Comments by "R" (@rdrrr) on "These Western Communists Really HATE Me" video.

@randomizer2240 Personally, I would rather be free and not have to look over my shoulder for the secret police because a friend of a friend smuggled a Western record into the country. Being beaten into giving up names is not my idea of fun. Hell, the iron grip the Party had over culture in the USSR was one of the reasons it collapsed! Young people want to express themselves and experience authentic culture. The USSR had no place for that. The USSR provided a bare and miserable existence to all citizens. Just surviving - barely - isn't living! Especially if the state could take it all away in a moment. What the USSR provided was slavery.
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@ashkitt7719 I doubt they make up 66% of Slovakia's total exports, lmao. 66% of something, sure, but total exports? No way in hell. That said, fursuits are really time-intensive to make but furries will pay big money for them on comission. I'm sure it's more than competitive with Slovak wages. I don't doubt that exporting fursuits to Western Europe/the US is a thing... I just think your numbers are wrong.
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@ashkitt7719 Nobody ever lies on the Internet. On a completely unrelated note I drive a Ferrari and am very well endowed.
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@minime7375 Don't sweat the reply guys, you're right. I was a socialist at age 20. Ten years of life experience - and seeing my 20something friends make all the same mistakes I did and then some - has turned me into a social conservative who believes in small government. Cliché though it is, older is wiser. You stop dreaming and start working with what you've got. You see how people behave, what motivates them, see the practical effects of government policy. You learn.
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@minime7375 No problem, I am a native English speaker, it's a cheat code. I'm interested in history myself and I'm planning on teaching English as a foreign language in Georgia. I think Poland has long abandoned any goal of controlling Western Ukraine, that would be geopolitical suicide. Weakening Russia is Poland's current goal. Russia is an existential threat to Poland; "the enemy of my enemy is my friend".
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@minime7375 Yeah, it'll be interesting for me to teach in Georgia for a year because I'll get to experience "the other way". I've only been abroad as a tourist, never engaged with a different society on a deeper level. I read a lot but reading things isn't the same as experiencing things. I would say I'm looking for "authenticity". Modern Western culture is very shallow and morally empty. It's all about making the right noises, not doing the right things. Thank you for your perspective, it's appreciated.
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@minime7375 There is a big divide culturally between the North and South in England. I am from the South. Perhaps "the grass is greener on the other side" but I generally find Northerners to be more open and honest. Do such cultural divides exist in Romania? I would think possibly yes because Romania was divided for so long? (also, thank you for your patience in replying to me and your interesting conversation!)
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@minime7375 I like to read philosophy and think about moral problems, so I suppose I think I get the benefits of faith without the faith. I agree that today's young people are not solely at fault for how they are. Indeed, I think it was their parents who raised them to conform rigidly to social expectations, trust the state, see consumerism as a desirable way of life to be aspired to etc. In the West, we say the "baby boomers" grew up as rebellious kids, then made their money and became morally empty and conformist. They benefited from a strong economy but lost a lot on the way. I was always a bit of a "misfit" and I actually consider that a gift because it made it much easier for me to look at my culture as an outsider and see what was wrong with it. My mother was a "misfit" too and I must give her credit for raising me to always question authority and look for the hidden motives powerful people have for doing what they do.
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We could solve a lot of problems by flying tankies out to North Korea. They can live in the socialist paradise AND they have no internet to shitpost with. Everyone wins!
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@ashkitt7719 "Yikes" yourself. There's a reason only mentally ill teenagers think Marxism is a good idea.
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@crepooscul Tankies are just fascists that wear red and should be recognized as such.
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@randomizer2240 Liberal capitalism is certainly fucked up, but that doesn't mean tankies aren't authoritarian crackpots that deny the many atrocities committed by socialist dictators in the name of the revolution. Stalin deliberately killing millions of his own people isn't in any way justified by the brutality of global capitalism. Ultimately, Stalin's USSR or Mao's China were horrible places to live. The famines, mass internment of political dissidents, politically-motivated murders and constant surveillance left a mark on the people, who had to live in constant uncertainty and fear.
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@randomizer2240 Stalin's and Mao's crimes are a matter of historical record. The only "historians" who disagree are Marxist crackpots who have no problem blatantly lying to defend the indefensible. This is not an issue of left-versus-right. This is an issue of freedom versus authoritarianism. Authoritarian dictatorships are horrific, whatever their ostensible ideology. They all behave pretty much alike in practice. It turns out that "Give a small group of people unlimited power; they pinkie-swear to use it for the benefit of the people and not themselves" is a very bad idea. This is how you get the Cheka torturing "counter-revolutionaries" to death in basements.
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@randomizer2240 Also while I'm at it the USSR never achieved agricultural self-sufficiency. Millions died due to Stalin's brutal collectivization and industrialization policies and the USSR still had to import grain to feed its people . I know I can't convince you. You're not going to turn your back on everything you believe in because of some random person on the internet. Anyone else that's reading this - go look up "Lysenkoism", and see what a farce Soviet agriculture was.
