Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

So in effect continuing a twisted system because they see no other way out of it?

That sounds familiar, alright.

EDIT: One heck of a pagetopper. Read the previous posts for context.

Edited by TechPriest90 on Apr 18th 2019 at 9:57:49 AM

Basically, yeah. As far as I know, at least; like I said, my class was years ago. I'm sure some of it was actual desire, some of it was seeing it as a good thing done for good reasons, and part of it was that it was just something samurai did, and when it was finally your turn to be on the other end, you finally gt your chance. Or so on.

That said, sorry to drag things off-topic!

And if your higher class boss wanted you, well it was an enormous pile of shit to roll on you if you refused.

Class pressure is a thing.

That reminded me, I've mentioned Ancillary Justice before as an example of a fairly well-done and sympathetic sci fi evil empire, and I had completely forgotten that they have that kind of thing too. Although with the twist that there are no gender roles in the Radch society (but there is a lot of classicism).

Basically, there's a lot of talk about how subordinates will "kneel" (I think that's what they call it) to superior officers, and will incorporate into their regalia things like pins/jewelry that were given by the superior officer and which reflect their (the superior's) family and connections.

And there's a couple of plot points around how it's considered scandalous when the superior officer in the relationship comes from family with lower status. Which needless to say does not happen often.

But it's kind of weird because it's generally presented in the books as sort of like an "office romance" thing, even though it is disturbing that there would be an expectation of providing sexual favors in order to achieve higher rank and status. Which I don't think the author is ignoring. I understand it as yet another illustration of how the Radch have elements of various imperial/ aristocratic societies both historical and science fiction.

Edited by Hodor2 on Apr 18th 2019 at 10:01:22 AM

The central element of a left-wing dystopia is, in my opinion, a dominance of the Know-Nothing Know-It-All personality. Actually communist states tend to exterminate intellectuals extremely quickly during their peak ideological years. You're framing it as though there's a cabal of genuinely intelligent people lording over the masses, but there really isn't a left-wing example of this happening. Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin, the Kims, they all purged intellectuals. They actually exalt the working man, in a backhanded way, as the embodiment of their ideology while being too stupid to question them.

Yeah, is something that is very much ignored.

Thought off course, part of this is that usually this happened on rural countries with low tech and thus, are hardly something that the Modern West can fully understood.

For the better or worse, the first world is spared of left wing attrocities.

Also, anyone don't think that Imperial Japan gets too ignored for the western narrative?

Edited by KazuyaProta on Apr 18th 2019 at 11:10:34 AM

<cough>Killing Fields of Cambodia<cough>

FFS, people were apparently killed for wearing glasses because glasses are apparently a sign of intelligence or something.

Edited by M84 on Apr 18th 2019 at 11:57:44 PM

Yes, and Cambodia was a super small underdeveloped country that suffered a massive societal collapse.

Obviously don't excusing Saloth Sar and his crazy ideals, but is hardest to make someone as him appear in a developed urban setting. Thought maybe in a story of a Post Apocalyptic USA...

Is weird that I'm thinking about the Cold War? We feel sad that WW 2 is being erased from the collective memory as all veterans and even their sons are dying, but in the case of the Cold War...dunno, that's something that worries me, we're starting to forget it without even understanding it.

Many people still believes that the third world countries aligned with the superpowers were mere mindless puppets rather than people with real agency and sayings, for good or bad.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Apr 18th 2019 at 11:18:07 AM

Reminds me of a story I read many years ago in school - it was about a girl in East Germany who faced discrimination in school for wearing glasses, which were seen as a symbol of the burgeois intelligentsia.

Her grandfather had been a miner and also wore glasses, so she wanted to bring photos of him with her to school to prove that you can wear glasses and still represent the working glass - in the end she didn't do it after one teacher who was sympathetic to her pointed out that she'd face even more discrimination if she actively went against the official line.

Heck, East Germany is probably one of the best examples for a real life left-wing dystopia - and one of the regimes that looked like they were actively using 1984 as a handbook.

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Apr 18th 2019 at 6:34:22 PM

It's harder for a leftwing uprising and dystopia to occur when most people can still at least go to Mc Donald's or Wal-Mart.

