Thank you for sharing your thoughts on it. I’m happy to hear it resonates. :)

This reminds me of a thought I had the other day, which went something like: some people (seems to be a US thing, can’t speak for elsewhere) are so stuck with the mindset of approaching politics as, “I am on equal footing with you in terms of knowledge and understanding” that it’s virtually impossible to get through on the information you give them alone. They have to first confront their socialized arrogance about knowledge and start to unlearn the idea that politics is some kind of easily universalized, mostly opinion-based entity.

Like if I look at my own progression of views, a significant difference in me being a “leftist” vs. being a “ML” (or thereabouts) was consciously trying to unlearn elitism and consciously trying to listen more (to marginalized people especially, but more importantly, to marginalized people who have theory/practice knowledge to impart, even if I didn’t know it in those terms right away) and talk less (resist the urge to comment “because I can” and try to be more conscious of why I’m reacting the way I am if someone’s take gets under my skin). This shift in mindset and attitude coupled with some partly guided exposure to theory was pivotal for me. I had a significant amount of “I can think smart so I can work this out just as well as you can” arrogance socializing to get through and a significant amount of viewing politics as overly simplistic in nature, and I see that same kind of attitude play out in other people, talking like their takes on politics have weight just because they are allowed to have one. When it’s like no, halt the universalizing, you need a framework to work from with a conscious motive behind it and that is found in sincerely caring about the plight of working class people, the marginalized, the colonized, and applying what liberators have observed about it who came before and who still exist now in developing socialist projects. It is humbling to get a glimpse of the depth of combined theory and practice that exists and has existed, and I would say it’s a good sign for people in the situation described if it is humbling because they are so often socialized to put their own intellect on a personal and cultural pedestal.

I like to tell people like this to read Blackshirts and Reds by Parenti. I forget in what detail atm, but he specifically goes over how Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy co-opted working class energy, while being opposed to working class power in actuality. In contrast with the Soviet Union, which had its issues, but was genuinely by/for the working class.

Like the thing these kind of people are talking about is sort of real?.. but it’s a rightist thing, it’s not something Lenin did or Stalin did or Mao did. There are shades of that happening now in the US, the rightists who claim to be ML or communist, but are also “patriots” (claiming there’s nothing wrong with being patriotic for a genocidal settler state developed into a global capitalist empire).

Also, I would say the use of the word “authoritarian” generally betrays how lacking a person’s political education has been and how desperately they need some grounding in history+theory from non-imperialist sources. Idk the origin of “authoritarian” as a term, but in practice, it gets used as a propaganda buzzword to contrast, claiming that “democracy for the rich” systems are “freedom” and other stuff is “authoritarian.” Meanwhile, the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Under what rock the freedom is hiding, I don’t know. People get told such spooky ghost story narratives about how “authoritarian” those “non freedom” countries are, while ignoring what’s in front of them: the “rights” written on a constitution that is as reliable as you are rich and that’s about as far as it goes.

There are some paranoid levels of thinking in some of that stuff. Like when a person thinks someone is a “x foreign country spy” because they disagree. It’s possible for people to break out of that mode of thinking, but when they are in that mode, it’s next to impossible to get through because everything you say that is in disagreement is “because you are trying to deceive them.”

Liberals claiming someone is doing whataboutism seems like a component of this thinking, with a belief that the one doing the “whataboutism” is attempting to deceive. But although it’s (probably? I haven’t analyzed it in enough depth to say with certainty) possible for someone to deceive in that way, it’s also possible to compare two things for a variety of rhetorical purposes that have nothing to do with dishonesty. Such as pointing out the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world if someone tries to say x foreign country is “authoritarian” in contrast to the US being “free”; that’s not whataboutism, it’s a factual point that undermines the narrative of the US having some kind of greater moral standing from which it can properly judge other countries.

If anything, I would say imperialists, liberals, tend to be more engaged in actual whataboutism, even if unconsciously. Like if you try to point out something fundamentally wrong with the US, claiming that alternatives are way worse. Which in that regard also seems to be in bed with doomerism (or more formally maybe, capitalist realism).

