Quote: Leninism is, of course, applied socialism. Socialism was huge before Leninism was even a thing, and that Marxism was and is still popular is not due only to Soviet patronage. Socialism works by hacking the Social Calculus Module that humans have in our brains. Remember, humans care deeply about status. Status is what drives human behavior. Everybody works to achieve more status, and to avoid losing status. Socialism of course sells egalitarianism. It tells people with low status that they can get some more. The Industrial Revolution had forced millions of peasants into the cities, and they all felt they had lost status in the process.

Quote:So these socialists come by and tell them they have this plan to make them gain status, big time. That was huge. Yes, sure, Christianity had also started promising the meek that they were morally higher than rich people; they’d all go to heaven unlike those perfid rich guys. But that didn’t translate into actual, real-world status. Socialism was promising actual goods. And so it became huge. It’s still huge.

Quote:Socialism works not only because it promises higher status to a lot of people. Socialism is catnip because it promises status to people who, deep down, know they shouldn’t have it. There is such a thing as natural law, the natural state of any normally functioning human society. Basic biology tells us people are different. Some are more intelligent, more attractive, more crafty and popular. Everybody knows, deep in their lizard brains, how human mating works: women are attracted to the top dogs. Being generous, all human societies default to a Pareto distribution where 20% of people are high-status, and everyone else just has to put up with their inferiority for life. That’s just how it works.

Quote:Socialism though promised to change that, and Marx showed they had a good plan. Lenin then put that plan to work in practice. What did Lenin do? Exterminate the natural aristocracy of Russia, and build a ruling class with a bunch of low-status people. Workers, peasants, Jews, Latvians, Ukrainians. Lenin went out of his way to recruit everyone who had a grudge against Imperial Russian society. And it worked, brilliantly. The Bolsheviks, a small party with little popular support, won the civil war, and became the awesome Soviet Union. The early Soviet Union promoted minorities, women, sexual deviants, atheists, cultists and every kind of weirdo. Everybody but intelligent, conservative Russians of good families.

(Yesterday 06:59 AM)Syberpunk Wrote:  

(05-21-2019 11:33 PM)TigerMandingo Wrote:  It saddens me that my little sister is now a rabid leftist who has been totally brainwashed by the school system.

She was such a bubbly, happy kid and I helped my parents raise her. The worst part is how the political bullshit they teach her in school has deprived her of the wonders and innocence of being a kid. All she talks about now is “white privileged” and “the future is female”.

Yet I don’t blame her. She’s a young, impressionable mind. I blame the fuckers that put all this nonsense in her head and ruined her.

I want my little sister back. The one I used to play with and cradled in my arms when she cried. Now what I see is an angry, negative young girl with a corrupted mind.

In a just society, I should be able to sue these bastards for what they did to her.

My heart ached reading this, I'm sorry Tiger.

I have (had) a younger brother that the conversion happened to Tiger, we'd fight when younger (as brothers often do) but as I reached 18 and he was 16, we got along like a house on fire and he was always gregarious and making good conversation with you. I used to help with his homework and he struggled so hard with dyslexia, I was often nearly in tears because I couldn't help him, my parents were like saints getting him all the help that was available, now he is out of university in community work and he's bastard to everybody around him including my parents and a true blood democratic socialism kind of guy, I don't feel a flicker of pity anymore, only a remorse for what was.

The relationship went up and up in our teenage years, then plummuted head first into the dirt.

It feels like a death.

When you look into his eyes, its like there is nothing there and its eerie, sizing you up to see what he can get from you, how you may be of use. It's almost demonic, everybody tenses up when he is the room (yeah we all go beta), I shouldn't have to hold frame against the prick, what way is this to carry on with family? It's like the sympathy gene, making sure people are at ease with you gene, tuned off in university.

Then doesn't call his parents for months.

I'd have to liked to go the parallel universe where we still got along and he didn't take an interest in youth politics in school, if future him, has potential nieces and nephews of mine, we could know that we'd always be family and have each others back. But we won't. I could forgive, but how could I trust him now that I know what he is willing to do?

Silly stupid bastard.

(Yesterday 06:29 AM)Simeon_Strangelight Wrote:  Welcome to the club. My younger sister was one of those sassy funny girls - one of the few women with humor. Most of that humor left her as she entered the far-left media workforce. But since it's Europe, then a lot of society is not fully on board with cultural marxism, so she pulled back a bit from it. Still - the person that she was is gone and she is filled to the brim with automatic NPC reactions. At the worst time the family had to avoid all kinds of trigger words, but it did not help, because anything could set her off - even a sex-joke between husband and wife was a micro-triggering sexual harrassment.

(05-18-2019 04:15 PM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  So my wife's best friend that she had known since high school suddenly had an outburst and blocked her over Alabama's abortion law (disclaimer: neither of them are American or living in USA). It went like this:

Friend (after more than a month of not writing or calling due to being "busy"): Since you're pro-life, what do you think about the Alabama law and its ban on abortion even in cases of rape?
Wife: Hey there, I hope you've been well. I support that law because (scientific/legal reasons).
Friend: I reject your reasons because everyone has their own truth. You're brainwashed by white people. Don't you even watch NowThis videos that show how black people are being slaughtered in America?
Wife: I don't watch them, but what does that have to do with abortion?
Friend: You're so bigoted. You're a Nazi. I can't believe it.
Wife: (no response)
Friend: I can't associate with someone like you. Goodbye. I'm blocking you now.

I know that someone who is willing to attack and hate someone over something on the other side of the world that has no effect on anyone makes for a very poor friend anyway, but it's still sad. Seriously, what the fuck? It's absolutely horrifying how communism brainwashes people into lashing out even at their family and closest friends just because they politely disagree with their totalitarian views.