IHeartBadCode

what long term storage would be the best option for storing digital information

The biggest factor with passive storage, something that’s not refreshed. Optical media that’s made to last. M-DISC comes to mind, but there’s no proof that worse case 100 years is a valid claim. Chemically speaking, a well kept disc should keep 100 years, but that’s chemical composition in an ideal case. Nothing in manufacturing is perfect, so impurities are always going to be there robbing the lifespan of these discs.

Magnetic tape ideally lasts decades if not close to a century, but these are tapes that are kept in incredibly controlled conditions. If you’ve ever worked in the server world you’ll know that any plain Jane LTO magnetic tape can’t be trusted after collecting dust for anywhere close to five years.

We have scrolls, we have books, and we have stone tablets that have endured centuries, but the key in all of those is how well they were kept. The construction matters, but the bigger aspect is the environment they were kept in. For digital media, we don’t know any real way to keep digital data in a passive state for centuries because, well, we haven’t had digital data for that long. We’ve got really old punch cards that are close to that age, but even then, some of the oldest stacks are now sitting in hermetically sealed cases and are actively upkept to prevent UV damage by clear coating those cases on a regular basis.

And that’s the thing with digital media, keeping it in an active storage rather than passive may be the key for centuries of longevity. USB sticks are fine so long as someone remembers to plug them in and allow them to refresh every some many years. Most USB sticks use ceramic capacitors, so leakage there isn’t too much an issue. The bigger thing might be corrosion of the various traces and pins, but if well kept, that might take decades to eventually make an impact.

Sometimes, I like to parallel digital long term storage as the Ship of Theseus. If you keep moving the data from one device to another, it’s still the same data. And in that sense, the data can live forever. Even if there’s a gap of say two decades, if you can still get to the data and convert it into something modern, the data lives on. It’s not the original medium, but with digital data, it doesn’t have to be, that’s the neat thing about digital data.

I think people still are working on trying to wrap their heads around digital data versus the way we used to do it. You know, someone might have the family bible and we’ve got to keep it nice and tidy and careful with it, because with analog data the medium and the information are one in the same. And I think sometimes people look at family digital photo collections like that. Like it’s the family bible and that we’ve got to keep it safe. But if it’s a USB stick that you pull out every so often, look over it, and call it day. Maybe move the photos from the Walmart USB stick that you got in 2016 to the new 800TB USB-F stick you just got from neo-Amazon in 2073, those photos can live forever. You don’t have to be careful with them anymore.

I think that’s one of the reasons that open formats matter so much. If you stored all your family videos in Windows Media Format, what happens when Microsoft dies in the Second US Civil War of 2038? That’s not helping you in 2073 to open those files on a format you can never figure out. But say you stored it in some open format. Now all you need is an implementation of that format and a compiler. And poof, now you have a modern codec to read the files of the before times.

It’s one of those fun maybe slightly existential kinds of things. Nothing lasts, no matter how hard we try, nothing will last. All things forgotten decay, we can only slow that decay down, but we can’t prevent it. But things that live, things that pass through the hands of the living, those things endure because there are people who put time, one of the most precious resources we have, into them. Our reward for that investment of time is something that continues beyond the decay.

I like to think of it as the balance of the universe. You get to keep this, but only if you give a bit of time to pay for keeping it. And sometimes it’s crazy to think of how much that applies to. Also I likely shouldn’t reply after having a few drinks. Wooooo!!

Environment makes all the difference for passive storage, sorry I really went out there on the reply.

Best bet is long term optical discs or long term magnetic tape. USB keys are not good for long term storage. USB keys use NAND memory that is a series of floating gate metal oxide semiconductors (FGMOS). These operate by using Fowler-Nordheim tunneling, in where a charge is carried along a regular style fin field-effect transistor (FINFET) and a charge above the transistor’s channel causes some electrons to quantum tunnel into floating gates that are isolated by oxides.

While these floating gates are sealed off from everything, so the charge should stay “indefinitely”, quantum effects cause some of the electrons to “leak” out of the floating gate, causing a degradation of the stored signal. Typically there’s a refresh circuit within the USB key’s integrated circuit that takes care of that and USB data can last seemingly forever. However, that refresh circuit requires a small amount of power, which if you store the USB stick somewhere for years on end, will never get powered.

