CrocodilloBombardino

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  • 35 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: April 7th, 2025

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  • i cited wars as counterexamples against peace. if that doesn’t make sense to you, im not sure we can have a productive conversation.

    i completely agree that humans are part of nature. So if you like, everything we do (and everything that occurs ever) is “natural” because everything is part of nature, but that’s a fairly useless definition. we also do some relatively unique stuff, too, that is not mirrored by other animals. Nation states are not the same as wolf packs or bonobo societies or whale pods.

    the most important difference here is that nations have institutions (such as a border) that exist despite the actual relationship of the people on those borders. the people on both sides of the Berlin Wall didn’t want it to be there. The people who live in Beebe Plain, a town divided by the US-Canada border, have much more in common with their neighbors than the politicians in Washington DC and Ottawa who make decisions for them. this is not the same as pack membership setting territory boundaries, this is control from a distance by strangers.

    anyway this has been interesting, im gonna get on with my day.


  • you said “decide to keep the peace” which I provided counterexamples against. I shorthanded that as “negotiate” but you can just sub in your exact language and the point stands.

    i don’t deny the social abilities of wolves. i don’t even claim that there are zero similarities between social boundaries and formal borders. what im doing is pointing out that borders formed by the institution of the state are fundamentally different from social boundaries adopted by people, wolves, or any being capable of negotiating them.

    my motivation here is to undermine the idea that national borders are “natural”, which tends to legitimate them in many people’s minds, like the meme in this post tries to do. I want to undermine that because i believe it isn’t true and because there are fundamentally better ways to organize society.



  • so the borders of the US were agreed upon by entities who decided to keep the peace, not established by war and genocide? the borders of several African states were not set by colonial violence? the border between Russia and Ukraine is being “renegotiated” and not fought over? Israel “renegotiating” with Lebanon?

    there’s a big difference between populations who come to agreements with each other and states who do things for power.







  • socialism: workers control the means of production (the factories, the farms, the freight trains, etc). there is no separate owner. this is usually considered a key step on the way to communism.

    communism: a society without any classes (no capitalists, no working class, no one in poverty, everyone is on the same level of society); without money (everything ppl need is provided for free and fairly, there are no capitalist markets); and without a state (government is not a separate group of people who command others, the people make decisions on things that affect them).

    Even those communists who believe the right strategy to reach a communist society requires them to take control of the state first believe that the ultimate goal is for the state to “wither away” as it becomes less necessary over time. other communists disagree that it is a possible to reach a communist society by taking control of the state, rather the people have to build their own non-state power that eventually defeats it.







  • preppy, Ivy League, business-casual style

    these aesthetics come from early & mid 20th century style worn by wealthy “aristocratic” (not literally, they weren’t nobles) American families. they rode horses, played tennis, rugby, and polo, wore school uniforms, etc. and their clothing reflected that.

    that style was pushed into the mass market by Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilifiger, and other brands. this meant everyone could afford those aesthetics. the old cars used to be much more expensive because they were imported and hand made, but modern production and shipping has changed that.

    rich people now differentiate themselves in other ways.



  • they did it for years in a significant territory. the state had no power there during that time. that was a success, even if it was rolled back by a nationalist military (supported by nazi Germany) and undermined by authoritarian communists. also, again, there’s rojava & zapatista Mexico currently, plus other historical examples.

    why are you demanding an impossible standard of perfection before you are willing to fight for a better life for yourself and everyone else? that’s just doomerism and it serves the capitalists.