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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • Conservatism can easily be a form of liberalism, and can even be considered progressive. It sounds contradictory but conservatism of progressive traditions, customs, and values is a component of many liberal societies. That’s your Teddy Roosevelts, the Southern New Deal Democrats, and the Blue Dog coalition.

    there is no necessary overlap afaik.

    As long as it is recognized that overlap isn’t a necessity, I think this is fine. The important thing to remember is that none of these terms are wholly exclusive to each other. Discussion just needs to agree to the context of used terms.

    Plenty of (big C) Conservatives want to conserve the social institutions of racial segregation or other regressive concepts. But you can also legitimately say Xi Xinping is a conservative in the context of the PRC. So there’s a wide field for the context of the terms to get stretched around and (mis)used and (mis)interpreted.

    Liberalism too. It is a concept that has existed and been applied to right wing monarchies and left wing republics. The entire French Revolution is exemplary in how these terms have no strict limit and so a baseline of agreed context is what is necessary.




  • I used to work nights until around 2015. Used to game with a lot of eastern europeans. (And American friends in the military deployed across the globe.)

    Two guys I knew, one in Svestopol and the other Kiev both signed off in 2014. I am 90% sure the Kiev guy moved to the UK since they were going there for a degree, but the guy in Svestopol just went radio silent.






  • I wouldn’t really be able to know what they’re on about without interacting with them, quite frankly. But I can’t say I really approve of the worship of political figures, historical or not.

    I try to approach historical figures as a part of the context in which they existed. It does sound like this person was into theory, so I’d wager their interest in Stalin was more academic than a celebration of the ills that occurred in 20th century Eurasia. But if this person was advocating for Lysenkoism or someshit then you’ve got a grade A idiot.

    Like, I find Stalin to be fascinating and the balance of power that he operated both inside and outside the USSR to be remarkable. He can be a very symbolic figure for a kind of struggle against overwhelming odds, which resonates at least on some level with a lot of people, Marxist or not. People get really into things like mob bosses and Scarface so I would try to slate someone’s fandom of Stalin against that, too.

    Also, if American, we go over eight decades of rabid anti-communism so sometimes people throw up things like hammers and sickles just as a fuck-you to (Neo)McCarthyism.