Let's Read America Against America

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Let's Read America Against America

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

2020 = year of wang gang

Kangxi posted:

This is all Marx. Marx's discussion of commodities and 'commodity fetishism' begins with the idea that people perceive that the value of commodities is objective; the result of relationships between money and other commodities, whereas they are actually the result of relationships between people who make commodities, or at least between producers and other peoples' labor they're using.

This is one of his ideas that really draws people's attention. Partly because 1) he is approaching a big question about how societies changed after industrialization, and 2) Anybody who talks about pulling back the curtain on how things work has its own mystique.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpyaKWY9HOc

Kangxi posted:

The thought of a future communist party politburo member knowing about or maybe seeing the porno theatres of 1980s New York makes for a very funny mental image.

i was hoping he teamed up with a wise-cracking new york city cop who doesn't play by the rules and then they go on adventures together in the city's seedy underworld to stop a triad gang

# ¿ Dec 2, 2019 09:16

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 10, 2024 01:51

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

but i just want to say this thread is good stuff and it's not something you're going to find, uhh... anywhere (in english)

# ¿ Dec 2, 2019 09:27

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

My guess is that the American rural population is spread out more, so an individual homeowner has more land and more space, and wildlife such as deer travels through that in a mix. People often have deer feeders in their yards and so forth. Whereas rural China (note I know squat about rural China) has denser villages surrounded by nothingness.

A friend in China was telling me about how his grandfather (I think) grew up in what was basically a remote village in the mountains and hunted. Don't remember all the details, but he served in the army in the early stages of the Tibet invasion and occupation back in the 1950s or 1960s. The army let him keep his rifle and ammo after his military service was completed, for hunting purposes, with the idea that he'd hand the rifle back when he was done shooting off all the ammo.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2019 23:46

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

I'd continue in order but "Active Intelligence" would be my no. 1, "Hidden Crises" as no. 2

They're also the last two chapters so we could save the best for last

# ¿ Jan 14, 2020 19:44

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Kangxi posted:

I do apologize for the delays. I've had notes for Chapter 2 Part 1 sitting on my desktop.

I've had a lot of responsibilities pile up over the past few weeks, and I've had barely any time for anything else. I can try to start up again this month?

No sweat. It's fine if the thread is a slow burn over a long period. I'll certainly be reading it. I'm sure others will as well.

Wang seems much more positive towards America in these early chapters. But the titles of the later chapters seem more critical.

# ¿ Jan 15, 2020 21:07

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

i find it interesting that china's red tourism with interactive exhibits might've been influenced by america. they just need a smokey the bear equivalent to tell kids that only they can prevent forest fires

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSJ8AGG_VRE

not that anyone asked but the "joke" of my avatar and username is also about blurring those things together because it just seems instantly funny to me. like a buc-ee's advertising mascot is a nod to my texas roots but it could be read as a criticism of "real-existing socialism" as just a variant of authoritarian capitalism or a critique of the authoritarian structure of american capitalism. i don't really fall neatly on those questions but i like playing with those ideas.

https://twitter.com/HunanTimes/status/1103483578334117888

Kangxi posted:

Samuel P. Huntington (1927-2008) was a Harvard-trained political scientist who obtained his Ph.D. at age 23 and began teaching at Harvard almost immediately after. His first major book was "The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations", published in 1957. He was denied tenure there and moved to Columbia in 1959, where he became friends with another new hire, Zbigniew Brzezinski. In 1977, he was invited by Brzezinski to serve on the staff of the National Security Council during the Carter administration, which he did until the end of 1978. His major works include "Political Order in Changing Societies", which was a critique of W. W. Rostow's developmental theory, suggesting that as societies 'modernize' and grow more complex, they may grow more violent without institutional developments to keep that violence in check. In 1991, he wrote "The Third Wave", which chronicled the waves of democratization among authoritarian states since the mid-1970s, starting with the Carnation Revolution in Portugal and continuing through to ex-Warsaw Pact states, the 'East Asian Tigers', and some states in sub-Saharan Africa.

