[Alzwards Corner] Never could happen here

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And so we pat ourselves on the back for not falling for the "capitalist propaganda," not recognizing all the propaganda that we have fallen for. I'd mention some examples but of course that would garner downvotes and disapproval, and thus the cycle continues.
- Who cares about downvotes? Give us your best examples - if they are indeed good, you may encourage people to think more about them, which is worth more than any amount of upvotes in the grand sheme of things.
  
  Okay, here's a whole bunch I can think of off the top of my head.
  Opposition to DEI initiatives, feminism, affirmative action, immigration, etc., are rooted in racism/sexism. Even dislike for certain movies is rooted in racism/sexism.
  People are being stolen from and/or their privacy is being violated when companies use public data about them to train AI, target ads, etc. People get really mad about this.
  On a similar note, AI art "has no soul" and AI artists aren't "real artists."
  Hamas and/or Israel are evil. Pick whatever position you want on this conflict, there's a flood of propaganda pushing it and reasoned discussion that goes against it is hard.
  Everything Elon Musk does is somehow evil or idiotic.
  Cryptocurrency is a scam. AI is a scam. insert some other new technology is a scam.
  Religion is bad.
  All cops are bastards.
  Unions are good and corporations are bad. Heck, the "capitalism is bad" message in this comic is itself propaganda.
  Cancelling major NASA initiatives like Artemis or Mars Sample Return (or James Webb, Space Shuttle, etc. historically) would be a disaster for space exploration and science, despite their wildly spiralling costs.
  Okay, that last one is perhaps getting down into the weeds of one of the more particular communities I find myself in. :)
  Of course, there are other communities out there that I'm not commonly in that I expect have the opposite "everyone agrees" views on a lot of these things - DEI is part of some "gay agenda" conspiracy to groom children, Elon Musk is an infallible messiah, cops are the thin blue line protecting us from criminals, unions are destructive to the economy and cause unemployment, and so on and so forth. Propaganda is highly specific to its target audience, as this comic suggests.
  The fundamental problem is just that in any significant group or community there are always hot-button issues that "everyone agrees" about, and attempting to question or discuss them with any nuance gets shouted down.
  
  Not the OP but let's fish for down votes.
  The Azov battalion are Nazis in Ukraine and Russia is actively trying to exterminate them.
  The Russian military brought peace to Syria while the US funded Syrian terrorists.
  We call Iran terrorists while the US actively terrorized Iran by murdering their generals without provocation.
  The US actively pirates Iranian shipments.
  The US changes the definition of words to fit their needs. US isn't in a recession because the government changed how we define recessions.
  China is actively committing a deathless genocide because like institutionalized racism we are generalizing the concept of cultural genocide to cover all definitions of genocide.
  The Chinese economy is bad because they only grew 5%.
  The fentanyl issue is blamed on everyone except the US own incompetence. Whether it be Purdue, or Mexico or China but definitely not a US enforcement issue.
  And that's just off the top of my head.
  *Edit. I see my votes have turned positive now that I've clarified my personal position on the Ukraine conflict. But let me point out that my facts didn't change only that I've pointed out I'm against Russia.
  But this is my point. We should stop down voting facts simply because they're uncomfortable. That's how we get presidents like Trump.
- Western media is mostly propaganda. Facts are just something they use in order to lie. What really amazes me is how people recognize that local media is often lying about internal affairs, but blindly belive anything the same people say when its about other countries
  
  Western media normally doesn't lie directly but lies by omission. They will only show one side as a victim and never show that side committing any crimes nor tell the full story.
  Israel is the prime example that commits Genocide for 20 years but only gets attention and portrayed as the victim when Hamas retaliates. Seemingly "out of nowhere".
  Though in the last few months we went from lying by omission to full on CCP style propaganda with no Genocide in Ba Sing Se.
- Difference is you get down votes for speech and not a prison sentence or sent to the front lines of a war meat grinder. Just for some perspective that you apparently need.
  
  Where did I say otherwise? I'm only addressing the prevalence of propaganda and our susceptibility to it, not Russia's war measures or oppressive lack of free speech.

Universal? Any kind of social program is called communism.
- Any kind of social program is called communism.
  Glim-Glam is pleased.
  
  It's all fun and games until Stalliongrad snowballs and joins the war

we need to do something! but first, let me finish my beer

I hear lots of people say shit like "eat the rich!"
Or "global strike!"
But it never seems to go anywhere.
- Ain't hungry enough yet

And Americans still believe we were on the right side of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Nationalism is the same everywhere.

Russia and its vassal countries are Orwellian dystopias. The USA and its vassal countries are Huxleyan dystopias.
- There is a little Orwell here and Huxley there. Like a yin yang type of thing

Since when does Russia have universal welfare? I thought it was a burning pile of feces when it comes to any social services.
- Pretty sure they're talking about the anti-universal healthcare propaganda in the States. Downplaying the wealth gap happens here plenty, too.
  
  I see. Yeah, I take fine understand why people in the US are so masochistic when it comes to health care...
  
