Nola

Excuse you OP, don’t you understand that I am NOT aligned with US imperialism.

Must I tap the sign for you all AGAIN

I’ve bounced off every GTA that has came out

SA was the furthest I got in any of them just cause it had some addictive qualities(the turf management stuff, some novel missions) and it was basically my first GTA so the novelty was there.

To me, GTA is a frustrating contradiction. It is always amongst the most graphically polished and meticulously crafted game worlds ever yet everything beyond it’s production value feels underwhelming. Heavily style over substance.

The controls/animations are clunky, the missions have barely evolved from the PS2 days, the gunplay even after patches was still mid, the sort of PS era chaos sandbox keeps getting paired back to accommodate more “realistic storytelling and immersion,” and the game systems and side activities all feel a mile wide and a centimeter deep. With little more than novelty to make you want to do them more than once.

Which in the last two games has made the whole world mostly feel like visiting an impressive tech demo more than something I actually get immersed into the way I can in almost any other open world style game.

And probably my highlights in both GTAIV and V is exploring the map for a few hours and listening to the radio. Which probably shouldn’t be the thing I find most memorable in a game with a trillion dollar budget or whatever.

And unlike RDR, the stories themselves aren’t enough to compel me to push forward.

I’ll probably pick it up eventually, especially if any of my issues get resolved or truly improved upon, but I already don’t game as much anymore so I’ll probably wait til it comes to PC and get it on a Steam sale or something.

Relevant supplement to this

Lawmakers Report That Some Democrats Missed Hegseth Impeachment Vote to Attend Event for ‘AIPAC Front Group’

https://www.commondreams.org/news/aipac-front-group-hegseth

Republicans are the Freudian ID for US imperialist capitalism

The Democratic party is the HR Department

They both serve the same master, they just perform different functions.

(some)People mistakenly think HR is there to protect you the worker, but in reality its primary function is to protect the institution from workers, manage internal contradictions, contain dissent, and maintain the legitimacy of the power structure.

This is missing the forest for the trees

The issue is not they missed the vote, it’s why they did and what that says more broadly about the party’s capture.

3 of those house members are explicitly on the board of this AIPAC front group, another 5 of them took money this election cycle.

In the first major symbolic vote since the election, these Dems were prostituting themselves for a front group advancing the interests of an ethno supremacist foreign government engaging in a genocide that just helped manipulate our nation into a war and is seeking to re-escalate it.

And the way you change that overton window and shift those pressures leftward is thru sustained outside pressure

Corporate Dems have no real incentive to betray their actual constituents, donors, especially when their former main lovers(tech oligarchs and Israel) are sending all the signals their pocketbooks will open back up for them if they play nice, and if voters as a whole just go back to brunch, guess who easily wins that influence battle?

So while there is a type of corporate media propaganda that I think undermines the left, this is one of those rare instances I think this sort of coverage is actually helping. As it is keeping focus on who the villains inside the tent are and that they can’t be trusted(which they can’t). And right now they are banking on people going quiet and falling in line so they can maneuver behind the scenes and preserve their power and the status quo dynamic.

In other words, bourgeoisie democracy

The only wedge this drives though is with the vast masses against the corporatist zionist wing of the party…which IMO is the energy people need to keep up.

I don’t know of any meaningful constituency of voters that is out there angry that people are getting mad at Hailey Stevens for making her dreams of Israel come true and up and leaving, or Nancy Pelosi ironically skipping the vote to end an illegal and unjust war to get a lifetime achievement award from a veterans organization.

If I missed a crucial meeting at my work that was pivotal for positioning the future of the company, I would expect to reprimanded far more consequentially than some mean words.

I admit I am not as into gaming as I once was, but I wouldn’t have a problem with a digital push if it was coupled with laws/regulations that guaranteed some sort of actual ownership, not simply a glorified rental.

Frankly I haven’t bought a physical game in probably a decade in large part cause all I do game on now is PC.

I need to see more details of this

On the one hand the industry needs more regulation and frankly, far more restrictions then is currently happening, and this coming from the progressive wing and not centrists is at least a somewhat better sign.

On the other, most Dems are still corporatist ghouls, and I think even Bernie has shown some bad instincts on handling AI at times, and this reads eerily similar to the cartelification the AI companies are reported to themselves be seeking.

Where instead of the Chinese approach of open sourcing the tech more, America, in the name of national and domestic security, essentially grants the existing companies defacto protectionism and in a way that will make it impossible to dislodge them.

I must applaud this analysis cause rarely in the wild do I find sickos that know ball this well

So bravo

And cause I am also a sicko I want to add a few more things to chew on

As you already alluded to, and I will add an additional allegory, Tucker is the Daniel Day Lewis of political pundits.

When he changes characters he is in a league of his own. And part of that is he has a genius level read on the pulse of politics. And ironically, cause it is typically something you more often find Marxists doing, not so much modern right-wingers, is that he is insanely good at identifying the contradictions in our politics, in our imperialism, and even in capitalism itself.

