[repeating your whataboutism yet again]

Please do your best to engage in good faith and reply directly to what I am saying.

Please do your best to stay focused instead of finding new ways to deflect or be wrong. In the spirit of this sentiment, I’m going to ignore everything else you said because it is not germane to my point - the one you keep trying to avoid.

I would be more interested in entertaining your parroting of old and boring talking points were you not ignoring everything I say to you and trying to move attention away from genocide and support for it. You are now doing the work of light genocide deniers.

Yes as in genocide is bad and should be opposed. Something that you would think would be the baseline but clearly is not among mainstream liberals.

Biden is at the vanguard of this genocide and Kamala is at his side.

The irony. My last response was simply calling out deflection and telling you what it means in the face of genocide. You apparently believe that your deflections are topic changes and my refusal to engage with this playground logic is “deflection”. Though of course we know it is because you cannot engage with the original point.

Please stop carrying water for gemociders. Your whataboutism lesser evilism is tacot support.

Lmao some people really do think October 7th was the start of history.

Ahem: no. You are embarrassingly wrong.

Whataboutism rather than acknowledging the Biden-Harris responsibility for genocide also counts as tacit genocide support. Please do better.

Everyone in the Bidem-Harris admin deserves to lose just for their genocide in Gaza. And anyone that defends them is a genocide apologist.

has been built with massive debts

While they have been financed it has not resulted in substantial long term debts.

no immediate commercial viability

Lmao. This is public infrastructure not a business grift.

When the private sector is in charge of things like this they do it worse and at higher expense btw.

Not a million miles away from Victorian railway companies in London building lines for, hoped for, future demand.

Very different, actually.

I hope it works out, but there is for sure a risk of it becoming a millstone.

I’m sure the Redditor that thinks public infrastructure needs commercial viability has plenty of useful lectures for the Chinese state on how to drive production and transportation.

While this is true it is not because China has deviated from socialist theory, including that of Marx and Enfels. China is a dictatorship of the proletariat as described by Marx and Engels as the necessary precursor to communism. It is also taking a very specific strategy towards imperialism that involves special economic zones, or capitalism zones, in order to build productive forces while also coupling the well-being of imperialist countries to China’s ability to produce.

Communism will never be achieved by a state and no state has ever expected to do so. The idea that any country ever could use a category error, it means a person doesn’t understand the term at all as used by Marx a d Engels. It is, by definition, stateless, and could only happen after all states are eventually abolished. But again, being practical people, they expected this to happen through a long process of struggle with dictatorships of the proletariat being what socialists first formed and could use to overturn the capitalist order

Why would you need to?

That’s a great point and that I can’t believe I forgot to mention! To add to that, universities themselves use research as a cash cow (they take a large share of nearly every research grant of a faculty member) and as a marketing tool to get more students (tuition), prestige, grants, and so on. The fact that universities market themselves at all is ridiculous.

In the US they are also usually heavily financialized and local real estate behemoths.

Naturally it is, yes. Though those things are used for imperialism there.

Censorship is definitely a sign of authoritarianism, and a strong state might be too, depending on what you mean by it, but not necessarily?

In reality, despite what the dictionary says, “authoritarian” means, “organized group we don’t like”.

Censorship is ubiquitous it just comes in different forms. The most powerful and insidipus is the kind you don’t even think it censorship. For example, will you lose your job for standing up for Palestine? Will you get paid to be a journalist if you are too critical of the ruling class? When the electronic commons is actually controlled by private corporations, do you really have online speech protections? Is sinophobia the only reason TikTok is getting threatened with a ban? Whose voices are heard at city council meetings? Who gets the ear of politicians?

These are all forms of censorship, but most of them are treated as normal, even righteous and justified.

States that fight for independence rapidly find that the global monopolistic empire automatically dominates all media narratives and funds NGOs to undermine their projects. Do you expect them to let that expand and destroy their country? Censorship is an expression of authority, but does that mean it is always wrong or particularly bad? Forcing out invaders is also an expression of authority, as is organizing defense, social programs, literacy campaigns.

and a strong state might be too

The strong states are usually just doing the functions of private industry in “non-authoritarian” countries but in a way that better serves the people and are resilient to US interference.

And as liberal democracy seem to be the ‘goal’ of states to achieve

Liberal democracy is the most effective producer of genocide in history and is really just rule by the capitalist class that pretends to be of the masses. States seeking independence from the US must eschew it by definition, as they will otherwise be coerced into the US-dominated order.

authoritarian is not at all a useless category since it’s the opposite of democracy.

Liberal democracies are, in reality, the most authoritarian countries. They impose the interests of the capitalist ruling class based on military and financial power with little regard for the horrors it inflicts. But you are correct about how the term is used, what it means despite its definition - “this is what we do and it is good, the system we don’t like is bad”.

The ICC only goes after black African war criminals

Wahr, natürlich die Israelis.

Any country that maintains independence and an oppositional character must maintain a strong state, develop a military, and engage in censorship. All 3 get lumped in the vague and clearly now useless category of authoritarian, meaning the US will attempt to destroy your country and people and its citizens will think this is helping “freedom” and “democracy” and “defense” and just what smart people do. Or they will play the ancillary role of demonization while maintaining an anti-war pretense that somehow always means materially supporting American war criminals.

Despair is natural in the face of genocide, it means you are empathetic and aware. Despair like this is even more likely when one does not have an outlet, a course of action they can take in solidarity or comrades to talk to about it. Do you have anyone you could talk to or know a local group that also cares about this like you do? They might be organizing protests or vigils.

Whichever ones are active at any local protests or actions. If none are, then a socialist organization that does not mince words about support for the resistance. If you are in college there are anti-imperialist orgs organized specifically by and for college students.

I would be more specific but it’s more important to find an active org with a good line on Palestine (e.g. one that opposes Harris, supports fighting against Israel) than it is to join one specific national org.

Sigh… we both know this isn’t going anywhere. Neither of us will give in because both of us feel strongly about our positions and will not budge on them because of our feelings that we are doing the right thing (and no amount of saying I support genociders will change that).

No, this is not a principled disagreement. You have repeatedly had to deflect, ignore, and mischaracterize to dance around challenging points. I do not care about the “strength” or your beliefs, though it is clearly flimsy given this insecure behavior.

Anything you say that’s less than Russia totally pulling out of Ukraine I can easily say is supporting genocidal dictators

Please refer to what I’ve already said about Russia and reply to it if you’d like to discuss that topic. I am not interested in discussing or defending your imagination.

Just remember, the average American is wildly less socially conscious than you’d like to believe

Oh? How socially conscious do I believe the average American is? When have we ever talked about anything like that whatsoever?

Ah, right, we haven’t.

I guess we have reached a point where you will offer nothing more than straw men and patting yourself on the back. I hope that you someday have the courage of your “convictions” and can engage in good faith, especially when it comes to topics like support for genocide.

Okay but do North Ireland and London (only London) first for fairness.