I don’t like to speculate as a matter of principle, but given what I’ve seen in my own evolution and what I can see traces of in some others, I suspect fear underlies a lot of it, as well as pride; fear of the implications of what it means and pride in not wanting to lose the idealized self image of western supremacy. If the US, for example, is genuinely terrible to the core on a fundamental state foundation level, that means a lot of pretty big change is necessary and change can be scary. And further, if a place like China or Vietnam is actually just a genuinely better system on a fundamental level and has better QOL for its people, that means the west is not only not superior, it’s not even on an equal level of political competency. Instead, it’s actually lower and in the capitalist caste socialization of “everything is a rung on a ladder,” that means the west is part of the “gross/bad class.”

People don’t have to see it this way though. They can see it as it’s not something to be afraid of, but a wakeup call that what’s being done is not working for most people and never has; they can consider the notion of major upheaval as an opportunity for fantastic expansion of the possibilities they’ve previously had presented to them, within which can carry drastic healing, improved quality of life, both personal and collective empowerment. They can also see the pride thing not as a designation of lesser nation, but as a designation of better or worse quality of life and empowerment and so on. It’s important that people unlearn the notions of it all being about caste, and who is and isn’t “superior.” Socialist projects doing better for their people are superior in the sense of quality of life, people power, etc., not in the sense of some colonizer-centric mindset of civil and savage.

Reminds me of that sketch The Expert. Seems like the gist of it is analogous to he wanted to draw seven red lines, strictly perpendicular, some with green ink and some with transparent ink, and when the expert told him that’s impossible, he said, “I am richguyinnovator, hear me roar!” And reality did what reality tends to do.

Also seemed like the media was trying really hard to turn it into some kind of real life version of The Martian, when it was pretty clear from the start it was over for those people and there was nothing heroic or brave about what the guy running it was doing; just needlessly playing on the razor’s edge of existence, living out a delusion of human supremacy over nature. I almost want to say it’s like a microcosm of capitalism as a whole in that way. The way it acts like it can dominate nature somehow, while ecosystems we depend on face collapse as a result of the unsustainable systemic practices.

Yeesh, sounds like she is very resistant to accepting an alternative POV. I do wonder with people like that if they basically are only ever going to be swayed by example (e.g. organized working class power happens in their area and they become a part of it). IIRC, there was someone in passing kinda like that in the How Yukong Moved the Mountains documentary, who admitted to having been skeptical or resistant to the changes at first, but saw value in what was being done when the results came to pass.

I’ve noticed what (sounds like) a similar wall with more than one person where they are more or less willing to agree with me that the current setup of things is a mess, but the moment I start talking a solution that is more than reforms, the Cold War type of indoctrination kicks in (I’m USian) and I feel suddenly like I’m being putting on the hook to justify people or countries (which are in their minds) monsters. IME, it seems to have something to do with the extent to which a person still thinks the US project is some kind of “flawed, but admirable project”, and believes perspectives presented to them by imperialist media on other countries with little questioning. But maybe this is a whole other different take on it too if she calls herself an anarcho-pacifist; although I do wonder because I was once at a point where I called myself a “libertarian-socialist” before I had any exposure to theory and I just sort of thought that made sense because it sounded like the “not controlling and violent” way of doing things. Demystifying and dismantling the fog of Cold War stuff seems to be an important element in getting through as well as serious reading of theory, if only I knew how to get there with people. I think Luna Oi’s videos and streams on Vietnam helped me some with concretizing defenses of socialist projects, though my ability to memorize details and share them to others is abysmal, so I would have to convince people to sit down and watch.

I feel you. I do like the pretty colors of them when I can actually see them and some shows are pretty neat in how they put the colors together, but I only find the noise tolerable in that context (which is usually at more of a distance) and most fireworks set off casually or in a context where I can’t even see them just end up feeling like I’m surrounded by loud noises I don’t want to hear. People also set them off at any and every hour in my experience, and any and every day that is near the 4th and sometimes other holidays too. 😐 It would prob be more tolerable if there was like an hour during which everybody did it and then it’s done.