This is the reason why flash memory only assures data can be retained for about ten years without power. Eventually the electrons “trapped” in floating gate have enough time to tunnel out of the floating gate completely obliterating the signal. The tunnel events aren’t many per second, but give enough time, and all of those events add up. Paired with the whole thing that USB sticks mostly no longer use binary logic levels. Most are now using something like four or eight logic levels. So instead of there just being on and off, there is 0V-0.7V = 00, 1V-1.7V = 01, 2V-2.7V = 10, 3V-3.7V = 11 logic levels. So a small amount of charge loss can create a different bit pattern.

One thing to look at for long term storage is something like M-DISC. The matter by which the burned data onto the optical media is made is via a process that takes about 10,000 years (estimated) to break down. However, the disc itself is in a polycarbonate thermoplastic that has an average breakdown of only about 1,000 years in extremely dry environments and about a tenth of that in your average sealed lock box environments.

Your average spinning disk hard drive can store information for some time, but the storage requirements are pretty intense and even then hard drives loose about 1% of the magnetic strength per year without power. And about 70 years is the max before the various magnetic bits that form the low level format of the disk have degraded without power to the point that the disk has too many bad sectors to be called usable. But outside of that, the biggest fault is mechanical failure. No matter how well you think you’ve stored a drive, it’s never good enough and the spinny bits always fail from becoming too fragile from pervasive oxidation. Basically the drive will spin up only to tear itself apart as some weaken part of the armature flies into the spinning platters.

But USB sticks will only give you about a decade before the stored information fades away into the quantum ether.

Really I’m just disappointed in the lack of blackjack here.

Ugh. This is why I hate summary because there’s always someone who is like “you didn’t explain EvErYtHiNg so you’re wrong!” While you’re trying to flesh things out you always miss a ton of things too that neither one of us touched on, and I didn’t because it increases what needs to be talked about when what I originally said was correct.

entire wall of text

I hate this term because it shows that people are trying to oversimplify something that is in itself complex. Additionally, you’re trying to point out things but you didn’t cover everything either. Which is why especially here, this annoying. You’re basically trying to make an argument of “you explain too much” and “you didn’t explain enough”. It’s a damned if you do and damned if you don’t argument that you’re trying to make. I’m calling you out on it because you are attempting a no correct way to answer line of questioning. I’ll give you this reply, but you keep going on this thread like this, I’ll just block you. I don’t have the time for childish game. If you have a point make it, if you don’t stop beating around the bush. That’s all there is to it.

a position that is easily filled without congressional confirmed

That’s not correct. I’ll point to the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 5 USC § 3345. You seem smart enough, you can figure out why Sec. of State quitting and the deputy becoming acting would trigger such a response.

someone didn’t pay attention to trumps presidency at all

Again, I’ll point to the many failures on exclusive authority during that term. Namely you can see the multiple failures along the regulation of coal that failed exclusive authority. Acting has only nonexclusive duties for the 210 day period and the extended period of 300 days on inauguration. Hence the failures on rule making.

what you’re missing is that during that time the president can just not due what the law says and these things can take years.

Yes, this is why enjoining an EO exists as a measure for the courts. Immediate relief is something the claimants can seek when bringing the issue up to the courts. That’s why you hear emergency relief often with controversial orders.

Secondly even if a judge blocks an EO the president can still do it the judge has no enforcement mechanism.

The enforcement is via Congress at that point. If a just rules something as violation of the Court order, that’s easily handled by Congress.

worcester v georgia

Just so we’re clear the Nullification scandal, Jackson indicated he was ready to march troops into South Carolina and shooting the government if need be. That was with eye to Georgia daring them the exact same thing. We’d revisit that willingness to march troops into the State and start shooting State Government members about thirty years later.

So just, so we’re clear the Worcester you cite, we got ready to have a preemptive war over the matter. I’m not sure the argument you’re providing holds a lot of water here in that “they can do what they want to do with no ramifications”. Clearly getting shot at by the Army is a ramification that at the time neither party wanted to try out. But we did give it a go a bit later.

abraham lincoln did it w/ habeus corpus

Yeah. Thing called the Civil War.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Was kicked to Congress, like I said it would be. Was mulled and Congress decided to take a pass. But that’s not free from consequences. Additionally, Congress had indicated to FDR to wrap that shit up with the alphabet groups. You’ll note how many of them didn’t last. CCC still a thing?

biden can easily deal with blinken, its called firing and assigning a temporary individual to the role

Again see FVRA.

not like he has a lot of time left there’d be no time to confirm a new individual anyways

Again see FVRA, carry over has a lot more impact in the first 300 day period than having an acting position.

