It's important to see the developing trends on South Park, an ever increasing promotion of homosexuality, with a weaker promotion of drug use.
In one way, though, the Simpsons is quite a bit "edgier" than the more staid south park: it's gung ho ever-increasing depictions of drug use. Skin popping, mainlining, freebasing with speed pipes, sucking up "sugar" in "flower" crack pipes followed by disco dancing to "Burn, Baby Burn", with weaker promotions of homosexuality.
But drug abuse and homosexuality are so complimentary with the Underground; (drug dealers deal crack in more ways than one.) Which ever "stance" these shows take: gay or drugged/drunk, their ultimate goals should be questioned.
"Walter Traprock" wrote in message news:[email]...
It is apparent that in your mind, if there is any mention made or reference to drug use or homosexuality that does not condemn it, then it promotes it.
Some people have a communist mindset, or rather they feel that every artistic endeavor - whether it be a television show, movie, novel, video game, or even a painting - should be a propaganda tool. Whatever it is must "send a message," simply portraying a negative aspect of life is unacceptable unless you send a message that what is being depicted is wrong and immoral. Crack whores are common in real life and of course South Park makes constant jokes about Mrs. Cartman being a crack whore, so the jokes are unacceptable unless Matt & Trey work include some sort of anti-drug awareness message to educate the public that whoring yourself for crack is bad.
"John Smith" wrote in message news:K_8ff.30593$[email]...
You are misusning the word "communism." The word I believe you are looking for is "dictatorial" or possibly "brainwashing."
Communism is about a system in which all property and wealth is owned by the people of that society. It has nothing to do with influencing art or the media. Mostly communism has gotten a bad name because insane dictators are more likely to choose it over capitalism (but not always.) But they only pay lip service to it. There has never been a communist country. Russia and China tried to go communist as did a number of smaller countries, but their dictators were much more interested in reaping the benefits of their dictatorship and forcing people to do what they want than actually bringing about a communist society, which wouldn't work even if they did, because almost all the people would be dissatisfied. Communism tends to work best under democracy.
Communism, like most systems, works well when it is 100% voluntary. You can't force a nation of people to accept a communist lifestyle and expect it to work. It can't. Since 99.999% of the world's population prefers private ownership of money and property, there are nowhere near enough people in any one place to make a communist country... However, there are communist societies all over the world. There are at least 50 in the US, some of which have been thriving and prospering for over 35 years.
Communism is a very efficient system because people who acccept it tend to use a lot less resources while still being effective producers. But again, it only works when it's voluntary.
Capitalist societies use the accumulation of wealth as incentive to get the people to work and produce. With communism people are motivated by the much less immediate and less concrete incentive that their work benefits society. You can see why most people prefer Capitalism!
Yeah, which is why I followed it by "or rather" because communism was just an example. All totalitarian regimes use mass culture to promote their ideological message. Notice how nothing of any cultural value came out of the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany or even North Korea today. Was there ever any Soviet television show that managed to attract a Western audience because of its cutting- edge comedy? Of course not, because everything they created was propaganda, even when they began to allow rock music they made sure the musicians were pre-approved by the state and that the lyrics contained pro-communist propaganda.
"John Smith" wrote in message news:2Y9ff.30605$[email]...
First of all, communism will NOT work, no matter whether if you have a dictator or a benevolent "council of learned elders." It just goes against human nature, and the laws of nature.
Second, this is OT, and should be in http://groups.google.com/group/alt-politics-simpsons.
"R Flowers" wrote in message news:%6aff.339332$084.211690@attbi_s22...
Well, it is obvious that you are wrong, as there are communist societies all over the world. Google "Federation of Egalitarian Comminities" to learn about a few of them. As far as your "council of learned elders" goes, I've never heard of that term used in a communist society. The ones I have visited were true democracies (unlike any country in the world, in the US we have a representative government.) Twil Oaks, if I recall correctly, makes decisions by 2/3 majority with everyone voting directly. Also, your understanding of human nature is inadequate. You are correct that MOST people don't want to give up personal ownership of material wealth and property, but human behavior covers an extremely wide range, and like I said, only a relatively tiny percentage want to live communally, but that does not alter the fact that some do.
