Glide

My first take when glancing at this was to mentally read it as a political compass meme, which left Dessalines placing his position in the "Authoritarian Right" category.

I know that wasn't the conscious intention here, but it's a fun little Freudian slip.

As long as we're on the topic:

It translates to "the ends justifies the means." Gamefreak, what the fuck?

Fascinating. I'm embarrassingly uneducated on South American politics, though I've taught a few EAL learners from there. I appreciate the quick history lesson, genuinely.

To be fair, this is largely why I discredit the left-right paradigm of politics. The graph adding authoritarian vs libertarian helps a bit, but it's just too complex of a set of ideals to break into simple binaries.

The .ml crew are genuinely leftists. They believe in the value of socialized systems and collective empowerment as opposed to individual merit. The problem is that they're also authoritarian nutjobs who actively cover up and/or support the wholesale murder of out groups.

Yes, there's a decent argument that this isn't true leftism, or a true belief in collective empowerment and the like, but that's kind my point. Politics are too complicated for simplistic binaries. They carry a number of beliefs that are decidedly left, while simultaneously sharing far more beliefs than they're willing to admit with the batshit insane nationalists that they claim to detest. They defend authoritarianism at every turn, while simultaneously speaking down to those they perceive as fascist. And not all of it - emphasis on "all", as a good portion of it is - is as hypocritical as we'd like to believe. Our simplified political binaries just do a bad job of discussing complex ideologies.

Mindfulness is about having an active brain. It's about training your brain to be active about the things that matter now, not the things that mattered yesterday or the things that matter in the future. A constantly thinking brain isn't necessarily an active one, which is what the meme attempts to point out in a satirical way. Mindfulness meditation attempts to teach the brain to curb aimless, vapid thoughts in favor of one's that deal with the here and now.

It's hard to define the feeling of coming down from a good meditation. It's like the world is clearer and more vibrant, and you feel refreshed in a similiar way to having a genuinely restful sleep. More than anything, though, it's good for anxiety. Taking a moment to put your worries into perspective does a number on those worries taking over your day-to-day.

Oh lord. And I thought the right wing chuds were kings of projection. These people genuinely live in an alternate reality. It's equal parts fascinating, sad, and disturbing.

The belief that "tankie" is an anti-communist pejorative is really all you need to know about his politics. Imagine using Western nations as the lens to constantly talk shit about imperialism, while dry humping the legs of other imperialist nations. And they'll use as much pseudo-intellectualist, cherry-picked logic as they need to defend their hypocritical arguments, while dismissing any arguments to the contrary as CIA-backed propaganda, despite overwhelming evidence from multiple sources. Marx is rolling in his grave.

They are quite literally the Eastern equivilent of MAGA-addled nationalists.

Same.

The writing wastes a LOT of time. Yes, I get it, that's the vibe they want to set, but the vibe was set like 5 minutes ago, and all you've done since is print synonyms for "drunk asshole."

It's also paraded as pro-communist media, and it really isn't at all. People are so capitalist-brained, that any game which places communism and capitalism on equal footing, pointing out the faults in both and mocking them relentlessly, is somehow "pro-communist." In particular, the games plot-relevant example of a die-hard communist is not someone to aspire to. Neither are the capitalists or fascists, but that's kind of the point: it's hard to say it supports any political viewpoint when it shits on everyone fairly equally.

Honestly, I wanted and expected a lot more out of it. Particularly in the ending.

Though it was absolutely worth the playthrough. It's a fantastic game, just not this pinnacle of writing the way the internet plays it off to be.

My favorite part is when Davel tries to argue that he's not a tankie by defending the Chinese government's use of tanks against unarmed groups.

That's the point though: they assume every white person is a racist asshole just like them, so apologizing for one is apologizing for the other. When you live the life of a white supremecist day-in, day-out, the way they do, you start to think that's just how life is. You can't see racist entitlement from the inside of the racists. It's just "the way of things."

Obligatory fuck JD Vance.

Appreciated.

Fuck Stalin, and every fake-ass "leftist" that evokes his name as something positive.

Well, I'll be damned. He actually got something right.