Actually, true believers are a legitimate problem for the CCP https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/world/asia/china-maoists-...

You joke, but CCP is Communist in the name only.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there are still some die hard communists around that’d love to seize the power.

People that have survived communism just accept high levels of corruption because it's better than the alternative. That's why Putin is popular.

Do dictators have to eradicate every slight manifestation of dissent and turn elections into rigged cargo cult shows because they are so popular?

It's subtle, but no, Putin isn't popular in the way freely elected leaders are. He's only preferable to the alternative.

Who is the alternative?

Was popular, a lot of protests happening this year.

Putin is popular, because he's better than what was before (i'm speaking mostly of the old drunk). And also because he does stuff that a lot of russians actually like.

A lot of people (mostly westeners) don't understand, that if someone gets back "historic russian territory" from a "neighbor" you don't really like, and noone can do anything about that, that's a good thing for Russia. It's bad for the neighbors, it's bad for NATO, it's bad for everyone else who wants to influece Russia, but for Russia, it's a good thing.

It's the same thing with Trump... he does this, he does that, outrage everywhere, and in the end, EU is even more fuc*ed, Chinese send threats but can't do anything, and USA gets richer, old industries come back, people get jobs, get paid more, etc. And some wonder why he won.

Citation for that last paragraph?

All I've seen is a shrinking coal industry leaving workers unpaid for their last month on the job[1], 25% tariffs slapped on our hardware imports [2] (causing a 30% drop in our sales) and kids being killed by Customs and Border Protection [3].

None of this is good for the USA or my fellow American

1 - https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/19/us/kentucky-coal-miners.h...

2 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2019/08/07/the-long-term-im...

3 - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/20/migrant-chil...

Wish you'd asked for a citation for the whole dang comment. It's the exact kind of "sweet tasting" vitriol that has been sending people with a certain kind of persona into a feeding frenzy in countries all over the fucking planet. This phenomenon is a testament to how susceptible our collective amygdalae are to narrative manipulation. Doesn't matter how many historical precedents are exemplified, our species falls for it every time.

I did not care to dig into his first two sentences, but next time you see a comment like that, please ask them for citations and dissect what they said with your own citations.

We need to deal in fact, which requires a fair bit of effort to cite and write. Call out those poisoning the comments with vitrol and insanity, a harsh light reveals their lack of grounding in fact.

Unchecked IP and currency abuse by China, and unfettered illegal immigration are also "not good for the USA or my fellow American."

> kids being killed by Customs and Border Protection

Are you actually trying to claim that CBP is deliberately killing children?

> Unchecked IP and currency abuse by China, and unfettered illegal immigration are also "not good for the USA or my fellow American."

Please cite how the USA has been negatively affected by IP abuse or China's monetary policy. It seems quite similar to our prior tangoes with Japanese cars & Taiwan's electronics imports to the USA.

At this juncture we have pushed China into economic stagnation, while slowing our own economic growth.

> unfettered illegal immigration are also "not good for the USA or my fellow American."

We're a country of immigrants, our current "legal" immigration system is only a few decades old. Prior to that it was a free for all with nearly open borders (and no passports/visas), which bolstered the US economy mightily during World War 1 & World War 2.

Open Borders is key to being open for business, our current policy is locking out millions of people that could turbocharge our economy.

> Are you actually trying to claim that CBP is deliberately killing children?

Yes, when you choose to act in a way that you know kills some children needlessly, you are killing children. God doesn't look the other way!

Economic growth for 8 straight years of the last 7 years of the Obama administration and the first year of the Trump administration were good for the USA and our fellow Americans.

Is killing children okay if it's not deliberate?

"but for Russia, it's a good thing."

Are you sure? Haven't the resulting sanctions damaged Russia's economic growth and increased prices for consumers?

I can see the geo-strategic value of Crimea, but for the ordinary Russian citizen, where is the positive effect?

You have to understand that democracy, even the idea of it, is not native at all to Russians. I was there earlier in June. What struck me the most was how much reverence the Russians still have for all their erstwhile Soviet era dictators (Lenin and Stalin in particular). The former Tsars are particularly venerated.

The Russian people called Tsar Nicholas "little father". The assassination was an anomaly; the revolutionaries had to work very hard to hide the bodies because they feared the people would start worshipping the dead Tsars (which is exactly what's happening today).

Even with religion, 70 years of Soviet oppression and Russia is now as religious as ever.

So when you criticize Putin for crushing dissent, you have to understand that what might be oppression to us is perfectly normal for Russian people.

At this point, I have to ask: why do we assume that we know what's better for Russians (or any other nationality) than the Russians themselves?

We have real Communists everywhere, they are called corporations, most people work for such government where once inside they are a number and a cog in a machine that tells them to cooperate and not compete. It was a stupid idea to take this corporate model and try to implement it on the scale of national governance and there is no fitness function to terminate it if it's not working as expected, i.e. everyone is not being a good Communist. You want real Communism simply install unions into any existing corporation and make all employees into shareholders, instant Communism.

I don't understand what you mean. Corporations as a legal structure are built to compete & live or die, governments are not. The point of having political power is to control it for the sake of prosperity. Having a 'death clause' in your government worker's performance would mean you've failed as a political actor to get enough control to guarantee prosperity. That's a bigger threat to the gov than having useless employees. Controlled incompetence, plausible deniability, ect are all useful political tools. Not always needed, but they are still useful tools.

If you want a 'communist corporation', just give every employee shares. You don't need unions or whatever else. You could start a company right now that does that. Some big UK firms do a performance sharing scheme with everybody in the company, even cashiers. Granted it's not much money in real terms, but it's proof how flexible the corporate legal structure can be.

> If you want a 'communist corporation', just give every employee shares

Co-operatives in this form aren’t communist. They compete for members, vendors and customers. They don’t have a monopoly on violence. They can be held accountable by the rule of law.

None of the above apply to communist governments. They have a monopoly on violence and the factors of production. That precludes an independent check on state power which, in turn, precludes the rule of law.

Yeah true. I was hoping the only thing of value people would see in communism is the egalitarian attitude towards the distribution of wealth. Communism is a political ideology, applying it to a corporation or business is going to lose it's political edge.