Reverse China

[de officiis]

Beijing (AFP) - Donald Trump is a "diplomatic rookie" who must learn not to cross Beijing on issues like trade and Taiwan, Chinese state media said Tuesday, warning America could pay dearly for his naivety.

Trump's protocol-shattering call with Taiwan's president and a subsequent Twitter tirade against Beijing's policies could risk upending the delicate balance between the world's two largest economies, major media outlets said.

"Provoking friction and messing up China-US relations won't help 'make America great again'", said a front-page opinion piece in the overseas edition of Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily.

The nationalist Global Times newspaper's Chinese edition also ran a page-one story on Trump's "inability to keep his mouth shut", damning his "provocation and falsehoods".

https://www.yahoo.com/news/chinese-medi ... 37748.html

Strange how reading this sort of thing just makes me want Trump to do more of the same...

[nickle7]

American law defaults to liberty (individuals come first). Marxist/socialists cities would need to be able to override the courts.

I certainly see the U.S. (or a large segment of it at least) moving to the left. So I don't want to say that your postulation is completely dismissable, but it doesn't seem like localized pockets of socialism would be unsustainable, especially if those areas remained politically tied to the U.S. And I would imagine that the U.S. as a whole (the federal gov) would become "socialist" before any city would be bureaucratically severed.

[Speaker to Animals]

Marxism constitutes the antithesis of freedom and liberty. At first, it might seem appealing and compassionate, but it always leads towards tyranny.

Liberty means the freedom to succeed and outperform others for greater reward.

Marxism seeks the equality of outcomes based on class warfare.

In our time, the new brand of marxism fabricates class out of racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender identity groups. For instance, marxists will claim with a straight face that women get paid some fraction of what men get paid, framed in such a way that it seems they mean men and women working side-by-side at the same jobs doing the same work get paid differently. But really they refer to men and women making different life choices, going into different careers, etc.

If marxists have their way, then women would need to be deprived of their freedom to pursue lower-paying careers and forced into STEM programs. Men must be deprived of their freedom as well. We may also have to force employers to pay well-qualified male engineers less than women working next to them at the exact same job, which would create the very problem they claim to solve.

You cannot both possess liberty and equality of outcomes.

The nation is becoming divided by marxism, and marxism cannot coexist with the current constitutional framework of our nation. Nor will huge swaths of the nation agree to it.

What Martin suggests could stymie the spread of marxism, but I doubt it can solve the problem of marxism. It certainly would not curtail the religious fervor with which the marxists seek to impose that ideology on every last American. Marxists, by nature, seek to overturn the existing order and implement what they see as a utopic world.

I don't believe there exist easy answers to this confrontation. This is less a civil war and more a hostile cultural revolution.

[nickle7]

Marxism constitutes the antithesis of freedom and liberty. At first, it might seem appealing and compassionate, but it always leads towards tyranny.

Liberty means the freedom to succeed and outperform others for greater reward.

Marxism seeks the equality of outcomes based on class warfare.

In our time, the new brand of marxism fabricates class out of racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender identity groups. For instance, marxists will claim with a straight face that women get paid some fraction of what men get paid, framed in such a way that it seems they mean men and women working side-by-side at the same jobs doing the same work get paid differently. But really they refer to men and women making different life choices, going into different careers, etc.

If marxists have their way, then women would need to be deprived of their freedom to pursue lower-paying careers and forced into STEM programs. Men must be deprived of their freedom as well. We may also have to force employers to pay well-qualified male engineers less than women working next to them at the exact same job, which would create the very problem they claim to solve.

You cannot both possess liberty and equality of outcomes.

The nation is becoming divided by marxism, and marxism cannot coexist with the current constitutional framework of our nation. Nor will huge swaths of the nation agree to it.

What Martin suggests could stymie the spread of marxism, but I doubt it can solve the problem of marxism. It certainly would not curtail the religious fervor with which the marxists seek to impose that ideology on every last American. Marxists, by nature, seek to overturn the existing order and implement what they see as a utopic world.

I don't believe there exist easy answers to this confrontation. This is less a civil war and more a hostile cultural revolution.

100% agree with you on the destructive nature of Marxism. Which is why I don't think pockets of socialism could exist in the U.S.

But also, Marxism isn't something that suddenly happens, which I think you'd agree with. I see much of the left advocating for Marxist/socialist (take it to whatever extreme you'd like) sentiments, which I think is an underlying reason for Trumps success. It's in part a pushback on that promotion of socialism and all the cultural nuances that could be labeled as tending toward Marxism (even if it's just a small step to the left). It happens gradually and it happens because (usually) good-hearted people push for what they see as needed change (like pushing for equality) without weighing the long-term implications, which are often fundamentally opposed to liberty.

[Martin Hash]

American law defaults to liberty (individuals come first). Marxist/socialists cities would need to be able to override the courts.

I certainly see the U.S. (or a large segment of it at least) moving to the left. So I don't want to say that your postulation is completely dismissable, but it doesn't seem like localized pockets of socialism would be unsustainable, especially if those areas remained politically tied to the U.S. And I would imagine that the U.S. as a whole (the federal gov) would become "socialist" before any city would be bureaucratically severed.

The OP is just being provocative & original. Since Marxism relies on exploiting the talented, they would leave, which is why Marxist nations prevent emigration. However, socialism is acceptable to many Americans, and they may all want to physically gather in socialist cities, where they can all have rent control, ride mass transit, allow panhandling, and pay for overpriced coffee when a cheaper place is right across the street.

[nickle7]

American law defaults to liberty (individuals come first). Marxist/socialists cities would need to be able to override the courts.

I certainly see the U.S. (or a large segment of it at least) moving to the left. So I don't want to say that your postulation is completely dismissable, but it doesn't seem like localized pockets of socialism would be unsustainable, especially if those areas remained politically tied to the U.S. And I would imagine that the U.S. as a whole (the federal gov) would become "socialist" before any city would be bureaucratically severed.

The OP is just being provocative & original. Since Marxism relies on exploiting the talented, they would leave, which is why Marxist nations prevent emigration. However, socialism is acceptable to many Americans, and they may all want to physically gather in socialist cities, where they can all have rent control, ride mass transit, allow panhandling, and pay for overpriced coffee when a cheaper place is right across the street.

People may think they want Marxism. But once they're experiencing it, I doubt they'd still want it. This may sound too objective but where and when have people under Marxist rule honestly been able to say that they liked it? We'd be pretty hard pressed to come up with and answer.

[boethius]

No one likes to experience Marxism, that's true.

But if the day comes where 90% of stuff is made by robots, and yet there 300 million armed Americans starving...well, fuck your patent and copyright laws. There's going to be a UBI or a revolution.

[Martin Hash]

One of my First Tenets is: productivity must exceed consumption. In the 300 million unemployed situation, that axiom would be violated because certainly all the productivity would be somewhere else, with America simply printing the money & flashing big military penis.

[SuburbanFarmer]

People may think they want Marxism. But once they're experiencing it, I doubt they'd still want it. This may sound too objective but where and when have people under Marxist rule honestly been able to say that they liked it? We'd be pretty hard pressed to come up with and answer.

Actually, the vast majority of Russian/Lithuanian ex-pats that I've spoken with long for the 'good old days' in the USSR. Sure, the economy sucked, but the culture was extremely egalitarian, and family was the center of their lives. Sort of how we pine for when 'America was great'.

[Martin Hash]

Marxism does provide a sense of perverse satisfaction to Losers.