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[misko27]

Meanwhile the coronavirus situation vis-a-vis prisons is absolutely fucking terrible, btw. Only good news is some states started pre-emptively testing their entire prison populations, so in some cases it was caught before symptoms, but it's also revealing how overwhelmingly really, really bad it is. Actually nutty levels of corona. In Trousedale, Tennessee the infected population was +1,300, including guards. Only the third largest outbreak connected to a single prison. But! Relative to the population of that county, that's 10% of the population infected! 10,000 per 100,000, most infected county in the entire country now. That's a solid yikes.

[Max™]

America has a comparable population of inmates to some small countries.
What justice is brought by locking up somebody for having a bag of something they were using to escape their shitty situation briefly?
What justice is brought by locking up anybody who didn't directly harm others?
Who is made right and whole again by traffic stops turning into random dudes losing years of their life if they managed to avoid getting shot?
Why is law and order treated as a noble idea for police to uphold, when said police and criminal "justice" systems got their start as loss-prevention specialists catching people who were trying to shoplift themselves out of slavery, and said "law" decreed it proper to maintain the "natural order" with negroes at the bottom?
Why is it silly to imagine somebody wanting to escape after waking up and realizing they were also enslaved, but the chains are made of ideas, workers sit at the bottom, and alien intelligences sit on top hiding behind the word "corporations" and driven by inhuman motivations like "maximize shareholder value" or "raise profits next quarter" above anything else?

Trying to argue against replacing capitalism by insisting on using the framework of ideas contained entirely within capitalism seems a bit like trying to stack the deck in favor of a particular outcome, doesn't it?

Extracting profit is not the exclusive way of measuring progress, what exactly does profit offer to raise general quality of life, mental health, physical wellbeing, other than half-hearted attempts to justify hoarding riches with vague statements about optimum resource allocation meaning the tide lifts all boats, but don't ask why the tide is yellow or what is floating in it, and don't drink any of it, ok?

America has a 51st state, nearly as large a population as California, called Poverty.

Capitalism requires inequal distribution of wealth to sustain itself, and accordingly it is in the best interest of those ahead of the game to fight against any discussion of alternatives being treated as valid.

Why help them by limiting the conversation and ignoring alternative methods of assessing value, distributing resources, or flaws in ideas like artificial scarcity and market forces?

The Holodomor was the greatest genocide in all of history, and not exactly a "quick death" at the hands of an axe or rifle either. You really can't claim that the October Revolution really made the situation a lot better. It just gave somebody else the stick.

>.>

When the english got to the Americas a century or so after the spaniards left they found stragglers of an apocalypse, what exactly do you call that but genocide whether it was deliberate or not?

[bloop_bleep]

@MSH

I'm sorry, uh, what?

There are piles of evidence that the Holodomor was planned by the Soviet Union government to starve out and destroy the "kulaks" in Ukraine that resisted collectivization. There was no "mismanagement" of the crisis, the management was the crisis. You think what happened during collectivization was a force of nature? Entire grain stores, everything was forcibly taken, and all this bread that Lenin and Stalin promised somehow never materialized. Soldiers were specifically told to target people that didn't seem to be starving and accuse them of hiding food. There were guards posted along the roads to make sure no one was able to get to the cities where there was more food. There's absolutely no way you can spin this to say "it was just an aCcIdEnT!" I don't care if the goal was ethnic cleansing, because that's just what ended up happening anyway, and everyone involved with orchestrating it was abundantly clear on what was going to happen. It doesn't matter if you in some twisted way somehow think this terror was for "progress!!", this was absolutely evil.

Kulaks were not exploitative bourgeoisie. They were peasants, farming peasants, who happened to have several more acres than their neighbors, or a couple cows, who were just a little bit wary of giving up everything they ever owned to this mysterious, violent force hundreds of miles away which just murdered thousands of dissidents and resistors to the revolution. And yet they were treated like dogs, starved, and brutalized.

Saying that this was not a genocide because it was "not [originally] about ethnicity!" is pedantic bullshit. It killed 7 million civilians at the hands of their government.

