Hahaha... seriously, what kind of passive aggressive bullshit is that? "Ignoring the theoretical underpinnings of socialism, because I've decided that that's waffling, I say Jesus was a socialist." Next time, maybe just write TL;DR and make a farting noise while rolling your eyes.

You can't dismiss the actual meaning of the word Socialist as 'semantics', if you're talking about whether or not something is socialist. That doesn't help the discussion.

In order to use socialism as you appear to be doing, you would have to first:
- ignore the history of socialism and its political development,
- ignore the entire body of academic work, current and past, on socialism, and
- ignore how the word socialism "IS used now, like it or not" in actual socialist or semi-socialist countries

By doing that you end up at your definition of the word, yes. But you had to take a pretty long detour to get to that point

Marx's quote on religion is pretty straightforward - it can be, as you say, open to interpretation, but it's generally agreed that he didn't say that your Jesus was a stand-up socialist. He is more commonly taken to mean that religion is a false response to the real suffering of the oppressed; religion provides a fiction of suffering and a fiction of redemption/happiness, that will never translate into real change. It makes the oppressed feel like they are bettering their lives, while actually keeping them passive and preventing them from changing anything.

The slightly larger context of the quote is this: "Das religiöse Elend ist in einem der Ausdruck des wirklichen Elendes und in einem die Protestation gegen das wirkliche Elend. Die Religion ist der Seufzer der bedrängten Kreatur, das Gemüth einer herzlosen Welt, wie sie der Geist geistloser Zustände ist. Sie ist das Opium des Volks."

I don't know how to make that more plain, but I can try. Religious suffering is on one hand a response to real suffering (wirkliche Elend, by which one would mean a materialistically determined actual lack of freedom, resources, physical wellbeing, etc), but it is also a false reaction against that real suffering. Real oppression creates suffering to which there could be a real respones, but religion instead substitutes in false suffering and false responses - it tries to tackle real suffering with metaphysical solutions. He goes on to say:

"Die Aufhebung der Religion als des illusorischen Glücks des Volkes ist die Forderung seines wirklichen Glücks."

This, too, seems pretty straightforward to me, but you might see 4 or 5 different things there. Religion teaches the people an illusory form of happiness, which doesn't actually change or even challenge the conditions of suffering, and must therefore be tossed out, for the people to ever achieve real happiness.

A fundamental difference here is that religious goodness is internally, individually, and fundamentally motivated. 'Good' is 'Good', and you as a Christian individual should choose to do Good. A goal of Marxism is to abolish that kind of fundamentalism and replace it with continuous criticism; creating a society that always questions, together, what good is, through the lens of dialectical materialism.

You might recognize this line of thinking* from what modern Europeans call the autonomous left wing, or what Marx and Trotsky called the Permanent Revolution, which Wikipedia helpfully comments on as "Marx outlines his proposal that the proletariat 'make the revolution permanent'. In essence, it consists of the working class maintaining a militant and independent approach to politics both before, during and after the 'struggle' which will bring the 'petty-bourgeois democrats' to power." Which sounds great, except it can also lead to purges, paranoia, and informant societies.

My entire point is that socialism and Christianity are entirely different beasts. One is a rich, layered mythology with an extremely deep academic and political history, but no modern critical or explanatory components.** The other is an academic theory of economics and politics, with all the tools of discourse of modern academia in its toolbelt, and a completely different critical and analytical goal.

TL;DR? Well, Jesus (in a lenient interpretation) taught that we should help the weak. Marx explained that the people should organize to eradicate the conditions that force weakness onto the people. Jesus
taught that greed would keep a man from heaven, Marx explained that religion, nationalism, tribalism and commodity fetishism blinded the people to its common materialist interests. Jesus taught that the meek will be rewarded for their meekness, and while on earth we should render unto Caesar what is Caesar's; Marx explained that meekness as a virtue is a way of preventing actual revolutionary change, and that dividing the world into the spiritual and the materialistic helped keep the people sedate and passive, which plays right into the hands of the Caesars.

*I'm just kidding, I know you don't recognize any of this


**There probably are modern scholars of Christianity who adapt and adopt some of the tools of modern academic discourse; I know too little about academic Christianity.

@Xaielao - you probably would have said the same about the cultural revolution before it happened... oh it'll never work. And then it did and got completely out of control and caused immense suffering.

I know this is a generalisation of the Chinese, but i found them to be ... um... acquiescent? When i visited.

Pitting people against each other, empowering those who are most 'patriotic' and effectively encouraging them to castigate those who are not. It will almost certainly affect the educated, the intelligentsia first and foremost, painting them as enemies to the overwhelming poorly educated majority. Did they learn nothing during the cultural revolution, or is it an intentional purge? I hope to god nothing like that can happen again, but i feel this has the potential to get out of hand.

