

Yes, yes yes yes. There are complications to all these beliefs. What is "leaderless," what is authority? Turns out a dozen different fringe left weirdos will tell you a dozen different things. How does it pan out? Really varies. My sole experience thus far of true communal living was a disaster clusterfuck nightmare of terrible people treating each other terribly.

And then there's the sectarianism, wee-ow.



But also, intelligence tests: who is defining and grading intelligence? Who wrote the rubric? The people such an idea would "aim to protect" or the people in positions of power? How quickly would "intelligence" come to reflect wealth and the ability to embody social norms? I am going to sleep now. No I am not.

[untilshewokeme]

http://www.loser.com

http://www.trumpdonald.org

[Iommic Pope]

http://www.loser.com

http://www.trumpdonald.org

These are the best things ever.