SpookyGenderCommunist [they/them, she/her]

I saved up and bought a reasonably beefy Mini PC, and turned it into an emulation console with Batocera. PS3 emulation runs like an absolute dream. But who needs backwards compatibility, when we can resell you the same game from 15 years ago, again, at full price???

no freedom of movement

Source?

• constant shortage of any goods

Think about why this might be, Friend. Really think hard about it. What large geopolitical things were happening at the time?

• being a dictatorship

Yes, of the proletariat

• (contrary to your first point) a housing shortage

Again, source? Also, wondering what you think happened before East Germany existed that might have contributed to this. Surely this changed over time

• a culture so dictated by work that people had little to no free time

Because people working 3 jobs under capitalism have so much free time? What does this even mean?

• political pressure

Again, what does this mean? All Political cultures and institutions exert pressures on their population… That’s how politics works.

• control over the media

I’ll agree that the siege mentality of much of former socialism led to a lack of press freedom, which was ultimately detrimental, but again… Why might this have been?

• the fucking stasi

Quick, name the West German secret police!

Let’s assume for a minute that everything you’ve said is entirely true. If we’re to be thoughtful about this. East Germany was a historically poorer, agrarian, region of Germany, much less industrialized, artificially lopped off from the west (not by the USSR, btw, who wanted a unified, nonaligned Germany, like the allies had done with Austria), it was heavily sanctioned, had been bombed to shit, much like the rest of Europe, but was made to pay the USSR reparations, that it wasn’t as capable of paying, as a unified Germany would have been. The USSR even dismantled entire east German factories and shipped them back to rebuild their own industrial base.

How do you expect any country to not come out of that with considerable problems?

And the GDR did have considerable problems. I think you and I would disagree on what those problems were, but in the broad strokes, that much we can agree on.

But I would contend that, even with that in mind, East Germany ended up being a much more positive socialist experiment in many respects then say, Romania, which suffered a much more severe centralization of power, and cult of personality issues, then East Germany did.

In fact, looking at the makeup of the East German Parliament and its mass organizations, there was a much greater degree of representation of various social cleavages then in some other Eastern Bloc states.

While you could say argue that this was only ‘on paper’, that really depends on what period of East German history you’re looking at, as the electoral system was altered a handful of times.

Regardless though, this was an expression of the fact that East Germany had a more open Political culture due to its institutions being establisehed as part of an intended nonaligned, unified, German state. And due to the fact that it had received the socializing effects of industrial capitalism that gave it things like an incredibly progressive Queer movement, that other Eastern Bloc states, which were formerly feudal backwaters, hadn’t developed.

Tl;Dr - this shit is a lot more complicated than listing off bullet points for “why East Germany was Evil”, That I was taught in the 7th grade.

It’s “just” a video of two trucks, given what the headline claimed.

When I first read the headline, I figured the image would be a kinda jank AI generated picture of Biden bound and gagged. Like… The headline makes it seem like that’s the focus of Trumps post.

But it isn’t. The focus of the image are the trucks adorned with Trump memorabilia. That’s the thing he cares about in this case. The presence of the Chud Tailgate Murder Fantasy is incidental.

And for that matter, what do you mean “normalizing”? This shit is already normal. That’s the problem.

Right, this shit has already been normalized. We ought to be concerned with how to deal with it.

First of all, LOL

Second of all, LMAO

Third, It’s super fucked up that the US names its military helicopters after indigenous people’s it genocided, and we don’t talk about that enough.

I’m doing my part! o7

Rent free

Richard Nixon’s head in a jar, from Futurama

Bro, all they did was give you info on the historic stance of the UN, on Taiwan. Is the whole United Nations a “CCP shill” too?

So, I want to engage in as good of faith possible, here.

The content of North Korean doctrine seems particularly discomforting to people here, lol. Not sure why this is the country people feel the need to stand up for.