  And anti any safety nets or some worker protections
- You would be wrong about that. My parents live in Russia and the services are fine. My mom can get an ambulance with a Doctor to come to her house for free whenever she feels ill. In the US, I would pay an arm and a leg for an ambulance without a doctor. That’s part of the problem, actually - life is decent in Russia, at least in Moscow, so people don’t rebel.
  Also, “unprecedented information” doesn’t apply. It’s literally illegal to access this information in Russia. My mom has a VPN cause I had one set up for her. Otherwise she would be cut off from the outside world. She has a dummy phone without any forbidden apps that she takes with her on walks. Young people figure out a way, but anyone who is not tech savvy is fucked.
- I don't think that's what top hat guy is trying to imply, I think he's just spewing some generic "our system is awesome! Don't change it!" stuff.
- Since before it was independent state

Things like UBI is part of the propaganda you're complaining about.
It's a poison pill promoted by wealthy people like Andrew Yang to distract from the need for increases in minimum wage.
If minimum wage increases corporations have to pay. With UBI, then the government pays and it doesn't cost the corporation.
But they already know it's not politically viable and will never happen anyway. Even if it does, they still don't going to pay out. Classic Xanatos Gambit.
But the main point of UBI is to get people that would normally push for an increase in minimum wage to push for UBI instead. Then the right wing can say "these clowns just want free money from the government." Centrist don't go along with it and it never happens. And neither does an increase in minimum wage which is much harder to argue against, but nobody is arguing for because of the distraction that is UBI.
UBI is all about making people take up a losing cause instead of raising minimum wage which would be a winning cause.
You swallowed the poison pill of UBI, so no minimum wage increase is happening. Their propaganda worked.
- Your counterpoint to UBI is a higher minimum wage? Yes, lets ensure everyone must work for the capitalists; that will free us. Wow, you are the poison pill.
  
  Wow, I don't usually find myself on this side of the argument, but..
  Did you even read what he said?
  In a republic, which we are, people have to agree on policy and their representatives vote for what the people who elect them want.
  The Overton Window dictates what we can feasibly pass with popularity within a system like ours. Like it or not, the majority of voters' opinions fall within this window, and by definition, what is acceptable for our politicians to run on falls within this window. Also, the Overton window of the US has been shifting right so that actual leftist policies are outside of that window (see how little it takes for someone here to cry about how socialism is ruining everything)
  Raising the minimum wage is just inside the left border of the Overton window right now. It's acceptable to talk about and most people with a clear understanding of how poverty works agree that it's a viable solution to remedy one of our nation's biggest problems.
  You know it's inside of the window because various states have actually passed those changes. It's acceptable to talk about that happening on a national scale when we can see it work on a state scale.
  UBI is so far left of our Overton window that it isn't implemented anywhere here (in the mainland) and can be ridiculed easily, and that's the point.
- ubi isn't the poison pill, yang was that for ubi, and you swallowed it apparently. there has barely been any push for ubi, mostly just academic discussion, and it has had absolutely zero effect on amount of campaigning for min wage increase, so like, wut?
  ubi is the way welfare should be because means testing kills and wastes money and everyone deserves that safety net. everyone. nevermind coming mass automation.
  imho andrew yang's whole purpose in politics was to be a dumbass awkward out of touch dickhead and spoil everything he promoted, mainly ubi. you fell for it.
  
  Political capital is finite, and the wealthy people understand this. Right now we're arguing over UBI instead of creating a common front to raise minimum wage. Exactly as intended. The person that made the comic promoted something that won't happen instead of something that could happen, exactly as intended.
  nevermind coming mass automation.
  Yes, nevermind coming mass automation. You're presupposing future problems can't be solved in the future. Future problems stemming from future mass automation (as if that's something that didn't start with the industrial revolution) can be solved in the future. Low minimum wage is a problem we have right now and it's not being solving now because too many people are fantasizing about a future that may not even happen in our lifetimes.
  Right now we gotta fix our energy infrastructure to solve global warming (which is a real future problem we need to work on right now) and that's going to take a lot of labour to accomplish. Our survival depends on us having a productive and healthy workforce to solve very real problems.
  I like Star Trek too but we aren't going to get to that world if we can't solve present day problems.
- This is whataboutism of the most laborious kind.
- Disagree. AI will make UBI the only way forward besides mass deaths.
  
  People have been saying machines will eliminate all jobs since the dawn of the industrial revolution.
  Right at this moment there are people that are doing minimum wage jobs that don't have enough money to survive on. How about we solve the present day problems instead of worrying about the problems of some sci-fi future world? We can worry about the problems of the future in the future you know.
- I sure hope that this was written by ChatGPT. Because if a living breathing human both believes this and took the time to write it out the system has failed
  
  No, the system has succeeded.
- The one that offends me is the belief in "infinite upside." Like somehow we'd lose out on some great works of social progress if we made peoole's bank accounts peg once they hit a certain number of zeroes.

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