I really really hope that China sees protest and change in my lifetime. I loved their country and their people, but they are so badly oppressed.

"It's been one culture that's been blowing shit up over and over again"

Americans?

This is really fucking reprehensible on Mahers part. He's an American and an atheist. See how quickly he takes responsibility for drone strikes, wire-tapping, dropping atomic bombs on civilians. How about the Stalinist purges?

Know what he'd say? I don't support that (except maybe the drone strikes, because fuck brown people, amirite?). I'm not part of that.

SO WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU PUTTING 9/11 ON A FUCKING KID WHO PROBABLY WASN'T EVEN BORN?

Hey, ya know what? Maybe we should be careful. Maybe we should treat the kind of people who commit mass killings in the US with a degree of caution. So let's start with locking up the white males, 'cos those motherfuckers seem to go on shooting sprees with depressing regularity.

Ugh, seriously, fuck Maher. That was fucking disgusting to watch.

I am German myself and I am disgusted how the German media and politicians are only blaming Greece. Some conservative papers (like welt.de) are ticking out completely and are turning to phrases that are very close to our Nazi history and are not allowing overly critical comments.

How Germans could chop down wages so quickly and without much opposition from the people and other parties?
The main reason is Hartz IV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hartz_concept
Its a reform for the unemployed people, which at first sight doesnt have much to do with wages of the working people. But it does have everything to do with it. Let me explain:
Before Hartz IV unemployed people didnt have much to fear from the state. They got their unemployment (Sozialhilfe) money every month which was enough to live without much fear of anything. It didnt mean much to be unemployed. But people found a job if they wanted to. Of course, like every country, it was exploited by a tiny minority. People were happy with it and many countries were envious of that system because it provided so much social security that people got very peaceful and crime rates were pretty much non-existent.

Hartz IV was planned to cut the massive costs of that social system. The left wing government (which turned out to be massive hypocrites), a coalition of a socialist party and a green party, claimed it would decrease unemployment rates massively and save lots of tax money and they would force those lazy useless unemployed people to get jobs. They emphasized on "the hard earning people whos tax money is stolen by lazy unemployed" and used the tiny minority of exploiters to get Hartz IV under way. Hartz IV was basically a cut for unemployed people where they would barely have enough money to live from or pay the rent from it. It also allowed the government to use many tricks to adjust the unemployment rate. They for example excluded people who were unemployed at a certain age or people who were send on useless trainings (like how you write a job application or how you use a PC), which were forced on them from the government. If they didnt attend, they would get cuts on the already not enough Hartz IV money.

They got it through the parliament (since there was no oppositon of mention thank to their "democratic" coalition) and it went all downhill from there. Unemployed people were suddenly massively discriminated, even by the politicians, because they had created so much hate against unemployed and built many stereotypes in the process, supported by stupid fake shows in the media, just to push Hartz IV through. As I said before, they only used the minority that exploited the system before in their arguments, and didnt care about the majority. That also lead to companies falling for the created stereotype and not employing people who had been using Hartz IV at one time and even going as far as them looking at older employees as inferior. They got rid of them in a massive purge, which also led to the trick of excluding old people near pension-age from the unemployment statistics. Pensions dropped because those old fired people didnt get a job anymore and had to use Hartz IV. That meant that they had to use up their savings before they get Hartz IV money (that rule is part of Hartz IV), which drained old people of their money and also caused them to get caught in an even worse trap:
After a few years of getting Hartz IV money, they dropped to the lowest pension rate, which was barely above Hartz IV. It didnt matter if they worked 40 years of their life in a well paid job. Now they were poor and would never get a pension that was appropriate to their former job. That lead to a massive shift in wealth away from the normal people (middle class and poor), to the rich people. The buying power of Germans was destroyed, and it became even worse after the socialist/conservative government (yes, a stupid coalition like that is possible here) increased the sales tax by 3% to a whopping 19%. As result of this living costs exploded and black labor skyrocketed. Cost of energy of any kind, taxes, food prices, gas, rents, every day stuff you need increased massively. The Euro was to blame too, because prices of many things (especially food) were just exchanged 1-1 to the Euro. So for example if there was cheese before that cost 1 Deutsche Mark, it would now cost 1 Euro, even though 1 Euro was worth 2 Deutsche Mark. Wages collapsed, while everything got much more pricy. Hartz IV made all that worse.
Now for the main reason how Hatz IV pushed wages down:
The fear of dropping into Hartz IV (for the reasons I mentioned) was massive. Nobody ever wanted to drop into Hartz IV because they knew then everything was over. So they accepted extremely low wage jobs, even if that meant they would get less money than they would from Hartz IV, which already was barely enough to live a crappy live from. They took 2, 3, 4 shitty paid jobs instead, and the companies loved it, because they saved a lot of money with that. The problem with that was that even well educated people had fear of Hartz IV and accepted lower wages because of it. Wages didnt rise for 20 years (and they dont rise much now either). Yet living costs, as I said, increased massively. It all came together.
Germanys economy was very low at one point, yet they still tried to tell us that the unemployment rate dropped again (even 2007/08 and every year after that). People started to learn how they manipulated us and now we are here. Companies making revenue records after revenue records, yet nothing is arriving at the people. The media claims everything is well, the statistics still lie to us that the unemployment rate is low, but its not.
And now they are trying to blame the Greeks for our problems. Just like the unemployed Germans before, and the stupid masses fall for it again.
Yet they still wonder why Germans are a dying breed (population has been dropping for years now), and dont get that having children is very expensive in Germany and only few people still have money or time for that (since both women and men have multiple jobs to be able to live) because of these developments.

