What kind of leftist are you? What kind of leftist am I?

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > What kind of leftist are you? What kind of leftist am I?

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

apropos to nothing posted:

which btw that has a lot more to do with why Im antistalinist than anything trotsky or anyone else ever write. Stalin liquidated pretty much everyone responsible for the Bolshevik revolution. well, I�m a Bolshevik right now and I would like to not be murdered or imprisoned after a revolution by other Bolsheviks.

This is reactionary thinking.

# ¿ Dec 25, 2019 17:50

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 03:02

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

BrokenGameboy posted:

Side note. I feel stupid, but I just realized I don't know what it means for a state to be centralized. Someone help me out here.

In a highly centralized state, any given subject has a single central authority (which might even be the same authority for several subjects) just telling everyone below them exactly what they're supposed to do. This is extremely vulnerable to the biases of the people involved, who, because they generally end up living in the capital region, become increasingly aligned - meaning when they ask around for an opinion on how to deal with an issue they get the same replies and figure that must be the answer then. In a less centralized system, someone more local to the area in question might have asked the people actually affected by the issue, and realized the solution was something entirely different, or it wasn't even a problem in the first place. Centralizing authority like this also just naturally pulls in people and investments which increase the contrast between the capital region and the periphery, further cementing the idea that people in the capital region know what they're doing and if everyone else would just follow their lead then their regions would be great too. This breeds resentment.

On the positive side of things, a central authority is useful for subjects that are national (or international) in character. You don't want something like the CDC to exist only at the state (or county) level, asking random local doctors their opinions on extremely rare diseases, you want highly talented people working together dealing with issues and seeing the big picture before an epidemic becomes one. A central state also has the advantage of being able to step in when a local authority starts mistreating segments of its population. I mean, when the central state isn't all for it in the first place.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2019 10:54

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

MizPiz posted:

State and municipal governmental entities have a degree of autonomy, but it's only to maintain an internal reactionary bulwark. "State's rights" only exists as means to counter any vaguely leftist policy pursued by the federal government.

Just because there's a purpose behind the decentralization doesn't mean it's not real. Hell, I'd wager that more often than not historically, decentralization has been exactly that; a bulwark against "progressive" policy from the capital.

# ¿ Dec 31, 2019 12:48

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