As usual, noncredible proposals become noncredible reality

Yep. She was a royal. While the Nazis were distinctly not monarchists, many of the conservatives aligned with the Nazis were. The chance of them alienating their own support base to execute just one more disabled person was not high.

God, that’s something I haven’t thought about in a very long time.

Back when NASA was flinging things into space for the first time, the tolerances that were even possible were extremely tight. Every pound mattered (every pound still matters, but because we have other things to do once we get to space nowadays, plus every pound is expensive).

600 pounds of white paint for the fuel tank was considered unnecessary, once the engineering team figured that it didn’t actually protect the special foam covering of the fuel tank anyway. Thus the distinctive orange color!

Professional squirting?

Waiting for nonviolent, nondestructive forms of liberation is often cruel towards the victims. Violence is not necessarily the right answer, but it is often enough to earn any decent person that description.

At the same time, violence which is poorly thought out can victimize many, many more people. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” applies to both sides of this argument. If both act in such a way as causes harm towards the oppressed, but in the hopes of alleviating it, why is one decent and one not?

People who believe only in nonviolent actions are fools who cause immense harm, and in modern bourgeois democracies, are by far the majority of fools screwing the oppressed over. But people who use violence without a serious and feasible plan for how it can actually overthrow, help overthrow, lead to overthrowing, or at least seriously hinder the oppressors are also fools who cause immense harm in the same exact way.

Choose violence, choose nonviolence, choose a mixture of both; whatever you choose, choose the most effective one you can figure.

I don’t blame people for rolling the dice and failing. But I might blame someone for playing the lottery and failing. At some point, a failure to genuinely analyze one’s actions and plans and route to success is, itself, a moral failure.

There’s a balance. PR is important, but I definitely agree that shrinking back from action because of the potential of state propaganda demonizing it is a weak response.

Just keep your finger on the pulse of the actual opinion of the masses.

It’s unironically a romantic way to meet tbh

Explanation: Marx’s theories were very much built off of his experiences in the Revolutions of 1848 - he saw that no amount of fire and fury in the bellies of a small vanguard could replace mass support and unity. To this end, he believed that the most important development in the journey towards a socialist state was the development of a capitalist economy. The capitalist economy builds industry, which creates a large proletariat, which is then agitated by their exploitation at the hands of capitalism, which then develops class consciousness, which allows them to marshal their strength against the capitalist state and mode of production.

Revolution fails? It’s not because you didn’t ‘believe’ hard enough, or socialism is ‘impossible’ in your very specific country. It’s because the proletariat was not ready. Go back to laying the groundwork. Make sure that the revolution’s goal is socialism; if it is just democracy, aim for that first, then overthrow bourgeois democracy. One step at a time. Let the pieces form together, don’t try to crush them into fitting.

None of this is ‘automatic’ - it must be cultivated by class conscious individuals and groups to help their comrades realize class consciousness faster than the capitalists can suppress the idea - but neither can it be truly ‘forced’ - it is a development.

The Bolsheviks, an originally fringe leftist group in the Russian Empire, believed that only a small ‘vanguard’ party would have the necessary education, discipline, and political correctness to ‘guide’ the poor, sniveling masses to their salvation. A coup by the Bolsheviks over the newly democratically-elected socialist-supermajority legislature of Russia, which did not support the Bolsheviks, created the USSR, which… did not end up being a particular success for socialism.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.

Regardless of whether one is a Marxist socialist or anti-Marxist socialist, I think most serious leftists would agree with the bolded - a socialist revolution is a movement of the majority. It cannot be a movement of an ‘enlightened’ minority.

Princess Alexandrine had Down syndrome. The norm was for royalty (even overthrown royalty, like the Prussian royal family) and prominent families to make a secret of children with major disabilities - notably, JFK had a sister who was lobotomized by their politically-oriented father for being a potential embarassment.

Princess Alexandrine, however, was largely treated like her non-disabled brothers and sisters - appearing at events, in family pictures, and in general being acknowledged by her family instead of treated like a dirty secret. She openly attended a school for special needs children, was cared for by a nurse, and would live to the age of 65.

Explanation: King Croesus of Lydia (located in what-is-now Turkiye) was once supposedly told by the Oracle of Delphi in Greece that, should he cross the river dividing his land from the Persians, “a great empire will be destroyed.” With that in mind, he went to war with the utmost confidence in his success. It had, after all, been foretold by the Oracle!

