Never underestimate what could happen .

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

I think the only difference between socialism and communism, is a difference of 'degree'.

Socialism takes something less than 'all' from one group to give to another group with some amount of consent, and communism takes it all for redistribution, involuntarily.

I think I made it abundantly clear that Trump will not sit idly by. You literally do yourself a massive disservice by suggesting that because while voter fraud does happen, it happens because it’s been caught and investigated. If an election is won by fraud, it’ll be found out and go to the Supreme Court.

a reply to: Arnie123

In a perfect world yes, you would be right.

The whole point of a "good" voter fraud is that no one ever finds out about it. This election is not going to go smooth and depending on the results we could get the worst riots this country has ever seen .

I'm talking entire cities burning thousands of people dead .

It may be hard to see by my post but I'm not a doom preacher , I typically look at the brighter side of things but I also listen to my instincts .

And my instints are telling me to brace.

a reply to: asabuvsobelow

I've been prepper minded since I was in middle school. I moved to my swamp 22 years ago, expecting the shtf anytime back then. Back in the earlier years, my like minded friends and I called it "Project 2010" as we all figured that we should be ready by that time, that the crap would fly a few years just beyond that date.

I think I'm the only one that has come close to being ready. It's unfortunate that those other guys still live in the same aging Detroit suburb we grew up in. Maybe they plan on being part of the chaos in the streets, maybe they have a bug out location, I don't know because after I left, I've been taken for lost and gone ever since, none of us preppers stayed in touch.

It is only natural to want to believe in a future that is brighter than the darkness ahead, "Keep on the sunny side" as that old timey song says. But I gave up on any kind of reasonable future a long time ago. As I grew up and realized how Detroit was dying and had been since I was born, and that there wouldn't be an auto industry there with good jobs just out of high school that have good medical and a retirement plan when I entered the job force. I believed that Social Security wouldn't be around when it was my turn and that the whole system was unsustainable and would fail.

It's taking a little longer than I suspected, and it is more of a slow motion train wreak than I thought, but it's just around the corner now IMO.

a reply to: asabuvsobelow

I keep thinking of this, and admittedly I have had this thought over the years. I wonder at what point, did citizens in the Roman Empire realize it was collapsing? Did they even realize it, or did they just wake up one day in a different social reality? I kind of think it was gradual, but they must have known it was coming. I think what happens in a lot of societies, is they flourish, some people are very successful, live a good life, and become insulated in that life from the predicament of those less fortunate. At some point the aloofness of the upper class collides with the angst of the impoverished masses and there is a re-adjustment in the society. The best bulwark against this happening IMHO is a strong middle class, which at least gives people the impression that they have a way up and out of poverty. I don't think there is any one thing to blame for this, its just sort of the way things have progressed, and we have very little time to turn it around I think. The minute upward mobility starts to disappear, we are on a bad trajectory. We have allowed our middle class to erode to pretty much nothing over the years, so here we are.

a reply to: asabuvsobelow

You analysis (hehe) is very simplistic. Nothing, now a days, lead from one thing to another, in a predictable, linear, fashion.

You are right about the “war on the middle class” eroding our rights and liberties as we focus on “food tickets” instead of our existential wellbeing. That is a lot like love... we seek it out when we don’t have it and ignore it otherwise!

We should be about the “whole of humanity” as a focus (like free renewable electricity for all), then we can progress beyond this lord/serf BS!

That is why I think the Lockheed CFR is not out here in the real world... our definition of society changes.

Nuclear fusion is your new Middle Class!

originally posted by: TEOTWAWKIAIFF
a reply to: asabuvsobelow

You analysis (hehe) is very simplistic. Nothing, now a days, lead from one thing to another, in a predictable, linear, fashion.

You are right about the “war on the middle class” eroding our rights and liberties as we focus on “food tickets” instead of our existential wellbeing. That is a lot like love... we seek it out when we don’t have it and ignore it otherwise!

We should be about the “whole of humanity” as a focus (like free renewable electricity for all), then we can progress beyond this lord/serf BS!

That is why I think the Lockheed CFR is not out here in the real world... our definition of society changes.

Nuclear fusion is your new Middle Class!

If you cant break something down into " simplistic " terms then you don't truly understand what it is your trying to explain.

You say that nothing is predictable or linear ? I disagree .

All that you have to do is understand the mind set , and the rest is quite predictable .

Especially if you can focus in on there desire or goals if you will.

We are all creatures of desire , and if you capture the desire of something not only can you predict it but you can control it as well.

I am sorry man but Russia is not socialist.
Neither is Vietnam.
We saved them from Socialism.


a reply to: asabuvsobelow

originally posted by: asabuvsobelow

People perhaps forget the lessons of history .

It's hard to remember the lessons of history if never learned them in the first place.

Communism is state control? The mess Stalin and his successors created was. Marx wrote of the withering away of the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The original Soviets were based on that model. Trotsky was killed by Stalin for promoting it.

Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Vietnam? Russia was a feudal society that even Marx considered too backwards for revolution but it happened because a couple of generations of loosening control wasn't enough to feed it's own army and navy, let alone the people. China, Cuba, Venezuela and Vietnam were all brutalised enough by colonialism to have primarily nationalistic revolutions. Why do you think Castro virtually expelled Che Guevara? See Stalin and Trotsky above.

Gibbon is seen more as a work of literature than a work of history; nobody in the last 200 years thinks the Roman Empire collapsed because of corruption. The corruption had always been there. It collapsed because it was too big to administer effectively. If the Nth Legion was having a spot of bother in Germania, it could take weeks for news to reach the imperial centre. Decentralisation was part of the solution but how do you ensure loyalty and compliance? Two imperial centres, administering two distinct and distinctive regions, helped. It wasn't a fracture, it was a deliberate act of policy to ensure imperial continuity.

You're right, nobody should assume that it can't happen in their own back yard. It's just that your reasoning based on a pretty weak knowledge of history.

a reply to: Whodathunkdatcheese

One more thing. If you ever want to irritate a real Marxist, point out one simple historical fact: no revolution, left or right, has succeeded without the support of the middle class. Kerensky's Mensheviks were a bridge but much of the Russian middle class also supported Lenin at first.

No dictatorship has ever survived without the support of the middle class wither. How do you think Saddam Hussein stayed in power despite a law, like the Swiss, requiring every adult male to keep a firearm at home?