Objection

That's not being "dishonest" that's just how debates work. You seem to be reading an incredible amount of things into the fact that I wouldn't do your homework for you.

Although, you had already decided you knew all sorts of things about me from your first comment. Since you had already made up your mind, there was never any way for me to change that.

But I will say, I appreciate that you did finally do your homework. It will be nice to have those sources if I ever need to refute similar claims in the future.

That sounds like one of the deeper circles of Hell.

It's not "helping" the worse evil. It's helping neither.

If third-party voters and non-voters "helped the worse evil" then the worse evil has won every election in recent history in a landslide victory. In reality, removing them from the equation has no impact on which of the major parties gets more votes.

It's only if you assume that a party is entitled to people's votes that the word "help" could possibly be used. And that's not how anything works. No one is entitled to my vote.

They're not just "slow."

"If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there."

"Slow" would be making only a small reduction in military spending, as opposed to increasing it to what was an all-time high. "Slow" would be enforcing international law and arresting Netanyahu if he set foot in the country, but otherwise doing nothing to stop the genocide, as opposed to actively arming them and violently suppressing protests.

The only "slowness" of the DNC is slowing the rate at which they're pressing the knife in deeper. But the knife is certainly not coming out if they have anything to say about it.

Now that you've finally done your homework, presented the sources of your beliefs for me to examine, like I told you to do about seven times, I will happily go through them, since you are no longer trying to make me go on a wild goose chase hunting down every random internet user with something negative to say about the USSR.

Your first source, as mentioned before, is a random Quora user. That's not remotely credible and it's ridiculous that you're still trying to use that even after I addressed it.

Your second source, Russia Beyond, I've addressed countless times. It quite clearly says that the average wait time was 6-7 years. Public sector employees might have to wait 10 or more, but the claim was about the average in general, and as I've repeatedly told you, 10 is also less than 20-30.

Your third source says:

On the positive side, the boast that 'there are no homeless in the Soviet Union' is generally true. But the homes are not what a Western family would tolerate -- or what Soviets want.

Which again, the claim was about housing in general and not about upgrades.

Moving on to your fourth source:

I won’t tell you which page that’s located on because I want you to find it for yourself.

Lol, being deliberately obtuse is not how you get people to engage with a source. Nevertheless, because I have such tremendous patience, I looked it up, it's on page 9. Once again, this is an single individual and tells us nothing about the overall statistical reality, and once again, 10 years is less than 20-30.

Your fifth source says:

Waiting lists for separate apartments could take 10 years or longer

Meaning, you'd have a shared apartment but might have to wait 10 years to upgrade to a separate dwelling. 10 years is still less than 20-30.

Also, Radio Free Europe is affiliated with the US government, just fyi. I take it with a grain of salt, like with the Russian one, but, like the Russian one, it contradicts your position, so that's your problem, not mine.

Your sixth source says:

But if the room was 14 sq.m – they received the right to improve their living conditions and were included into the waiting list for the new flat, granted from the State (this people are called ocheredniki) . Some ocheredniki have to wait for several years (in Moscow and Leningrad – 10 years and even more).

Once again, that's saying 10+ years for an upgrade (in specific cities), contradicting the claim of 20-30 years to get anything at all, because, and this is true, 10 is less than 20-30.

Your seventh source says:

During the Stalin era, between 1927 and 1955, the USSR did not increase the extremely low per capita built-up area rates that existed in 1917, 4m2. Cohabitation was frequent and necessary, with about 35% of the population living in shared apartments until the end of the USSR. The queues of waiting to obtain housing took around 10 years.

This one says around 10 years to obtain housing in the Stalin era. I'm not sure if they mean, housing outside of a shared apartment or housing in general, and the situation was worse during that era than later. Once again, 10 years is less than 20-30.

Your eighth source is a Rickroll. I'm not sure why you think trolling me for reading through your sources is a good idea. I think your frustrations have more to do with the fact that you seem very confused about the purpose of sources and how debate works in general, rather than anything on my part.

Your ninth source says:

Instead, the MZhK movement started to be seen primarily as a shortcut for solving the housing problems of young families, who otherwise had to wait in the queue for years or even decades.