… King Croesus’s empire was destroyed by the war. Maybe being cocksure isn’t a replacement for a functioning brain?

Gotta be careful about them seers and their wording.

… the uh… timing of this meme and our current war with Persia has me a little triggered.

Explanation: King Croesus of Lydia (located in what-is-now Turkiye) was once supposedly told by the Oracle of Delphi in Greece that, should he cross the river dividing his land from the Persians, “a great empire will be destroyed.” With that in mind, he went to war with the utmost confidence in his success. It had, after all, been foretold by the Oracle!

… King Croesus’s empire was destroyed by the war. Maybe being cocksure isn’t a replacement for a functioning brain?

Gotta be careful about them seers and their wording.

… the uh… timing of this meme and our current war with Persia has me a little triggered.

Explanation: Marx’s theories were very much built off of his experiences in the Revolutions of 1848 - he saw that no amount of fire and fury in the bellies of a small vanguard could replace mass support and unity. To this end, he believed that the most important development in the journey towards a socialist state was the development of a capitalist economy. The capitalist economy builds industry, which creates a large proletariat, which is then agitated by their exploitation at the hands of capitalism, which then develops class consciousness, which allows them to marshal their strength against the capitalist state and mode of production.

Revolution fails? It’s not because you didn’t ‘believe’ hard enough, or socialism is ‘impossible’ in your very specific country. It’s because the proletariat was not ready. Go back to laying the groundwork. Make sure that the revolution’s goal is socialism; if it is just democracy, aim for that first, then overthrow bourgeois democracy. One step at a time. Let the pieces form together, don’t try to crush them into fitting.

None of this is ‘automatic’ - it must be cultivated by class conscious individuals and groups to help their comrades realize class consciousness faster than the capitalists can suppress the idea - but neither can it be truly ‘forced’ - it is a development.

The Bolsheviks, an originally fringe leftist group in the Russian Empire, believed that only a small ‘vanguard’ party would have the necessary education, discipline, and political correctness to ‘guide’ the poor, sniveling masses to their salvation. A coup by the Bolsheviks over the newly democratically-elected socialist-supermajority legislature of Russia, which did not support the Bolsheviks, created the USSR, which… did not end up being a particular success for socialism.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.

The Chosen One, at long last arrived…

Helps catch your breath on those long races!

Explanation From Meme-Maker:

Félix-Roland Moumié was a Cameroonian doctor trained in Dakar who joined the Union des populations du Cameroun (UPC) in 1948 after meeting Ruben Um Nyobè. Becoming UPC president in 1952, he advocated immediate independence and Cameroon’s reunification against French trusteeship, organizing rallies and anticolonial fundraisers despite crackdowns. After the UPC ban in 1955 (May massacres, 1,000+ dead), he fled to British Cameroon, then Guinea, Ghana, and Egypt, directing armed struggle from exile.

In 1960, in Geneva, Félix Moumié contacts Chinese diplomats, buys arms, and prints anticolonial brochures, living lavishly without much suspicion. SDECE spy William Bechtel (“Grand Bill”), sent on orders from Michel Debré and Jacques Foccart, poses as a journalist and invites him to Le Plat-d’Argent restaurant with an accomplice. He poisons his Ricard pastis, but when Félix barely touches it, fearing he’d skip one drink, William slips thallium into a wine glass brought by the waiter too. Bon vivant Moumié downs both glasses at meal’s end. Hours later, stomach pains hit; a maid finds him collapsed in his hotel room. Rushed to hospital, he dies after two weeks’ agony on November 3.

Swiss police track Bechtel but Paris exfiltrates him. Arrested in 1975 in the Netherlands, he’s extradited then released in 1980 for lack of proof.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iran,_vaso_zoomorfo_a_forma_di_cavallo,_II-VI_secolo.jpg

Him chomk

https://collection.ncartmuseum.org/objects/1262/owl-skyphos

https://collection.ncartmuseum.org/objects/170/mirror-with-the-three-graces

Explanation: The Roman Lorica Segmentata, depicted in the above panels, is considered the most distinctive form of Roman armor, and is often used in depictions both before and after its actual, historical existence. Segmentata was used mostly from the 1st-3rd century AD, with some usage straggling into the 4th century AD. Before and after? Chainmail or scale armor. Or no armor.

At the bottom, this is extrapolated to American history as a metaphor to show how out-of-place it is! Behold, GI Joe (GI Jane?) seizing the airports of the American Revolutionary War.