But not off-topic enough for you to refrain from responding to it, apparently.
I was thinking of countries, not little half-assed communes that wouldn't be able to survive if they had to exist outside the bubble of good will of the United States.
And before anyone points out that there are INDEED communist countries, I did qualify by saying that it would not work. You can have a car that doesn't work, but it's still a car.
And before anyone mentions China (which does seem to work, to its people's detriment), let me qualify by saying things might take a while.
And doesn't "Federation of Egalitarian Communities" sound like one of the terroist groups from Monty Python's "Life of Brian?"
I'm just trying to promote my measly little Google group. I'm still waiting for an invitation to join that Mythbusters group that fellow was starting. Now I wish I hadn't sent him that $50.00 joining fee, at least not until I was in!
"R Flowers" wrote in message news:6Noff.340380$084.141413@attbi_s22...
Try reading my original post again, this time a little more thoroughly. I specifically said that there aren't enough people in any one place who would choose to live communally in order to make an entire nation of communists and therefore communism wouldn't work on a national level.
Again, you are wrong. There are thriving communes all over the world, on every continent. Many are based on the principle of communism, but some are based around a particular belief, tenet or religion and are set up with communal ownership of wealth and property (communism) as an efficient means of operation. Communism is one (not the only) natural state for societies of small groups of people. There are enough tribes of native people in the world living communally to show that communism does not go "against human nature."
There aren't. Never have been. The fact is that you *can't* have a communist dictatorship! Think about it. The definition of communism is that people share ownership in property and material wealth. In a dictatorship, the government owns everything, not the people. Dictatorships like to SAY they're communist and that the people DO own everything and the government is merely the custodian, but we both know the truth on that!
I already SAID communism wouldn't work on a country-wide scale in my original post. Please go back and read the entire post before commenting further.
A communist country could and would thrive IF all or nearly all the people in that country wanted to be communist, but that will not happen because most people are too interested in personal wealth and ownership of property to want to live that way. Most people all over the world want to have more stuff, and capitalism is the surest way to get that. That is why we will never see a communist country, even though these communist societies living in most if not all of them.
Sorry, I did not see your original post. I can only see communism as it is practiced, and that has been in brutal regimes. Sorry if they hijacked the term, but they sure said they were practicing communism.
As far as the small groups that are 100% voluntary, that's all well and good as long as they don't show up on my doorstep, rifle in hand, saying "Comrade, we bring wonderful news!" I wish them well. But I can't imagine a more depressing way to live.
I have to ask, where do your yourself fall on this? Some of your language suggests that you do, or would like to, live and work in these communities. Other phrases suggest that you prefer capitalism. If you don't want to answer, I'll understand.
"R Flowers" wrote in message news:Dhxff.582852$xm3.492433@attbi_s21...
Thank you for your questions and interest. Around 20 years ago I was investigating alternative lifestyles, as the rat race of earn-spend and the feeling of never having enough money was grating on my nerves. I found out about Twin Oaks and went for a three-week stay. Twin Oaks is a commune founded in around 1967 and a fairly steady population of around 80.
I admire the lifestyle and the people who are able to set aside their desire for personal ownership. Because each person uses a much smaller amount of resources than an ordinary individual living the capitalist lifestyle, their communal resources are very extensive.
I finally decided the communal lifestyle was not for me, at least not one like Twin Oaks or East Wind (more about both communities below) because it requires close interaction with people, and I am just not a people person. In addition, having my own personal property and wealth allows me to do a number of things easily that would not be possible to do easily or at all as a member of a commune. While I admire the communal lifestyle, I'm just not into living that way.