"soldier and the state" had a lot of influence on the U.S. cold war military structure, and the most important thing was making distictions between "objective" and "subjective" control systems (i think) in terms of how the civil authority relates to or interfaces with the military and controls it so the military doesn't control the civil, contrasting the U.S. system with marxist-leninist ones (in which the military is politically indoctrinated in marxist-leninist ideology and is treated as a political weapon in a sense... although the objective western systems do this in a different way with the military being a political weapon to the extent that it stays out of politics but is used by the civil authority / politicians to carry out national-level political objectives. note that both systems ultimately derive from clausewitz who viewed warfare as politics by other means). wang huning doesn't seem to talk much about the military but might glance at it in chapter 11 with the role of national security institutions and think tanks, which i'm particularly interested in because i think a marxist-leninist would critique the U.S. military control system as not being as "objective" as huntington would've described it.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Jan 25, 2020

# ¿ Jan 25, 2020 00:51

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

this book is making the rounds

https://twitter.com/shen_shiwei/status/1348533449825546240

# ¿ Jan 12, 2021 23:20

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Kangxi posted:

Well, looks like this thing has caught some attention:

This thread has just been ahead of the curve. Smart ladies and fellas around these parts.

https://twitter.com/Ryan_J_Mitchell/status/1350330631796846592

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 12:34 on Feb 25, 2021

# ¿ Jan 23, 2021 12:07

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

bump

# ¿ Feb 25, 2021 12:10

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Bar Ran Dun posted:

Now that�s interesting and reminds me of something in the socialist decision.

�Between the origin and the present stands tradition.�

So capitalism / modernity is always breaking myths of origin. But capitalism also needs myths of origin understood through tradition to support itself. So there is a fight between the between the bourgeoisie, the romantics (the conservatives) and the revolutionary romantics ( fascists) over tradition. One of arguments Tillich made was that socialism should also support itself through unbroken myths of origin by what eventually becomes his method of correlation (which is this applied to Christian theology).

Anyway it�s super interesting to see another tradition reaching the conclusion they should do that.

Kangxi posted:

First, I feel like I should add that there was a lot of pushback against the economic reforms over the 1980s at top levels. So if you want to talk about 'conservative' figures at the top levels of party leadership, this would lead to people such as Chen Yun, Li Xiannian, Li Peng who were cautious or openly skeptical about economic reforms. This resulted in such campaigns as the Anti-Spiritual Pollution campaign of late 1983, and the Anti-Bourgeois Liberalization campaign of 1986. So one meaning of 'conservative' might refer to this wing of the party.

But if we're talking about traditional culture, that's different. The Chinese Communist Party in the later Mao era had a combative relationship with much of traditional Chinese culture, and the extreme example is the Four Olds campaign. But by the 1980s, in the Deng era, you start to see more topics from the pre-Communist era allowed to be discussed. The publication of more scholarly works on Confucius began in the 1980s, the rehabilitation of various figures in non-Communist regimes started in the 1980s. But a lot of this really accelerated after 1989, after the student protests and the horrible tragedy of June 4th.

Excuse the brief answer without any citations, it's late and I've been F5'ing the results of the Georgia election constantly.

Knowing very little about Confucianism and knowing it's impossible to do justice to its complexity in a post, it's still interesting getting the undergrad philosophy 101 cliff notes version of its emphasis on tradition and rituals, in context of the CPC's language about building a "harmonious" and "beautiful" society. Now, rituals are a thing in all societies and political systems (just see the importance of the U.S. presidential inauguration and Trump's insult to it), either centrally or in part with varying intensity, of repeated patterns of traditional activity and pledges and oaths that give order and structure to the society and give people meaning. Now, Confucius can be thought of as a conservative and he was also big into a rigidly stratified and hierarchical society, although he was an ancient philosopher in same manner as Socrates and Plato and you could also argue that he was a radical in his time because he felt his society was just falling apart. And the yin to Confucius' yang would be the Daoists which is like "gently caress you I'll do what I want?" Or I'm just going to go hang out by a lake and go fishing.

