
Don't Be a Sucker - fortran77
https://archive.org/details/0022_Dont_Be_a_Sucker_22_33_53_00
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anm89
It' funny to me that both sides of american politics would claim they agree
with this while saying it's the other side who wants to divide people and they
are both right.

The left wants to include all of the traditionally divided groups on the
surface but want's to divide those groups on new terms, gender, class,
politics themselves(if you aren't with us you are against us)

The right wants interpersonal solidarity (we can accept people individually as
long as they let me be) but still likes the nationalistic and anti immigrant
rhetoric.

They both would end up back at some kind highly restrictive, facist like end
point if left unchecked in my opinion.

The right causes more damage in the short term in my opinion, things like
immigrant detention camps, civil liberties abuses through the police courts
and prisons.

The left scares me more in the long run because unlike the right, they believe
that they hold the correct pure set of ideas(many subgroups in the left think
this although the left as a whole can't agree on what the pure set of ideas
is) and are much more willing to claim the ends justify the means for any
given topic and claim the rules don't apply to them (look at things like the
CHOP as an example). Most of my slightly left of democrat friends if really
pressed to define what they support end up supporting the violent seizure of
assets from groups they feel like have to much (IE an armed populist
revolution, the irony being it's the other side who has all the guns)

I know this isn't the place for any of this but this stuff bothers me recently
and I hate how if you don't pick a side you are always the bad guy.

~~~
sudosysgen
The goal of the left isn't to divide the population on gender and class, it is
to make the already existing divisions apparent as that is a pre-requisite to
actually fix them. Which is why leftists would call it ...-consciousness,
because the goal is just to make people conscious of the already existing
differences and then to heal them.

The basic idea of modern leftism is that strongest, base distinction in
society is class, but that there are other existing divisions that need to be
bridged before class itself can be fixed.

If it is not readily apparent to you, the US is already divided based on
gender, class, and race, and the right party (really both of them) promote
policies that would actually increase these gaps. They would ignore them in
their rhetoric, but augment them in practice. Whereas the left augments them
in their rhetoric, but seeks to minimize them in practice.

~~~
roenxi
> They would ignore them in their rhetoric, but augment them in practice.
> Whereas the left augments them in their rhetoric, but seeks to minimize them
> in practice.

I'm going out on a limb I suppose, but that isn't how political parties work.
Outing myself as an engineer, if I wanted to increase/minimise something in
practice I would start with a survey of the academic literature on times where
the thing changed radically. Then I would attempt to replicate those
conditions. Then I would assess the outcomes using pre-defined measures of
success.

No political party works that way. Both wings of policies work near-
exclusively with sounds-good-to-people-who-vote strategies. In particular,
speaking cheerfully from the right, I've never seen a leftist "minimise
[divides] in practice" strategy that looks like it started from a historic
survey of what worked. I expect there are similar complaints about the right.
I've never seen a political solution assessed for effectiveness, and most of
them aren't effective.

~~~
sudosysgen
If you read leftist literature, there are many attempts to do exactly that.
It's just that in the US the left has essentially no power, it's shared
between a centrist Democratic party and a right Republican party.

That being said, there are a lot of ineffective tactics in the left, because
there is a lot of infighting (see the XKCD article on standards, as another
commenter suggested), and very loose organization.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Well, I'm not really all that concerned with what the leftists do in
literature. I'm concerned with what they do in power. If we don't actually
have any in power in the US, then the only answer is "no data".

(And "literature" is a pretty poor way to try to refute the claim, which is
what leftists do "in practice".)

~~~
sudosysgen
The GP mentioned an engineering process and literature review. I answered
their questions about how these problems are approached and what the process
is. I think that's fairly adequate.

If you want to know what any politician will do in power, the process is to
see what they are proposing, and to see what others with the same ideology do
in practice in other places. If you want to know what the left would do, I
suggest doing this.

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jenkinsj
A classic. The part when the agitator-clown-carnival barker yells "Folks I'm
just an average American but I'm an American American! {{insert-ad-libbed-
racist-tirade}}". Good thing we defeated nonsense like this long ago.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGAqYNFQdZ4&feature=youtu.be&t=220)

~~~
cxr
Agitators and racists are still around today.

~~~
JKCalhoun
Whoosh?

~~~
cxr
Nope. The comment I responded to was a low-quality comment, and it irked me
that it was at the top. I repeated the same obvious point, only stripped of
the sarcasm to show that without the sarcasm, it's a pretty bare statement. If
you think that my restatement is facile, then you must be able to recognize
that the previous attempt at the same point is, too. Its payload differs only
in the sarcasm attached to it, and there's no value in the sarcasm itself.

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sukilot
It's interesting how the government propaganda celebrated the freedom and
equality of Black people, despite the legal falsehood of the claim.

The class in power is willing to accept the presence of a despised minority,
as long as they are kept firmly lower class. It's only when the opppressed
agitate for freedom and equality that they all called unpatriotic and
unbelonging.

~~~
CyberRabbi
How would you describe the people that make up the class in power?

~~~
sneak
"large landowners", generally.

~~~
a1369209993
Or "high-functioning psychopaths", if you're a bit less concerned with
rriepe's concerns.

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Animats
Yes, it's instructive to watch those educational videos on American values
from the post-WWII era. Another good one is "Despotism"[1].

People of that era knew what despotism looked like.

[1]
[https://archive.org/details/Despotis1946](https://archive.org/details/Despotis1946)

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neilv
I overall love this one, and occasionally send it to people. Though state
propaganda is something to be very careful with-- for the reasons this example
discusses.

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mrobot
Why was the US Department of War renamed to Department of Defense?

~~~
qntty
The department used to be sometimes involved in national defense, so they
called it the Department of War. When they started using it to exclusively
create unnecessary wars, they had to change the name to the Department of
Defense.

~~~
Chlorus
…it was created in September 18, 1947 as part of a reorg brought on by
difficulties encountered during WWII. Pretty good foresight on their part to
realize they were going to need to start a bunch of unnecessary wars!

~~~
rriepe
It was 14 years before Eisenhower's famous speech on the military/industry
complex. Maybe they were just incredibly prescient.

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thimkerbell
This is the short antifascist WWII-era public service video.

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anongoesprivate
this video is relevant to every country now, i can see this happening very
clearly in my country with my friends and family, but i can't do anything
about it, because i think people understand that discrimination thoughts are
immoral and wrong, but since they get immediate benefits like influence and
space to talk, and ignore the consequences, if someone try to talk to them
,like the guy in the video, they will fight them or try to convert them. its
like humans don't follow religion or other cult because of belief ,but because
of some ulterior motive they have.

another question from the video, what is a Freemasons, i tried googling but
cant understand it, is it like a cult?

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netsharc
This editorial from today is great too:
[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/31/the-
ri...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/31/the-rights-
culture-war-politics-rightwing-fantasy-elections)

Fact (I guess I shouldn't use that word) is, currently half of Washington, who
knows how much of Britain, and in many European countries, is actually
peddling shit to suckers, and the suckers are eating it.

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troughway
Great video and lots of potential commentary, once again twarted by the
bullshit political diatribe of HN.

Job well done lads.

