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Now I understand US a bit more

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26 comments
  • And despite saying this, Chumpsky spend decades as safety valve protecting it.

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  • Idealist rubbish. Culture, all superstructure, follows the basis. The USian culture is "psychotic" because the basis is capitalist. Would you say Chinese culture before the revolution was "psychotic", what with the foot binding and the treatment of peasants? No, you would not. Would you say Russian culture is "psychotic", given everything the Russian Empire had done? Then why would you slap a label on 300 million people?

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    • the basis is capitalist

      And also settler-colonial, which is a very important factor when it comes to culture in this sense.

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      • Imperial Russia was also "settler". Everything east of Gorky was conquered from the natives and settled. In fact, conquest of Ural and siberia coincided with the European colonisation of Americas.

        Yet from this basis the USSR came to be.

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    • I think there is room for both processes if we're to give Chomsky some leeway no? The capitalist basis, and the power relations which follow, is of course the "driver" of this but there are still differences between the US, which has essentially destroyed the world many times over, and capitalist countries like modern day Germany or Norway. Can it be explained solely, and deterministically, by the power expansion of the capitalist base? Or are there other processes, call them culture, or ideation, which exhacerbate the psycotic nature of the base? I believe so, but I don't know if the word culture is best to describe and lump such processes together, but does that matter?

      It is of course an idealist interpretation but I believe these can help in materialist investigation, or in the construction of a critical theory.

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    • Nah, I feel general American leaders and intellectuals to be psychotic. Full of Jesus is coming on the next war Armageddon , so let's bomb Russia crazy 😌 , Russian empire was just benign when compares to US imperialism in 20 to 21st century or it's genocidal campaign against the native Americans and land grab of Mexico. Uff.. Just beyond fucked up... People are not allowed to dig up the past there I feel.

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      • Just to nitpick, someone who is "psychotic" is just someone with psychosis, a mental illness, and they aren't dangerous for that. The common use of the word to mean "sick, twisted and dangerous" isn't really fair to people who are suffering and not dangerous at all. It's like the word "schizo" or similar, using mental illness and "craziness" as a synonym for "dangerous and violent."

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    • Then why doesn't every other culture in capitalist states exhibit even remotely the same degree of social psychosis?

      The school shootings, the murder rate, the mass imprisonments, the death count around the world is around 5 million people in the past two decades.

      You need to explain why the US is quantitatively off the charts compared to other capitalist states.

      Aside, I'm noticing a lot of knee jerk defensiveness lately on this comm when the US is criticised. It's really weird.

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      • Because it was the center of the capitalist class. That's about it. Every other capitalist state has issues you've described. I'm in Russia, and we get school shootings, stabbings and more nowadays. Despite having significantly more strict gun control laws.

        Think dialectically. USSR began to have issues with gang violence in its later days, as the society was entering a crisis and the leadership was slowly, but surely abandoning socialist principles.

        Aside, I’m noticing a lot of knee jerk defensiveness lately on this comm when the US is criticised

        Point an instance of my comment "defending the USA".

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