But what's also interesting about Confucius is how he thinks it's important that people perform these social rituals, but be so good at it, and so perfect at it, that the performance of the ritual is also effortless and spontaneous. You've so embodied and internalized the social mores of your culture (along with being altruistic and treating people well) that your spontaneous desires sync up perfectly with them. And that's an amazing vision, really. But you can see this also in social rituals like handshakes that we learn and perform until it becomes natural to us.

Thinking about that while watching these videos which are all from the CPC, the first one being the military specifically showing training of the PLA honor guard, the second and third are from the party's "Don't Forget Your Original Heart, Keep Your Mission in Mind" campaign (wouldn't surprise me if Wang Huning was responsible). And all three videos are absolutely loaded with little rituals whether it's the children saluting statues of their elders or the party member pouring tea and arranging notebooks in a remote meeting hall. It creates some real Breakfast of Champions energy:

https://files.catbox.moe/9v6c6u.mp4

https://files.catbox.moe/w20mx6.mp4

https://files.catbox.moe/y05yf6.mp4

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Mar 1, 2021

# ¿ Feb 25, 2021 12:25

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Feb 25, 2021

# ¿ Feb 25, 2021 15:18

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

I'm interested in the displays and aesthetics of power and of political regimes. This is one reason why I find Wang Huning so interesting as an ideologue. But I'll also watch CCTV music videos glorifying the party state, and it reminds me of Reagan America in some ways, or Van Halen with Sammy Hagar, which is all the more interesting because Wang was in the United States when that was going on.

This is like Top Gun stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHsrbgZw7yc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siwpn14IE7E

There's an official optimism and the kid who wants to be a fighter pilot. There are astronauts and soldiers watching the skies. There are rituals like the Communist Youth League kids unfurling the flag and doing it correctly with the flick of the arm. We're gonna rock you like you a hurricane because it's all about love and pushin' it to the limit and it's just something you feel together.

Of course, I'm sure there are Chinese who look at this stuff cynically, but there are probably a lot of Chinese who like it, just like there are Americans such as my dad who likes Van Halen and The Right Stuff.

The relevance to socialism or Marxism, I suppose, is whether they feel they have to instill and encourage a communist culture, ethic and set of motivations in the same way capitalists do with their values (and not without reason), but that might be hard to do when there are material impediments to doing so, and whether that ideology will be derailed by an out-of-control consumer culture, which they can't exactly stamp out if they want to transition to a domestic consumption model. It's an interesting thing to think about.

There was something Mark Ames and John Dolan said recently on their podcast about the Reagan regime, in that unlike the American right today, it was more reserved back then and it didn't burn as hot, it was much more powerful, and felt much more inevitable as a political force. It's like a tectonic force or iceberg that is just gradually advancing, and that I think that's probably how power really works. It's a marathon, not a sprint. And you can see how people fail at political analysis in the U.S., just like how you see so many wrong predictions about Biden in 2020 and that the Democrats would just fail as opposed to succeeding while being slow, gradual and... inevitable. And also about the CPC, a lot of what passes for analysis in the west is that they're going to fall apart any minute now, but I've doubted that for awhile now and I haven't been proven wrong so far.

This year is the 100th anniversary of the CPC and if you see those tweets above, Wang Huning is telling people to go all out for the celebrations, so it'll be interesting to see.

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Mar 1, 2021

# ¿ Mar 1, 2021 00:47

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ May 10, 2024 01:51

BrutalistMcDonalds: Oct 4, 2012; Lipstick Apathy

Fleetwood posted:

just happy to be here lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbuJrK69x6g

"We've got some red flags to cover..." oh ho ho

BrutalistMcDonalds fucked around with this message at 21:56 on Mar 11, 2021

# ¿ Mar 8, 2021 03:15

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Let's Read America Against America