When I was at Twin Oaks, 49 hours of work was required per week per member (it sounds like a lot, but there's no commute time.) Twin Oaks is a commune bases not around a specific religion or ideology other than the core principle of communism. Government, if I recall correctly, is democracy with 2/3 majority being required to make any changes to existing policies.
There was no television at Twin Oaks when I was there, but their sister community, East Wind, had a TV and VCR and members could rent movies. I also visited East Wind as you can probably tell.
The TV at East Wind was rarely in use. Most of the folks living there seemed more interested in a number of other things, usually involving human interaction but not always. Conversation, chess and other games, and a number of other activities were popular means of entertainment. East Wind had a big party about once a week as I recall.
Thanks for your reply. I'm glad that you were civil to me when I jumped the gun and started ranting about communist states.
First, sorry to all these groups for x-posting. I would have emailed 'That Guy' on this question, but for obvious reasons, I don't think he's using his actual email address. (He might be; I haven't tried.)
Second, this is a question that I am curious about - I'm not just being cynical - what happens to a member of one of these groups that starts to let their end down? That is, they are not contributing what they can, or their fair share. Are they reprimanded in some way, asked to leave, tolerated, or what?
"R Flowers" wrote in message news:zStgf.591291$xm3.317919@attbi_s21...
Good question. There was an issue with a member not doing his share of the work while I was at one of them. If they got behind in their work a certain number of hours without a reasonable excuse, they would be asked to leave the commune. There was a set number, I seem to recall it was like 150 or 250 hours.
He may be making the usual claim communists make for the perceived failure of communism in the Soviet Union and other countries, that communism didn't fail because those countries were never really communist. In "pure" theoretical communism there is no state, or the state is a temporary artifact that dissolves once the collective communist society has been attained, and since the Soviet state continued to exist the country was never communist.
"John Smith" wrote in message news:J8qff.14681$[email]...
That is more or less part of what I'm saying, but I'm also saying that it is pretty much impossible to make a communist country, because communism only works when it's voluntary, and there aren't enough people on the planet who want to live communally to make a nation of any reasonable size. If you could find, say, fifty million people or more who really wanted to have a communist society, it would work great, but that'll NEVER happen because the number of people who would rather work for the common good than for personal gain is miniscule!
Which "laws of nature" are those, any relation to the Law of Gravity or the Law of Unintended Consequences? The assumption of "human nature" justs reflects the shortsighted thinking that the the way one knows is the only "natural" way things can & should be, which is clearly not the case. Check out:
Marx rejected the belief that such a society could be set up immediately as utopian. People would need a long period of reeducation under socialism to condition them away from the selfish orientation produced by capitalism and toward the wider perspective necessary to create communism. Many of his socialist and anarchist adversaries argued that it was impossible to achieve communism by passing through a stage which retained and even strengthened the centralized state government. Marx replied that it was impossible to leap directly into communism from socialism. What's your opinion on this question?
The most common reply is that both are impossible because "you can't change human nature." What Marx set out to prove was that not only had "human nature" changed many times in the past: there is no such thing as a static human nature. We are products of our environment, particularly of the economic system in which we live. People living under feudalism are motivated by feudal motives and think them natural and fixed, just as people living under capitalism are motivated by capitalist motives and think those natural and fixed. Occasionally in history people undergo what is now called a "paradigm shift" in values, based on an economic transformation. It is this process that he attempts to sketch in the first section of the Manifesto. If people's values have changed radically in the past, he implies, they are certain to change again radically in the future. In a socialist society it would be nonsense to say that people will always naturally tend to become owners of factories because such owners would be as impossible, and such desires would be as irrational as the desire to own the Moon. Engels spent a good deal of energy studying so-called "primitive communist" societies to show that sharing could be as natural and widespread an attitude toward wealth as acquisition. What do you know about pre-capitalist cultures that might support or undermine this argument?
"Sparky Spartacus" wrote in message news:yNyhf.7178$[email]...
