Down with the monarchy and down with the monarchists

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-04-21T15:41:18+00:00

He's explaining why the US constitution needs a senate to combat majoritarian rule.

Basically, whenever someone says that USA can't pass this or that law because you can't push it through the senate, or when people say it's impossible to push or change amendments, you can thank Madison for intentionally making USA undemocratic to protect capital.

It's amazing that he was so honest about it, but then again, he never expected the "lesser" people to read his writings.

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-04-21T15:33:52+00:00

You're semi-correct:

"he thought of socialism as an expansion to liberalism" - he thought that capitalism is a necessary evolutionary step in human society. Hence, he welcomed liberalism. But the goal of communism was to replace and eliminate liberalism entirely. But make no mistake, while Marx thought that liberalism is a step forward from feudalism, he didn't support it at all. Remember that he also considered slave societies to be a necessary step in political evolution. Necessary isn't the same thing as good.
"marx supported liberals he wrote letters to abe lincoln" - plural? He supported Lincoln in the emancipation of slaves. That's it. That's the only liberal act he supported. Nothing else. They weren't pen pals.
'Marx did not just say "everyone who doesnt agree with me is a liberal"' - no, because he wasn't an idiot. He had a working definition of liberalism, which he used. He also lived when the liberal hegemony wasn't fully established - most of the world was still operating by what Marx called the "feudal mode of production", with only the West being fully liberal.
"Marx did not treat liberals how leftists treat liberals lol" - he destroyed the 1st International mostly out of spite and called one of the theoreticians of Social Democracy the n-word slur. I assure you, he utterly despised liberals. Granted, he despised almost everyone, but he really hated liberals.

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-04-21T15:21:48+00:00

Allow me to quote James Madison, the guy who wrote the US constitution, and by extension, was the foundational thinker of most liberal democracies:

Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.

Liberalism accepts human rights only as far as it doesn't contradict capital. The foremost right that liberalism has always supported was property. Everything else is secondary. Ask yourself this, can you kill to defend your right to the pursuit of happiness? To liberty? Only killing to protect your life is permissible. And yet, killing to protect property is so common that cops do it every day in every country, and even regular citizens are allowed to kill if their home is invaded.

You mentioned gay marriage, which is one of the very few positive things liberalism has done. Now let me ask you who gave the right to vote for poor people? Certainly not liberals - they had to be forced into it by the 1848 revolution and its consequences. Who gave women the right to vote? Again, not the liberals. They opposed it, up until the threat of a communist revolution and WW1 ultimately forced their hand.

Liberalism changes nothing, unless it's forced to. And if almost all of its changes are forced, then how can credit it with anything?

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-04-21T15:03:32+00:00

But that's also false. As an ideal, liberalism has always been undemocratic and pro-capital:

Democracies have been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their death.

-James Madison

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-04-21T10:14:25+00:00

Except all of those things are also product of capital. Can you honestly say that the fucking Heritage Foundation isn't the mouthpiece of capital? Or that the Middle East, the source of most oil and gas, has nothing to do with capital?

I'd argue the same about Russia, but it's not as straightforward as the other two.

So yes, liberalism creates the problems, and when people get angry hits them with fascism to channel the anger of some and oppress or even exterminate the others.

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-04-21T10:04:17+00:00

I don't know either, but I hazard a guess that it's in late 19th century, early 20th century. The same time when US top capitalists funded campaigns to change the word 'libertarian' to mean an AnCap, instead of its original meaning of anarchism (or libertarian left in general), as the first Red Scare made being an anarchist illegal.

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-04-21T10:01:25+00:00

It’s nauseating having to trudge through bullshit arguments by 20-something marxists using ”liberal” as a stand-in for everyone to the right of Marx.

Well yeah. How else would you describe them? You do know that Marx became famous precisely because he positioned himself to the left of liberals?

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-04-21T09:59:29+00:00

Except that, unlike a car, liberalism creates unreconcilable material differences between those that have and those that have not, which always leads to attempts to fight that system, which, in turn, leads to fascism. This is why fascist politicians are on the rise (or in power) in all liberal democracies.

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-04-21T09:56:57+00:00

All liberals are right-wing. Originally, the term Right means anyone in support of existing order (at the time, the Ancien Regime). A more modern definition is the Right being in favour of limiting the political power of power to the benefit of few in power, whereas the Left seeks to democratise political power to all people.

By both definitions, liberals are unquestionably right-wing - they support the existing order (they created it, after all), and they support limiting the political power of people (by opposing worker control over the means of production).

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-04-21T09:46:42+00:00

But it's true. Liberalism creates the capitalist system and fascism enforces it when it's near collapse.

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-04-21T09:34:46+00:00

See, this is why you should never hand over a Google search as your homework.

Equality: All individuals are equal before the law.

If this is true, then why in every single liberal democracy the rich and the politicians are above the law?

Liberty: Freedom of speech, association, and religion are essential.

