plov_mix [comrade/them]

OMG FINALLY. Have been meaning to offload this re AC Odyssey. Less problematic than the awful treatment of slavery, but equally to-your-face-annoying, the whole main story — to the extent there is one — is basically ORANGE MAN BAD (Kleon was literally orange haired lmao) POPULISM BAD (I’d be mad if war and hunger going on but Perikles keep jerking off to his temples) BUT WE MUST DEFEND DEMOCRACY TOGETHER WITH, hold on … SOCRATES?! Like it’s so nauseatingly CIVILITY liberalism it made me stop half way in my ng+ play through after I so painfully fine tuned all my gears and engravings /rant

my conspiracy brain tells me it’s not actually aimed at average western readers. During this round of real estate downturn (which started in 2020) there’s been some concerted effort both inside and outside china in the business/finance journalism to force the gov to pump out massive amounts of cash and bail out those loser-financiers (perhaps à la USA in oct 2008?). Instead, not only is the gov reluctant to do so, but they’ve also done the appallingly unthinkable of jailing many CEOs and board members (the gov has also, to my limited understanding of macroeconomics, refused to let those real estate firms declare bankruptcy before they actually finish those construction projects for which people have already paid the deposits and taken on loans). Anyway, there’s probably a rather materially cynical reason for all this clamor of “Xi’s intentionally letting the economy go bust”

Grew up in China and did college in US. First time I read about “mandate of Heaven” in English-language histories of China I had to look it up cuz I had no idea what they were talking about, even with guess work

“Healthcare leftism” = I just want more shares of the imperial spoil but those fucking tankies want to destroy the empire!!!

reminds me of how the first National Assembly of the “democratically governed” “Taiwan” lasted from 1947 to 1991

When you try to sound like an intellectual but don’t even know how to write

I read it and I don’t have anything smart or rational to say, other than how tired I am of this one particular assumption palpable in the way many Western lefties think (including this piece, I feel): “y’all in the third world need to catch up with us — that is, become Western/modern AND THEN, ONLY THEN can we start building solidarity to takedown capitalism.” It seems really difficult for many on the Western left (whatever that definition is) to imagine solidarity NOT on the terms of their Eurocentric history and experiences. /rant.

I’m not an American so I can’t vote in your stupid elections anyway

Lmao I’m glad i’m not the only one who loves to troll the lib yanks this way.

French aristocrat knights, c. 14th century: “how dare these English peasants shoot me with longbows!!! Where’s their chivalry!!!”

(Actual military history may vary)

Speaking from experience. I realized I was gay in high school in China and nobody around me from my teachers and classmates to my parents and extended family gave me any trouble — except the grand narrative on everyone’s mind was that, because I am gay, my future lay completely with the west, mostly cuz of this “western value” idea Chen seems to subscribe to. It was a big factor why I so eagerly moved the US and became an absolutely cringe Eurocentric lib till recently.

There’s perhaps something to be said about how queer people in non-western worlds might be assumed/pushed to identify with the western capitalist world that has middle-class-washed and hijacked the lgbt liberation movements. But this line of thought is always too close to home for me to rationally think about