Now Harris is, she’s the one who has committed to genocide at this point thats causing the issue not blinken

That is just plainly incorrect.

You’re entire ‘civics’ lesson ignores the historical realities of the presidency and EOs

And you covered zero of them either. I’ve provided more context to the examples that you gave. But the reality is that “the historical realities of EOs” is a complex issue. But apparently you don’t like walls of text.

especially in light of the recent SCOTUS ruling on presidential powers which expanded this ability by conferring it judicial backing

I take it that you are referring to Trump v US. None of that has any bearing on the matter of what Bliken does or doesn’t do. If Biden simply just withheld funds and gave everyone the finger, he’d still be subject to Congressional review of his actions and possible impeachment. That is not being free of ramifications.

If you want to keep up with daily events in the Executive, the Federal Register (Fed. Reg. or FR) cannot be beat. It contains all of the FOIA request, every public inspection requirement, CFR proposals, Executive Orders, Presidential Proclamations, and so forth.

If you want something more specific to rule making, you can find that here. Rule making makes a bit more sense when you think about it. Say Congress passes a law that says “build me a road between Texas and South Dakota”. The law will usually say who (department) is in charge of that and then that department will take the money and begin rule making. Rule making is basically laying out the path the road will take, what kind of materials will be used, what companies are allowed to bid, environmental guidelines, etc, etc ,etc… Once those rules have been made the who is going to do it is determined. Like Highways in this case, the Federal Government provides the money and the States are the ones who select the labor and make minor course corrections to the highway (like if it’s about to pass through a cemetery or something).

Rule making is also sometimes called regulation. Because the agency put in charge is regulating the action being done to ensure compliance with what they think the law is asking for, because Congress is very NOT detail oriented until they really want to be. Also with rule making, Congress can “ask” a department to come in and meet with them if Congress thinks some of the rules don’t mesh with what they were thinking.

There’s also override laws, which Congress passes like a normal law. These laws, remember the Constitution requires laws to be applied equally if they involve the public so these override laws are written as such so that they only apply to a executive department, specifically smack the department over the head and “corrects” where the rule making went wrong. These don’t happen often, but we did have one back in Trump days over the FCC. The FCC had made a new rule that required ISPs to get permission to sell customer data, and Congress plus then President Trump overrode the FCC, explicitly banning them from ever creating such a rule. It’s still open if the FTC could make such a rule. But that’s an example of an override of regulation.

Oh also my whole comment didn’t even touch on the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, which is what would happen if a Secretary quits. Very, very, very long story short. The Deputy Secretary automatically gets to become the “acting” Secretary BUT they cannot do any “exclusive actions”, which that Leahy rule is indeed an exclusive action. The “acting” Secretary can only maintain “status quo” until the Senate Confirms that the acting secretary is indeed the actual secretary. But an “acting” position can only last for 210 days, after which the office is then considered “vacant”, but none of that matters anymore because Congress uses “pro forma” sessions to prevent recessed appointments. But typically, if a position is “vacant” and Congress is not in Session, the President can make a recess appointment.

If you ask me, what we really need is an Amendment to the Constitution that provides the President a way to declare Congress as absent and if some threshold of Congress doesn’t become present, then the President can then call Congress not in Session. The whole “pro forma” sessions of Congress really needs to stop, like in a really bad way. Sort of like how Filibuster should return to requiring a person physically speak for the entire duration of the filibuster and must remain on topic.

Congress has gotten really soft on everything and that’s allowed them to permit a lot of bad faith actions in Congress to happen. It used to be that it was “gentleman’s agreement” that Congress would behave and act in good faith, but boy have we really fallen down on that since the 1980s.

Anyway, I’m rambling.

Oh man, this is a doozy. You aren’t wrong but I’ve got to get some sleep. To explain this is A LOT.

The thing is the Leahy Law doesn’t put the power directly in the President’s hands. It grants the vetting process to the Secretary of State. Which is a member of the cabinet of the President. Which I don’t know how familiar you are with how the Executive Office works or not. But Secretary of State Antony Blinken is the one who wields the power to deny Israel’s aid.

