I just repeat my ‘yes’ and grunts and ‘I see’ in triples. Aha, aha, aha, yes, yes, yes, no, no, no, ok, ok, ok, click there, click there, click there, no, no, no, yes, yes, yes, NO-NO-NO HIGHER yes-yes-yes, okay sigh.

and that they’re all terrorists.

Well, not all, but I know at least one such country

The guy who answered you is actually right.

Outright military interventions and coups are part of the package called the real world.

Anyway, I would replace “capitalist” with “bandit” here. Because “capitalism” is just as square-abstract as “communism”, while IRL just as vulnerable to those.

See, there’s an important thing called “feedback”. If there’s no feedback from you, your life doesn’t matter and you get stomped upon.

60s-70s USSR had very weak feedback mechanisms, but still surprisingly better than today’s Russia. Some things that people just accept today would cause real protests there. Half the ministries would be paralyzed by people saying that following such a policy is against their conscience. I really believe that, yes.

But then, due to its slow collapse and decay, those feedbacks becoming stronger started pushing for change that would deprive the ruling class - KGB and similar or related people, bureaucrats and relatives, anyway, the real structures usually don’t have names, - of power. That’s when that class hijacked the popular movement from the likes of Sakharov or Starovoitova and created modern post-Soviet states.

Which means that it had blind zones with no feedbacks said class used. And the more centralist-bureaucratic and non-transparent a state is, the more blind zones it has.

Anything that takes the power from being distributed between separate people and assembles it into one Moloch, calling it “power of the people”, controlled by hell knows whom, means that those people who actually have principles will get stomped.

As we can see, though, same things happen in countries very far from being “communist” or “socialist”.

It was not a feudal state. It was roughly similar to post-slavery South in the USA.

Yes, I already wrote they didn’t “achieve communism”. It’s the point of my text that they were promising it in the future in exchange for loyalty to a weird system in the present.

Sorry, wrong comment.

and forced the Soviets to waste resources on a strong military.

Oh, so it’s “the capitalist nations”, not the way Soviet system worked, made this so expensive?

But even despite their failings, communism was still the best thing to ever happen to Russia.

Stolypin and Witte are generally considered something much, much better. The closest it came to a normal society with civilization potential.

Unfortunately, Russia was also the worst thing that ever happened to communism.

One could argue Khmer Rouge were that, but IRL communists’ incredible ability to just pretend it didn’t happen makes USSR the most notable example.

Unless you’ve lived in ex-USSR.

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That is exactly how subjective reality works. Everything is interconnected, so whether something is relevant to some subject is purely a matter of choice.

Except some people of questionable intelligence and culture consider their choice on that matter more important than that of others.

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You’re not the main character,

You are. You are also responsible for your own choices whether you admit it or not.

That is the most selfish possible way to approach life.

If taking responsibility is selfish, then selfishness is a virtue.

at least you’ll be able to vote again and you might actually get to negotiate for things that make people’s lives better.

They are already threatening you with Trump if you don’t vote for them and don’t want to compromise. So about that “you’ll be able to vote again” - I think that’s true, but since that threat works, that’ll likely be the same kind of choice over and over. When you agree to get owned for protection, you usually don’t get owned just once.

Selfish naive children.

For fuck’s sake, are you 16?

How can a grown person be that arrogant without knowing shit about game theory?

Voting for the party that is consciously using the other one as a boogeyman will enable someone worse with no doubt. They are both worse.

And before the actual ballots are being cast, the public opinion sending right signals to Dems would reduce that risk.

It’s my choice to make whether that is true.

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Yeah, I’ve recently talked with my therapist about this choice between very slow, very hard work and sitting on my butt dreaming. And about the idea that it’s better to avoid action than to act, if I’m not sure I’ll act right. And how it apparently came to me in my teens, when I’ve been doing martial arts for some time, girls would smile at me often, and in general I thought I might be too stupid and happy and there should be something smarter. That ‘smarter’ was, of course, just another teenage idea of being wise and not like everyone else. Fucked up my life for a decade.

By the way, people who’d be removed and theoretical and talk about some imagined third movement created via some magic other than voting - would be called ‘idiots’ in ancient Athens. Because they are on the side of an idea, not real politics. Then it became a rude word.

Any such decision to try and find a smart shortcut, or that it’s better to wait and see how it goes instead of sweating, - are all wrong and are exactly what propaganda works for. Being honest is smarter than being dishonest. And voting for the party most fitting your ideals is smarter than for the lesser evil.

I was banned a few times for saying something like that if some politician of some country consciously does a thing which costs Armenian lives, or, say, “recognizes territorial integrity of Azerbaijan”, they are fair game for Armenians. That technically they make a choice they have right to make, or that their country has some interests, etc are reasons, but not excuses.

I mean, people are responsible for the actions they take. It’s not extremism.

I disagree, they would do a lot of good if part of any weapons being available (not just guns, but FPV drones and ammo for them, anti-tank and anti-air missiles, small mortars, and so on), but not for crime levels. The benefit would be in improving political stability (no, it wouldn’t help MAGA and such, because they don’t really want a violent takeover, they want an administrative takeover and then unpunished violence against those who can’t defend themselves).

When only rifles are available, it doesn’t help that end at all - you can’t fight the government or the invading army or some terrorists with just rifles.

So I agree that one has to pick a lane here. If we understand private weapons’ ownership as that well-organized militia to protect against tyranny yadda-yadda, then that includes a lot of stuff. Drones with grenades at least. If we don’t and, say, the national guard is that militia, then allowing just pistols and rifles lacks the advantages, preserving the harm.

It’s confusing. Usually such a pic means a single stream of possibilities branching, so to say. Here multiple branches are for the same data point.

They could at least make them different colors, which would be the components of the initial color if combined. I think I’ve even seen such a graph.

Oh. People from English-speaking countries don’t sink you with downvotes immediately for criticizing that show anymore. Nice.

Even the broad strokes are, eh, how do you say it, eh … worse than Tom Clancy and that’s an achievement I’m not sure everyone is capable of measuring.

It’s funny though how such series about “USSR” talk in fact about something American. Reminiscent of the “17 moments of spring” series which were about a Soviet spy in Berlin in the last months of WWII, but mostly explored Soviet ideology and morality issues.

That’s how you don’t do infographics.

It’s baffling just how much language is used to dehumanise, other, and discriminate against people.

Yeah, such language sucks, of course, but since right now that connotation of marijuana, for example, seems to be lost - why the hell worry about it. There are worse things which are not in the language, but in the way “protected group” works in the heads of some homo sapiens specimens.

I’ve recently had my comment deleted for answering “Armenian Genocide was bad, but not even close to the Holocaust” with “Holocaust was bad, but not even close to the Armenian Genocide” and in the next sentence clarifying that for me they are on the same level, but people for whom one of these statements is acceptable are not people.