> Stalinist Russia, to be precise, but no, you don't ...
Well, I can tell you something. I grew up in adorably crazy Cuba as part of a family of high profile political dissidents during times in which there were no cameras everywhere and people, including little children, would not "monitor" themselves by carrying their cell phones and recording all matters about their "private" and "public" existence ... (not even Orwells could have imagined that "technology" and "the proles" he so hopefully regarded would go that far)); so, they would make teachers write thorough reports about what "the children of 'the counter-revolutionary' were saying in classes/doing while in the school". Teachers would not even look or refer to you during classes (which, of course, other children noticed as well) in order to tax their existence as little as they possibly could and as an adult I was the victim of Berufsverbot, professional ostracism and endured two prison terms for openly and directly criticizing the government.
I actually have Russian people in my family (I, generally speaking, like very much about them that they have a sense of humor and that they have a spine, something that even Reagan recognized, quite ironically I would say). Three of my first cousins are fully bilingual (Russian-Spanish). No, things were not as bad as in "Stalinist Russia" on a number of important counts. People, coming to visit Cuba from "the Eastern Block" and Latin America were amazed to notice how people in Cuba listened to all kinds of music and watched hollywood movies even before they were shown in their own countries. Anthropologists could not believe that in Cuba "We the people" actually made the repressive, dictatorial government accept a "free" closed up, grass roots version of the Internet they started by themselves.
https://www.wired.com/2017/07/inside-cubas-diy-internet-revolution/
> ... justify your assertion that the US is similar in many respects to [Stalinist Russia] ...
No, this was never part of my point or intention. What I am talking about is the effectiveness of propaganda. Let me make it clearer for you: "people in the U.S. are actually more heavily propagandized than they were in Russia and still are in Cuba". They, quite naturally, actually see themselves as altruistic, "good 'Christian'", "'the' land of 'the' 'free' and 'the' 'brave' ..." kinds of folks and all of that bs. You see that even right here while talking to those who consider themselves to be "skeptic", it even naturally transpires from your own comments. They react like "what do you mean there is a sun in the sky?" when all they have to do is raise their heads and see it. Let me give you a few "facts":
* life expectancy in the U.S. and Cuba are the same, even though that little, dirt poor island has had to endure perpetual animosity coming from the powerful "yankee imperialism" and an economic -terroristic- embargo for 6 decades (and counting)
* "'the' land of 'the' 'free' and 'the' 'brave' ..." actually has the higher incarceration rate in the world, has had for way longer than anyone would expect and I don't see that changing any time soon, only that shows how much they love "freedom" or as they say that "freedom is not for every", or "freedom doesn't come for free", or, or, or, ...
* I once heard that they couldn't pass some laws about retirement age in the U.S. because that would mean that black folks would have had to work all their life, no retirement (back to slavery!) such a difference in life expectancy you would not even find in "Stalinist Russia" among the people living in those illusively mythical "gulags" and the rest of the population. Solzhenitsyn himself lived in those "gulags" and even if he was gravely ill (later, after being treated in those "gulags", he recuperated) he was able to make it through and become a writer, even the German troops including the high officers captured as prisoners of WWII after being released went back to Germany to die at an old age ...
* "freedom lovers" have 8xed the genocidal ratio of Nazi Germany during WWII
...
> I assume (probably naively) that you have evidence of this claimed shared belief of most non-Hispanics?
What are you talking about? and BTW, as I have repeatedly said (and most people who use that terms would as well) the term gringo doesn't -necessarily- mean U.S. citizen, nor does race or ethnicity have to do with it. It is a certain mindset I have taken the time to describe here what turns you into some gringo.
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum ...
> Somewhere in this confused mess, there is presumably some kind of rationale for comparing the Monroe Doctrine with the Nazi idea of Lebensraum.
> It's very well hidden, if there is. Given that the Monroe Doctrine is specifically about defending the independence (at least from Europe) of Latin American countries, and Lebensraum is the exact opposite of that, it's hard even to guess what that connection might be.
Are you being sarcastic?
If I wouldn't know that gringos actually talk like that, I would think you must be baiting me into some nonsensical back and forth and/or are some of those paid bots who access the Internet with the mission of "memes control" (which you notice here)
Do you actually belive that the Monroe Doctrine is "specifically about defending the independence of Latin American countries", as you say, "at least from Europe"?
What do you mean with that "at least from Europe" exception? Isn't "independence" -independence-?
What could you possibly, effing mean? Hilary Putman, on his paper about Philo of mind/linguistics: "the meaning of meaning", while explaining about meaning and sense, makes the point that you could not posibly make sense with anyone who believes that the Vietnam war was about "'helping' South Vietnam".