There’s Executive Orders (EO) that the President can give but there’s the whole “what if” Blinken quits given an EO and then we have to get the Senate involved which is currently 50-50 on Republicans and Democrats. Which that turns it even more complex and Senators can delay confirmation until after the election or if they’re really bitter, until next year. Which means that everything that requires a Secretary of State would get put on pause.

I get that everyone thinks the President gets to have the final say, but the President orders people around on EOs, which the various Secretaries can just quit if they don’t want to follow them, and then that kicks everything to the Senate. That’s kind of a built in protection in our system of Government to prevent a President becoming a dictator. If a President wants XYZ done and the Secretary thinks that’s bad, they quit and the Senate becomes involved potentially delaying the President forever.

There’s way more background on why Blinken has only stopped two aids and also because of classification reasons, not every stopping of aid can be published, unless the President does so since the President has unilateral authority on classification markings (except for anything related to the name of spies and nuclear bomb designs, that is one of the few things that requires both the President and Congress to sign off on, there’s a few other exceptions as well but I won’t go into them).

But anyways, Blinken is the one who can stop aid. The President could order him, but he could also quit, which means the Senate would get involved, and I can explain why all of that would be messy if you need me to.

why can’t he veto the military aid

The President only has veto power on bills that have passed both the House and the Senate. Once something becomes law, the President “has” to carry it out. There’s a ton of background on “Executive Discretion” and any time the President wants to exercise discretion, Congress can sue, which then brings the matter into the other branch, the Judicial. Plenty of States that would sign on, to a Congressional suit (which that’s a requirement for Congress to sue the President, at least one State has to join in).

So Biden could use Discretion to delay funding, and he’s done that quite a few times, but he can’t just outright NOT pay when the law requires him to do so. That discretion comes from a kind of EO called a “Reviewing Executive Order” and it requires a department to “review” ((insert whatever the topic is)). That’s a delay, but it isn’t a halt. The President has to follow the law as well. So if we have a law that says, “we provide $xxx to Israel’s Iron Dome”, we have to send that money to them at some point.

A lot of the funds that Israel is getting, is funding they secured before the Gaza invasion. There’s been recent upping of that funding that Congress has passed, but that’s been on things called Continuing Resolutions (CR). Republicans in the House (who are the ones who control what the US Budget is) have been using CRs to get choice things enacted. That’s because Republicans in the House have passed rules on how a budget may be formed in the House that are impossible to comply with (which that’s a whole long story). So if Democrats in the House refuse to accept the CRs the Republicans offer, the Government shuts down.

Anyways, that’s been a lot already. If you need me to clear anything up, let me know. But Harris likely wouldn’t have Blinken as Secretary of State, which would fix A WHOLE LOT. But I don’t know, because if the election isn’t kind to Democrats in the Senate and Republicans have a majority in the Senate, they could block Harris’ Sec. of State unless they specifically pledged to support Israel. Now they could absolutely lie about that, but then Congress could also impeach them, but that would cut off aid to Israel for some time as that’s not an easy process to impeach a secretary of state.

I just don’t get how people are looking at Harris’ stance as being pro-genocide. Biden is the President and historically, foreign policy during the tenure of the President by the Vice President doesn’t veer too far off from the President. That said, Harris has absolutely called for investigation into the suffering of civilians in the conflict.

Congress sets the budgetary amount of aid to direct to Israel and the President distributes the money via their diplomatic channels. There are very few options for the President to just suspend funding, which Biden has done twice for weapons under the rules established within 10 USC § 362 (a)(1)

Of the amounts made available to the Department of Defense, none may be used for any training, equipment, or other assistance for a unit of a foreign security force if the Secretary of Defense has credible information that the unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.

But outside that, there’s very little the President can do once Congress approves funding and that funding has been signed into law. This is why an independent channel investigation is required and is exactly what Harris has called for. This would allow the the US Government to establish their own inquiry into the human abuses. This would give the required evidence to cancel funding under Title XII authority. But none of that can happen overnight. It’s not an easy path to override the will of Congress.

On the opposite side, Trump has indicated that he will absolutely turn a blind eye to the whole thing and allow Israel to determine solely the “best” course of action for their current conflict. Trump has literally stated in his rallies:

From the start, Harris has worked to tie Israel’s hand behind its back, demanding an immediate cease-fire, always demanding cease-fire

Trump would not see a cease-fire as a required condition for the on-going conflict.

