Would actually be kinda cool if the prevalence of chatgpt forced everyone to write in a more varied and interesting style to dodge the accusations :)

God, remember MSNBC the night Bernie Sanders won the Nevada primaries?

My issue with that theory is if it’s true, why didn’t Putin invade while Trump was in power? I think Putin rightly considers Trump a loose cannon who may well have escalated in response. While Biden is predictably afraid of escalation and has been eager to pump the brakes on military aid whenever possible, against congress’s wishes.

I hate to be a Russian whataboutist but the American record of antiwar protest isn’t stellar either. Imo the closer comparison is Vietnam, that was the last one where we were forced to draft people. And it did result in significant protests from multiple groups (incomparable to Iraq imo. What exactly did the Iraq protests 2 years in accomplish, again?)

The vietnam protests were actively suppressed by intelligence services and ultimately followed in the 80s by a wave of reactionary public sentiment that set the tone for republican politics even to this day (and we can all see how well that’s going).

Back then we didn’t live in a police state with modern surveillance tech. It’s surprisingly difficult to organize a revolution when the medium of most social communication is readable by the gov without a warrant.

On the other hand I’m still amazed that those (yes I know they weren’t ever a revolution) Jan 6 clowns got as far as they did, considering they the relative capabilities of US and Russian domestic surveillance. Like that sort of thing has to have been organized on Facebook and telegram right?

It’s like that for many vices such as alcohol- it’s harmful but banning it is much worse than regulating it (see the history of 1920s America). I’m not convinced porn consumption is harmful but even if it was, it shouldn’t be banned.

I love the culture books too but c’mon man.

First, how do you imagine transferring power to an AI overlord would sit with the people who currently have all the proverbial guns in our current society. That’s the problem we need to solve first.

Second, who in our society would you trust to build an AI up to the task of single handedly managing world affairs? How would you even test something so superhuman? Not to mention that we’re not close to superhuman, we’re already pushing the limits of our tech building a chatbot that can’t stay coherent for more than a couple paragraphs. The tech just isn’t there yet and not within orders of magnitude.

I would say a good argument for communism is the worsening side effects of capitalism. These problems simply cannot be fixed in a capitalist framework because they require global cooperation and capitalism is based on competition. Problems like over exploitation of natural resources (overfishing, carbon emissions) and the failure of the market to adequately provide services for which there is a fixed level of demand (housing, education, healthcare. The scale of college and medical debt is getting ridiculous). Many other problems like these.

The solution is more democracy and yes common ownership of the means of production. People are just allergic to the specific term of class struggle. but it doesn’t change the meaning - the ownership/ruling class benefits from the status quo even as everything gets worse. They will not give up control without a fight, and as you said they will use every tool, from propaganda and legislation up to direct violence to maintain that control.