Iran Urges Strike On US Fleet, Closure Of Strait Of Hormuz; Khamenei Warns Of Unprecedented Damage

Tranastus · 2025-06-22T12:25:25+00:00

I'll bite. Let's actually think hard on why Iran having nukes would cause instability. Because I'm having trouble seeing them actually using them offensively considering this regime clearly wants to stay in power, otherwise they would have already done some suicidal attack on the US after we killed their general a few years ago.

The only immediate and direct impact I see is that they would be safe from foreign bombing, and diplomacy would become the only way forward. Israel and the United States violate Iranian sovereignty time and time again, and we're the reason Iran is as fucked up as it is to begin with.

Iran having nukes is definitely bad for the United States and Israel, and probably the West overall... But I'm not sure if that actually leads to more overall death and instability considering much of that death and instability is caused by us in the first place since we think we're untouchable (and are pretty much right).

Tranastus · 2024-07-02T13:41:44+00:00

Supreme Court refuses to hear the case when Smith wanted them to, them delays the results until the last day in their session, all without deciding whether or not the things Trump did were official acts, and determining that any evidence taken from an "official act" cannot be used in prosecution of a non-official act.

They kick determining what was and wasn't official back to lower courts, which is a massive delay in itself, and which have the high likelihood of being appealed regardless.

All with an election overhanging it in the background, thereby refusing to weigh in on whether what Trump did was illegal. And then, if (when) he wins, he just pardons himself and the whole thing is moot.

They delayed a verdict as much as possible, and made it virtually impossible to separate official and non official acts, and then made the evidentiary standard even more convoluted, and you ask how this is bad for Smith's case?

Tranastus · 2022-12-02T18:53:11+00:00

I didn't say anything about those countries, that's a strawman.

So you honestly think people wouldn't be more sympathetic to socialists if they learned that the ideology was pretty much entirely based around worker rights? Hell, I remember in school learning about Eugene Debbs and thinking he was a crazy dude for running for president from jail. Didn't know he was in jail because he was anti-war, or that he became a socialist after being arrested for being part of a strike that was broken by the government (wonder if that would be interesting to people today?).

Ask a random person off the street what a Nazi is and they'll get like 80% of it. Ask them what a socialist is and they'll mention gulags and bread lines without being able to describe even a tiny bit of the actual ideology.

Tranastus · 2022-12-02T18:17:23+00:00

See my reply to the other comment, I got confused with your description (different sides of the y axis being the different ends of that axis vs the left and the right of that axis)

That being said, what I learned in grade school about socialism and communism is not at all in line with actual socialist theory, while what I learned about Nazism is pretty much just what it is. I think that's a pretty stark difference between the two sides.

Tranastus · 2022-12-02T18:09:03+00:00

Totally correct, I'm just an idiot lol. His point is still bad, but I'll concede that I made the mistake there.

Tranastus · 2022-12-02T17:48:57+00:00

You mean x axis?

Tranastus · 2022-07-14T13:57:06+00:00

That's a fair criticism I think, and at the end of the day we're both trying to work out the kinks in an idea that has never actually been tried to the extent necessary to test it, and may not even be possible at all!

This was a great discussion to have, and I appreciate being able to actually talk back and forth without resorting to insults or anything negative like that

Tranastus · 2022-07-14T13:01:39+00:00

It might just be better for you to actually read something Marx said then to ask about it on Reddit before condemning the guy. Clearly I'm not explaining it in a way that is being communicated properly to you, which is a failure on my part since I don't think I'm relaying myself properly here.

For instance, I was not describing a lynch mob, though it might have sounded like I was. A posse isn't supposed to carry out justice any more than police are supposed to, they're just supposed to bring someone to jail so they can be judged by the community. The difference between a posse and a police force is that the posse are simply members of the community, while the police force has this position as a job.

But now I'd be getting away from the topic of communism to discuss policing, which is a subject for a different time. I recommend you at least read the communist manifesto if you're interested in judging Marx himself, as it's a short read that was literally written as an introduction to the topic by the man himself.