Like if someone is so inclined, if you read the opening chapter or so of his book, I think it was Ship of Fools, it basically just reads like semi accurate leftist critique of American capitalism translated into America B language. But he peppers in just enough ethnonationalism and causation misdirection to seed people in a more right wing Trumpian direction and away from a true capitalist and class critique.

And I suspect that is what he is doing here again thru this new persona that as you rightly note is targeting the political/voter contradictions on Israel and repackaging ethnonationalist right wing economic populism and astutely incorporating some of the DSA energy as well(see him praising Abdul El Sayed and note the shift in people under 40 embracing socialism and socialist policies, even on the right).

And I will add this elite/counter-elite push and pull is a pattern we see repeat again and again in right wing politics and media.

There is the Establishment and the elites that are backing them. Then there is typically some counterfroces to their right dialing up the rhetoric on various tension points between the party elite and the right wing masses, identifying those contradictions and misalignments so they can exploit them as the more authentic voice for “the people.” Who themselves are usually backed by some counter elites seeking to gain more influence in the larger political space.

They embrace positions, posturing, and/or manufacture a movement that presents like it is challenging the Republican Party, eschewing unpopular aspects while fronting certain populist energies thru that anti establishment image. Gain enough support for it to create a crisis within the existing status quo, use that to leverage to gain more power and influence within the party/politics in exchange for sheep-dogging people back into the party.

Reagan Revolution, Moral Majority, Tea Party, Trumpism, etc. All followed a similar pattern.

And on the media side no one has done it better or more often then Tucker. He is a bellwether people should not ever ignore or underestimate.

And a cheat code for seeing who and where people are aligning themselves is not to just look at what they say, but what they do behind the scenes.

Peek thru the veil at Tucker and you will find someone maneuvering in between his post Fox News backer Omeed Malik and toward the JD Vance wing of oligarchs(not a fan of the source but it is the one I could find reporting on this recently)

https://jewishinsider.com/2026/08/vance-fundraiser-with-tucker-carlson-backer-omeed-malik-raises-eyebrows/

My personal theory is Tucker, and this is based on his movements behind the scenes, is trying to position himself as a kingmaker voice in 28 for using his clout on this issues he is on the correct side of to then sheepdog people into Vance. Which he will use to demonstrate he is a goodboy to the Thiel wing of the oligarchy he is trying to ingratiate with, and he is smart enough to know Vance has no chance in 28(in 150 years no party with an incumbent president anywhere near this unpopular has won a non-incumbent presidential race and the Republican Party under current material conditions is in no position to break that trend).

And I would also go out on a limb and say I would not be shocked if Tucker wants to then position himself as a Trumpian like figure for 2032 or 2036.

Why do we assume this is real to begin with and not just more theater in the lead up to the re-escalation?

Nothing Hegseth did was without the explicit consent of the president and the implicit consent of Republican controlled congress(and quite a lot of Democrats)

And at ANY TIME congress could have pulled funding for the war as is their power constitutionally.

This is simply a way to shovel all the blame onto one person while obfuscating their own accountability, Trump’s own accountability, and Israel’s accountability.

While actively avoiding the mechanism in their face that could end this war tomorrow because deep down most Republicans and a good chunk of Democrats support these actions or at least the larger foreign policy behind it.

Which TBC also only works if Trump doesn’t continue the war and goes further up the escalation ladder. Which by all accounts he is positioning to do.

No one does false flags

I wouldn’t go that far…

Second Gulf of Tonkin, The Nayirah Testimony, Operation Northwoods, USS Liberty, Gleiwitz Incident, Ryazan, Lavon Affair, USS Maine

And it depends on how strictly we are defining that term, cause CIA activities are awash in operations meant to create or foment incidents, create pretenses for further interventions/escalations, and obfuscate US or western responsibility.

This feels like it needs a semester more than a few paragraphs lol. But I will attempt to answer some of it to the best of my ability cause I think if nothing else it can be helpful cause almost everything you said here I come across all the time.

1.) Communism is an end goal strived for after achieving sufficient social and economic transformation, not something you simply enact by decree.

Socialism though, broadly speaking, is understood as a transitional process of transforming the institutions, property relations, and class structures inherited from capitalism into one that serves the proletariat as opposed to the capitalist class.

And developing those productive forces can take a myriad of forms, including managed capitalism.

This is actually one of the fundamental misconceptions I see people fall into constantly.

And that process will necessarily look different depending on a country’s historical circumstances, material conditions, level of economic development, and position within the global economy.

That’s why Marxism is fundamentally a materialist framework rather than a strict blueprint for organizing society. The goal isn’t to immediately abolish every market, private enterprise, or capitalist institution regardless of circumstances. It’s to transform the underlying class relations and develop the material conditions necessary to eventually transcend capitalism altogether.

