RWDT XX: The System Is Kapp Putsch

[Questarian New Yorkshire]

like, this is just so deeply and fundamentally divorced from how actual politics function, even for the rwdt

haha

"actual politics"

Politics is the business of the state.

Politics functions like business. There are some differences but it's mostly the same thing. Politicians are businessmen but their objective is the functioning of the state rather than the functioning of enterprise.

Whether or not trans should be allowed to use bathroom or whether cops should be disarmed isn't politics. It's religion.

Most people who are interested in politics have absolutely no idea how either business or politics works and have absolutely no experience in business or politics. Well, welcome to democrazy!

I speak figuratively (and the inference in my signature is that a lot of people don't understand how to speak figuratively) because it gives me an instant and automatic approximation of the IQ and EQ of the person I'm speaking to. There is far more information about a person and their positions encoded in their figurative speech than there is in their literal speech.

And I understand the world through figurative, formal, and functional terms. I'm not a religious person. I don't mean to say that as I have no spirituality. I mean I don't have a religious personality type. What components of my spirituality exist are expressed through figurative language and not religious signals.

[Cekoviu]

like, this is just so deeply and fundamentally divorced from how actual politics function, even for the rwdt

haha

"actual politics"

Politics is the business of the state.

Politics functions like business. There are some differences but it's mostly the same thing. Politicians are businessmen but their objective is the functioning of the state rather than the functioning of enterprise.

Whether or not trans should be allowed to use bathroom or whether cops should be disarmed isn't politics. It's religion.

pretty good example of what i'm talking about akchually

[Questarian New Yorkshire]

haha

"actual politics"

Politics is the business of the state.

Politics functions like business. There are some differences but it's mostly the same thing. Politicians are businessmen but their objective is the functioning of the state rather than the functioning of enterprise.

Whether or not trans should be allowed to use bathroom or whether cops should be disarmed isn't politics. It's religion.

pretty good example of what i'm talking about akchually

The first and foremost question about politics is:

What is the state?

In fact all political philosophy comes down to this question: What is the state?

As citizens or subjects, we do not ask "What is the state", because if there is a state, it is inherent, apparent, so obvious to our life that this question doesn't need to be asked and is left to - well - philosophers.

In fact we do not need to ask "Is there a state?" very often at all. If that question has to be asked it is usually apparent - there isn't a state. And we already are gearing up to kill each other as we think about the question. You people had to deal with this question in 1861.

As citizens or subjects our first and foremost question, if we want to be members of the body politic and not people outside the body politic trying to subvert it, is: How is the state?

Few questions answered on this forum actually are related to this question. Some people here are philosophers, or would be philosophers. I'm not a philosopher, so I don't engage them in philosophy. But most people are not. Most people are citizen-subjects. And they do not ask: how is the state?

They ask: how is God? What does God want?

And this is dangerous.

[Questarian New Yorkshire]

You will notice that even in our depraved democracies, the rulers still seek to answer the question "How is the state?" They make State of the Union addresses or speeches to Parliament outlining what problems the country has and how the government intends to fix them.

But these answers to questions that the body politic has longed asked fall now on deaf ears. The response to them is religious. All other countries in the world laugh at us. Our leaders can not even speak to our people about the health of the state without being attacked by extremist religious minorities. No wonder they no longer listen to us.

If the leadership of the state can not answer a simple, timeless question: How is the health of the state? without being mocked and attacked mercilessly by media, if the answer to this question falls on a deaf body politic, the death of the state is shortly to follow. When the body politic doesn't care about the health of the state, the state will die.

When the state dies, it is not replaced by religious utopia. Never. It is replaced by violence, unlaw, and disorder. It is replaced by pensioners being beaten to death on the street, the images of the state being trashed and destroyed by demagogues, and the sacred objects of nationhood defiled. This situation can not last. Either chaos or order has to win.