Second of all, please fact-check what you seem to think about the Holodomor's death toll. Data is easily available. It's second on that list of genocides by the highest estimate (which is still lower than some estimates), after the Germans' treatment of Soviet forces, which was during wartime EDIT: corrected: and mostly involved Soviet combatants (many of which were Ukrainians too), which doesn't make it less valid as a genocide but puts it in another category. Even by lowest estimate it's third on that list. What you're saying about its death toll is blatantly false, not even considering how callous responding to MILLIONS OF PEOPLE BEING KILLED BY AN AUTOCRATIC REGIME with "b-but.. but it's not the largest group of people that's ever been killed!" is.

I thought and hoped this board wouldn't have any Soviet apologists in it, and yet...

The Holodomor was the greatest genocide in all of history, and not exactly a "quick death" at the hands of an axe or rifle either. You really can't claim that the October Revolution really made the situation a lot better. It just gave somebody else the stick.

>.>

When the english got to the Americas a century or so after the spaniards left they found stragglers of an apocalypse, what exactly do you call that but genocide whether it was deliberate or not?

What is your point? How is this related? Yes, colonialism is terrible. Yes, capitalists killed lots of people too. But I don't think the answer is to say "well, those people halfway around the world also did some killing, so I guess the killing these guys did isn't all that bad, and so I guess we could just go on and trade for the other killing, with the MORE NOBLE motive, because I guess there's no other way.".

EDIT: Oh, and, if you think the Soviet Union is the holy grail for industrializing in a couple generations, remember that imperialist Japan did that too. Oh, and then terrorized China.

[Frumple]

Most of their point just seems to be that holodomor was not, in fact, the greatest genocide in all of history.

[bloop_bleep]

Most of their point just seems to be that holodomor was not, in fact, the greatest genocide in all of history.

Maybe second greatest. So much better.

EDIT: It's also worth noting that many of my great-grandparents lived through the Holodomor, so this Soviet apologism makes me particularly irate.

[Frumple]

*shrugs* I've got both native american and jew in me, too, some not too far back. For what that's worth. I'm not particularly irate about what looks a fair bit like downplaying basically destroying entire continents, plural, of civilizations, but I can see where it might irk someone

[bloop_bleep]

Lol, how am I the one doing the downplaying here? I am not downplaying anything. I affirmed that the colonialism is terrible, and the genocides in the Americas happened and were utter tragedies. MSH said that "the Holodomor isn't even in top ten, weak bruh!" while praising the Soviet Union. (Though, again, it is most definitely in the top ten and probably second.)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The historical consensus about the Holodomor what it is for a reason, and I will not be strawmanned or called a denier in this way for agreeing with the mainstream opinion of people who actually study history and mass killings. You are opportunistically swapping definitions vis a vis "genocide" in order to both put the Holodomor above other far more fitting candidates for the word genocide that are not included but also not to compare it to mass killing in general, as Frumple points out. If you want to get sanctimonious about it, that's pretty fucked up.

The farming mechanization crisis is a well understood historical phenomenon, and the price in lives of those crises are determined by the location, government functionality, and situation of the society in question. Claiming the Holodomor was some kind of premeditated tongue-in-cheek ethnic cleansing is kind of absurd in light of the mass famine that gripped the entire USSR at that time, not just Ukraine. And so people did what they always do during such times, and tried to get their hands on any food they could by hook or by crook, only exacerbating the problem. The disaster that resulted was man-made. An artificial famine. It is even probably classifiable as a crime of murder by incompetence on the part of the Soviet government. But the use of "genocide" peaked all the way back when it happened by influence of US (and, for that matter, Nazi) propaganda, and historical studies have moved further and further away from it ever since.

If even all-time anti-USSR critic Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who hated the Soviet Union so much he spent his career one step short of "so maybe the Nazis were right about us Russians" sees the problem with calling the Holodomor a genocide, you should be less confident.

[Reelya]

https://www.newsweek.com/trumps-favorability-among-white-christians-falls-double-digits-particularly-counties-hit-1501609

Forty-three percent of Americans surveyed over the past few weeks hold mostly or very favorable views of Trump--down about six percent from the 49 percent high he received in mid-March, which was his best rating at any point since 2015.

And while most of the president's numbers have remained more or less steady since the U.S. outbreak of COVID-19, Trump has seen a sharp drop in support from counties where coronavirus cases are higher than the national average. Among white Christians, Trump saw a significant double-digit drop in support between March and April.

It turns out Christians specifically don't empathize with a guy who says 10's of thousands people dying is no biggie. Who would have guessed?