It’s not about whether it’s discomforting, it’s about whether or not what you’re saying is even true. I have zero reason to believe what you posted has any basis in fact. You initially copy/pasted it with no citation.

Now, the links you’re giving are decidedly not Korean. The DPRK puts out works of theory and the like, fairly readily. All I’m asking for is a primary source for this.

But let’s assume it’s 100% true, for a minute.

Even if it is, and Korean socialism does look the way that these 10 points describe, why might that be? What would drive such an insular, personality-cult driven, set of doctrine?

Could it, perchance, be the fact that the United States set about occupying half of the Korean Peninsula? Reinstalling many of the Japanese colonial administrators the Korean people had just spent decades trying to kick out?

Might it have something to do with the fact that the US bombed the entire peninsula so heavily, that US pilots complained that they were no more targets, and that Koreans literally began living in caves and a result?

If you actually care about Koreans, and are unsettled by the centralization of power in the DPRK, then you ought to recognize that it’s US imperial policy that has irrevocably shaped the destiny of the Korean peninsula.

If there’s any reason to “Stand up” for the DPRK, it’s for the exact reasons you’ve laid out. If a society is too heal, and overcome the sort of backward despotism you’ve presented, then the answer is surely to not isolate it more. To not continue to fuel the siege mentality that drives the state ideology. But rather, to work for peace and unification, so that the whole of Korea might, once again, be able to shape its own destiny.

Can you provide a source for this? No use in responding if we don’t even know if it’s real

You’re a fucking idiot. Do you know anything about the history of the region? I do not condone the killing of civilians, but the people of Gaza are in effectively an open air concentration camp. If you back an animal into a corner, you shouldn’t be surprised when it bites you.

The violence of the oppressed can not be compared to the violence of the oppressor. If you punch me in the face unprovoked, that’s entirely different from me punching you back in self defense.

The people of Israel are settlers who, by and large, have not lived their whole lives there. Benjamin netanyau grew up in Philadelphia for fuck’s sake. Those people largely chose to bring their children into a war zone. They could just as easily have left. The Palestinians who’s land is being actively stolen from them have no where else to go!

The Israeli government has the choice to end this conflict. They could grant Palestinians equal rights, end settlement in the West Bank, provide Palestinians a right of return, and formulate a long-standing peace plan tomorrow.

They choose to not make progress towards any of those things though. They choose to continue treating Palestinians like cattle to be caged and slaughtered. As far as I’m concerned, any fresh perpetrated by Hamas is a direct result of Israeli policy.

Eat shit. You’re a genocide denier, plain and simple.

One of these cultures has normalised vegan and vegetarianism for centuries, the other is trying to wean a meat-obsessed population

As someone who works in a grocery store, the worst fucking people are the ones who go up to the deli counter and yell at the clerks, demanding the "bloodiest* roast beef they’ve got. That or the spiciest turkey, or whatever.

Dudes who’s entire sense of self is invested in eating meat. Easily the most annoying kind of guy I encounter in my daily life.

Lol. Lmao, even

The USA did not kidnap those kids. They were typically orphans as a result of the wars but hey don’t ket nuance get in the way.

So if I shoot at random people on the street, and kill you, and decide your baby is cute and I want it. It’s not kidnapping, because that was just an orphan bro, that baby’s parents were dead.

Nah, if country A precipitates a war on Country B, people die, and then you started adopting their orphaned children out, back to County A, and not within their county of origin… That feels an awful lot like kidnapping. In fact, it feels an awful lot like the definition of genocide

I’m gonna put on my political scientist hat, and point out that almost every political party on this planet enforces internal discipline in a multitilude of ways, a handful of which have been mentioned in this discussion thread already.

The idea that parties are these big tents where you can’t possibly enforce any kind of internal discipline is both a uniquely America-brained take, and also not entirely true.

Like, there are literally people called “Party Whips” who’s job it is to pressure the party members vote along party lines.

Doesn’t matter, tbh. It shouldn’t be there in the first place

Cool! Now if only it would scrap the shitty DRM