[Italios]

no youre fundamentally misunderstanding. advocating for your in group, however it’s defined, is collective politics. you cant really self-define any social group without an opposing social group (as in, blacks cant exist without whites, and so on) so by advocating for it, you’re furthering the interests of your community. obviously this is going to come at the cost of another community, that doesnt make it any less collectivist. its that “collectivism for the entire human race,” or universal collectivism is just... individualism. because it erases communities, leaving you only with the individual.

think about it, socialism calls for the abolishment of capital, who does this hurt? the capitalists and to an extent the petty bourgeois. you’re further the interests of the proletariat, but somebody has to lose something for the proletariat to get what they want.

ah, i see. the issue here is that i approach politics from a semi-humanist perspective, such that i consider the entirety of humanity to itself be a community whose interests must be furthered, whereas you are approaching it from a semi-identitarian perspective. i was interpreting your point as such, so that introduced a misunderstanding. sorry about that; the lesson is to never assume!

well here's where we disagree, because as i socialist i recognize that should socialism every be implemented, certain humans will necessarily lose out. as it stands, society functions to further the interests of the capitalists (as marx said, "The worker need not necessarily gain when the capitalist does, but he necessarily loses when the latter loses"). if you remove the capitalist's ability to appropriate surplus profit, that's antithetical to their interests, which means socialism is mutually exclusive with the idea that it "benefits everyone."

so, yes, i agree that there are opposing subgroups with fundamentally different interests contained within humanity. however, the thing that you seem to be missing is that human groups are nested fractally and there is some sort of schism at any point you can come up with. black people can be subdivided into black trump supporters and black trump detractors, both of whom have fundamentally different interests. black trump supporters can be subdivided into black female trump supporters and black male trump supporters, both of whom also have different interests. the divide between subgroups grows smaller as you go through more levels, but it is never completely gone because no two humans are exactly alike. so where exactly do we place the divide between communities, and why? the natural solution, in my view, is to not concern oneself with such arbitrary divisions and to consider humanity to be the ultimate community. therefore, any political solution proposed must maximize the benefit to humanity as a whole.

all minority groups in the US have ethnic solidarity. that is a fact, they vote, work, volunteer in their own self-interest. this is illustrated by the recent rioting. it doesn't matter whether a black person is a trump or Biden supporter, they take their political stances for the purpose of benefitting their racial in-group. how they all have the same goal of furthering black interests, but how they arrive at that goal is different.

im not really sure what your point is about the divide between subgroups. to be sure, there can be divisions between them, but the point of a subgroup is that it's defined by the things in opposition to it, so even if individuals have their personal differences, the group still exists. if you're positing that an ingroup is socially significant because "we're all unique individuals, blah blah blah" then youre the individualist, not me

now, how does this square with supporting socialism? there are several factors here that must be considered:
1) the bourgeoisie are a much smaller class than the proletariat
2) the bourgeoisie will undergo short-term damage upon the implementation of socialism, but should be able to live as any average person
3) damage to the (former) bourgeoisie class will not extend for more than a few generations because their grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. will assimilate to the lifestyle of the proletariat and "not know what they're missing," so to speak.
4) implementing socialism will have greatly beneficial short- and long-term effects on the proletariat and their descendants.
any reasonable person ought to see that over time, the benefits of socialism to humanity as a whole vastly outweigh the negatives. the same sort of reasoning can be applied to any political situation.

the size of the bourgeoisie doesn't matter, because so long as even a single member of it exists, it's in opposition to the material needs of the working class. also we're defining the non-proletariat differently. I included the petty bourgeoisie (also roughly equated to the more contemporary term " professional managerial class") who are usually urbanites (ie shop proprietors) but may also refer successful farming landowners. that's fairly large chunk of the population because entrepreneurial capitalism considers business owning to be one of the highest personal achievements possible.

domesticating socialism so that it's just "well the bourgeoisie lose their stocks and shit," so it's framed as this universalist humanistic thing is not good. again, socialism works directly against the lifeblood of a capitalist class, which is why historically socialist activism and regimes have been heavily repressed by capitalists and their government. regardless, even if it *does* end up benefitting "everyone" in the long term, that doesn't mean its the reason we should be socialists, it's just a byproduct of redistributing the means of production. we're not doing this *everyone* can benefit, it's so that the workers can benefit.

[Italios]

pretty good example of what i'm talking about akchually

The first and foremost question about politics is:

What is the state?

In fact all political philosophy comes down to this question: What is the state?

