Whenever there are developments in China-US relations, the DPP has become highly jittery and grows nervous, fearing it will be abandoned by the US and turned into a discarded pawn, Li Zhenguang, deputy director at the Institute of Taiwan Studies at Beijing Union University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

fearing it will be abandoned by the US and turned into a discarded pawn

How could they ever think that would not be the case? The US doesn’t even look after its own citizens’ healthcare. The US will use them until they cease to be useful to the western imperial agenda and then abandon or turn on them, as needed. That’s what it does with compradors.

thanks :)

We can call it FORK as in Fascism, Organized Racism, and KKKolonization

Wonder if it’s just me, or somewhat of a general ADHD thing, of finding “doer” speeches annoying at times. Mind you, I don’t mean stuff like targeted calls to action, I don’t think, because in that case it feels like a “let’s do this” - it’s more focused on the we, with the speaker being included in it.

I guess what bothers me is the sort of individualist kind of “put on your adult pants” talk, where like no matter how diplomatic the tone of it, the underlying implication is that there’s some kind of action you’re not taking that you’re “supposed to” take and that you have missed the fact that you could be doing this action. And for some people some of the time, that’s probably helpful. I think for me and why I bring up ADHD, is most of the time I already kinda know what I could be doing (sometimes to an absurd degree relative to proportional action because of gathering more info in lieu of actually doing). It’s the mechanics of executive functioning that are more so the struggle rather than a lack of knowing. And I suspect if there’s any trend to it and it’s not just me, what people like me probably more often need is emotional support, an actual physical “I will go do this with you” if necessary (like for body doubling), and in general, a certain amount of trust that we’re capable; that the problem isn’t so much ignorance as just needing more support (or even just space, not being distracting) to get started.

Not about anything I’ve seen here BTW. More a general thing I’ve seen in various ways, some of which may be rugged individualism culture, though I’m not certain because I don’t know how well executive functioning struggles are recognized in general, in the world.

“What is socialism?”

“You just triggered my trap card. Allow me to explai-”

“Sorry folks, we’re out of time, see you next show!”

Fair enough. I think I see what you’re going for, yeah.

So that sounds like a lack of actively trying to put pressure on the US with express intention to hurt them, which is not the same as capitulating. As disappointing as it may be for those who wish to see the US tank as fast as possible, it seems to me like business as usual for China, who consistently appears to have a line something like “if you are willing to be cooperative, we will be cooperative with you. If you are belligerent, we will not bow.”

Within the current mode of things, it seems this is a critical stance for them to have, in order to replace the US as a dominant economic force and work toward a multipolar world, without being perceived as, or materially operating as, “new flavor of empire.” The fact alone that the US was not able to make China bow is already significant in and of itself. That China is not in turn trying to make the US bow is arguably significant in its own way, continuing to affirm their commitment to a cooperative mode of operating on the world stage.

We know the US / western empire will not go down willingly and I think it’s safe to say with 100% confidence that China is well aware of this too. It would be kind of chauvinistic I think to believe China is somehow ignorant and confused on this matter. But there is the question of how much can be shifted in the balance of power through economics without firing a shot, and the US recklessly decoupling from China and going full warhawk is arguably more dangerous to the burgeoning multipolarity than a deescalation that is not an immediate leg sweep of the US.

In short, I don’t think the takeaway here should be “capitulation”. It should be: The US tried to play mask off mob boss with the world. China said no and organized with other countries to be less tied up in this volatility. Now China is stronger, the US hurt itself in confusion, and China is still the level-headed cooperative-minded entity that it was before, taking a leading role in building a multipolar world.

P.S. Open to disagreement if I’m missing critical information in how this went down, but that is how it strikes me based on what I’ve observed.

How exactly is this capitulating? I’m so confused.

Sometimes it makes me think you brainwashed westoids actually want Uighurs to suffer so you can cope with how terrible your lives actually are.

Western Christian thinking (https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:Western_Marxism,_the_fetish_for_defeat,_and_Christian_culture) is obsessed with having an underdog to support, one whose David vs. Goliath prospects of winning are slim.

China is far from an underdog at this point, but a minority population living within China could be seen as one, so it’s easy for people to latch onto.

“We’re going to have the biggest tariff reductions you’ve ever seen, folks. The biggest, we’re going to halve them, and then we’re going to keep going, until there aren’t any tariffs. People said it couldn’t be done, they say no one has ever brought tariffs so far down before. And China… China is a big country, very big country, but you know, they don’t make tariffs like we do here in America. All those people and they can’t produce a single tariff, but we said, we can do that, we can produce tariffs like never before. And we can take them away too. All these people, they say why is he doing so many tariffs, we’ve never seen so many tariffs in all of history. And I make it simple for them, I say, all you have to do, is you get out a piece of paper. A little piece of paper. And you write it on ‘Trump is the greatest.’ That’s all it takes, folks. One little paragraph and the tariffs go away. But the Chinese, you know, they don’t want to admit it. So we came to them and we said, we’ll keep reducing the tariffs until you listen. And believe me, they’ve been listening very hard. For any of the hundreds of voice mails I left them. Every hour, I send off another. The most amazing voice mails you’ve ever heard. But we’re going to get the tariffs down. Or up, whichever one it takes.”

This is a joke, but I mean, is it impossible he’d say something like this.

Thanks!