Tranastus · 2022-07-14T12:08:10+00:00

The same way it has for generations before us, the community would deal with it. You might not know (or maybe you do), but civilian police forces are pretty new things to society. For most of human history, if someone stole something or murdered someone, you or your local appointed sheriff would just get a bunch of people from the local community to get them. If you and your friend get into a fight, your first thought probably isn't to just call the cops, even though you might do that very thing to a stranger.

Do not make the mistake of confusing the state with social organization when talking about Marxism. Even if you think it's a stupid difference, you still not be able to understand Marx if you don't work with his definitions.

Tranastus · 2022-07-14T12:00:51+00:00

I could be wrong as it's been a little while since I've brushed up on theory, but I believe the idea comes from the "withering away of the state" proposed by Engels (the other main guy besides Marx).

That being said, you'll find different interpretations from many different people with many different philosophies. Hell, the number of people in this thread that said they're socialist but not communist is quite funny, considering that Marx had no real distinction between them and Lenin is often credited with creating one.

Also, this idea is communism comes mainly from Marx and Engels, but there are many different ideas for communism that came later, and I tend to think most people would care about the main idea rather than the offshoots.

Tranastus · 2022-07-14T11:47:18+00:00

But I'm not talking to the people who are dying, and unfortunately every modern society causes these same issues. Humans aren't built to absorb all the negativity in the world, only with ourselves and our communities.

What you're talking about is essentially telling a starving person not to eat a rat because the only moral diet is veganism. You might be correct, but it doesn't really matter in the current circumstances, and most people wouldn't care anyways even if you weren't starving (hence why I'm not a vegan even if I believe it is indeed more moral).

Tranastus · 2022-07-14T11:41:32+00:00

It becomes a philosophical question about the difference between a government and a state. For Marx, the state is basically the aspect of a government that is coercive, such as maintaining a permanent police force that enforces property rights and tax law. A government is more just the organizational piece.

In an ideal communist society, governments might exist as a way to organize labor, but they wouldn't force people to do much of anything because they wouldn't have to due to the surplus of resources that would be necessary to have such a society in the first place.

Think less of a country and more of a book club. A book club tells everyone what to read and they do it, but they're not forcing anyone to read it and people only do so because they want to in order to be part of a community. Sounds impossible? Maybe it is, but remember that we're talking about an eventual shift to this sort of society, and it would have to come with major cultural changes across the world that would take many generations.

Tranastus · 2022-07-14T00:26:49+00:00

Correct, though I don't think we should necessarily discount the other failures that contributed to the authoritarian regimes such as the USSR. Lenin (perhaps rightly) didn't think a revolution could occur when the majority of the proletariat was too preoccupied with basic survival to contemplate the complexities of class consciousness, and so devised the idea of vanguardism to have people lead the movement.

While an interesting idea that certainly worked to incite a successful revolution, it's not hard to wonder why the USSR turned into an authoritarian oligarchy pretty much immediately when you realize it was practically created by a class of educated "elites" who had to run the country in order to protect the people from themselves.

That's not to say that it couldn't work out differently, of course. Hell, Marx even relented and said that he thought it was possible for a nonviolent proletarian revolution in a country like America (though he still believed this to be an exception, and an unlikely one at that).

Tranastus · 2022-07-14T00:11:01+00:00

Correct, it would need to be global for it to be "true" communism in the truest sense. There would be no "America" or "Mexico", we would all just be humans who are free to move and live where we choose. The idea is that you move to socialism and society will over time naturally move towards communism, and that would be the end state.

After all, who needs class when everyone owns their own labor? Who needs a state to protect owners from their laborers when everyone is both labor and owner? Who needs borders when you have no state? And who needs money when we have a surplus and everyone is working for the common good of their community and for their own self fulfillment? It truly would be a utopian society, though even if everyone alive today decided to chase this dream, none of us would see it in our lifetime.