This is perhaps the closest any of your sources has come to backing up the claim of 20-30 years, however, it doesn't explain where that claim actually comes from or how typical it was, or if it's talking about waiting in the queue for an upgrade, or for housing at all.

There. See, when you do your homework, I do my part too. I'm just not going to do the part of trying to guess where you're getting your claims and beliefs from.

I'm not sure what part of that Jesus is so broken up about tbh 🤣

WKUK - European History 3024

They actually prefer Republicans in power, Trump in particular, because they harm America.

This is just something y'all say, it's made up. On the rare occasions where I've encountered a Trump supporter on here I call them out the same way. I suppose I could go over to Truth Social and try to sell them on communism but I doubt they'd be particularly receptive (and you wouldn't see it if I did), and besides, our people built the platform.

They want to divide the left and create litmus tests for DNC candidates that are impossible to achieve.

"Met with the news the Israelis delivered the most devastating bomb & artillery attack on W. Beirut lasting 14 hours. Habib cabled—desperate—has basic agreement from all parties but cant arrange details of P.L.O. withdrawal because of the barrage. King Fahd called begging me to do something. I told him I was calling P.M. Begin immediately. And I did—I was angry. I told him it had to stop or our entire future relationship was endangered. I used the word holocaust deliberately & said the symbol of his war was becoming a picture of a 7 month old baby with it’s arms blown off. He told me he had ordered the bombing stopped—I asked about the artillery fire. He claimed the P.L.O. had started that & Israeli forces had taken casualties. End of call. Twenty mins. later he called to tell me he’d ordered an end to the barrage and plead for our continued friendship. Spent rest of day meeting with Congressmen on Tax bill."

Diary entry of Ronald Reagan, August 12, 1982.

Don't try to tell me supporting an end to the genocide is "impossible."

Notably, the MAGA grifters benefiting from this division are unbridled by these requirements.

No they fucking aren't.

Tbh I think people are trying to hard to dunk on you rather than actually explaining how we see things and why.

Opposing war is generally the correct take, in most cases, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you should turn it into a hard rule, because there are exceptions. The American Civil War is an example I think most people would agree with. As violent and bloody as it was, it was still outweighed by the centuries of systemic violence baked into the system.

As Marxists we concern ourselves less with "who started it" (an inherently subjective question) and more with who's fighting it and why, and what outcomes can be expected. War is the continuation of politics by other means, so to understand a conflict it's important to look at the political questions at stake, on a case-by-case basis.

Without getting into the specifics of these conflicts, that's what's meant by "anti-war-ism," not just opposing war, but doing so without really bothering to understand the specifics of a given conflict.

That's still not as fast of a development, and the conditions aren't really comparable. China used to be among the poorest countries in the world.

And while their government has not always been ideal, it was undoubtably the best option on the table historically. The corrupt Nationalists didn't do shit for the people (and pocketed foreign aid). Before that, with no central authority, was the warlord period. Before that was the backwards Qing dynasty. In all the thousands of years of Chinese history, nobody really did anything for the rural people until the communists.

Marx... is convincing with his way of argumentation (at least if you’re a bit stupid)

I'm sorry, what? Have you ever actually tried to read Capital? Most of Marx's works are dense and academic, drawing intellectual traditions that are often unfamiliar to modern readers (classical economics, Hegel, etc). Marx's way of argumentation isn't really geared toward the lowest common denominator.

It's kinda funny how you can't even keep your criticism straight through a single comment. In one sentence, reading Marx is a "chore" that nobody would want to slog through, in the very next one, Marx is so persuasive, his honeyed words easily sway the minds of any who stumble across them, like the Sirens calling ships to their rocks.

As for "no good goal exists anymore" or "it's hard to see what good goal tankies ever had" maybe we just like it when this sort of thing happens:

The revolution that feeds the children gets my support.

When you figure out a better way to do that, get back to me.

This is the absolute worst part of site culture, particularly on .world.

If you talk shit about another user or instance, then checking up on whether it's actually true or not is not "following around and harassing" it's just basic fact checking.

This is why I always say, "If someone says something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they're lying." At the very least, it should be disregarded as hearsay. But somehow the culture is that people get to talk shit and if you check them on it you're the bad guy. How anyone can stand that BS is beyond me.