Well that sucks. Do you have any good sources on it? I know there was the thing his show did at one point with the visit to israel, I take it that may be part of the problem, but I watched it a long time ago and was much more ignorant on zionism then, so I don’t know well how it would play into it.

when the left criticizes all of them for wanting to just be fit.

Who here is criticizing men specifically for wanting to be fit? Point to the comments in question, let’s see it.

I know I’m probably in a bubble as a sober, vegan communist but still.

I mean yeah. It’s a good bubble to be in, if one is going to have to be in a bubble, but there is a lot of reactionary bullshit out there…

It’s weird to be aware and to be trying to do something about it, and also live within that stuff. Reminds of the following line from when I was trying to read through: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:No_Free_Left

E. M. S. Namboodiripad found a flaw in Ningal Enne Communistakki. The characters, he wrote in 1954, “are puppets with no relationship to living communist activists.” Where are the voices of the dalits, the adivasis, the worker and the peasants, the heart of the communist movement? Thoppil Bhasi, Namboodiripad felt, had not adequately addressed the struggle to become a communist which often runs through several phases – fighting one’s circumstances, certainly, but then the break with established ideologies, ability to find activities to do to contribute to the struggle while living in this world. In close-knit communities at the nether end of the social order survival is an anxious business and social humiliation is a constant hindrance. The communists who emerge out of these worlds are often talented and bright – those who could make lucrative careers and could be the shining lights of their communities. Yet, they chose to go to the trenches of political battle. They refuse to leave their world, but in adopting the transformative social agenda of communism they remain within at a curious distance – unwilling to conform to conservative social trends. What Namboodiripad seemed to indicate is that communists live a double reality – fighting against this world to make a better future, and living in this world within one’s social order. To inhabit the present and the future is a stern burden on a communist. None of this comes out in the art on communism – too middle class in its orientation, only able to see the Maoists or the communists as figures of romance. It makes it so much easier to disdain them when the romance fades.

(bold emphasis mine)

And I would add, unlike the concept of a cult and other formations that emphasize a sense of superiority as a justification for being outside the norm, communism has no such mental buffer exactly? Instead, there is I think more of a humbling going on and an uncovering of scientific ruggedness in existence that might otherwise be more softened or hidden by fanciful ideologies of elitism and false promises. It is like you are seeing the raw nerve endings of society and watching as a steady diet of fast food is paved over with running a lot (figuratively speaking). But you can’t simply pretend you exist outside it and act from a safe vantage point. You’re in it even as you try to change it and are awash in its influences on you.

Idk if that makes sense, but I’m trying to get at something that is hard for me to put into words.

Hilarious. I’m pretty confident that if by some next to impossible occurrence, the current Catholic Church got an actual Marxist Pope, there would be a schism, multiple assassination attempts, and western countries banding together saying the Catholic Church has been compromised and can’t be trusted. And the only way I can imagine it being possible is if some crypto Marxist worked his way up the ranks and only revealed his true views once he became Pope. The best we can probably hope for is Popes who lean into the “care about others” rhetoric, but through the lens of charity.

This is among the kind of “steps back” that is so tiresome; people who are deeply unserious about power and think they can somehow beat power by doing mental gymnastics to tell themselves that their form of power is not actually power, that they are “pure” and “unmarred” by power because they don’t seek to use a formally defined state administration to do organized work. End result is you get conscientious people who avoid positions of power out of a sense of moral ickiness and leave them more so to those with less scruples, which will have very predictably bad outcomes. 🤦‍♂️

“How dare they use the kind of rhetoric against Britain that Britain has been using against other countries for hundreds of years!”

I’ve seen a lot of copaganda cause of the “murder mystery” / detective interest someone I know has. And it is insidious, like someone else said. You have these shows like Monk, Diagnosis Murder, Psych, Perry Mason, and they often follow this general pattern of “somebody who is working outside the law and/or stretching it a bit because the law doesn’t do enough.”

There’s a very particular technique that these kind of shows often use: The audience sees the murder happen.

This sets the stage for the audience 1) being on the side of the protagonists, no matter how they go about things and 2) believing a crime happened and happened more or less as the protagonists come to suspect (because you saw it).

But in real life, no such thing happens. If there was evidence that direct, you wouldn’t need much of an investigation. It’s almost never going to be the case in real life that it’s so straightforward. And if it’s not, that means much of what people do in these shows unravels quickly.

And you can see this reflected in the way some people think about a concept like “due process” in real life, where a personal belief that somebody did wrong means not only that they must have, but that no investigation is needed. Or if an investigation is done, it should be as intrusive and browbeating as necessary to “force the truth out of them.” In reality, this is not only unnecessary, but could create false positives if you hurt someone badly enough that they fake a confession just to make it stop.

But anyway, I focus on that technique about how these shows start because I think it’s important in how this sort of thing becomes warped. If you truly believe that someone has done absolutely horrible things, you may be more apt to go outside the law yourself, in order to stop them, or at least sympathize with someone who is trying to. I guess what I’m touching on here is the nature of atrocity propaganda.

So following from that, it makes no sense to blame the voters if we’re working with a system where the idea of a positive outcome for regular people through voting is nothing more than fantasy.

I have some fear about it, but then, I also have fears about a lot of things. In general, it feels hard to muster much headspace for it with everything else going on in the world. Plus like, I don’t even really understand it and I don’t want to do a bothsidesism unfairly, so there’s not much for me to do with the information coming out about it.