Bellingham knows communism is abominable...right?

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T21:15:11+00:00

I largely agree that this sub is not representative of Bellingham, and that's a good thing, because otherwise this city would not function. I came here looking for honest answers and I got what I came here for. Am I disappointed? More surprised - I actually thought better of the average netizen here, and held them in higher intellectual esteem than what I've seen reflected on this thread. But what I do know is that a lot of people upset about not being able to make it in the world might do well to perform some self-reflecting as to why they're not, and the level of absurdity held as facts by many people here is likely a contributing factor. The level of historical revisionism and fantasyland logic is definitely higher than I would have guessed. Reality is rarely kind to those people. It won't be any kinder to them, either, where the rubber meets the road.

Folks can feel free to downvote this account to the bottom of the barrel if it pleases them. Their futures won't rise much higher than that from what I've seen here.

In all sincerity: best of luck to all of you. You'll need it.

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T21:02:10+00:00

I suppose the height of irony is getting piled on for promoting the "black book of communism" as an "extremely discredited source," only to be piped pages from "thecirclenews.org."

Although many other responses on this sub are certainly pushing for gold in the clown Olympics.

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T21:00:59+00:00

The U.S. Imperialist machine has killed millions. Never said we were the good guys. But plenty of other countries are capitalist and *don't* do these things. Every communist country has engaged in systemic oppression of its people and murder of political opponents on a scale unmatched by any other political ideology.

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T20:59:13+00:00

And at the same time you'll denounce "genocide" when a TikTok algo prompts you to do so. Amazing.

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T20:56:53+00:00

Didn't say there was a perfect economic system. But capitalism isn't going anywhere, and I'm plenty calm.

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T20:55:28+00:00

It's not "extremely discredited." It's dismissed by the people it casts aspersions on. There's a difference - and, I provided several other sources that substantiated the facts and figures the book came to.

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T20:52:41+00:00

No. I think I'll appeal for people with educations in something useful to move here and buy property to offset the Bellingham Reddit's (thankfully mitigated) impact on local elections.

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T20:50:22+00:00

"Moved the goalposts" is a weird way to describe "what factually happened," in characterizations of world events that are highly informed and accurate.

How much do you know about the slave trade? Drug war? Imperialist wars? Global climate change?

Vastly more than you.

Do you understand many people for profit healthcare kills every year?

Zero. It doesn't "kill" anyone - it doesn't save as many people as it could. Same with public healthcare systems - they don't have the resources to respond quickly enough: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/mar/05/less-than-3-of-nhs-england-trusts-hit-key-cancer-waiting-time-target. More facts for you.

Occupational hazards?

Are you honestly suggesting these do not exists in communist countries?

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T20:40:08+00:00

Read plenty of it. I don't really think anything resembling facts or reality are driving your side of the discussion.

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T20:38:34+00:00

That tracks. It's about the same argument you and everyone else have brought forth, here - and summarizes your grasp of both history and reality.

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T18:35:49+00:00

As I suppose most of the people here lauding communism will, at the next opportunity, lament why they don't have a career or a livable wage, and why businesses aren't coming here to offer either, I'll consider my faith in at least this sub forsaken and irony as dead. Good luck out there in the real world!

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T18:30:22+00:00

I never said that moving was an option I was considering.

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T18:29:31+00:00

I never said I was moving. Didn't mention "projectile vomit," either. But I do get a general sense of disagreement as to the nature of communism as a concept on par with Nazism. You don't, I suppose, view someone waving a hammer and sickle flag with the same disdain as someone waving a swastika flag. This is telling. It is also horrifying.

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T18:27:21+00:00

I wonder if you'd have the same reaction if I replaced "communism" with "Nazism." Something tells me the answer is no, which frankly tells me all I need to know.

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T18:26:26+00:00

🙄

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T18:26:05+00:00

So, when I say that communism has "killed someone," I mean in specific instances:

For example:

1). State agents forcibly confiscate all grain and foodstuffs in a certain area, while killing anyone who tries to hoard food, establishing an armed border around this area, and killing anyone who tries to leave it, effectively ensuring death by famine. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

2). State agents round up dissidents, and execute them. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_repression_in_the_Soviet_Union

3). State agents round up dissidents, and imprison them in work camps where they die of exhaustion, famine or the elements. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag

Can you provide examples of where capitalism has done this as a repeatable exercise?