Harris and Democrats historically have called for a two-state solution. Trump’s plan which has been broadly adopted by the Republican party in general would:

• Give Palestinians only about 15% of their original territory
• Jerusalem would become Israel’s undivided capitol, meaning all claims by the Palestinians to the eastern half of the city would be tossed out.
• Allow Palestinians to “achieve an independent state” via a means that is not clearly defined in the plan but indicated that Israel would have a final say in that process.
• “No Palestinians or Israelis will be uprooted from their homes” indicating that the territory that Israel has already colonized from their current conflict would become Israel’s.
• Would put Israel and Jordan on equal footing for the administration of al-Haram al-Sharif, which will absolutely ignite a conflict.
• Any territory allocated to Palestinians would have to undergo a four year “wait” period, but there’s no protections from Israel obtaining that territory if done so during conflict. So Israel could provoke someone to fight them and that would give them justification to take the land during this “four year wait period”.

Trump has all but given up completely on a two-state solution. Which means, he’s for a one state solution. And people are fooling themselves if they believe that Trump would seek a “peaceful” one state solution. He has told Netanyahu directly, “Just get it done quickly”. Now we can play a game as what manner is used to “get it done quickly” means, but only idiots are the one’s thinking that doesn’t give a tacit nod to ethic cleansing.

I just have no idea what these people who think Harris is a bad idea for Palestinians are actually thinking. And really, I don’t think they are thinking at all. You have one solution that is long, stupid, and required because we are a nation of laws. And you have the other solution that is “fuck it, firebomb them all and call it done”. It is difficult to imagine that there are truly people this blind and ignorant to this reality. But yet, here we are.

The notion that we might get a 3rd party into office like twenty years from now if we start today, helps nobody if the people we’re trying to help are all eradicated over the next four years. Going down this “third road” only ensures an outcome where we are fifteen years too late to help.

Except the idea wasn’t solely within those leaders. That was the major issue with reconstruction that followed. We weren’t just fighting people, we were fighting an idea. We’re still fighting it. We would only be so lucky to fully extinguish an idea by hanging a few thousand people from a tree.

For the folks wanting to try something along the lines of “how is it illegal?!”

It’s not the signing a document that supports 1A and 2A. That’s not the illegal part. It’s the requiring being a registered voter and having a lotto with cash money attached to it. Musk is perfectly fine to have a lotto for people who support 1A and 2A and want to sign a document saying so. He just can’t attach “you must be a registered voter” to those terms and conditions, that’s the part that makes it illegal.

All the other parts, if that’s how he wants to blow his money. That’s his money. But he just can’t attach that one term to that process. Likely is that someone will ask him to drop the term and leave it at that. But if Musk starts being a penis about well then yeah, it’s a Federal law and can be made messy if folks don’t want to comply. It’s likely why he’s pulling this, this close to election day, figures that no AG would get it in front of a Judge fast enough. But I mean, get an AG angry enough, they can start making things happen on a faster time scale.

But yeah, there’s not really a question about what Musk is doing if it’s illegal or not. It’s very much not legal. But the ramifications are likely for the State AG to ask Musk to drop that condition or get yanked in front of a Judge.

Nah it’ll be like what we think of this kind of art.

do as I say not as I do

Nintendo: Money! Fuck everything else.

All other attributes derive from that.

When I get back to Washington that’s the first thing, we’re gonna — we need a reorganization of FEMA.

We JUST HAD ONE!! That was the Homeland Security Act of 2002.

And then they’ll tell you, ‘Oh, we didn’t send that money to the illegals.’ The hell they didn’t

That has been authorized by Congress the last three appropriations bills. More importantly, that money is for Customs and Border Patrol which for some odd reason, FEMA cuts the checks when it comes to SSP expenditures, why is that? Oh because that’s just how the Homeland Security Act of 2002 works.

So the interesting thing here is that Congress writes a confusing method for how accounting works within a department and is then shocked that the manner by how funds get paid is so confusing. Who could have possible seen this coming? I guess 9/11 kind of clouded our ability to have foresight.

