Locally

Civilization is basically just bureaucracy integrated over population. Some people figure out how to game the system via the chasm of abstraction between; that’s a function of any sufficiently complex system, look at the speed running community

But ultimately, civilization is just people. All the bureaucracy placed on top of it is just a collection of systems made by people to coordinate themselves. A lot of the dark theatrics are the result of the population becoming so vast that even at the lowest levels, the bureaucracy is distant and abstract. That abstraction alienates people from one another, so they only really know how to interact through the lens of that bureaucracy

The optimism is that you can engage your community. You can meet your neighbors, learn their trades and share yours, start a group chat. You can organize barter networks, childcare rotations, handyman services, mutual aid.

You can join local political groups. Start local political groups. Go to protests and meet people in neighboring areas. Network.

You can promote candidates for local office, and encourage others in your network to do so. You can run for local office, and encourage others in your network to do so. We’ve seen what the other side is offering so far as administrative competence, you think you’re worse?

Go to local events. Talk to your neighbors. Organize with your neighbors. The big system is very top down in its perspective, but it’s really ultimately dependent on the composite people. You can organize the people from the bottom up, and get your friends in nearby neighborhoods to do the same.

If all the neighborhoods are organized, bloodless revolution slides quite comfortably into the realm of plausible futures.

Uh, no. I just have the ability to look up definitions. The word means what it means

Certainly, but it’s the only real starting place

That’s the entire point of citation, repeatable experiment, and peer review. The only way we can ever touch at reliability is cross-referential consensus.

I dunno, SpongeBob occupies a sizeable fraction of successful memes

Y’know, if it had ham in it, it’s closer to a British carbonara

Bookmark the stuff that warrants a bookmark.

Close the stuff I’m not as interested in as I thought I’d be.

Group remaining tabs by subject (books, articles, products, etc. I have a system).

Close redundant tabs in groups.

Not really, no. Words have definitions. It’s not a "semantic argument’ to clarify the definition of a word. It’s not “no true Scotsman” either, that’s when you define a group by some unrelated or incidental quality. What I’ve referred to is the definition of a tankie. The quality described is neither unrelated nor incidental.

It’s not that weird if you remember money

Read up on Discordianism. Fight the horrors with silliness.

“Every anecdote that challenges my biases is a lie”.

Bad faith bullshit

I have deliberately avoided interacting with people like that for a while, and I don’t really feel like digging back like a year to find a specific examples, especially since you came out of the gate unshakably convinced that it never ever happens.

But I assure you they exist. No I’m not generalizing pro- Russia/China sentiment. I’m talking about people who advocate the forceful spread of their ideology through violence.

Look into the kabbalistic concept of tzimtzum, it’s an interesting take.

You would be incorrect, I do no such thing. I’m speaking about a specific phenomenon, as I described.

I wasn’t talking to you

Unfortunately not, I have had conversations with them. And I know your next line is going to be “But they’re just trolling, no one really thinks that”, and I call horseshit. That “trolling”, when so religiously adhered to, inspires weak-willed onlookers into sincere belief.

That’s exactly the complaint against tankies. Tankies are specifically authoritarian “communists”, who defend the violent enforcement of “communism” by authoritarian states. Tankies explicitly want to control others who do not share their beliefs, that’s the material distinction between a tankie specifically and a Communist in general.

What do you think a tankie is?

Uh, I don’t think you understood their point. Tankies aren’t communists, they’re authoritarians with a red paint job. We’re not talking about nuanced Marxist thinkers, we’re taking about people who think “Just line everyone who doesn’t accept my exact interpretation of communism up against the wall” is rational praxis.

There are plenty of ways to rationally arrive at Communism, but really the only way to get to Tankie is, as the top comment says, rejecting Western propaganda in favor of the propaganda of so-called “communists”.

How dare they