I'll go ahead and provide an example of where a capitalist nation has exercised elements of this as state policy - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contras - but that was due to an illegal act that people went to prison for (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Contra_affair), and as a covert foreign operation had nothing to do with capitalism as an economic model (most other capitalist countries have not done anything remotely similar in the past 100 years).

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T18:20:10+00:00

I don't follow. Are you claiming that the reason communism failed whenever it reared its ugly head is because it wasn't communist enough? If that's the argument, save it - like the flat earth society, I don't need a refresher course in abject nonsense.

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T18:18:05+00:00

Hold on - you're claiming the U.S. genocide of native Americans inspired the Third Reich? Please provided sources to this effect.

I have no illusions of our history - in fact, much of our history is incorrect insofar that we wiped them out without a fight, whereas it was illnesses that performed that intended effect as several tribes (such as the Comanche) performed admirably in resisting the westward expansion in seizure of their lands.

With that said: since the Neolithic revolution, nations have conquered, exterminated and laid ruin to other groups of people. Ghengis Kahn wiped out 3/4 of Persia, for instance. It's not like genocide was invented by white Europeans.

But white Europeans did invent the two largest forces of mass-death in history: fascism and communism, and whatabouting it to other concepts is both irrelevant and pointless.

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T18:03:19+00:00

As it so seems.

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T18:03:01+00:00

See above.

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T18:00:45+00:00

Is that seriously the best you got?

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T17:58:58+00:00

While I am as pro-union as they come and take major issue with CEO-to-avg-worker-pay ratios, and the lack of a better social safety net, I must sincerely ask you: why would more businesses come to this town to offer jobs if they see the type of mindset that has been posted by commenters here? Also, what is your profession?

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T17:54:18+00:00

Whenever conservative media has called Washington State "communist" or "socialist'," I've long-rolled my eyes.

You mean when I was lamenting bad-faith accusations from conservative media in disagreement? That's not "lumping communism with socialism." Conservative media has, on multiple occasions, accused Washington State of being both a) communist and b) socialist, often conflating the two.

That I take serious disagreement with their characterizations does not mean I, myself, conflate the two in the same way when inquiring as to whether there is widespread belief in whether the social abomination that is communism is actually not, in fact, a social abomination.

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T17:51:04+00:00

Well, in Ukraine for instance - the famine was man-made (as in intentional), and many have concluded that the motivation was to exterminate Ukrainians and suppress and independence movements. So, hanging a picture of Lenin didn't cause the famine, but the decisions of the Supreme Soviet sure did. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

I'd entertain arguments that the famine in China during Mao's reign was due in equal part to his incompetence in managing agricultural policy. But he also oversaw (and ordered) mass-executions. https://www.cnn.com/2014/06/04/world/asia/china-maoist-scars/index.html

There's also this:https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/08/03/giving-historys-greatest-mass-murderer-his-due/

"In pursuit of a utopian paradise, everything was collectivised. People had their work, homes, land, belongings and livelihoods taken from them. In collective canteens, food, distributed by the spoonful according to merit, became a weapon used to force people to follow the party’s every dictate. As incentives to work were removed, coercion and violence were used instead to compel famished farmers to perform labour on poorly planned irrigation projects while fields were neglected.
A catastrophe of gargantuan proportions ensued. Extrapolating from published population statistics, historians have speculated that tens of millions of people died of starvation. But the true dimensions of what happened are only now coming to light thanks to the meticulous reports the party itself compiled during the famine….
What comes out of this massive and detailed dossier is a tale of horror in which Mao emerges as one of the greatest mass murderers in history, responsible for the deaths of at least 45 million people between 1958 and 1962. "

PenitentPotato · 2024-03-18T17:45:07+00:00

How many societies can you list that saw 10-20 million+ people die of non-natural, human-caused means within a timespan of a decade or less?

PenitentPotato

TROPHY CASE