star_wraith

Wherever he is, I hope he’s doing good. I don’t remember if he was an open communist when he was in the Virginia legislature but probably the least lib politician in America in a generation. Seemed like a pretty genuine dude, too. Feels like he dropped out of politics and has been pretty quiet since.

I played DE for the first time a year ago. I played it pretty “straight” because I wanted to learn as much about the world of Revachol and it’s history as possible (I avoided most spoilers but I had some vague notions there was some sort of communist revolution in the past). So on my skills, I loaded up on Psyche and Intellect with a focus on Encyclopedia and Visual Calculus. I didn’t do a lot of drugs or drink, either.

So for my second play through, I’m looking for a different experience. I’m thinking about loading up on Physique and Motorics - Physique in particular. I’ve heard Shivers and Half Light can be fun. I kept Interfacing, Hand Eye Coordination, etc pretty low so I might want to try it with higher levels there.

But I wanted to ask you all and get your thoughts and suggestions.

Also, I’m torn if I should try the Moralist vision quest or go back to the Communist one. I didn’t have quite enough Communism points to get the “best” ending (didn’t internalize The Suicide of Kras Mazov) so I kinda want another shot. But the moralist one does seem kinda interesting and apparently you learn more about the Pale.

Anyway would love to hear your ideas.

Our beloved Large Adult Son went on the Age of Napoleon podcast and gave his thoughts about Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, which I saw somewhere that Matt said it was his favorite book.

It’s a pretty great rundown of the book; I especially enjoyed the insight he had into Marx’s “sack of potatoes” comment.

Happy Eighteenth Brumaire, comrades!

First 13 minutes is the introduction. From about 13:00 to 23:00 they cover the extensive bibliography, discussion follows after that. More about the economics of the USSR in the 1920s than just the NEP.

I’ve spent the last few years devouring Soviet history. Books, papers, blog posts, podcasts, all of it. I can’t get enough. Not to brag, but I do feel as though I’ve achieved a certain level of understanding about the USSR, its history, and eventual collapse. But I’ve also put the work in.

And yet, whenever I engage people I know IRL or online, I’m amazed by how doggedly people will defend what they just inherently “know”: that the Soviet Union was an evil totalitarian authority dictatorship that killed 100 million of its own people and eventually collapsed because communism never works. None of these people (at least the people I know IRL) have learned anything about Soviet history beyond maybe a couple days of lectures and a textbook chapter in high school history classes. Like, I get that this is the narrative that nearly every American holds in their heads. The fact that people believe this isn’t surprising. But what is a little surprising to me is that, when confronted with a challenge to that narrative from someone they know has always loved history and has bothered to learn more, they dig their heels in and insist they are right and I am wrong.

This isn’t about me, I’m just sharing my experience with this. I’m just amazed at how Americans will be completely ignorant about a topic (not just the USSR) but will be utterly convinced their views on that topic are correct, despite their own lack of investigation into that topic. This is the same country where tens of millions of people think dinosaurs and humans walked around together and will not listen to what any “scientist” has to say about it, after all.

Take a moment to consider all the resources used in the United States regarding automotive transportation since 1945. Think about all that metal that’s used on something that becomes obsolete and junked after only a decade or two. Think of all the labor involved in manufacturing them. And think of all the time individuals must spend on long commutes where they can’t do anything other than drive (because our time is a resource too). Think about how many more automobiles are needed than trains and buses. And then think about all the oil that’s needed to run those cars.

Now think about how little resources are needed for public transportation vehicles. How they last a lot longer, are more fuel efficient, and allow you to spend your time doing other things. It’s truly amazing how wasteful automobiles are. The automobile is the product of the free market and “individualism” run amok. A socialist country run by central planning wouldn’t dream of creating a society that’s based around the car because it’s so needlessly inefficient.

Let’s expand this a little further. The modern capitalist culture around cars is largely a post-WW2 invention. Look at a map of where you live. Try to figure out what your metro area looked like in 1945 and what it looks like now. I know for my hometown, the post-1945 part is several times larger than what was there before. And that all was built around automotive infrastructure. It boggles the mind the resources involved in that. All the concrete used for highways. All the land paved over for parking lots. All the inefficient single-family homes and strip malls. It’s hard to wrap your head around how much resources were used to build that.