SIGH

At any rate. The whole FEMA writes checks that CBP will cash has been weird ever since 2002, that you all finally have come around to “Oh gosh they’re spending this on illegals” is just y’all’s take on the oddity. But strange that “Oh gosh that’s odd” doesn’t seem to hit when FEMA is writing checks for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that was going on in 2017 to 2019. Nor when DHS Secretary requested Disaster Relief Funds for ICE to deport illegal immigrants, remember that one?

The thing is, FEMA being this bank account for various other agencies in the Department of Homeland Security only seems weird when it’s distinctly shit y’all don’t agree with. And let me be clear. I get it, we DO NEED to reorganize FEMA. I’m not debating that. But FEMA should not be a agency of DHS since twenty-two years ago, because this is the shit that happens when you mix agencies like this together.

And this is the thing, Congress knew that this kind of weird shit would happen when they originally placed FEMA into DHS, that was the entire fucking point. Y’all wanted to intermix disaster relief with border protection and all the various bullshit that’s involved with the latter because then when you needed funding you could all gasp and go “WHO WOULDN’T WANT TO FUND RECOVERY FROM DISASTERS!!” And this guy hasn’t shied away from that argument, he’s just using the other side of the coin argument for this instance.

You all have created these weird interactions because it gives you cover when you need it, and a scapegoat when you want it. Burchett can continue to be a useless sack of shit that collects a paycheck and does nothing, just like DesJarlais. These fuckers go to DC, yell at a camera, collect their paycheck, and go home and in, DesJarlais’ case, I guess to go impregnate some aide.

Tennessee second, fourth, fifth, and sixth district are fucking useless bastards that if they went into a bathroom in Congress and jerked off would be more than they usually do in a typical day. Anything they have to say should be treated with about the same dignity one gives bird shit on their vehicle’s windshield. I mean the others aren’t that great, but at least they have demonstrated some small ability to reason. Those four are a fucking lost cause.

I mean ever since XZ binaries are a no go. Like the trust is gone, the bridge is burnt, unless there’s like an insanely good reason, anything this heavy in BLOBs ought to be treated as suspect. Benefit of doubt isn’t coming back.

The disaster hit areas will get funds. It will be rebuilt. But none of that happens overnight. The US has spent $1.79T on disasters since 1980. Hurricane Katrina alone costed about 190 Iron Dome Systems.

I get that there’s always more we can do, and trust me I really dislike that a ton of our budget goes towards war and military. But I think people forget how absolutely massive the destruction is in some of these disasters and how much it’ll cost to rebuild. I mean the conservative end of cost from Helene is eleven years of 100% of the funds annually allocated toward FEMA. And that’s just a single disaster.

We’re still spending FEMA money on the 2013 Colorado Flood because these disasters are that destructive, the 2017 California wildfires are still a 15 million a year recovery operation that’s still on-going. There’s even $15B earmarked for COVID-19 and it’ll likely be the late 2020s or early 2030s when we finally see that fall off the FEMA spreadsheet.

I’m not trying to defend the wasteful expenses on military that we do, but things like those missiles in the picture are minuscule to the massive amount of destruction these disasters bring. And I think it’s important to highlight that because it hopefully gives people some clue to the true cost of climate change.

It will likely benefit the State.

Does everyone just forget the aspect where it absolute enriches the guy but just “maybe, likely” benefit anyone else?

I literally had to cite the page number from the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 Public Law 117-328 that covered how the $800M that Trump keeps telling everyone FEMA spent on migrants was a completely different fund than the disaster relief fund that FEMA uses for hurricanes. Which the DRF was established originally as it’s own fund in the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act of 1988 Public Law 100-707

It’s page 4,730 where that item is located for anyone wondering.

I fucking hate what online interactions have become. I think I’ve easily read over 200,000 pages of government legislation, federal regulation, and legal proceedings since June because of the lies one orange shit stain keeps telling. I really do hope that the Republicans can move past that fucker, it was a lot easier to talk politics.

for a reason that you are listening songs from another country or reading books, that was not accepted by censorship

Man are you going to have a wild time reading the First Act of Supremacy of 1534 from the United Kingdom. Couple of follow up bangers from it like the Act of Supremacy in Ireland of 1560. All that happening distinctly before communism was even invented.

Because my country, Ukraine, was under communists and it was not good time with all genocides, holodomor, repressions, red terrors and other things

Yes, but none of that is unique to communism, that’s just corrupt government. Anywhere that develops systemic inadequacies and a culture of impunity can instantly become such. That’s just something that is independent of the underlying system of economics. Like many capitalist systems like to point out that bourgeoisie who are after their own interest act as some check on the government who is usually in a power struggle for control. And that power struggle is what ensures no one side wins out.

