littlegreenpills posted:

my girlfriend is going on cum town

catchphrase

serafiym posted:

I've never interacted with or seen Tom's political views outside of the podcast so I wouldn't have a clue if he was trying to address me or something outside of getting into really stupid political debates with people online with absolutely no benefit whatsoever (because I really have done that, haven't we all?). Most of the obviously silly stuff that Tom said I just sorta shrugged off, sort of like his "just because it's a red flag instead of an American one doesn't mean it's a solution" because I'm pretty sure most left-wing politics isn't some sort of Soviet Union-era industrialism that eats up entire lakes anymore. The comment about the U.S. not invading Venezuela just seemed more like a comment on people overreacting to me, which was fine, I've seen it happen before, and I think it flows into the whole climate doomsday prophecizing that they talked about before where we'll all die or something. To me, that's a good point, because when you mix that into an ideology which really doesn't have any punching weight on the ground (and a premise that might just be flat out false I.E. capitalism cannot fix climate change) then it's a recipe for disaster for people who really might care but are nonetheless surrounded by a toxic narrative. In these cases, it's either acting like you're marching toward triumphant victory, political anxiety, or "oh well we might as well die lol". Makes me think about all the peasant revolutionary groups in Russia that failed spectacularly for decades but accepted that as part of the job. Or did they fail? Because 1905 happened. 1917 happened, where many of the factory workers had grown up in communal villages with knowledge of the Narodniks and SRs.

Overall, thought-provoking. Episode 4 not so much because some of their points aren't very clear and they moved on too quickly. Still entertaining to listen to before bed though.

Sounding off against the US invading Venezuela may be an overreaction, but on the other hand, the US is already attempting a very real coup, and is doing very obvious saber-rattling, so even though further intervention is a lot more likely to be done via something like a dirty war, or just continued sabotage and economic strangulation, you can easily see why some people might be denouncing a seemingly unlikely invasion. That's not acknowledged, and of course that's because Venezuela (and Iran) were only mentioned offhand as part of a discussion on a different theme, but that was also my big issue with the theme: it never acknowledged the possibility of people holding good faith political beliefs and engaging in good faith activism, in a world where the really is a lot of injustice and harm being done. The gist (to me) basically amounted to someone having a look at people trying to do some politics and judging them. "This is why all these obsessive people are so misguided."

One thing that's kind of interesting is that the ethos of the show might well be that politics is for perverts and losers, but that doesn't prompt You Can't Win to ignore politics and talk about other stuff, which politically invested people could easily enjoy. Instead they're doing a kind of active anti-politics, where people's political engagement is being interrogated and questioned. As a zzoner I'm not sure if I'm completely outside of the target audience, or if I'm exactly who they're trying to reach.

ultramega posted:

i liked the part where tom was talking about playing red orchestra

I like that game. There's a new one coming out from the same devs called '83 that takes place in a Cold War gone hot.

I'm basically this but with the Soviets:



Anyways I like Age of Napoleon.

ilmdge posted:

Sounding off against the US invading Venezuela may be an overreaction

There's no way that Washington hasn't put professional killers into that country already to "facilitate transition", which by itself qualifies as an invasion in context of their current attempts to overthrow Venezuela's government. We went through all of this with Syria and certain people on this forum until the Obama administration admitted it had sent special forces in months ago, and then those posters scattered.

You know as well as I do how this goes, I think, how a certain type of person tries to be a contrarian by claiming that there's no way the U.S. government has done X, and then when they've obviously done X, well, then they didn't do Y, and when it's known beyond a shadow of a doubt they did Y, the wannabe contrarian goes silent until they can start the whole thing all over again.

It's a weird hobby and I don't really understand the point of being constantly wrong and humiliated for it. They should at least join a Trot party so they can have people praising them for being dumbasses.

trakfactri posted:

serafiym posted:

I've never interacted with or seen Tom's political views outside of the podcast so I wouldn't have a clue if he was trying to address me or something outside of getting into really stupid political debates with people online with absolutely no benefit whatsoever (because I really have done that, haven't we all?). Most of the obviously silly stuff that Tom said I just sorta shrugged off, sort of like his "just because it's a red flag instead of an American one doesn't mean it's a solution" because I'm pretty sure most left-wing politics isn't some sort of Soviet Union-era industrialism that eats up entire lakes anymore. The comment about the U.S. not invading Venezuela just seemed more like a comment on people overreacting to me, which was fine, I've seen it happen before, and I think it flows into the whole climate doomsday prophecizing that they talked about before where we'll all die or something. To me, that's a good point, because when you mix that into an ideology which really doesn't have any punching weight on the ground (and a premise that might just be flat out false I.E. capitalism cannot fix climate change) then it's a recipe for disaster for people who really might care but are nonetheless surrounded by a toxic narrative. In these cases, it's either acting like you're marching toward triumphant victory, political anxiety, or "oh well we might as well die lol". Makes me think about all the peasant revolutionary groups in Russia that failed spectacularly for decades but accepted that as part of the job. Or did they fail? Because 1905 happened. 1917 happened, where many of the factory workers had grown up in communal villages with knowledge of the Narodniks and SRs.

Overall, thought-provoking. Episode 4 not so much because some of their points aren't very clear and they moved on too quickly. Still entertaining to listen to before bed though.

Same. I'm going to listen to episode IV of You Can't Win but I don't have any strong opinions about Tom's apolitics because from my perspective he just seems to see the world in a very different way than me -- and what can I say about that? There was a moment when he said that religion and specifically Islam allowed him to connect things about the world together (half-remembering this) in a way that made sense to him. I don't think I've ever thought that way myself but I am really hesitant to tell other people they are "wrong" or whatever.

I relate to their talk about how people can fall into thinking of themselves as being on a mission or a quest to transform themselves and the world. And then you conscript other people into your own personal mission / apocalypse / etc. You can justify leading other into believing the world is going to end unless they get on board even if the fundamentals are false or deceptive in various ways -- like climate change will make things really shitty for a lot of people but things are already pretty shitty for a few billion people right now.

But this is something of a dilemma because all big political projects seem to have something like this serving as the primer, and the socialist project has -- we don't like to admit this -- involved a great deal of coercion whether you're dealing with scabs or trying to enforce discipline in various ways. The rubber doesn't meet the road unless you're working as a unit. I watched this East German film glorifying the KPD and Ernst Thälmann and there was this hilarious scene where this column of hundreds of workers led by the KPD link arms and just stomp their way through a police line: your class is taking on its role as the driving force in history! Once your arms are linked there's no going back. But you can also see how this can become really terrifying and go horribly wrong, and this is embedded in the left (as well as on the right, center, etc.):

here's my political advice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00ySZOPPDD4