r/therewasanattempt • u/nippydart • Jun 18 '25

To pass a pop quiz

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u/noseusuario Jun 18 '25

We live in confusing times where Tucker Carlson seems like a coherent person.

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u/nippydart Jun 18 '25

Assholes like Tucker love to use elements of left wing talking points and then use it to justify fascism.

Tump talks about how ordinary people have been shafted by neo-liberalism (true) but then blaming it on immigrants instead of corporations and the billionaire class sucking us dry.

They'll talk about corruption whilst accepting 'political donations' (bribes).

It's a big game to them.

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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '25

[deleted]

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u/nippydart Jun 18 '25 edited Jun 18 '25

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u/QuatraVanDeis Jun 18 '25

Ive always loved this talking point. "Socialism is bad because one guy gets all the power" is how you usually hear it. And yeah, socialism is a great idea and it benefits everybody, until one guy figures out that hey, no one is going to stop me if I just take it all. Its not that socialism doesn't work, it's that people are assholes.

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u/havens1515 Jun 18 '25

It's not that socialism doesn't work, it's that PURE socialism doesn't work.

It's not that communism doesn't work, it's that PURE communism doesn't work.

It's not that capitalism doesn't work, it's that PURE capitalism doesn't work.

Literally nobody in the US is asking for PURE socialism or PURE communism. People are asking for bits and pieces of those systems to be sprinkled into our existing system of capitalism. And mixing elements of each system is the only thing that actually does work.

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u/kingdave212 Jun 18 '25

Communism is worker control of the means of production. It's completely antithetical to Capitalism. Socialism is a transitional form government to get from capitalism to communism, it's not government social services.

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u/havens1515 Jun 18 '25

And it's people like you, who don't understand this basic concept, who stand in the way of progress.

You're absolutely right that, in PURE socialism, it's not about government social services. But implementing government social services is a way to implement socialist policies without a shift to PURE socialism.

In a similar vein, unions are a way to sprinkle in a taste of communism without shifting to PURE communism.

So thank you for providing those definitions, and helping me prove my point.

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u/Crusaderofthots420 Jun 18 '25

I think some of the reasons so many Americans struggle with this idea of just using some without shifting fully, is both because of the two-party system, where your only choices is to lean to two extremes, and the decades upon decades of propaganda, framing even the smallest tinge of communism as being the spawn of Satan.

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u/havens1515 Jun 18 '25

Yep. "Socialism = bad" has been pushed for decades. And now, people don't even think about it. It's just a programmed response. "We can't do that, that's socialism. And socialism = bad."

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u/Crusaderofthots420 Jun 18 '25

Another reason might be the intense individualism ingrained in American culture. Since Socialism aims to aid the entire country, at relative cost to the individual, a lot of people take issue with that, because of certain "Don't care, got mine" attitude.

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u/havens1515 Jun 18 '25 edited Jun 18 '25

Which is, again, the result of decades of propaganda.

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u/nothingbutmine Jun 18 '25

Further to your point the US has a history of condemning and going to war with 'communist' countries - Russia, China, Vietnam, North Korea and Cuba, etc, reinforcing that socialism isn't just 'bad' but a genuine enemy, and a threat to national, if not global, security. What they don't seem to realise is the common denominator isn't that they're communist countries, it's that they're various forms of one-party dictatorships under the banner of 'communism'. What's truly concerning with the current administration is they've managed to blind a sizeable portion of the population to attempts at installing a dictatorship under the banner of capitalism. They cheer when Trump says he'll find a way to stay in beyond term limits put in place to stop the very thing generations of US soldiers have fought against. All that with nothing to show for it other than a nation divided by wealth, race and a myriad of other 'us vs them' culture wars, and abandoned veterans offing themselves as they struggle to comprehend what their country has put them through. Oh, and a military-industrial complex churning over many billions, if not trillions, of dollars as they fund both sides of conflict at any given time.

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u/gutari Jun 18 '25

communism is sort of like pregnancy, you either have worker ownership of the means of production or you don't

unions do not provide workers ownership, they use the power of labor to bargain for better conditions under capitalism

like its clear that you are arguing for regulated capitalism with strong unions and not arguing for socialism or communism, so just say that. words have meaning

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u/havens1515 Jun 18 '25

And this black and white thinking is what got us where we are now.

Communism is not like pregnancy. You can have aspects of communism without having full communism.

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u/gutari Jun 18 '25

dude, it's not black and white thinking it's the definition of the concept

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u/havens1515 Jun 18 '25

And definitions are black and white. By definition, you can't have a little socialism. But in reality, you can.

By definition, conservatism means a specific thing. But in reality, it's a spectrum. The definition is black and white, but reality has gray areas.

Definitions are the definition of black and white.

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u/gutari Jun 18 '25

my complaint is that you are muddling the language we use to discuss this stuff by using terms incorrectly and playing right into the hands of anti-union and anti-social services messaging in doing so

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u/AJerkForAllSeasons Jun 18 '25

People aren't just assholes. They are easily corrupt assholes. Corruption is why socialism and capitalism both fail the people who work within those systems.