As citizens or subjects, we do not ask "What is the state", because if there is a state, it is inherent, apparent, so obvious to our life that this question doesn't need to be asked and is left to - well - philosophers.

In fact we do not need to ask "Is there a state?" very often at all. If that question has to be asked it is usually apparent - there isn't a state. And we already are gearing up to kill each other as we think about the question. You people had to deal with this question in 1861.

As citizens or subjects our first and foremost question, if we want to be members of the body politic and not people outside the body politic trying to subvert it, is: How is the state?

Few questions answered on this forum actually are related to this question. Some people here are philosophers, or would be philosophers. I'm not a philosopher, so I don't engage them in philosophy. But most people are not. Most people are citizen-subjects. And they do not ask: how is the state?

They ask: how is God? What does God want?

And this is dangerous.

what are they putting in British alcohol that they arent putting in american alcohol, and where can i get it?

[Questarian New Yorkshire]

what are they putting in British alcohol that they arent putting in american alcohol, and where can i get it?

Im actually drinking american alcohol so there

[Italios]

what are they putting in British alcohol that they arent putting in american alcohol, and where can i get it?

Im actually drinking american alcohol so there

why are you drinking piss when you have the option not to? didn't take you for a pee fetish guy

[Questarian New Yorkshire]

Im actually drinking american alcohol so there

why are you drinking piss when you have the option not to? didn't take you for a pee fetish guy

cheap

[Fahran]

Questers is too based right now.

[Italios]

why are you drinking piss when you have the option not to? didn't take you for a pee fetish guy

cheap

oh and it's cheap alcohol? why are you subjecting yourself to natty ice?

[Bear Stearns]

Have you ever started drinking, but once you had your first drink, you just lost all desire to keep drinking?

I think I just hit that and throw my bottle in the trash can

[Questarian New Yorkshire]

cheap

oh and it's cheap alcohol? why are you subjecting yourself to natty ice?

i was a good boy and didnt drink for two weeks, so i felt like being slightly tipsy and not wasted

actually learning to tolerate and drink shitty alcohol is important. same as learning to drink shitty coffee and not turning your nose up at awful cigarettes. you never know when you wont have a choice

thats what was so great about johnnie walker black/red. wherever I went in the world they had it. I never had to be annoyed that my highly specific and unavailable outside certain parts of scotland whisky wasnt around.

of course I dont drink whisky now. By dont I mean rarely.

(i was drinking heinies today)

[Questarian New Yorkshire]

Have you ever started drinking, but once you had your first drink, you just lost all desire

literally never

[Questarian New Yorkshire]

“I only drink single malt” is in the same tier as “I wore shorts on the 10 hour flight and it was too cold!!!!”

[Bear Stearns]

“I only drink single malt” is in the same tier as “I wore shorts on the 10 hour flight and it was too cold!!!!”

i am a fan of rye - i drink a lot of canadian stuff

[Italios]

oh and it's cheap alcohol? why are you subjecting yourself to natty ice?

i was a good boy and didnt drink for two weeks, so i felt like being slightly tipsy and not wasted

actually learning to tolerate and drink shitty alcohol is important. same as learning to drink shitty coffee and not turning your nose up at awful cigarettes. you never know when you wont have a choice

thats what was so great about johnnie walker black/red. wherever I went in the world they had it. I never had to be annoyed that my highly specific and unavailable outside certain parts of scotland whisky wasnt around.

of course I dont drink whisky now. By dont I mean rarely.

(i was drinking heinies today)

oh yeah, lockdown had me as a de facto teetotaller for a few weeks. then it got lifted - friends came over - tequila at 2pm - reenter addictive cycle

[Questarian New Yorkshire]

i was a good boy and didnt drink for two weeks, so i felt like being slightly tipsy and not wasted

actually learning to tolerate and drink shitty alcohol is important. same as learning to drink shitty coffee and not turning your nose up at awful cigarettes. you never know when you wont have a choice

thats what was so great about johnnie walker black/red. wherever I went in the world they had it. I never had to be annoyed that my highly specific and unavailable outside certain parts of scotland whisky wasnt around.

of course I dont drink whisky now. By dont I mean rarely.