It's also notable that core Republican voters are turning on Trump especially where there are enough cases of the virus in their vicinity. I guess word of mouth 'Trumps' everything. At the county level, most people would probably be within three degrees of separation, so it's much more likely to know someone who knows someone who knows someone affected by the virus. Like if you can say your cousin's wife's grandmother died from the virus, that's close enough that people can get a handle on it. Stats and the like don't do that.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Eh, don't count on it lasting. Actual core Republican voters are far more likely to go with "there is no reality" than "I was wrong about Trump". Back when Trump started he was more unpopular too, but about 10-15% of the country decided he wasn't so bad. I think this will probably snap-back as he continues on the "quarantine's over folks, get back to work" train, second wave or no.

[scriver]

I'm with MSH. It's great to finally have a rationale by which I can claim the Swedish refusing to send food to the Sami during the 19th century famines wasn't genocide at all. All of Sweden was starving. And so people only did what people always do during such times. Definitely not targetting Sami at all. It's impossible to try and imagine a world where governments opportunistically use crisises to favour one segment of the population that they like over one that they despise.

The Holodomor isn't even in the top 10 in terms of mass death, and in the modern day even conservative pro-US historians like Robert Conquest generally do not consider it a genocide.

If even all-time anti-USSR critic Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who hated the Soviet Union so much he spent his career one step short of "so maybe the Nazis were right about us Russians" sees the problem with calling the Holodomor a genocide, you should be less confident.

The actual inventor of the term disagree with them, however, and I'd maintain that he is by far the foremost authority on the matter.

Genocide isn't about killing persons, anyway. It's about killing peoples. The most common genocide strategies don't involve literal murder in any way, they're about stealing children and forbidding languages and customs.

[thompson]

Unfortunately, right wingers transforming into Russia apologists doesn’t really give me much confidence these days. If they’re right about anything, it’s more likely to be coincidence than merit. I hope we can all agree that the Soviet Union was a brutal, murderous regime that ruled through fear and tyranny. Not sure why the USSR is relevant to contemporary US politics though.

By all means, advocate alternatives. Personally, I’m more interested in HOW such alternatives can come to be. I suspect we have some common ground somewhere. Freedom to join a trade union and perform related activities, proper regulatory oversight, tax reform, welding the lobbyist/politics revolving door shut? Surely most of us here can agree on most of these.

Edit to avoid double post: If COVID is still around come November (which it will be), a few % of Rs will vote D. That’s all if will take to lose the presidency. Might even cost them the senate. I’m waiting for the moment the Rs realise Trump is a liability and they throw him under a bus. Will be fun.

[Reelya]

Decent enough read about how conservative media generally works. Omit the context of your opponents argument then set up a straw man ( Reductio ad Absurdum fallacy). Like, another example would be omitting the water issues in Flint Michigan, taking some quote about water quality out of context then arguing it's absurd to complain about the water because no water supply can be 100% pure and perfect.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/pretend-trump-doesnt-exist-liberal-claims-will-sound-dumb.html

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

National Review editor Rich Lowry has a column that is a perfect specimen of the genre. Lowry’s theme is that science alone is not a guide to managing the coronavirus pandemic. His launching-off point is a series of pro-science quotes — “Joe Biden has urged President Trump, “Follow the science, listen to the experts, do what they tell you.” — which Lowry rebuts by arguing that science doesn’t have every answer: “Once you are outside a lab setting and dealing with matters of public policy, questions of values and how to strike a balance between competing priorities come into play, and they simply can’t be settled by people in white lab coats.”

That observation is perfectly correct, even banal. Science doesn’t have a perfect understanding of every scientific question, and no serious figure is proposing to let scientists alone determine every aspect of the public-policy response to the pandemic. Instead, the liberal Lowry scolds are registering their disagreement with President Trump’s practice of ignoring or manipulating science.

From the outset, Trump has treated scientists as members of a suspicious category. He insisted for weeks that the coronavirus would never spread in the United States and threatened to fire CDC official Nancy Messonnier when she publicly diverged from his denialist stance. He has insisted the virus would disappear on its own, perhaps with warm weather, a scenario scientists have deemed unlikely. He repeatedly touted hydroxychloroquine, even urging Americans to take it, ignoring the pleas of scientists to first allow testing to determine if it was effective. (It apparently is not.) He fired the government’s top vaccine expert, allegedly for failing to cooperate with Trump’s campaign to subvert the scientific method and promote treatments favored by his political supporters. He has floated ridiculous pet-cure ideas that popped into his head and directed his scientific advisers to look into them on camera.

