What’s the point of banning something if you’re allowed to have it anyway?
The point is to not allow people making money from things that are banned and make these things less relevant.
If you’re not allowed to legally purchase stuff, people won’t make much money from it.
You can access western social media through VPN but most people won’t bother and their influence will be negligible.
You don’t have to lose empathy to not be naive and to understand why people hurt others.
It’s always dialectical, it’s always driven by their material conditions. People raised “perfectly” might be even less likely to identify with poor people as poor people themselves are. And not seeing another human being in a person of the other class leads straight to apathy or worse.
Behind those “perfect” families of rich white people often hides a narcissistic abuse that’s inherited for generations btw. Such abuse easily makes new abusers.
Mainstream value system that promotes freedom of individual to use their influence against other people also contributes to normalize abusive behavior.
The good villains need to be dialectical. People hurting others happens due to material conditions like anything else.
Imagine people having superpowers lowering themselves to thievery instead of using it as a capital.
On the other hand, bourgeoisie member doing bourgeois things is probably the most easy template. Even in the least dialectical universe of DC Lex Luthor remains surprisingly well written compared to everything else because he is essentially just that.
In general people who benefit the unfair power structures trying to preserve them or even push their direction further to own benefit can easily be good villains.
People who try to challenge the unfair system while being monsters themselves are great material for bourgeois propaganda tools.
I prefer villains that aren’t tools of liberal propaganda.
Superhero movies from DC all have this trope about never killing villains and inevitably letting them murder innocent people again being supposedly a good thing. We all know who benefits from this kind of garbage filling people’s minds IRL.
One of methods of sustaining this terrible narrative is creating atrocious villains that happen to challenge our glorious heroes for this bullshit. The Reverse Flash comes in mind immediately. Batman and Superman also got called out multiple times by their villains.
Of course, when a hero breaks this rule in some alt universe, they immediately become terrible people over day in all aspects of their life, like Superman in Injustice immediately going crazy because he killed the Joker.
Bourgeoisie chases their own short term interest, there is nothing metaphysically evil about it. The consequences are dire for everyone in the long run. Including most of the bourgeoisie as the concentration of capital happens inside the owning class too. Eventually, with destruction of our environment, even for the very wealthiest.
Western bourgeoisie isn’t better or worse by itself. The environment there is different and bourgeois class has overwhelming political power. In e.g. China bourgeoisie exists but it has no power, it’s the most important difference.
Every accusation from a Yankee imperialist is a confession.
The bourgeoisie and also class traitors serving them are more likely to be narcissistic. And narcissistic parents abuse their children emotionally.
Also, about Linux distros, Huawei recently made their own independent OS with their own kernel.
Yes, it would be cool if CPC made their own fork of LibreOffice and endorsed it instead if WPC.
But they don’t atm and endorsing LibreOffice risks endorsing a hostile actor that could use it against PRC.
I have one for a few years and I’m quite satisfied with it. As long as you really need an e-ink tablet, boox is the way to go.
A Chinese capitalist asshole is a capitalist asshole that can be controlled. A German non-profit is an actor that’s totally out of control.
A piece of free software that’s developed by an organization under control of a socialist state would be better, yes. But with what is already there, I’m not surprised what was the lesser evil from perspective of CPC.
Why would they choose a product owned by a German non-profit over a product owned by a Chinese company?
I believe that gender is going to wither away in communist society eventually. As it is a construct tightly coupled with patriarchy.
Abolishing gender in any society existing today is as idealistic as abolishing Christianity in yankeeland though. Social roles and expectations imposed by patriarchy are part of people’s reality. We need people’s consent to abolish gender and to be able to consent, people need to have awareness of gender first.
Also, gender doesn’t exist in isolation. Dismantling patriarchy will be more nuanced than dismantling its elements separately. And it will require material basis we might not currently have anywhere in the world to address it properly. (inheritance is part of the patriarchal system too!)
For now we should respect people’s struggles within the patriarchal framework and give trans people our critical support.
Gender will wither away with material conditions changing, not with us saying it shouldn’t exist.
The first law of dialectic, accumulating quantitative changes leading to a qualitative change eventually.
At some point the realization gets through the inertia if you continue exposing yourself to the facts about the imperial powers acting against your interests and facts about which actions worked against them and which didn’t.