Now think about the alternative: how few resources would be used in building housing for need with space efficiency in mind. How you need so much fewer roads and how you can connect cities with rail instead of highways. Think about how much less commercial areas you need under socialism. The later is just so much more efficient.

But in the debate of free markets versus central planning, all this seems to get skipped over in favor of “but socialism means no bananas in the winter” or “how will I be able to get the exact color iPhone case I want if it’s all centrally planned?” But the sheer waste of capitalism is overlooked because there was profit made the whole time. People never consider how those resources could have been better used.

I think if you took the US post-WW2 and made it socialist with central planning, we’d truly be living in a post-scarcity society by now. Even acknowledging how much of a “boost” the capitalist US economy gets from imperialism and environmental destruction, with socialism and just the resources within the US, we’d have so much that our society would have no choice but to massively reduce work hours. How wasteful capitalism is gets ignored because the waste is dealt with by a willing buyer and willing seller at a market clearing price (ignoring overproduction, I mean). The anti-communists don’t want to think about in terms of finite resources, and how those resources are used.

Idk, just something to think about.

Because once you have kids and they become mobile, it will be years before you get to take a private, undisturbed poop at home again.

With my kids, we tend to stick to more gender-neutral toys, wood blocks, that sort of thing. Get a lot of toys from Hapé, that sort of thing.

Went to a kid's birthday party today. Family has 2 boys. Played with the toys in the basement. And jfc, damn near every toys was heavily masc-coded. i swear to god, there was a toy fire engine that had literal muscles on it. Every vehicle had big chunky wheels and seemed to be designed with a certain masculine aesthetic. There was this cop car designed like a tank that shot out discs. Every toy just seemed overly aggressive and bought specifically to signal MY SON IS NOT GAAAAYYY!

Like, I was raised with "boy toys" like Tonka trucks. But those just seemed more like realistic representations of real thing. Even something silly like Transformers, their vehicle forms were like boring-ass sedans and shit. So many toys today seem like they have to crank up the gender coding to 11 (boys and girls); while at the same time there are a ton of toys that aren't problematic at all.

I feel like this says a lot about the social reproduction of gender and capitalism.

Maybe an odd question, so I'll unpack it a bit. Back during the time of the Michael Brown shooting, I remember hearing about how black parents often have "the talk" with their kids about the pigs. About how they aren't there to help, about how to stay safe around them, etc.

I'm white, my kids are white, and I realized I need to have my own ACAB talk with them eventually. This weekend, my older toddler said to me "the police keep us safe". I'm guessing she picked it up from day care teachers because I don't let her watch any TV that glorifies pigs and I live in a kinda reactionary area.

When she asked, I kinda fumbled and just said "not really, the police don't keep people safe". I knew that wasn't a great answer but she's little so she just sorta heard it and then moved on to her next unrelated topic. I've been thinking about it. I have some time, but at some point I need to talk to her and tell her the truth about cops.

Do you all have any advice about how to explain the reality of policing in America to white kids? I'm making that "white" qualifier for a reason. In white spaces and communities, the copanganda kids face is intense. The cops are portrayed as these kind, benevolent peacemakers who are only there to help. And frankly, the cops themselves do a great job propagandizing white kids. They make sure to have all these positive interactions with them when they're young. That's what I have to fight against. I know because that was my experience as a white kid growing up. I never really had negative interactions with cops myself. Shitting on cops was very much socially forbidden among my Mayo-American social circle. And the last mental domino to fall in me becoming a leftist was realizing how absolutely shitty cops are and their real role in the system. I really want my kids to be able to see the cops for who they are, even though I know how much of an uphill battle that's going to be for me.

For real, it's taken me nearly a year to finish Capital vol. 1. It's a large book but not that large. I used to read so much more. But now that I have kids, it seems like that reading time has really shrunk. There are some unique factors that work against me (kids that sleep less than the low number of the range for their ages and a partner who sees reading as kinda antisocial) but still, I bet a lot of parents are in the same boat. If you have kids and you're actually able to get reading in, how do you do it.

Edit: actually, I'm reading David Harvey's companion book along with it, so that's like two books in a year. Still way, way below the amount of reading I'd like to do.