Flumpkin

Well, when I started to use lemmy I had a few problems:

1. I read something on the landing page about "Mastodon account works too" so tried that, so basically confused fediverse, activitypub, mastodon and lemmy and wondered why nothing worked. Oops.
2. I tried to join a community that was meant to migrate away from reddit, but found two duplicates. So I wasn't sure which one was the correct one. Ultimately the migration failed, even though it was a software oriented community
3. Then I soon wanted to make a new account on a server that doesn't require an email. Because emails today are basically personally identifiable for security agencies.
4. Then I found out that socialists are called tankies on lemmy and some of the main socialist instances are banned by the limbrols. So I made a new account and posted a little and had an interesting discussion about voting in proto-fascist democracies and promptly got banned by the tankies. Oh well.
5. Then I had a discussion about how calling russian people "orcs" is racist. You guessed it, banned.
6. Well several accounts later, here I am, the last sane man on the internet and you all fucking suck hahaha

I do think lemmy is worthwhile and can be fun, but as a reddit alternative it has already failed. You cannot purge insanity by splitting it up into smaller insanlets. That's just schizophrenia.

Ah yes, the US is being run by a fascist pedophile and his 4 techbros of the apocalypse, but lets focus on the tankies because clearly they are the real problem haha.

The closer we are to irrelevance, the farther we are from harm!

Otherwise, how do you explain a man who believes government should not be restrained in how it treats people?

You're saying you view Elon Musk and his DOGE department favorably? If so, we can save our breaths and don't need to argue about anything any more haha.

I agree that things in Germany are, by and large, far saner and far better than the US or the UK. The conditions of the market, the news media and government institutions is better, which allows the liberal dogma to work better. But it's far from good enough.

And yes I'm a doomer lol. It's simply a question of numbers: billions vs millions.

I'm not an ideologue and think a mix of ideologies is important, but the fundamental problem is the vast accumulation of wealth (=economic power) that brings unstoppable degeneration and collapse. Especially with social media being completely corrupt, and mainstream news media even in Germany only spouting misinformation and imperialist war propaganda and a pro genocide stance, things will deteriorate to the state of the US.

I agree that many who vote for liberals believe those things, but those are not the goal of liberal parties. The historical meaning of liberalism was the same as what is called neoliberalism today. Calling it a derogatory term is just pretending to be a victim. There IS such an ideology as "belief in inequality based on wealth" and that includes the right to survive through access to healthcare. That is reality.

You argue as if good arguments win, and ideology matters - it doesn't work that way. Ideology is merely a tool. There is only power, or money that you can exchange for power. And those who desire nothing except power have a competitive advantage to gain more power and shape the world over people who want other things. There is a selection process that has been going for decades that precludes normal people like us two.

Politicians in the US might write some other virtues on their flags, or they might even delude themselves to believe them - that is actually best. But when the chips are down, only those who pursue power gain more power. I believe this could be scientifically proven with game theory and a simulation.

What you are doing is kind of denying that economic power (or capital, or billionaires) have an overwhelming influence on politics and policies. If you say that the conservatives or democrats or whoever does this or that for ideological reasons, you deny political reality and obscure paths to improve things. We need transparency and better tools and countermeasures to these mechanisms.

Politicians are chosen by capitalists among thousands of candidates, and only the fringe that happen to fit into their plans are funded. Those who want power above anything else and who have neoliberal tendencies. The useful idiots to capitalists.

So no, neoliberalism is not a derogatory term that should be avoided. It's reality. Or how else do you explain Elon Musk running DOGE?

I'd be curious what liberal party in what country you mean.

AFAIK the liberal parties in Europe like Germany, France and UK want exactly what the US neoliberals want, to dismantle the social equality state, deregulation, private schools, private healthcare etc. But they are usually smaller third parties after Social Democrats and Conservatives. But even the Christian Conservatives in e.g. Germany are more socialist than the third party liberals, and to the left of the Democrats in the US.

Of course, ever since the "Third Way" after the fall of the USSR and Clinton, the social democratic parties of Europe also have become far more neoliberal.

The question is really who's liberty? The liberation of the masses from economic exploitation? Or the liberty of the capitalists to exploit the masses? There is absolutely no doubt what is meant today with liberalism.

And their virtue signalling you can mostly ignore. Why would they want to solve an issue they could run on next election?

If you believe in equality, you're woke. You're also a socialist. Because since fascism is a sincere belief in inequality based on identity, while neoliberalism (democrats) is a sincere belief in inequality based on class / wealth.

So yeah, this belief in equality or basic human decency needs to be destroyed in order to maximize profit. Invest in this propaganda, great ROI guaranteed!

Thanks for linking the article but the video talks about the "techbro ideology" that fuels at least some of their thoughts and actions. They want to create a kind of feudalism where billionaires can rule fiefdoms without interference however they want, a tech utopia for the worthy. I don't know though how much they actually believe in this shit, but they associate or at least flirt with it. So the billionaires and tech-bro's are not fascist or idiots, they are using fascism as a tool.

Trump is also not an idiot, he doesn't think he can buy greenland, he just throwing shit at the camera lens. Every day has to be a new outrage and own the libs. No politicians ever cared about abortion, it's a wedge issue to increase power. The cruelty is the point but it does serve a purpose, because you can't have a functioning democracy without peace, modest prosperity and education / news. We are still "flailing" which is what MAGA wants.

The article doesn't seem to understand these tactics, nor the strategic goals they want to achieve. Or maybe doesn't communicate for brevity.

There is an interesting analysis of the ideology of the techbro's (youtube) backing Trump, who actually do want to destroy the US. I'm kinda shocked how well this explains things, and haven't found a good written article yet (but haven't been looking).

That's like saying the best argument "ought to win" and money doesn't matter (or media manipulation, the economy or voter roll purging). That is what I mean with the liberal mindset though.

Or another thing: If you divide the population in a smarter and a less smart half - it's always easier to manipulate the less smart half. This fundamental problem gets worse with the quality of news and social media.

And lies travel fast while debunking them is hard and boring. And people have been trained to accept lies by their politicians, including the democrats.

Hmm, I thought shifting blames on minorities like Palestinians or Latinos was a conservative thing! ;) I do suspect this is agitprop like with tankies.

There are reasons for the outcome, found in how the rules of the system is set up and the emergent effects and resulting outcomes. These are not that unpredictable in hindsight. Fundamentally, how can you have a democracy without a good news media? (also you need prosperity and peace). So fascism is the natural outcome.

So I don't blame people really, it's more like the math didn't pan out.