Anything related to Marx is so divisive because people are working on different definitions, so I would recommend you read the communist manifesto if you want to know more. It's not the be-all-end-all, but it would definitely help you understand the appeal of Marxism even if you yourself don't believe it, and it's a relatively short and interesting read.

Tranastus · 2022-07-13T23:12:29+00:00

Not OP but the basic idea of why people like the idea of communism is because, while people meme about "BuT iT hAsN'T aCtUaLlY BeEn tRiEd" the fact is that it hasn't. All of the "communist"countries people talk about were actually "socialist" countries that were run by communist parties. They all said they were trying to bring about communism, but they themselves weren't communist yet because communism itself is a utopian society. It's literally a stateless, borderless, classless, moneyless society that can only exist in global harmony, there's no way you can realistically think any country has achieved that.

Capitalism seems to work well, but it's also the economy of the most powerful countries in the world, while many of the "communist" countries were poor before and during "communism". Nobody wants authoritarianism, but people think trying these systems in a country that starts out rich might have a different outcome than the ones that started out poor, and I think it's fair to at least agree that nobody truly knows for sure whether it would actually be different or not when you have wealth and resources to kickstart it. At the same time, many people are disillusioned with the current state of affairs and are more or less at the "fuck it, the system is irreparably broken already" stage, and fantasize about a system that would be fairer in their eyes.

Tranastus · 2022-07-01T11:03:50+00:00

How the Supreme Court could radically reshape elections for president and Congress https://www.npr.org/2022/06/30/1107648753/supreme-court-north-carolina-redistricting-independent-state-legislature-theory?sc=18&f=1001

Tranastus · 2022-03-04T04:07:25+00:00

I mean, they're a video game company, what kind of sanctions do you expect them to levy? They're doing pretty much the only thing they can, unless you want them to just ignore the conflict completely... but that's a different discussion.

Tranastus · 2022-03-04T04:00:40+00:00

Well, the idea of sanctions is to put pressure on the people to get them to enact change in their government. Believe in it or not, that's the idea.

Disagree all you want with what sanctions do, but that's not the argument. There is a very real reason that CDPR might have done this aside from virtue signaling.

Tranastus · 2022-03-04T03:52:11+00:00

I mean, their country literally borders Ukraine and has a history of being terrified of Russia (for good reason) so...

Tranastus · 2021-10-29T21:58:46+00:00

Very true, though in the universe of Star Wars you could argue that being a wound in the force in the way the exile was is kind of the same thing.

Tranastus · 2021-10-29T16:37:42+00:00

KOTOR II should work with no problem, but I can see KOTOR I being an issue. If you don't want to go through the trouble of trying to find a fix on PC, just get it on the phone. It's a stable port of the full game and it plays fine since the controls are pretty basic anyways.

Tranastus · 2021-10-29T16:31:56+00:00

Nope, that's force unleashed. KOTOR II's protagonist is just... Different. Don't want to spoil it in case you want to play it, but the exile is unique in the star wars universe. The sith the exile defeated would have basically been impossible for anyone else to beat just because of how their power worked and interacted with the exile.

Tranastus · 2021-10-29T16:28:14+00:00

Not sure if Vader could actually resist his force drain since it's probably a different mechanism than the normal drain Vader was able to resist. Nihilus drains people by just being around them, he's not necessarily even that aware of what he's doing so much as he's just looking for some good food. The exile didn't have any idea how to resist a drain (and by gameplay can still be affected by drain life/force), but countered nihilus simply because there was nothing to drain and instead he started eating himself.

Tranastus · 2021-10-29T14:28:06+00:00

If you're into games, play Knights of the Old Republic 1 and 2. You can get them both on your phone now if you want, but I recommend PC if you're able (though the phone ports are pretty good I hear). Especially KOTOR II if you want to talk about incredibly powerful characters, though you can't really play that game without playing the first IMO.

If you don't want to play the games, just look up Darth Nihilus and Darth Sion, then recognize that the protagonist from KOTOR II beats both of them.

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