It seems that some kind of market forces insert themselves into human trade and interaction into all societies, including communist and totalitarian societies. It's just like fighting water; you can divert rivers and build dams, but the water creeps into whatever little spaces you've left behind.
"R Flowers" wrote in message news:GHGhf.572047$x96.229467@attbi_s72...
Many primitive, native tribal communities all over the world live communally by sharing property and resources. Communism is apparently a more basic state to human nature, capitalism requires a higher level of conceptualization overlaying reality. Hell, even groups of animals could be said to live communally.
??? Get real. While it is true that artistic expression is strictly controlled in dictatorial regimes, to state that "nothing of any cultural value came out of the Soviet Union" is just plain ignorant. And for this you give the following laughable example:
That's it? You reduce cultural values to fucking TV shows?
How little Johnny imagines communist society works.
Okay, name anything of cultural value. And I mean ORIGINAL cultural value, not just the billions of dollars they spent subsidizing centuries-old ballet and opera (and even then their opera singers and ballet dancers had a nasty habit of defecting to the West).
Solzhenitsyn, Sholokhov, Pasternak are Nobel prize winners for literature. There are better Soviet writers than them, including Gorky, Tolstoy, Esenin, Mayakovsky and Blok, just to name a few most famous for whom at least there is a minuscule chance you heard of. I'm not holding my breath, though. A few great Soviet film directors include Eisentstein and Bondarchuk. The list of the composers include Shoshtakovich, Tchaikovsky, Khachaturian and Prokofiev.
And this has what exactly to do with cultural values?
While no one in his right mind is justifying the brutal communist regime that ruled Russia for over 80 years and suppressed all venues of human interaction, including culture, to state that "nothing of any cultural value came out of the Soviet Union" is the pinnacle of ignorance. To support this ridiculous statement with the "lack of a TV show" is just plain idiotic. You don't honestly want to get into a discussion of why this would be even theoretically, culturally and technologically impossible, do you?
Let me ask you this: have you ever heard of Czech cinema and literature? Some of the greatest writers and film-makers of our era came out of the 60's period in that country. I am willing to bet all I own that you never read a single book by Hrabal, Skvorecky or Kundera, let alone seen a Forman (Czech period) or a Menzel movie. And all of them lived in the communist system.
And then you rednecks get offended when people outside of the US consider Americans ignorant morons. Get some fucking education.
Ooh, aren't you a snotty little intelektul. As a Westerner I believe in the market and the market obviously doesn't demand all the "great" intellectual Eastern-Bloc artists you drone on about. I'll admit I haven't read any of the authors you cited, and I don't plan to. I do notice that it is not Czech movies that dominate world box office receipts, it is American movies. As incredibly intellectual, sophisticated, and culturally refined you consider these things to be, the vast majority of humanity considers them to be incredibly boring. As a result, even the pre-Soviet works like "War & Peace" aren't voluntarily read by anyone, rather we are forced to read them in high school literature class and almost all of dedicate the rest of our lives to making sure we never have to read them again.
I personally consider "South Park" to be the height of intellectualism. It is something everyone can relate to, not just a handful of ivory tower intelektuls with their lofty degrees in 14th century lesbian Eskimo poetry. The refrain about the clubbed seal symbolizing the lesbian Eskimo's repressed desire to use the club as a dildo may be utterly fascinating to you, but the rest of us don't care.
The "market"? What has the "market" got to do with artistic and cultural values? That's what we were talking about, according to you, cultural values, yes? If so, then the fact that Stephen King and John Grisham sell one thousand copies of their crap to one Nobel prize winner's is meaningless. Only an idiot determines artistic and cultural values by popularity. But seeing that you made the stupid "nothing of cultural value from USSR" remark, it is understandable that you're trying to weasel out of it without looking like an ass right now.
There's a shocker.
So fucking what? Left to their own devices, all children would immediately switch to the candy-only diet. According to you, this means that eating nothing but licorice, chocolate and chewing gum is the best thing in the world.
