Have you visited Chicago?

Two words: U.S. ideology and practice inspired Nazi founders and the Nazi state apparatus thereof. The US declared war on Japan specifically in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor, it did not declare war on Germany; Germany declared war on the US three days after the US declared war on Japan. Immediately after the Nazis no longer posed a threat to U.S. hegemony, the CIA collaborated with Nazi war criminals to wage a spy campaign against the USSR, in addition to America's Operation Paperclip for use of Nazi scientists in NASA and elsewhere. The “lend lease” shit is pure cope for the fact that the USSR defeated Nazi fascism by every possible margin with the reply being “yeah well we sent them stuff opportunistically.” I will laugh at any person who legitimately places the victory of the Red Army on the lend-lease.

What the fuck do you even think my complaint is? it’s the rollback of covid precautions at a federal level, cutting the aid they were giving out, ending mask mandate. You shitheads acted like vaccines were a magic bullet because it was a convenient lie to tell everyone try to get ‘back to normal’. Instead you abdicate responsibility and act like it’s the most anyone could done.

Fye post, your harm reduction is a lie

In Xi's case laws needed to be changed to give him the ability to run a third time. IMO moving towards a more authoritarian state is never going to result in a move towards socialism as it further entrenches power in an elite.

1. Authoritarianism (rule by authority) isn't a valid concept (by which manner of authority? the authority of which class?). All societies are ruled by blind authority, but the status quo asserts itself as natural and everything against it becomes “authoritarian.” The immediate aim of the liquidation of the national bourgeoisie’s political power taken up by the dictatorship of the proletariat is not in any sense removed from bourgeois power elsewhere. This point manifests itself in the consideration of the state of the press, which has more and more become a close link between the capitalist class at large, a class that retains a political dictatorship over the majority of developed nations and several national dictatorships over their respective colonial shares of maldeveloped nations. Owing to the supreme authority of the world bourgeoisie, the proletarian masses who have consolidated political power domestically must suppress the siege on their delicate rule internationally. There are more prisoners per-capita and in total in the U.S. than in China, not to mention the clear difference in ownership of the factors of production, and yet this “authoritarianism” comes up again and again in rhetoric

2. I explained the term limit change in my other reply to you [link]. There is no possible way to categorize this as “authoritarian” or “entrenching power in the elite.”

3. This is an extreme non-reply. Leadership in the DPRK is diffused (explanation below). You never explain how “the state seems to work to perpetuate [hereditary succession, although succession is complex, as I already mentioned with the diffusion of power from Kim Il Sung].”

The fact that there were historical justifications made for Kim Il Sung to pass it to his son is meaningless.

Actually it explains the reason why voters might follow this pattern, and of course nothing in the article I wrote was addressed. As for “hereditary monarchy claims”, Kim Jong Un is General Secretary of the Workers Party of Korea, and Chairman of the State Affairs Commission. These positions are elected by the WPK Party Congress and by the Supreme People’s Assembly respectively.

• Sidenote: parties are elected by the people every five years (under the DFRF), the WPK isn’t permanently leading [other parties include the KSDP and the CCP]

If Kim Jong Un didn’t wish to continue to hold his positions, one of the Vice-Chairpersons would take his place temporarily, and a successor would be discussed and elected at the next party conference, also likely a Vice-Chairperson. For example, Kim Jong Il was elected into the Party Central Committee in the 70’s, and in 1974 was elected as the successor to Kim Il Sung. Jang Song-Thaek was elected to succeed Kim Jong Il, however, he wanted to reform certain areas, thus debate regarding his intentions and whether he was a revisionist or not ensued; the party then switched and had Kim Jong Un succeed Kim Jong Il. Jang Song-Thaek then staged a coup in an attempt to consolidate power by force (confirming his intentions were not pure and that he was likely a revisionist in the intent of his “reform”). He was executed thereafter. It’s important to mention Jang Song-Thaek to show that a successor to Chairman of the SAC doesn’t have to be a direct child of the former. So, if Kim Jong Un were to retire, or wish to discontinue his positions, it would be somebody in the Politburo, or a Vice-Chairperson of the State Affairs Commission, to succeed him. However, there currently isn’t an elected successor appointed, because likely odds are that he isn’t retiring or dying in the near future. Kim Jong Un is not actually in total control of the DPRK; the Supreme People’s Assembly has, by far, the extreme majority of control over the latter. Kim Jong Un has never been in either the Supreme People’s Assembly or its respective Standing Committee. Premier is the second top rank within the SPA, currently held by Kim Jae Ryong [not related]. President of the Standing Committee (Presidium) is the top position within the SPA, a position held by Kim Yong-Nam [not related] until April 2019, where Choe Ryong-Hae thereafter was elected. That isn’t to say that Kim Jong Un holds no power within the DPRK, but anyone within the SPA certainly has more legislative authority. Each person within the SPA, including Premier and Head of the Presidium, is elected (and thus their power is temporary and can be removed at any time). The closest thing to a dictatorship (so to speak) in the DPRK is the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, a determining class dictatorship of the majority which governs the state. The only of the Kim family members (remember this is a common Korean surname, I am referring to the lineage of Kim Il Sung) to have an SPA position was Kim Il Sung, and he abolished his position. The “next in line” leader in the WPK is likely not to be a descendant of Kim Il Sung either.

OP is talking about how FDR was the first president to be elected for three terms, which is the same situation for Xi. Are you confusing the PRC and DPRK?