(i was drinking heinies today)

oh yeah, lockdown had me as a de facto teetotaller for a few weeks. then it got lifted - friends came over - tequila at 2pm - reenter addictive cycle

Ive been socially isolated for 80 days, count yourself lucky you can go to a party

[Italios]

oh yeah, lockdown had me as a de facto teetotaller for a few weeks. then it got lifted - friends came over - tequila at 2pm - reenter addictive cycle

Ive been socially isolated for 80 days, count yourself lucky you can go to a party

shit that's rough, my sympathies

[Forsher]

Come to the RWDT they said. It's not a chat thread they said.

[Questarian New Yorkshire]

Come to the RWDT they said. It's not a chat thread they said.

sorry who are you

[Cekoviu]

ah, i see. the issue here is that i approach politics from a semi-humanist perspective, such that i consider the entirety of humanity to itself be a community whose interests must be furthered, whereas you are approaching it from a semi-identitarian perspective. i was interpreting your point as such, so that introduced a misunderstanding. sorry about that; the lesson is to never assume!

well here's where we disagree, because as i socialist i recognize that should socialism every be implemented, certain humans will necessarily lose out. as it stands, society functions to further the interests of the capitalists (as marx said, "The worker need not necessarily gain when the capitalist does, but he necessarily loses when the latter loses"). if you remove the capitalist's ability to appropriate surplus profit, that's antithetical to their interests, which means socialism is mutually exclusive with the idea that it "benefits everyone."

it seems as though you're misunderstanding what i'm saying, because it is true that socialism does not benefit every single human and i have acknowledged the ways that it hasn't (it clearly does harm the bourgeoisie). the point is not that every human must benefit from a political decision, but that humanity at large must benefit. otherwise, it would be impossible to hold literally any political view because as you have stated, there are fundamentally opposing interests present between different sectors of the population.

to use an example which is perhaps more intuitive than socialism, think about gay marriage. based on a flawed belief system like the one you appear to think i have, this would not be a good political move because gay marriage only benefits a small portion of the populace while leaving the vast majority virtually unaffected. according to my actual belief system, the fact that it is neutral towards all but ~2% of the population but majorly beneficial towards that 2% means that there is still a non-negligible net benefit to humankind and it is therefore a policy worth pursuing. (this need not necessarily hold true in religion, it is purely relevant with regards to politics in my view.)

so i think we actually do agree on this issue, more or less. hopefully that clears it up?

so, yes, i agree that there are opposing subgroups with fundamentally different interests contained within humanity. however, the thing that you seem to be missing is that human groups are nested fractally and there is some sort of schism at any point you can come up with. black people can be subdivided into black trump supporters and black trump detractors, both of whom have fundamentally different interests. black trump supporters can be subdivided into black female trump supporters and black male trump supporters, both of whom also have different interests. the divide between subgroups grows smaller as you go through more levels, but it is never completely gone because no two humans are exactly alike. so where exactly do we place the divide between communities, and why? the natural solution, in my view, is to not concern oneself with such arbitrary divisions and to consider humanity to be the ultimate community. therefore, any political solution proposed must maximize the benefit to humanity as a whole.

all minority groups in the US have ethnic solidarity. that is a fact, they vote, work, volunteer in their own self-interest. this is illustrated by the recent rioting. it doesn't matter whether a black person is a trump or Biden supporter, they take their political stances for the purpose of benefitting their racial in-group. how they all have the same goal of furthering black interests, but how they arrive at that goal is different.

im not really sure what your point is about the divide between subgroups. to be sure, there can be divisions between them, but the point of a subgroup is that it's defined by the things in opposition to it, so even if individuals have their personal differences, the group still exists. if you're positing that an ingroup is socially significant because "we're all unique individuals, blah blah blah" then youre the individualist, not me

simply noting the fact that people are unique as significant when discussing group differences is not individualistic. it is obviously a fact that no two humans are completely identical physically and psychologically and i would further posit that differences in the demographics of those factors within a group can be enough to sway the outcome of a group decision. that means that within a set of two groups sharing one trait but differently sampled for other physical and psychological traits, the first may well have have a different collective interest than the second (i'm not talking out of my ass here; group decision making has been evidenced to be influenced by personality and conditioned preferences in humans and other species). lumping the two groups together and accepting the apparent majority consensus loses important information -- this can be true without mandating that the individual take precedence over the community in terms of political or social values.