As for the Cold War...we're forgetting it without understanding it because we don't want to remember or understand it. The Cold War was an ugly gritty mess that arguably brought out the worst in everyone involved.

At least with WW II there's still a lot of people who do want to remember the truth in addition to the people who engage in denialism or use a theme-park version to justify nationalist bullshit.

Edited by M84 on Apr 19th 2019 at 12:38:29 AM

Plus, the "winners" of the Cold War are still with us and are in many ways, the source of many issues of modern day, admitting their wrongdoings would absolutely end their careers.

...and even the losers aren't fully gone, many of them using their fallen comrades as Doomed Moral Victor material.

Edited by KazuyaProta on Apr 18th 2019 at 12:08:23 PM

I'd say it has less to with the population being allowed to indulge in some distracting consumerism and more with democracy.

One of the reasons why the 'first world' (or 'the west' or whatever you want to call it) has never declined into full on left wing dystopia is that people tend to default to what they're used to, especially when it comes to society and on the whole revolutions tend to involve a major shift in politics and ideology and only minor changes in society.

And so when people rise up against a dictatorship they tend to adopt elements of that dictatorship directly into the new structure of their country even when the new country isn't a dictatorship (although it so very often is).

It's why after the American Revolution, voting rights were initially extended only to certain people, specifically the class of people who were the only ones to already have political power in the colonies. The politics changed massively, since those people were now no longer answerable to the King of Britain, but society didn't change much, since there was still a wealthy landed class making all the decisions.

It's why the Soviet Union, after the revolution, maintained the previous Tsarist system of dealing with political dissent through a combination of the secret police terrorizing the population with semi-random executions and sending dissidents to work camps.

It's why the PRC under Mao continued the long standing structure of local officials leading their provinces functionally as their personal fiefdoms while (nominally) answerable to a central leader who was treated as infallible (right up until the moment he wasn't).

And the thing about left wing ideology is that, generally it tends to encourage diversity (unlike right wing ideology, which encourages loyalty and conformity to the in-group). Now... When you've just led a left-leaning revolution against the authoritarian state that overthrew the democracy you grew up in and you have to determine how you're going to settle the many disagreements that diversity causes on what to do next, your go-to ways for settling that dispute is going to be to debate it, let everyone make their case and put it up to a vote...

But if what you're used to is a dictatorship? Then all those people who disagree with you on the details of what to do next are a threat to your vision of the future and the only frame of reference you have for how to deal with that is how that dictatorship dealt with its dissenters: repression and elimination.

That was an excellent post. Do we have an option to Gold it or something?

No we do not. And I for one am glad we don't have a damn ratings system for posts. That just encourages psychological feedback bullshit ala Facebook or Disqus or Youtube comments.

Edited by M84 on Apr 19th 2019 at 6:00:24 PM

How about a Hall of Fame or something?

If you like a post so much, bookmark it yourself.

x4 You can do something like () this generally using the emotes at the bottom of a post if you like it. Or, you can do this ().

Or, if its really important, .

But I've found myself increasingly agreeing with M84 on the ratings front, messing with the fundamental structure of the forum is probably a bad idea.

Edited by AzurePaladin on Apr 19th 2019 at 9:31:31 AM

I put stuff I like in a "Stolen, to be Used Later" File.

Robrecht's post does remind me of the Lost Regiment series where a Union regiment from the American Civil War gets isekai'd magically transported to another world where the local society is essentially Medieval Russia. Long story short, the soldiers influence inspires the peasants to rebel against the noble boyars and set up a new democratic state.

Which immediately encounters problems because a good chunk of their Congress ended up being reactionary boyars who made it through the revolution. Many of the peasants farther away from the center of the action just don't know anything else besides boyar rule, so when the new government told them they could elect their own leaders and representatives now, they just put the boyars back in control.

~Oruka

> That was an excellent post. Do we have an option to Gold it or something?

No but you can put in the posts made of win

here

I'd argue that underplays the issues in Russia and China. Things "didn't stay the same" but actually changed tremendously and the problem was that the changes didn't result in the kind of change that was expected of them. There's also the fact that both the Bolshevik and Maoist voluntaries defeated their enemies in Civil Wars that didn't necessarily indicate their victory on any public mandate.

