The metaphysical / new age religions have a version of “a desire to be totally rational” that is honestly just as bad.
I grew up in one. No glass and steel, but quite the desire to be made out of cosmic sunbeams and spiritual joyfulness.
Humans feel more than that. Pain, grief, loneliness, stress, rage, and pride aren’t toxic energy: they are existence. You can’t aspire to something that cuts out half of your existence, or you’re always going to feel inadequate.
Firstly, I’d like to warn you: you’re on !tankiejerk . You’re not going to find many friends here.
Secondly, I gotta say: I can’t help but notice some questions very conspicuously absent from your list. Very important questions, too.
How many civilians have died in Russian airstrikes?
How many Russian weapons have been destroyed or intercepted by lend-leased military equipment?
How many people would those weapons have killed?
How many Ukrainian civilians’ lives would have to be saved for their salvation to be worth 10% of America’s military budget?
If a capitalist wanted me to hand a sandwich to a homeless man, and was rolling the cameras and spewing propaganda about how this couldn’t happen in a communist country… I would still hand the sandwich to the homeless man.
Because a man’s gotta eat, you know? His needs don’t change because some monster has an agenda that gets fulfilled when his needs are met.
Except that the problem I have with tankies is their tendency to wish death upon people, (or, at least, accept casualties as some kind of ideological necessity.)
I don’t even wish death on Neo Nazis. I wish Life After Hate upon them. The organization, after all, has ripped people right from the bowels of Neo Nazi organizations. I’d like to see more of that.
I sure as hell don’t wish death upon misguided idealists who think killing political rivals is somehow going to build a world free from authoritarianism. They don’t need to die: they need to examine their beliefs.
not that that means anything consistent in the first place
Yeaaaaaaah… I wasn’t sure what to use as the title. By the time I had captioned the meme, I realized it didn’t exclusively describe tankies. It also describes Tucker Carlson’s whole audience.
In hindsight, I probably could have said, “Tankies and far right.” There did not need to be symmetry in my statement.
This is a NATO proxy war in that NATO, an organization created to provide European countries protection from Russia’s territorial ambitions, is providing assistance to a European country to help protect them from Russia’s territorial ambitions.
Perfectly stated. Definitely sums up NATO’s involvement.
You can ignore everything I’m about to write. I’m just thinking through this in written form.
Here goes: it’s a bit confusing for me. Tankies call themselves leftists. In fact, they call us “pro-capitalists” because we don’t believe in authoritarianism.
And it feels weird to me to be in one of two groups both saying, “you’re not REAL anti-capitalists” at each other.
So here goes:
the Nazis weren’t nationalist socialists
the USSR wasn’t a republic controlled by worker Soviets
In fact, the use of tanks on Hungarian worker Soviets was what gave tankies their name. They were actually anti Soviet.
the Democratic Republic of North Korea isn’t democratic
the People’s Republic of China does not belong to its people
Moms for Liberty doesn’t want liberty (and is filled with numerous people who aren’t even moms)
a majority membership of the National Black Republican Organization is white
So yes, I must acknowledge that a group of pro-authoritarians can call themselves leftists without being leftists.
… it still feels weird though. Because if you view it from their perspective, they are leftists. And we are capitalists’ enablers.
Wait! I think I see it. Their embrace of violent regimes and violent tactics destroys working class unity and alienates non-violent, compassionate anti-capitalists. They actively choose Stalin over Trotsky and Trotsky over Kerensky, and (like they did with Marguerit Duras) drive anyone out of the movement who won’t support that choice.
They are anti-solidarity. And you cannot be a leftist and be anti-solidarity.
Firstly, we’ll save a lot more money than that by auditing the DoD like Katie Porter and Jon Stewart keep advocating for. I would much rather take my portion of a DoD audit on my next tax return.
Secondly, would you like your next tax return to include shares in a Patriot missile system? Because I don’t know about you, but I don’t actually have any use for soon-to-be decommissioned weapons.
Were you planning on overthrowing the bourgeoisie with your share of those missile systems?
Oh, we’d better be still doing a deep state. The only thing that helped me make it through inflation was the Soros Bucks from all the paid protesting I’ve been doing.
At some point, I ran across an argument along the lines of: “We hunger, and food exists. We thirst, and water exists. We feel horny, and sex is real. We yearn for God, and so I conclude that God exists.”...
Well I can believe it. The CIA once tried to murder Fidel Castro with, like, shaving cream or something one time. Our agencies can go back and forth from “we are a daunting, all-knowing panopticon” into “hi, we’re the Keystone Cops” a dozen times in a weekend.
If that’s the case, and they’re targeting someone who didn’t even get in that deep, then: ouch. My condolences. I hope you if you really aren’t a threat that they figure out they aren’t needed anymore.
Why i lost my faith (feddit.de)
Fringe right and fringe left both make this conversation difficult (lemmy.myserv.one)
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No long hair! (lemmy.ml)
Biden’s NLRB Brings Workers’ Rights Back From the Dead (prospect.org)
Looking for a counterexample to an argument for God
At some point, I ran across an argument along the lines of: “We hunger, and food exists. We thirst, and water exists. We feel horny, and sex is real. We yearn for God, and so I conclude that God exists.”...
Why is the government targeting incels?
You may have heard of the “Countering Violent Extremism” program under DHS....
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Tankies - pushing reasonable people out of the Communist Party since 1950! (lemmy.myserv.one)
From the article: When Marguerite Duras Got Kicked Out of the Communist Party...