Kulturkampf

[benji]

But I did come across this galaxy brain take:

This woman posts a lot of stupid shit. BUT in this instance there is a mild kernel of truth to what she's saying but she doesn't know enough to understand the caveats and nuance.

The Castro cadre had such absolute control that when they all reached their 80s and started dying and becoming senile the party didn't have an appropriate new generation, so they allow local elections to pick between the factions of the party. This actually isn't unique to Cuba, or communist single state regimes, because there's no threat to the regime, the candidates are controlled by the party so nobody they don't accept can be elected. They just don't care which of the two gets elected. China does this in a different form, so does North Korea.

Most of these states also "encourage" or mandate participation, along with sometimes even allowing opposition candidates. They just punish you for not complying. North Korea's system is the most famous as you are allowed to vote against the Kim regime, but you have to place your ballot in a separate box in front of everyone in the town. Nobody should be surprised that anyone who does this is severely punished for the rest of their life being denied everything from jobs to food for being a traitor to the people.

Only a gullible idiot considers it anything like democracy, but as this is Bluesky they consider it actually superior:






I like these two in particular:



For the first one, the Cuban people aren't allowed to vote for any of that, they aren't even allowed to vote between party platforms. There is only one party, only one policy and they can pick between which candidate brings that about. China does the same thing, this is how they get rid of corrupt local dudes by having them "lose election" but it never changes party policy because that is decided by the Politburo.

For the second one, he's literally describing Cuba or any other single party state. There is a single gigantic national organization that controls everything and overpays everyone who is part of it because there is no alternative allowed.

It really shows how much these types of people are beholden to language, you can have a total regime that doesn't practice socialism, violently punishes minorities, etc. and as long as it calls itself the "people's democratic republic" they believe that must be true and will be defend it as true. If Donald Trump tomorrow abolished all parties but the Republican Party and said that now all of these people can just vote in the Republican primary they would scream their heads off. But if Cuba claims to do this (while controlling the actual candidates on the ballot) they say it's superior to the "false" system in the US because that system doesn't provide the results they want.

Saying men are women isn't new, the "left" has been claiming that a single monopoly that doesn't allow opposition or deviation is a "true democracy" where the people universally choose it for over a century. This was indeed Marx's argument for why socialism was superior to capitalism, because he starts from the premise that everyone of a class agrees on literally everything. You eliminate all classes but one and boom, politics indeed disputes themselves are forever solved. It's tautological and also beyond stupid.