2.) China and Russia are not really interchangeable beyond their relationship as adversaries to the US hegemonic order.

First, Russia doesn’t even claim to be communist anymore from what I read(maybe nostalgia for the USSR). The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and the Russian Federation that emerged underwent an enormously destructive process of capitalist restoration thanks to US shock therapy and Yeltsin’s government(which Putin comes out of). Which led to mass privatization and oligarchic consolidation. Putin’s Russia is an authoritarian capitalist state and the re-hardening of hostilities is it’s own chapter but the friction points came over perceived encroachment into it’s spheres of influence and economic protectionism America saw as acts of economic warfare.

China is a fundamentally different story, and the distinction is important because it goes directly to questions of class power and who ultimately controls the economy.

China has billionaires, private capitalists, wage labor, markets, and significant wealth inequality. That is all true

However, unlike Russia, where the post-Soviet transition transferred enormous amounts of public wealth into private hands and created a politically powerful oligarchic capitalist class, China’s proletarian revolution retained substantial state ownership of strategic industries, a state-controlled banking system, and a Communist Party that maintains ultimate political authority over private capital.

TLDR: Think of the words of lesser remembered founding father and first Supreme Court Justice John Jay:

The people who own the country ought to govern it

This gets to the heart of what separates Russia and China’s relationship to capital, property, and who holds power in the state and who that state is designed to serve and preserve. And I often find it a bit frustrating cause a materialist understanding of Russia today is more like a sneak preview of America tomorrow than it is of anything to do with communism.

3.) So why even pretend to be Communist?

The theoretical justification behind the Great Leap Forward and then Deng Xiaoping’s market reforms was that China, emerging from centuries of imperial domination, war, and extreme underdevelopment, needed to develop its productive forces before it could construct a more advanced socialist economy. And that in order to survive as a nation had to be reflective of the broader global economy, geopolitical realities, and historical context they existed within.

And attempts to go against that were met with what places like Cuba, the USSR, and any number of other attempted socialist revolutions(or even just unaligned nations) experienced in terms of economic isolation, sanctions, embargoes, political destabilization, covert operations, military invasions etc.

Market dependency, foreign investment, private enterprise, and class dynamics were therefore treated as instruments of development rather than necessarily being incompatible with a socialist transition.

China considers itself to be in primitive socialism.

And i think there is a pretty passionate debate about whether some of the same capitalist relations used to develop productive forces also reproduce capitalist class interests, inequalities, and concentrations of economic power that may ultimately undermine the socialist transition itself.

TBH I also think that feature can become it’s own problem too.

The Fediverse may be good at combating certain forms of enshittification(it’s too small right now to know for sure), but what qualifies as such can easily drift into ideological balkanization, purity testing, and arbitrary in-group/out-group policing…Which I already see happening here during my short stay.

And social networks thrive and grow on cross-community connectivity, discovery, and engagement, excessive ideological sorting and fragmentation then undermines that. That is a core contradiction in the Fediverse that I am not sure is easily reconciled.

Where the incentivizes toward that balkanizing also increases the risk of creating a network even more unfriendly or overwhelming to newcomers to navigate(ideological boundaries they didn’t create, didn’t consent to, and may not even understand), while risks decreasing broader political dialogue, coalition-building, and productive disagreement that makes town square social media what it is and not just a more convoluted Discord for messageboards.

And how many accounts are just dormant for a decade or at least until some bot farm hacked it and repurposed it to do some Hasbara on your local community sub?

Honestly? Cause much of the entirety of the US tech capitalist model is just digital feudalism.

Create a compelling reason to join your digital kingdom then when enough people move there you put up the enclosures and start profiting off exploiting your subjects and charging tolls to people wanting to access them.

And ideally enough of that peasantry remain dependent on your digital commons that realistically they can’t leave.

The upside is that this process naturally lends itself toward enshitification over time. The downside is that unlike messageboards of old, social media deploys incredibly addictive algorithms to keep a core type of user engaged. And then those habits harden and leaving feels impossible.

In summary, they want the world as it largely exists now but they don’t want the poor reputation, political backlash, civilian unrest, and for some of them, the personal guilt associated with the exploitation they built their fortunes off of and need to sustain to keep it.

It’s not a bad litmus test under current US politics.

It is about the most powerful third rail in politics right now that exposes the contradictions within the Democratic Party and their voters

Someone that is an Israel First Democrat is basically a 1 for 1 for being corporate captured on other issues as well.

And a willingness to call Israel a genocide, an apartheid, and support a full arms embargo(including defensive weapons) is also a good clue they won’t be speaking half measured on healthcare policy, housing, wealth taxes, universal childcare, fighting Trump, ending Citizens United, supporting unions, banning AI data centers, a living wage, and any other issue that faces internal contradictions with Establishment corporate Dems and their voters.

And sure enough, Ossoff is problematic on all those domains as well.