But there’s nothing technically stopping the rich from becoming the actors of the government and when we as a society excuse profiteering in office, well then there’s no barrier from the rich just becoming the government. Which that’s just the French ancien régime that ultimately lead to the French Revolution.

So it’s NOT specific to just communism. It’s just that’s the most recent and easiest one to point out because of how blatant/brazen that system had become with it’s corruption. Even with all of the “nay-saying” that might happen with United States detractors with their usual hum of “Oh well they’re all corrupt!” Even with how passive some are with it, the corruption is nowhere near the level of being out in the open that was with the USSR. Politicians still weasel their way around because they know that there’s still some bottom level of ensuring checks on that corruption that exist. And we have those checks not because we are a capitalist society.

I think the idea that some economic system promotes some civic purity or prevents some form of government corruption is a bad linking of things that ought not be linked, because a pure capitalist society doesn’t magically inherit some barrier of corruption. That barrier has to be formed independent of the underlying economic system.

I’m not trying to detract from what happened under the USSR but that has way more to do with how power got consolidated post World War I and everything that lead to the toppling of the Russian Monarchy. The system of communism played a role in that consolidation of power, yes, but literally any tool could have been used if you have someone with the mindset of Vladimir Lenin who wanted to rapidly consolidate power during the Bolshevik revolution. I mean look at the current Myanmar Civil War and some of the ideas of General Min Aung Hlaing, no need for implementation of communist ideology there, he just wants to be in power, doesn’t believe that the current transfer of power is legitimate, and is willing to get a lot of people killed in proving that point.

I think given the current situation in the United States, the belief that you NEED communism to have totalitarianism is a dangerous linking of things that can actually happen independent of each other. You just need someone to wear down government legitimacy enough to start a civil war, that’s all you need. Everything else is just tools at your disposal to get that goal done.

So you have to understand the nuance here I’m trying level. I’m not saying it WASN’T COMMUNISM, what I’m saying is that it can be communism, but ultimately you just need someone who wants to consolidate power rapidly and exists in a society that will forgive abuses of power enough, sometimes that’s done by de-legitimizing the current system enough. That’s it, that’s all that’s required. Communism can play a role in that somewhere, but it doesn’t have to.

You’ll have a ton of people jumping down your throat about how not voting for her is a vote for Trump and all this nonsense

I’m just going to add here, that when I’m indicating this kind of thing what I’m hoping for folks to get out of it is how broken our first past the pole system is.

Because of that system, yeah, 3rd party candidates are tossing your vote away, that’s how the system is created. I didn’t make it, that’s just how it works. It’s also why the hard nationalist group usurped the party of small government. There’s a realization that a realistic third party isn’t possible, especially with how hard the two majority parties prevent 3rd parties from having an equal seat at the table going into elections. So the smarter groups have realized that if you can’t effectively make a 3rd party, just take over an already existing one. You can also see that with socialist and the Democrats intermixing. We keep excusing it by indicating “shades” of a color, like deep blue Democrats, etc.

There’s layers to the “voting 3rd party is tossing you vote away”. You aren’t at fault here for a desire to vote 3rd party, but if the only thing you take away when someone tells you that is “you’re worthless for tossing your vote in the trash” you’re kind of missing the point.

Our system is built a particular way and it’s wrong to pretend it isn’t. That 3rd parties are viable choices or actual reflections of non-mainstream political agenda, they aren’t and our tectonic sized two parties are mostly the reason for that. I’m not going to tell you to vote for whoever, all I ask for anyone is to see the problem and know voting 3rd party isn’t, strictly, going to fix it. If we look at the US State of Maine, you can see, that there is actual change and that we can have it if we demand it, no need for hard bordered in 3rd parties to enact it.

I’m not angry at anyone who says they are voting 3rd party, you do you is my biggest jam. But we’ve got to see the problem before we can address the problem, and then we need to effectively address the problem. Which means, yeah, we are wholly reliant on something that sounds impossible. For one of the two parties to get into power and then vote to make changes that could potentially dilute their power. I know that’s asking for a big leap of faith there, it is possible. But it isn’t possible if we’re just sticking our heads into the sand.

Not the article title, but way more clever.