CHINESEBOTTROLL

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I mostly agree with your conclusion, but this is a very american (I.e. ignorant) response to her concern and i am not surprised she wasnt receptive. I think you underestimate the difference between a country like yours (which has always been a ‘salad bowl’ of cultures united by a commitment to liberalism) and mine (Germany, which is essentially a big tribe of tribes). This difference is even more stark if you look at a place like Denmark.

Here are a few of your points that gave me this impression:

Germany is actually younger than the US

Her concern is (to me) obviously independent of the state we happen to live under. Germaneness is not tied to a political entity. East Germans were German, Volga Germans are German and the German speaking people under the hre were German. (“German” Americans are not German btw.) This also makes your comment about

Her mom was an East German and described to us how they had an entirely separate culture

baffling (to me).

US culture has, … tangibly benefitted from immigration over the centuries.

The us is in many ways a much worse country than Germany (or almost any EU country). I don’t see why we should strive to emulate that model.

Strongest is the caternary arch. Its not listed there for some reason. A caternary is the shape of a chain dangling from its two endpoints. Flip that shape and you get an ideal arch (assuming no additional forces)

Maybe a bit advanced for this crowd, but there is a correspondence between logic and type theory (like in programming languages). Roughly we have

Proposition ≈ Type

Proof of a prop ≈ member of a Type

Implication ≈ function type

and ≈ Cartesian product

or ≈ disjoint union

true ≈ type with one element

false ≈ empty type

Once you understand it, its actually really simple and “obvious”, but the fact that this exists is really really surprising imo.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%E2%80%93Howard_correspondence

You can also add topology into the mix:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homotopy_type_theory

My argument is not “look how many attempts have failed” but “look, of all of these many attempts, every single one has turned into a kafkaesque nightmare”. At this point it is not even clear that “successful communism” is something that can exist in our world

On the other hand, while many (depending on your perspective you might even say most) capitalist systems fail, there are absolutely some that work ok. Of course nothing is perfect in the real world. But the life of say a danish person is not only materially well off, but also free and full of dignity, which was true of none of the experiments in communism

What about them? The choices here are not “what we have now” vs “trust the people that want to try communism again”

communism rises from the ashes in the form of mutual aide, community, schools, and basic infrastructure.

This made me realize that you are not worth my time. I hope you have a nice life!

the atrocities of the system that keeps you fat and happy.

You misunderstand. That is not capitalism but CRONY-capitalism. The two concepts are anrithetical. In REAL capitalism everyone respects the non-agression principle and therefore everyone is free. Crony capitalism is actually the LEAST capitalist system and is closer to socialism, because the government does stuff. I am very smart

Communism doesn’t include a hierarchy of power enforced by violence

Very convenient, since nothing will ever meet this standard, so you will be able to say “that’s not communism” for the rest of your life. Actually sounds like the definition on anarcho capitalism

The two concepts are antithetical

Maybe to you, but many of the people in power at the time believed they were on the way to communism

USSR was somewhere between capitalism and fascism

I know of two common definitions of capitalism: “a system mostly organized around a profit-motive” and “a system in which individuals are mostly free to enter into consensual contracts”. I don’t see how the USSR is close to either of these. It was closer to fascism, tho there are also large differences

failed attempts

They didn’t fail. I mean you can criticize the ussr, but it was not capitalist

which were sabotaged by capitalists

What a weird thing to say. The USSR had sovereign control over the largest country in the world by far + a lot of allies. The capitalists can’t even get rid of north Korea. Its not the capitalists, the system is just shit

the need to rebel is the problem

I mean its fine to rebel, but if your goal is communism I will bet on another case of “tHatS nOT rEaL coMMUnIsM”

countries in which the Dictatorship of the Proletariat failed to cede power to the working class and establish a socialist economic structure

Oh, so like every single other place that tried to implement that deranged system? Thank you for this very important distinction.