Then you use the profuse records these folks leave in their wake to back through to everyone who profited from or otherwise aided and abetted this Gestapo. Down to the individual agents and “forward deployed” engineers.
(To be clear, I support stricter immigration enforcement. ICE blowing the military budget of Saudi Arabia to deport fewer than Obama did with a tenth of a budget isn’t immigration enforcement, it’s a partisan militia. I don’t use the term Gestapo lightly.)
Or crowdfunded hire a bounty hunter to hunt the bounty hunter network /s
Our society is so damn dystopian now sheesh
Normal bounty hunters. I’m asking why this feels different. (Civil v criminal doesn’t seem to be meaningful. Maybe it’s the bond?)
The use of mass surveillance Palantir dragnet data in this case is also unique, and a precursor/practice for using it in domestic counterinsurgency and war on the broader populace.
(Yes I know a lot of people can't leave. Maybe the US needs to do a Nepal and overthrow this corrupt government)
What do you think the current crop want? In any new revolution, the rich consolidate power. Same as has happened in pretty much every non-communist popular revolution over the last two centuries.
What is needed is a communist popular revolution, it's the only hope left for the country.
This is why even flawed democracy is better. The alternatives are just horrible.
Communist popular revolutions succeeded in replacing the previous elites. None of them—apart from departure from Tsarist mismanagement, and even then only for a short run—resulted in a higher quality of life for the people.
History rarely has justice. Idiots overthrowing flawed democracies reaping and then getting stomped on by the ensuing autocrats are a rare example. (The others are terrorism and strategic bombing backfiring. Pretty much always.)
Utterly and demonstrably false.
Fair enough, I added the exception that’s known. If someone thinks there is Tsarist-level economic mismanagement in America to be reaped by a new regime, I have a DOGE to sell them.
Fair enough. I'd point out that both had low baselines, and the former managed to still fuck that up under Mao. China's living standards dropped post Revolution, and didn't really start materially improving until its leaders had swapped away from communism. By that point, they proceeded to fabulously enrich themselves.
> neoliberal turn in Russia in the 1990s, meanwhile, was an unmitigated humanitarian disaster
Agree.
> unshackled Western capital to the current relentless pursuit of advantage that has yielded today's K-shaped economy
This was happening since at least the 1980s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_literacy_campaign
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-35073966
https://www.plenglish.com/news/2025/10/14/cubas-urban-reform...
And this is just in Cuba alone. Imagine what would've been possible without the blockade! Don't believe the propaganda you've been fed.
Cuban literacy is a legitimate example. The other would be Russia. Beyond those two, you're stuck trying to justify the Cultural Revolution.
Most revolutions result in the old guard consolidating power. Where they haven't, they've tended to cause unmitigated misery. In the rare cases where violent revolution didn't fuck over everyone but the rich, it was because the previous aristocracy left a lot of develoment cards on the table. And in none of those situations was a system even pretending to hold elections overthrown. (Yes, I'm moving the goal posts. I concede the previous absolutist position was untenable. I think this refined one is, and my original point, about anyone arguing for revolution in America being an idiot, stands.)
> Don't believe the propaganda you've been fed
This is a terrible way to end if you're arguing in good faith.
I'd argue this is generally why revolutions happen in the first place, because the masses are miserable while the aristocracy lives a life of excess.
In related news:
Exhibit A: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/food-stamps-snap-benefits-cuts-...
Exhibit B: https://old.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1omlsyg/trumps_ela...
I'd further argue that there's plenty of "development cards", as you call them, left on the table in the US. Medical care being paywalled is an obvious one. Homelessness is at a historic high [0]. 13.5% of households are food insecure [1].
All of those problems could be fixed by simply redistributing resources from a few oligarchs.
I'm not sure what to make of your point about voting - I'm not quite sure I understand how that's related to the success of a post-revolution society.
> This is a terrible way to end if you're arguing in good faith.
So is calling people that disagree with you idiot, but I am actually enjoying the discussion, so lets not get petty here.
My point was a bigger one about Cuban society having these achievements despite being constantly undermined by its superpower neighbor. The same neighbor that presumably educated you? It was an attempt to point out a conflict of interest in said education system, not meant to be a personal attack.
[0] https://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/homelessness-at-a-record-h... [1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/food-nutrition-assistance/fo...
saubeidl•12h ago
Everything old is new again. Never again is now.