In one especially surreal scene, trade adviser Peter Navarro threw a stack of papers purporting to prove the value of hydroxychloroquine on the table in a rebuke to Dr. Tony Fauci, claiming, “That’s science, not anecdote.” Trump has surrounded himself with, and empowered, a cast of characters who dismiss scientists and fail to understand science. Rudy Giuliani, who has bent Trump’s ear on treatment ideas, laughed at the practice of contact tracing, asking why it wouldn’t also be done for cancer, obesity, and heart disease. (The answer of course is that its purpose is to trace the spread of communicable diseases.) The Fox News hosts Trump spends hours watching and talking to on the phone, like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, have promoted kook theories that the coronavirus is far less deadly than scientific authorities believe.

Lowry’s column does not mention, or even allude to, any of this. He does not even have a tossed-off line saying to be sure, Trump’s dismissal of science has gone too far in the other direction. The only mention of Trump’s name in the column occurs in the sentence quoted above, in which Lowry quotes Biden urging Trump to listen to scientists. Lowry does not explain why Biden would even have to make this plea. For the purpose of Lowry’s argument, Biden has simply embraced extreme scientism, out of nowhere.

Remember the National Review were also the ones who took aim at Obama for calling the Holocaust "senseless" on Holocaust Rememberance Day, with their basic argument being that Nazi doctrine was imminently sensible. Logically you'd have done the holocaust too if you believed what they did, so the whole thing was perfectly sensible and Obama did a bad thing. It's like another universe over there when their entire anti-Obama argument boiled down to listing points of Nazi ideology and asking "how isn't that sensible?"

[bloop_bleep]

My intent was not to downplay the Native American genocides by comparing them against the Holodomor. My intent was to respond to your claims that the terror and suffering the USSR caused was somehow insignificant, essentially. You have to admit, this:

So do the Russian Revolutions and Chinese Civil war, and their follow-up genocides count?

Or are those capitalist too?  Because if so, maybe you're just using that as an excuse.  A 'No True Scotsman' thing, where nothing bad can be applied to anti-capitalist forces, because nothing is anti-capitalist...

B.

There were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.

in the context of the subsequent genocides after the Russian and Chinese revolutions, sounds a lot like Soviet apologism. The Holodomor was not so bad because it "lasted mere months" and was a "minor Terror, the momentary Terror", and how terrible it is that "all our shudders" are for the Holodomor, and it should be forgotten about, that's what your response reads like. I'm not sure if that's what you truly believe, but given that statement it certainly sounds like it.

Mark Twain was talking about the killing of aristocrats in France. The Holodomor was not a killing of aristocrats, and it was not "swift death by an axe", and it did not last "mere months".

EDIT: And most developed countries (that are not Russian puppets) consider the Holodomor a genocide. You're cherry picking.

EDIT: Oh, and I didn't even get to the fact that no, the USSR was not starving as a whole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_famine_of_1932%E2%80%9333 "Unlike the previous famine of 1921–22, Russia's intermittent drought was not severe in the affected areas at this time." It was mostly grain-producing areas, like Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Why were the grain-producing areas, of all of them, starving? Because their grain was being taken and they were being forcibly starved by the government, mostly to destroy the resistance and partially to fund their pet industry projects in the Russian cities. There was a natural element, yes, but it was relatively minor, far too minor to kill 7 million people, and the problem didn't get worse because the natural element was mismanaged, the problem got worse because Stalin and his crew were murderous pricks.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Well, it's a good thing I never said that, now isn't it? I said through the Twain quote that the October Revolution was justifiable in light of the Tsardom's centuries of terror, which it was. The Holodomor is decades removed from that. Just like Stalin wasn't the only leader of the USSR, the Holodomor wasn't the only thing that happened during the USSR's existence. Obviously the Holodomor was horrible and served no purpose, I just object to the specific use of the word genocide for the same reasons that historians in general have moved away from it. I agree that the Holodomor was a crime against humanity, but the nature of that crime is a specific thing which genocide is not.

The original point was that people uncritically condemn the violence fraught by revolutions as bad, even though people are typically only risen to revolutionary violence because of even worse unspeakable horrors inflicted on them, and over a longer period of time thus causing even more suffering. Thus it was in France, and thus it was in Russia and China. This has digressed away entirely from AmeriPol, so it's the last I'll say on this.