Part of the main issue that many Left-wing governments ran into in RL (that caused millions of deaths) was the fact that they tore up all the institutions, instituted their new ones, and shot anyone who disagreed. When these new institutions didn't work out or started to have affects they didn't like, they doubled down and tripled down despite the human cost.

One element under Lenin was the fact that he'd done his best to purge any and all mercerism from the farming communities of Russia, only for a new market to start occurring as wandering salesmen moved from the new properties to try to deal with the shortages or needs. Said salesmen made huge amounts of money in a short time and became the wealthiest new citizens of the rural class. So, Lenin had thousands of them rounded up and shot.

To use the Horseshoe Effect, basically Leftist dystopias are secular theocracies with all the zeal and cruelty those imply.

In a real respect, the "default to what they know" isn't the problem so much as, "this flat out did not work and brooks no room to counterargument it."

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 19th 2019 at 7:03:37 AM

I'm also reminded of a scene from Generation Kill, based on many more real instances of this happening, where the Iraqi locals list 'statues of George Bush' among the aid they desire from US relief workers.

Not because they love Bush all that much or feel very liberated and want to honour them...

But because they didn't realize that Bush wasn't the same kind of leader as Saddam Hussein and that they didn't need to curry favour with him for their own safety.

They couldn't just tax them, confiscate their wealth, turn them into a government agency, or anything like that? They couldn't even jail them or put them in reeducation camps? I mean, physically eliminating them, that's more than sadistic zealotry, that's a literally criminal lack of creativity. I always thought Lenin was rutheless, but I never knew him to be dumb.

Interesting, Eric Flint (an actual Marxist in the USA) wrote the 1632 series that is based around, "What if a bunch of working class coal miners in West Virginia were dumped into the middle of Germany during the 30 Years War." It's a very idealistic series that introduces a lot of things about democracy, the rights of man, and equality among citizens.

One of the things that Eric confronts about 5 years after the events of the original novel, though, is that "The United States of Grantville" has become a major power in Germany. It has a bunch of eager zealots converted from the locals that want to invade surrounding nations like Poland, Russia, and so on in order to "bring democracy."

They've also been kind of ignoring their strongest ally in Gustavus Adolphus is, well, one of history's most famous conquerors. He's been using democracy as a way to become the sort of absolute monarch that the Renaissance actually produced numerous bad examples of and to weaken local aristocracies while strengthening their loyalty to the state. One book points out this is what Julius Caesar did and why he's such a mixed figure in history.

Well, the entire "Go America!" thing hits a major wall with the invasion of Poland (never words that have ended well) as the Polish classes are a good deal less regimented than elsewhere. Basically, 1/3rd of the country is the aristocracy and they have some democratic institutions of their own. it becomes a slog that causes them to question a lot of what they're there for as the zealots are angry at the idea of slowing down.

Very few series get into this kind of thing.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 19th 2019 at 7:21:25 AM

Sounds like good stuff.

A lot of time the answers to their problems were, "Take their families hostage", "shoot them", or "exile them from the country." Lenin was a genuine believer in communism being just around the corner and really was frustrated that reality kept indicating that people liked believing in religion, didn't see equality as the most important thing vs. just not starving, and weren't magically producing everything to make the country the most powerful industrial nation in the world.

There's thousands of stories like this between him and Trotsky (who most agree was more imaginative but that's not really a good thing). Stalin just took over his systems and expanded them greatly while introducing mass starvation techniques, genocide, and having Evil Versus Oblivion as what the Soviets had to deal with (no shade thrown on the heroic folk defending their homes).

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 19th 2019 at 7:23:58 AM

That's just embarassing. Not just morally wrong, but also profoundly unimpressive on the skill/power/competence side of things. Why were they hyped for so long as vanguard geniuses? Misinformation? Orwell seems to think the British intellectuals at least were being willfully blind, but I'm not sure I entirely trust his judgment anymore.

Edited by Oruka on Apr 19th 2019 at 7:25:09 AM