anyways, this is kind of off-track and not really the main point here, which is that even if the groups you're talking about have their own clear shared interests (not necessarily true), that does not mean members should be acting only for those interests. doing so actively generates conflict, which is ultimately worse for all groups involved.

now, how does this square with supporting socialism? there are several factors here that must be considered:
1) the bourgeoisie are a much smaller class than the proletariat
2) the bourgeoisie will undergo short-term damage upon the implementation of socialism, but should be able to live as any average person
3) damage to the (former) bourgeoisie class will not extend for more than a few generations because their grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc. will assimilate to the lifestyle of the proletariat and "not know what they're missing," so to speak.
4) implementing socialism will have greatly beneficial short- and long-term effects on the proletariat and their descendants.
any reasonable person ought to see that over time, the benefits of socialism to humanity as a whole vastly outweigh the negatives. the same sort of reasoning can be applied to any political situation.

the size of the bourgeoisie doesn't matter, because so long as even a single member of it exists, it's in opposition to the material needs of the working class. also we're defining the non-proletariat differently. I included the petty bourgeoisie (also roughly equated to the more contemporary term " professional managerial class") who are usually urbanites (ie shop proprietors) but may also refer successful farming landowners. that's fairly large chunk of the population because entrepreneurial capitalism considers business owning to be one of the highest personal achievements possible.

domesticating socialism so that it's just "well the bourgeoisie lose their stocks and shit," so it's framed as this universalist humanistic thing is not good. again, socialism works directly against the lifeblood of a capitalist class, which is why historically socialist activism and regimes have been heavily repressed by capitalists and their government. regardless, even if it *does* end up benefitting "everyone" in the long term, that doesn't mean its the reason we should be socialists, it's just a byproduct of redistributing the means of production. we're not doing this *everyone* can benefit, it's so that the workers can benefit.

i have to disagree on the point of the size of the bourgeoisie being irrelevant, though this is pretty much just a manifestation of our philosophical disagreement here. if we hypothetically lived in a society where capitalism did not necessitate that the true bourgeoisie be an extremely small group and they were, say, 45% of the population, i might have more reservations about immediately and decisively applying socialism without a greater safety net, as it would heavily harm such a large portion of the population (and my political philosophy is not purely utilitarian, so a minor positive difference towards humanity as a whole while devastating this group would still give me pause). your point about the "petty bourgeois" is noted, but given the much smaller difference between them and the average proletarian compared to the bourgeoisie and the average proletarian, i do not think the impact on them would be so large as to outweigh the benefits towards the proletariat -- they would likely adjust much more quickly, basically.

yes, it's true that original socialist thought was geared towards improving the lives of the proletariat without regard to the wider human condition, but i'm not necessarily an orthodox socialist per se, and i value the overall impact on humanity.

ugh, i'm making wall of text posts now, what have i become

[Cekoviu]

i was a good boy and didnt drink for two weeks, so i felt like being slightly tipsy and not wasted

actually learning to tolerate and drink shitty alcohol is important. same as learning to drink shitty coffee and not turning your nose up at awful cigarettes. you never know when you wont have a choice

thats what was so great about johnnie walker black/red. wherever I went in the world they had it. I never had to be annoyed that my highly specific and unavailable outside certain parts of scotland whisky wasnt around.

of course I dont drink whisky now. By dont I mean rarely.

(i was drinking heinies today)

oh yeah, lockdown had me as a de facto teetotaller for a few weeks. then it got lifted - friends came over - tequila at 2pm - reenter addictive cycle :!:

damn, it's always sad to see teetotalers turn back to the devil's soda :(

[South Odreria 2]

Is there a quiz or something where you find out if you have a semi identitarian or semi humanist perspective on politics

[Cekoviu]

Is there a quiz or something where you find out if you have a semi identitarian or semi humanist perspective on politics

u just have to be in touch with urself hon :^)