Certainly you understand that a mayor (or anyone, really) can request that the governor send them in. I didn't see or hear about any of that. It doesn't have to be done in front of a camera, but if it happened it would have been reported that the mayor had requested that the governor send them in...at least that's how it usually happens.

Have they been deployed now? They had not been last night, the last I saw. I can't understand how the city on fire, cops on the run and injured, and thousands of destructive looters on the streets doesn't meet the requirements, that happened early on. Instead of doing something, they announced a curfew for the next (5?) days and basically let the rioters do their thing on day one. Anyone injured is going to have a good case against the police/city/state for not taking action to stop it.
EDIT: I see now, they sent in 160 national guard members this morning (Tuesday) with more to come...zero on Monday or Monday night/Tuesday early morning.

When it's obvious that local law enforcement is outnumbered 10 to 1 or worse, and the "protestors" have become violent rioters attacking police, citizens, cars, and businesses, and lighting buildings and cars on fire, it's time. That was 3pm, and came with plenty of warnings online. There was pretty good indication that there would be exactly that problem, they should have had serious backup at the ready, they did not.

I can't fathom why there wasn't a curfew last night, there was plenty of time to see it was needed. I also can't fathom why the national guard wasn't requested (yes, I'm sticking with that being proper and normal, but not necessary) by the mayor, or why it wasn't sent in by the governor or the fed without being requested.

It really seemed the authorities could have foreseen there would be severe problems (they've been claiming they have serious credible death threats against the entire police force by numerous factions...that's enough right there to call/send in the National Guard yesterday, before the funeral). Waiting for the problems to happen, then allowing it to continue over night is shirking their duty because they're scared, IMO.

EDIT:from http://www.wsj.com/articles/national-guard-deployed-in-baltimore-amid-riots-after-freddie-grays-funeral-1430218096
Protests over Mr. Gray’s death had been largely peaceful until Saturday, when pockets of violence led to 35 arrests and caused minor injuries to six police officers.
Mr. Batts, the police commissioner, said late Monday that 250 to 300 officers assembled in West Baltimore after a social-media message called on high-school students Monday to stage a “purge”—an anarchic protest based on a film called “The Purge” that includes a period of lawlessness—at 3 p.m. starting at the Mondawmin Mall and ending downtown.
Baltimore police also said they received a threat that city gangs would join together to “take down” law-enforcement officers.

Well, that's my hipster quotient for the day. I have to go purge

As "The Captive Mind" posits that the primary means of ensuring compliance from "the people" is not propaganda, but physical coercion. The state does not 'reason' or 'debate' with non-compliance. 'Students' are forced to go to school and learn the 'official' version of history, for example (home schooling aside), and accept it (i.e., the hierarchical "binge-purge" model of education in which regurgitation of ossified narratives is valued more highly than any independent or creative thought).

Propaganda serves as post-facto justification in order to give people some way to rationalize what goes on around them. This helps to allow the threat of violence to suffice as a means of maintaining control without the state having to resort to actual violence, in most cases.

In one of Stefan's other videos, he calls professional licensure a dog collar that you're forced wear. He calls modern folks 'free-range slaves'. The 'human farms,' as he calls states, are run by 'farmers' who have realized that free-range slaves are more productive than those kept in a more strict captivity. (And it undoubtedly is better for for everyone than the slavery-of-old.) He says that allowing a few slaves escape here and there creates a desired illusion of freedom. One could argue about the accuracy of Stefan's ideas, but I don't find that as useful as simply accepting it as Stefan's own aesthetic/philosophical position, or his worldview, and understanding it or interpreting it as you would for say, any other artist/philosopher. This brings to mind the understanding that the 1% consists mostly of "human farmers" (i.e., kleptocrats and cronies) and other escaped 'slaves'.