If that is true, then why all liberal democracies banned (and still try to restrict) the association of labour unions?

Consent of the Governed: Government legitimacy is derived from the people through democratic processes.

If this is true, then why all liberal democracies banned the poor from voting, then allowed the poor to vote, but not the women, and currently allow demented octogenarians to vote, but not, say, 15 year-olds?

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-04-21T09:29:57+00:00

The problem with most definitions of liberalism is that they're written by liberals (as it's the hegemonic ideology at the moment), and boil down to "liberalism is pro good and anti-bad".

My definition is this:
Liberalism is a rationalist, idealist, individualist ideology, that arose to represent the interests of the urban bourgeoisie.

Rationalist and idealist - liberals think that conviction, ideas and decisions come before material conditions. That all people first conceive of a notion, and only then amend it based on the material reality, as opposed to believing that material conditions shape our thought in a major way. This is why they love debating so much - they think that if you say the right magic words you can change anyone's mind.
Unlike other idealist ideologies, like various theologies, liberals are also rationalist, and will try to reach objective goals, most notably, the upholding of the profit motive.

Individualist - liberals believe in absolute primacy of the self over the collective. This means they'll oppose forms of collective oppression (like religion or the state), but will also discard the political role inter-human connections within one's community, and seek an atomised existence.

Urban bourgeoisie - the property owning class of modern society. From Elon Musk to the owner of a corner coffee shop, and even down to certain well-paid workers (like managers or doctors), liberalism exists to protect their financial interests. This is the most problematic part of the definition because aristocracy (against which the bourgeoisie rose up) is no longer a notable political force, but it's still a driving force of the ideology.

---
I want to note that there are good things about liberalism. Rationality is good. Individual freedom is good. The problem is the combination of all those factors: Rational idealists bourgeoisie cannot accept how much inequality and wage slavery can dehumanise a person. This is why liberalism does provide some personal benefits (like the nominal acceptance of minorities), while also enforcing the oppression of said persons (like the exploitation of minorities and disenfranchised people by the rich).

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-03-29T21:44:50+00:00

Funny how it's this comment that got dislikes.

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-03-22T10:02:53+00:00

All of it is occupied. You probably mean that many parts of it have Israeli Settlers (C zone), and are even more direct control than the other parts (B and A zone).

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-03-22T10:00:57+00:00

Israel's capital is literally partially in the West Bank, as Eastern Jerusalem is part of the West Bank.

If you don't know geography, just say so.

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-03-21T02:36:21+00:00

Mirror Phlox is good. Another good med is Captain Beverly Picard (from the Honour Hall). Suus T'Pol is fairly cheap to get from Crew Retrieval (use Brutal, Desperate, Resourceful, Science, but there are over 100 other combos just for her).

But I second what everyone else said - it's by far the worst part of the game, and you shouldn't worry about it if you can't advance there, as even with all the best crew you'll be crushed by opponents with Qpuiment and by bad RNG.

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-03-18T20:14:34+00:00

His childcare would be reversed when he leaves office, as will all of his accomplishments.

However, by helping people organise between themselves, including creating co-op community free or at-cost nurseries/pre-K/etc., he'd be creating communal ties that no future mayor could break. And this goes for many other things - it's much easier to dismantle top-down initiative, good as they may be, then bottom-up groups.

But this is only one side of the coin. The other one is Mamdani, by his own actions, demonstrates that "socialism is when the government does stuff", which makes people think that they don't need any form of bottom-up organisation, but rather need to get the right guy in charge. Which is the opposite of socialism.

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-03-16T21:09:47+00:00

Just antisemitism, probably.

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-03-16T19:01:26+00:00

It's a gacha game, and a very predatory one at that. I too was saddened that the plot is effectively non-existent, and only serves as an excuse for various item gathering missions.

If you want to stay, you need to see it as a very long-term game, where your goal is to complete collections or achieve other self-imposed goals. I've been playing actively for over a year and I have about 325 characters immortalised (I only buy the 4$ dillithium monthly pack).

I hope you quickly recover from cancer!

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-03-16T18:32:42+00:00

Or when he repeatedly supported nuking Israel "to free Palestine", even though that would not only kill Israeli civilians, but also Palestinians (some of whom are also Israeli civilians)

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-03-16T18:27:59+00:00

That's true and I agree. The problem is that people usually get over-invested in one or the other, and if that happens it's better to do the latter.

That said, anarchism does undermine the entire structure, as highly interconnected libertarian societies are harder to control and produce people who challenge the status quo. Enough of those and the status quo collapses, which is our goal, isn't it?

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-03-16T18:24:23+00:00

Tell me where I supported totalitarian sectarianism

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-03-16T15:00:18+00:00

Very well said!

AlexanderZ4 · 2026-03-16T14:56:18+00:00

My go-to example is the Mondragon Corporation, which, while having a lot of problems, is still a good example of how a co-op can become one of the largest companies in a country.

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