I think even if you can't "make sense" with them you have to still tell them, make them think about/own what they are talking about. Honesty is an important aspect of truthfulness, reality, so you shouldn't expect to be reibungsloss.
// __ The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg (2010)
youtube.com/watch?v=OaYez2MT6HI
~
Let me, just give you an example of the Monroe Doctrine. USG was stealing half of Venezuela's oil production and calling it, ready?: "the alliance for progress". The good thing about lies is that people employing them at some point start quite naturally believing them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_for_Progress
https://www.nytimes.com/1964/03/15/...us-aid-to-latin-america-ustakes-stock-of.html
> Sorry if this messes up your simplistic stereotyping of a large part of global humanity.
global humanity?
> A further reminder, as it too is clearly needed, that the term 'gringo' is offensive.
I can't really understand why you find that term so distressing. what should you be called them? "American"?, as gringos use that term as a way of tacitly make themselves the very definition of all that is good, proper and hopeful in the Universe and all that is morally wrong and hopelessly base un-"American"?
What exactly makes gringos think that they can constantly make fun of every kind of people in the rest of that un-"American" "global humanity" from the higher grounds from which they see themselves, but they can't be called gringos?
~
I always thought of lies as kind of pathological, morally base, short-sighted, ego centric reactions and also conerly beneficial, kind of benign; as "necessary options" of the whole picture of all possible language usage possibilities we have when we use signs to communicate, but one of the few things I did learn in the U.S. is to respect lies. Seinfeld repeatedly said in his shows: "it not a lie anymore if you choose to believe it". I stopped taking that phrase as a joke.
Notice how that guy doesn't consider as part of his "lexical priming theory" what freedom loving media does to people.
~
// __ "Primed for Violence? A corpus analysis of jihadist discourse"
youtube.com/watch?v=dj5SXGgT11U
~
People who make "social control" their business, see themselves as "patriots", morally "responsible". I always found "peculiarly strange" in the U.S. that not only are primary school children being told about "having the courage" to become homosexual while in the school by the government at a young and naive age in which they should be worrying about learning "fractions" and telling apart verbs from adjectives, but in universities and even at the UN (which I think should be very illegal) they have "clubs" about literally every possible thing from needle sewing to scrabble playing and artistic jump rope contests. I then learned that they do that in order to identify those "possible troublemakers" who would rather potentially become "question authority" kinds of folks. Those who refuse to be entertained by non sense. Now, gringos don't see anything wrong about any of it: "why shouldn't people play scrabble?", right?, but I have a question for which I haven't found an answer, since when it is the job of the government to be telling people about their sexuallity, isn't it "'your' ass" (as they say in the U.S. meaning your own "private" matters) and why are they brainwashing children from such an early age about "their 'freedom' to become homosexual?" When you hear people in the U.S. say such nonsense as "I am a man trapped in the body of a woman" or vice versa, you wonder to what extent they have been "managed" into such beliefs. In the U.S. people take sexuality as a political matter!
I have later learned that there are two kinds of lies: honest and "persuasive" ones. In Cuba the dictatorial government actually writes as top most line in large and blacked font: "organo official del partido Comunista de Cuba". They are honestly telling you as clearly as they possibly could: "we are lying to you!" Compare that with that "all that fit to print" stanza. Honest liers are "more respectful", always less harmful than persuasive ones.
Most people (virtually all?) in the U.S. are so brainwashed that they don't see anything wrong about the Monroe doctrine, the Westward expansion, the genocidal of aboriginal native American people, ... messing with Latin American countries, killing little girls and their grandma for threatenning the worldsonlysuperpower, ... and that kind of mentallity has never stopped. In fact gringos are way past that. None of it ever happened. That is just some deranged Mr. Lopez guy (as you have called me) talking nonsense at ISFs
~
As the Israeli govenrment did in Palestine, with the assassination of Qassem Soleimani USG is aiming at turning all governments of the world (again the world they see they can safely abuse) as their Warsaw ghetto Jewish police.
If you fall in love with a girl, but she is not interested in knowing how your farts smell, you may "realize" how unjust the world is and listen to sad songs or watch movies, eat chocolate ice cream, drink beer, rant your head off at a bar, masturbate "to have sex with her anyway" ... or even start reading about philosophy or rant here at ISFs, but freedom lovers deal with "more serious" problems, they can't just accept that genocidally invading a country based on their own delussions and consciously worked out lies was a mistake and just walk out of it.
I remember once the government they themselves arranged in Afghanistan telling them to leave and the reaction of freedom lovers was that they (Afghanis) didn't know what they were talking about ... no, they didn't, "couldn't" leave. This is what lies do to you.
~
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