It seems that folks who tend to take issue with my comments here (@enoch, @ChaosEngine, @newtboy, @Taint, among others) have taken on the recent swell of anti-"libertarian" rhetoric as their own (particularly the more tabloid-like forms of it).

That's not as important to me as the question of why there seems to be so much media attention given to these ideas of late? I think it may have to do with setting the stage for opposing a possible 2016 presidential run by Rand Paul (who has already been 'branded' as a 'libertarian' by opponents of both parties).* Or it may have to do with how technology (particularly in the Bay Area, where I live, but certainly in other places as well) is increasingly making individuals less reliant on the state, more self-sufficient, and more able to access the information they need to recognize their status as a serf, and/or plan their means of escape from the 'farm'.

*I guess the media cares less about an "ideological war" against "libertarianism" than they do about crafting a practical strategy of electoral politics. Hence their insistence in conflating conservatives, Republicans, libertarians, and even anarchists (which couldn't be more dissimilar at their core).

"I don't want to bake a cake for those queers -- for religious reasons"
"I don't want to rent a place to those niggers -- for religious reasons"
"I don't want our club to admit those kikes -- for religious reasons"

Guess what -- those have all been said; you're hiding bigotry behind religion. If your religion says someone is less of a person than you because of the way they're born then your religion is pure crap that should be purged from the human experience for the betterment of humankind as a whole. Gays exposing your bigotry aren't doing you harm, they're doing everyone else a favor.

Try putting an upside-down reg in your mouth underwater. If it's in your mouth when you go upside-down, that's no problem. He likely didn't purge it either. Sounds like his problem was escalating fast.

Weird, I've never had an issue with an upside down regulator?
Anyone know what was going on?
Could it be that he just forgot to purge before inhaling (on the first and second breaths)?

When you consider Germany's infamous history with guns and the power used with them to manipulate their people's recent legacy it's not that "terribly" sad. Sad as it may be, Germany's pogroms of Jews rate higher on the WTF scale than the U.S.'s 'purging of the indigenous' genocide as far as shock value is concerned.

German's like the Japanese were kept in an international box after the second world war and their toys were put in a box as well that read, "Don't open till we say so."

Except for the Yakuza, Japan simply forgot they had a fucking toy box and but I believe you can hunt squirrels with a rifle if yer a good German these days...

Hearth Stone is just so so, but I'm looking forward to this. From what I've seen and heard, it sounds to be a very casual MOBA experience... more Smashmuck Champions than DOTA 2/LoL. Purge, one of the bigger names in DOTA 2 posted a video of his impressions (enjoyed it, but doesn't see it being a competitive game since there is no last hitting and no items): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ip3I-7H6CQ

I'm going to leave aside the highly dubious assertion that is was democracy and not rampant capitalism that stole the land from the Native Americans.

But you still don't get it. I am not required to condone or accept everything that is done in the name of "statism", any more than being an atheist makes me condone Stalins religious purges.

Once again, yeah, that is a terrible injustice and it should be righted. But on balance, "statism" has done far more good than harm.

What is helping with that though is that because the right keeps moving the goalposts, so many people who were once Republicans are now RINOs according to the extremists. Just like this video suggests, Will may be a fictional character, but he's describing exactly what a lot of moderate Republicans are going through right now. The right wing extremists have decided to pursue a personal vendetta against Obama and all the moderates in the party are going "wtf?"

Sorry, but that's the most basic sign of a downfall. when you keep purging your ranks for not having enough ideological purity, you're not exactly planning for long term success.

When all the big historical Republicans heroes like Lincoln, Nixon, and Reagan, and maybe even HW Bush couldn't win a Republican primary in today's climate, you know you're losing touch

I dunno though, speaking more generally however, there's got to be some way of inducing politicians to not play games like this. The whole 10% approval yet 90% incumbancy rate should hopefully shock people into doing something. We've got a bill that passed both houses of congress, signed into law by the president AND upheld by the SCOTUS, and yet a small faction is holding gov't hostage over this.

I don't see how it's even legal to defund something that is law. If it's law, how is it legal to interfere with it like that? If you don't like it, pass a new law repealing it....that should be the only way to stop an existing law (other than Supreme Court of course)

I've heard this numerous times before from conservatives that we need to enforce the laws already on the books....well...ok. Let's do that.