you know, sometimes i feel like a right illiterate rube on this website watching people go off on long threads about shit I have honestly no idea about
But man am I glad to not have whatever this guy has instead of a brain
Imagine somebody replied to him with this link to a Wikipedia section and they gave him a ~200 word baby brain summary so he doesn't have to strain his baby noggin with big words and context and too much information.
He couldn't understand. There's no way to get him to understand.
How can a fruit company be powerful? They just sell fruit!
He can't fathom that countries like the US historically and still routinely bully weaker countries and powerful entities allied with US interests benefit greatly. Sometimes it's fruit and other times it might even literally be "digging up minerals".
Libs today don't think neocolonialism exists, that's kinda OOP's whole deal (although it'd be easy to miss as the only defense of this idea he gives us "it's dumb if you think it's real"). They think colonialism was bad but the Good Guys in the West ended it a hundred or so years ago and now the third world is poor because they have bad ideas/governments.
You have to remember that liberals are idealists. As in, they believe that material conditions are caused by ideology. The West has better ideas and better systems of governance, so it's more prosperous. They can't believe that wealth in the imperial core comes from extraction in the global south because that means that the liberal ideology stems from the material conditions of global dominance and hegemony and not the other way around.
"Neo-Colonialism is based" is what they'll be saying after they've been scratched
Protestant work ethic is that others should work hard so I don’t have to. It’s slave driver ethic, management ethic, the ethic of bourgies who glorify the ideal of “hard work” as a reward in-and-of-itself (so compensation can be reduced)
I've legitimately had to deprogram the whole "protestant work ethic" from a couple of coworkers and you could fucking see the gears turn in their heads when I pointed out all the ways in which it was incredibly wrong. Also apparently a lot of people in Scandinavia sort of just assumes that France is protestant, since France is rich and works hard, therefore they must be protestant.
this man could read if he chose British liberal texts from 200 years ago that say "we have enriched ourselves by stealing all of the colonies stuff" at no point was this a secret
Noah Bilitytoselfcrit: no, actually, I think France would do just fine since Africa's all the way over there anyway. It would cost more to boat rocks here than the rocks would be worth, I'm pretty sure.
His take actually helps me understand why libs keep screeching for decoupling with China as if it wouldn't crash the entire world economy. They don't think that things are made out of raw materials and labor.
Beyond this dork, this is genuinely what modern economists claim to continue defending endless growth in the face of climate change: that growth itself will decouple from its environmental effects / from actual resources extraction and exploitation (and all that means for local ecosystems). As far as I can tell it is treated as absolute truth - almost as if it's common sense - by these freaks.
His take on how to bring peace to Gaza was amazing. I assume he said to himself "I'll figure out this Gaza thing. I don't know anything about it but what's to know! I'll google and then write a few thousand words." And he did. I only scanned it very quickly but his take was that after the war Gaza would be able to rebuild itself via tourism. I don't think he googled very hard.
---
Ninja edit
Shit. Neither archive.today nor achive.org have a full copy. That's a shame. I, myself, should have put it into archive.today when I had the chance. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain...
My brain made a few quick thoughts here and my conclusion is that this is the sort of person who would say "ah, but have you considered that people = money?"
I'm convinced that most libs just look at political cartoons and go "so true!" Without understanding the content. Their biggest fear is being perceived as anything but the adult in the room so they'll just pretend that they understand or that the topic is so complex nobody can understand.
Therefore, there's probably also a really big hidden market for a lib Ben Garrison that just spells shit out with labels.
Both minerals and the people immigrating are both economically advantageous to larger more powerful countries. The connotation difference is rooted in racism.
Do they think the creator of the cartoon genuinely thinks South/Central America and Africa are sunken into the ground? The digging is a metaphor for all extraction of resources/wealth and the person who replied LITERALLY EXPLAINS THIS IN THE FIRST COMMENT.
I do not think the wealth of nations, generally speaking, comes mainly from digging up minerals
Oh, you silly goose, don't you know that water flows downhill? If this was based in reality all of Africa and South America would be flooded, because they're in the ocean and you can't just dig a hole into the ocean. I'll have you know there are actual mountains in South America and Africa. They stick up ABOVE sea level. So that's pretty much the opposite of what you are suggesting here. You tankies really need some STEM education.
because he always has the most dogshit lib takes that are so mind bendingly reactionary they have to be reposted as cringe in the dunk tank. Every one of his tweets is a work of art in how wrong it manages to be.
He must have thought that was a clever retort but he doesn't actually understand the sarcasm - he only thinks that he does. Newman wrote that song about people like him.
I really wonder who pays out of their own pocket to read clowns like Noah Smith, Matt Yglesias, whoever the third guy who is just like them who I can't remember right now, etc. I wish a major newspaper would interview people with subscriptions and not orgs or think tankers who pay without thinking.