I wrote something on the DPRK's elections a while ago [link]—the "hereditary" (of which positions are diffused, with the SAC being a modern development of decentralization) succession is a product of extreme hardship from being bombed to shit and starved and occupied by the U.S, and deciding upon candidates that are seen as "successors" to the pioneer of the country/visage who defeated the imperialists; whether or not this is correct in your eyes means nothing.

shut up

Also the U.S. has the highest number of prisoners on earth (in both proportion and totality). Bad countries are authoritarian though, good countries (the U.S. in this case) are wholesome teddy bears that just happen to use s-x slavery in their occupied bases, kill millions of people, lie about their real motives, torture innocents (with Guantanamo Bay still open)and gun down dissidents in other countries because they were just trying too hard to bring democracy to the hordes who begged for U.S. "charity." We'll do better next time guys!

• Read "Monopoly Media Manipulation"
• Read "Brainwashing"—and since you immediately dismissed my well-sourced and thoroughly explained response to your "death camps in north kora" (lmao) comment with the thought terminating "they're defending north korea so I'm right" cliche, read "Masses, Elites, and Rebels" as well
• Read Parenti's Inventing Reality
• Read Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent

"The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships, the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas” - Karl Marx

You still haven't explained how America is "learning from their mistakes", or given any proof that they've stopped their imperialist pursuits (much less actually refuted my example of Yemen), haven't apologized for your cowardly defense of the War in Afghanistan (and of course didn't address the examples of horrific atrocities committed by the U.S. which @sunset linked), nor addressed really anything I said on this except for a single comment where you made an idiotic argument about "one party" with no understanding of Afghanistan's political realities (or really anything for that matter). Stop acting smug you awful chauvinist cracker.

lmao

@GarbageShoot addressed everything else and debunked it, but I want to talk about this:

I don't need to defend ever [sic] single thing the US has done wrong or what you think the US has done wrong to enjoy and understand the benefits of democracy. US is certainly not perfect [sic] but it beats living in a dictatorship that's for sure. I want the US to support and defend democracies.

This sort of nonsense of dismissing all anti-democratic actions by the U.S. government (ex. below) by saying “I don’t need to defend everything” is absurd and ignorant.

• the insertion of the dictator Syngman Rhee in south Korea; the support for the ROK’s government as it placed 188k people in prison for sympathizing with socialism/communism (Korea’s Place in the Sun, p. 349), put 70,000 leftists in concentration camps (Korea’s Place in the Sun, p. 223), and massacred tens of thousands in Jeju for protesting; the undemocratic and uneducated division of Korea (Patriots, Traitors and Empires, p. 73), etc.

• inciting terrorism and supporting Nazi “stay behind” troops in countries with communist resistance movements (Italy, Greece, Germany, Turkey, etc.) with the intention of pinning this terrorism on communist movements and tricking the population into voting for the U.S.-backed parties (see Paul L. Williams’ Operation Gladio)

• the support for the coup by dictator Pinochet against the popularly elected Allende in Chile

“I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves” - Kissenger

• every single action in the Cold War that subverted democratic principles (see The Jakarta Method)

There comes a certain point when the “democracy” thesis must be questioned; in which U.S. military intervention did America “fight for democracy”? You’ve brought up Iraq and Afghanistan. What evidence is there that these were genuine pursuits for democracy? Afghanistan HAD democracy under the DRA, but the U.S. decided to undermine social reform in the country to supplant Soviet influence in the Middle East:

“The United States’ larger interest...would be served by the demise of the Taraki regime, despite whatever setbacks this might mean for future social and economic reform in Afghanistan.... The overthrow of the DRA [Democratic Republic of Afghanistan] would show the rest of the world, particularly the Third World, that the Soviet’s view of the socialist course of history as being inevitable is not accurate” (US State Department memorandum reproduced in Cockburn and St. Clair’s Whiteout, pp. 262–63).

We know that the lie of support for the Mujahideen being afforded by the U.S. merely to push back against Soviet invasion is false, since the U.S. admitted to supporting the Mujahideen at least half a year before the invasion (US Foreign Policy and the Soviet-Afghan War, Lowenstien). The volatile conditions in Afghanistan are the exact result of the U.S. fathering the Taliban for influence in the region, and the intervention in Afghanistan had no democratic results apart from furthering U.S. interests (and U.S. corporate oil interests, see Parenti’s “Afghanistan: Another Untold Story”), which were decidedly undemocratic. By the way, the U.S. is still starving people in Afghanistan.

And Iraq, this MUST be the single democratic war fought by the U.S. right? Apart from killing more people than Saddam ever did (and this is of course excluding that the U.S. supported Saddam as he gassed Iran)., giving children birth defects and cancer from depleted Uranium, s-xually abusing and torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib, and so on, the effect was merely “democratizing” (giving to western corporations) Iraqi oil shares. And one of your pig-dogs already admitted to the war being an imperialist bid for oil and not “democratic”:

“People say we're not fighting for oil. Of course we are. They talk about America's national interest. What the hell do you think they're talking about? We're not there for figs” - Chuck Hagel, U.S. Senator (1997-2009) and U.S. Secretary of Defense (2013-15)

Say that bs “oh I guess they weren’t ready for democracy” nonsense again I dare you. You don’t deserve to prance around these topics and “learn” by defending horrific atrocities and seeing what responses you get.