Related, in Star Wars lore, Tarkin got promoted (in the late Republic) after landing a ship on top of a crowd of protesters where were blocking the spaceport on Ghorman.

The thing is that the rebels were (mostly) white, and removing the racial lens allowed Americans to see that a struggle like that of colonized people against their oppressors was obviously correct. But it also means they can’t connect the rebels to real world conflicts, because the oppressed people are generally not white, and so it’s understood through a racial lens.

Libs think Trump vs. Harris was like Leia vs Darth Vader when in reality it was more like Darth Vader vs Palpatine.

“This is just natural free market competition. The real problem is big government trying to impose restrictions on Hawk Inc.”

Dresden Codak

The military industrial complex.

Of course, material conditions have nothing to do with what beliefs people arrive at or what movements spring up, no, it’s entirely 1) AI, before it existed, or 2) magic.

I knew about MK ULTRA from that time but hadn’t heard about this one. I know about so much fucked up shit the US has done, but it seems like there’s always more out there.

Maybe the real problem was that there weren’t enough civilian jobs that could make use of the valuable skills they were taught, like, “how to get shoved into the line of fire while the rest of us run away.”

Finally, a grindset I can get behind.

Are we sure the Lenin one’s not real? Lenin’s plan for defeating the bourgeoisie was, famously, to work within the system to increase taxes through incremental reforms.

"Look, I don’t like this any more than you do, but as long as billionaire perverts exist, there’s going to be demand for secret pedophile islands, and somebody’s gonna have to traffic kids to them. I’m just trying to get that bag.

I feel like you’re being very childish about this."

Yeah, this is why I became a hitman. Who cares? Other than the victims’ friends and families, obviously.

But you really think they wouldn’t just hire someone else? Murdering people for the mob is morally neutral.

Yes, that is more or less correct. My problem is primarily with US weapons manufacturing and military spending. If it could not be shut down entirely, then, all else being equal, it would be preferable for it to be offshored to Europe, or anywhere else, to keep as much as possible out of the hands of the increasingly fascist and beligerant US (not that Europe can be relied on to resist the US, but any barrier is preferable).

In most cases, the main enemy of a poor person of a given country is a rich person of the same country. I believe in following my class interest, not some “national interest” that’s typically completely divorced from my own, if not actively detrimental to it. I have no interest in upholding or protecting that “national interest,” that “national interest” is really bourgeois interest and the bourgeoisie are more than capable of looking after it themselves.

There are some exceptions, however. Franz Fanon, for example, argued that in developing countries, the gap between the domestic rich and poor is outweighed by the international gap, such that a class truce may be acceptable to resist foreign colonizers. Likewise, the CCP was willing to form a temporary alliance with the KMT in order to repel the fascist Japanese. The USSR opposed strikes in the US during WWII because those strikes would have impaired the war effort against the Nazis.

These exceptions to the general rule of class war only apply when there is a significant, genuine threat to the average person, when the foreign threat is intent on outright extermination. If it’s merely trading one set of capitalists for another, then it is not my fight and none of my concern.

Typically, anything that benefits the bourgeoisie, that benefits the so-called “national interest,” is bad for me, even if it doesn’t harm me directly. Because the more money and resources the bourgeoisie possess, the more power they will be able to wield against me, lowering my wages, making me work longer hours, taking away my healthcare and security. All of these things they are more capable of when they have money, weapons, and resources acquired through imperialist conquest.

This is the most this clip thing I have ever read in my life.

That’s complete nonsense.

You’re saying, “a just society would need engineers to build weapons, to be used for defense, therefore, it is right for engineers to build weapons in an unjust society where they will be used for offense.” That does not follow at all. That’s like seeing a car stalled out in the middle of an intersection and saying, “A functional intersection would need me to go when the light is green, therefore, I should keep driving forward. The problem is the car in the intersection, someone needs to fix that, and I don’t need to change my behavior even if it’s going to lead to people dying, because I’m acting in a way that would be appropriate in a functioning intersection.”

That’s not how morality, reason, or anything else works. You have to look at the world as it actually exists and look at the predictable consequences of your actions in the actually existing world.

Again, I will return to the unanswered point from before, about how far you’re willing to extend this line of logic, whether you think it was morally neutral to manfacture Panzers and Zyklon B for the Nazis.

Your position is completely indefensible and untenable. You called me childish, when you’re refusing to acknowledge and adapt to the real world.

The fewer weapons that people make for them, the fewer weapons they will have that they can use to kill brown people with. Therefore there is a clear line of cause and effect between making weapons for them and brown people dying. Therefore, the people making those weapons have caused harm, and would deserve to go to Hell if it existed.

This is all very straightforward, I still have no idea what you’re confused about.

The fewer guns they have the fewer brown people they’re able to kill. Obviously.

I have literally no idea what kind of point you think you’re making.

Yes, reducing spending would not completely eliminate the harm. It would only, you know, reduce it. Since you said you don’t like the idea of cutting it too much, I suggested a reasonable compromise of merely reducing it by 2/3, to be “only” the most well funded military on the planet.

To actually eliminate all the harm altogether would require either a complete shutdown of US military production or a fundamental shift in US foreign policy away from terrorism and domination, which would hopefully involve prosecuting the politicians responsible for current foreign policy for war crimes. Probably in some sort of revolutionary tribunal, because that’s about the only conceivable way for them to be brought to justice.

I’m not sure what part of that you’re confused about.

True, these people will not face justice through any natural force of the universe, only by people holding them accountable for the harm they cause.