That depends on your definition of the word "we". I know plenty of literate, educated and intellectual people who don't share your redneck views. However, I do admit that I don't know any trailer park residents, so I can't speak for your colleagues.
That's because your intellect is severely limited, which in itself wouldn't be a tragedy if you at least attempted to widen it. On the contrary - you insist it's a virtue that you don't. It's not a shame to be ignorant - it is a shame to stay ignorant.
Who is this "we" you keep referring to? Since when are you the spokesman for anyone, or is there some trailer trash referendum that I missed? And if not, what makes you think that everyone else here or anywhere else shares your limited capacity to absorb more than one kind of intellectual stimulus?
Famous for writing about how evil the Soviets were. They imprisoned, beat, starved, censored, and finally exiled him. His works were banned in the Soviet Union until its breakup.
Solzhenitsyn alleged he was a plagarist, but even if he was not, his only major work was written in 1926, only nine years after the Soviets seized power. Hardly a product of decades of Soviet culture.
Like Solzhenitsyn, he was persecuted for his anti-Communist ideas. Like Solzhenitsyn, he couldn't get his Nobel-prize winning work published in the Soviet Union because it was critical of the Soviets.
Claiming Solzhenitsyn and Pasternak as great Soviet writers is like claiming Anne Frank as a great Nazi writer.
1868?1936, didn't even live in the Soviet Union from 1921-29. Under house arrest after 1934. Cause of death probably poison from the Soviets.
Nice example -- he died in 1910.
Yet another "Soviet writer" who didn't even spend ten years in the Soviet Union. He killed himself in 1925 and most of his work was banned for the next 40 years.
I'll grant you him, but it's interesting how all your great Soviet writers were born in the 19th century and grew up in Tsarist Russia. None of them were products of the Soviet system.
If everybody in North Korea smoked pot, wouldn't that be great?
Maybe THERE IS a tv show like, say, the Simpsons in North Korea, and actually much funnier than the Simpsons, but our capitalist media is suppressing it to hold down the workers in humorless bondage?
And yet they were read in the USSR, even though they were illegal! How about that, the punk was breaking a law!
Don't forget Virgin Soil Upturned, or rather the first volume (published as "seeds of tomorrow" in the USA), ignoring Sholokhov's second volume (published as Harvest on the Don in the USA) which is diluted. Can't say I've read it all, but found it entertaining, like the play "Bread" by Kirshon.
You read any Pasternak? I haven't.
I heard Yagoda poisoned Gorky, under orders from Trotsky, perhaps? poisoned his candy, he did.
By your measure, Stalin, Lenin and Trotsky were never Soviet Writers! They weren't really products of the soviet system.
And how about Prokofiev and Shostakovich?
("MUST CRUSH CAPITALISM") -Simpsons ref.
promotion of homosexual crime in the USSR despite it being against the law -south park ref.
The fact that ballet and opera was subsidised does not make it garbage.
No, i think it was yenukidze who insisted to yagoda that Gorky be poisoned, at least according to yagoda's trial, or something like that. i had to post this correction because i wouldn't want to mislead.
I don't remember if any of the above has ever been on south park, but Lenin was on the simpsons.
Who gives a shit, idiot? The claim was that "nothing of any cultural value came out of the Soviet Union". I listed several well known names in order to show that the claim was clearly stupid. I limited the list to writers and composers, but since the claim was about "culture", I could have just as well included sports and technology (for the history challenged among us, the Soviets were first to put a man in space, for example). So why this "imprisonment" non sequitur? Of course the USSR was a nasty-ass place where all kinds of human rights were denied on a mass scale. How does it follow from this that "nothing of any cultural value came out of [it]"? Unless, that is, one is a turd-for-brain for whom a definition of "culture" is restricted only to TV shows.
The following is a true story, and by true I mean false, they're all lies, but they're entertaining lies and in the end isn't that the real truth, the answer is no.