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@minime7375 Western Ukraine hasn't been ethnically Polish since "Operation Vistula". Hell, only Lviv/Lwów was ethnically Polish before WW2 - the surrounding countryside wasn't. Interwar Poland had to deal with a lot of Ukrainian uprisings in Galicia-Volhynia.
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@minime7375 I read a real interesting take on the pay gap in sports: Yeah, female athletes get paid much less than male athletes do... But male athletes bring in so much more revenue that if anything women athletes are overpaid relative to their profitability. Women don't watch women's sports... most of the revenue from women's sports comes from men! That gave me a pause for thought... the women saying female athletes are underpaid aren't watching women's sports, aren't generating revenue from which female athletes are paid... hmm.
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@minime7375 I think it's more that Eastern Europe on the whole wants Russia as fragmented and weak as possible because they perceive Russian aggression as a very real possibility. Personally I think Putin played his cards badly with the takeover of Crimea. Ukraine was such a mess in 2014 he could have forced a pro-Russian government on Ukraine without much effort - OR he could've done nothing, waited for Poroshenko's unpopular government to fall apart and played the long game of rebuilding Russian diplomatic influence. Instead Putin took a half measure; seizing Crimea to secure Sevastopol while creating a frozen conflict which ultimately served to aid in the reform of Ukraine's armed forces and draw NATO attention to a country they previously didn't care about, while simultaneously alienating many previously apathetic Ukrainians.
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@robh_tex An excellent point. I believe that also illustrates that the 'gender pay gap' isn't a simple "women are unfairly paid less than men" issue.
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@minime7375 As a consequence of average English proficiency increasing I have noticed pro-Western views are quite common among Gen Z in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. They're usually able to correctly identify the sociopolitical problems in their own countries... but although they're immersed in English-speaking "internet culture", they have little firsthand knowledge of what it's like to live in "the West", so they are totally blind the sociopolitical issues we experience. They idealize the West and think that by emulating every aspect of our societies they will achieve prosperity and happiness. Meanwhile, our culture has been subverted, our political systems are becoming increasingly authoritarian and our economies are failing... (I'm from the UK. Things are going to hell here, fast...)
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@minime7375 Your experience growing up middle-class in 90s Romania sounds like my mother's experience growing up working-class in 60s England. Goes to show how badly Ceaușescu fucked your country. This is why I can't stand Western Communists. How stupid do you have to be to ignore the evidence of history and insist that it'll definitely work this time? Well, I was that stupid when I was 20. I'm not proud of it but I wonder how you convince kids burned by dysfunctional modern capitalism that socialism is much worse. Or do you even need to do anything at all? The youth barely bother to vote anyway. We're just hopelessly naive over here...
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@minime7375 Yeah, Ceausescu got up to his eyeballs in debt to the IMF. I sort of think of him as a Romanian Nero; he built himself a palace and symbols of royalty while ordinary Romanians couldn't afford food or heat. The youth were born too late to experience that era and are happy to march blindly towards dictatorship. Try and give them another perspective and they refuse to listen. What can you do? To be honest I rate the prospects of your country better than mine right now. At least the older generations have experienced authoritarianism and are suitably suspicious of government. Not so here. The youth are brainwashed and the older generations are apathetic, too busy with consumerism to care about what the government does. I'm sure we'll learn - but only after it's too late.
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@minime7375 A further question - sorry, there are two paragraphs before I get there. The Church of England is an absolute farce - it has ordained a transgender priest, preaches 'racial justice' and, in general, behaves more like a political organisation than a religious one. It's long been a running joke that the Archbishop of Canterbury is a political office where belief in God is optional but discouraged. In short, the "C of E" has become nothing more than a state propaganda tool. An observation of mine is that countries that embraced the Protestant reformation secularized to a much greater degree than countries that did not. I think that's because in Protestant nations the head of the church and the head of the nation are the same, so religious hierarchy ended up subordinate to secular hierarchy. So - my question. I have never been a particularly religious person but I see the current cultural rot we are experiencing in Western Europe as a consequence of religion losing its power as a counterweight to the state. What are your opinions on faith and general and the Romanian branch of the Orthodox Church in particular? As always, thanks for your time - I don't get a lot of opportunities to talk to educated people from Eastern Europe who are fluent in English. I feel very lucky right now!
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@minime7375 Yes, my apologies, I actually worked with many English-speaking academics from Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia etc. at a previous job. I don't miss the job - I was an office assistant, a glorified photocopy boy - but I do miss the academics! They were very interesting people. I guess my general attitude to religion mirrors yours. I'm not religious myself but I think faith is an important check against the worst excesses of secular ideology. In particular I worry about the erosion of the idea that the human body is sacred. I won't subject you to the whole rant but let's just say I think the medical-industrial complex has a lot to answer for and people's blind faith in scientists and doctors is rather ironic. Perhaps the pendulum will swing back the other way? I hope so, but I look at how young people behave - it does not fill me full of hope.
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