@debrecenisrac46.bsky.social: That's true, at the time only party functionaries had cars. On the other thing, that was about variety, not fully stocked shelves.

Your regular reminder that I personally loathe Noam Chomsky for the reprehensible things he said in apologia for the Khmer Rouge - and has never really taken back. He was no friend to the Cambodian people. (Not to mention his stance on Ukraine).

Makes me sad that folks on the left like him, ngl.

It does indicate someone who perhaps has not done nearly as much research as they like to think they have

It's a bit funny because how quick the left usually is to cut people loose for failing purity tests, but there's always the few who manage to get into the state of grace where the test must be wrong.

Tbh the left is pretty fucking awful at enforcing the “supporting Russia/genocides committed by vaguely leftist seeming countries” purity test nowadays

I kind of got supporting Russia when it was a purportedly communist state, but now that it's basically a kleptocracy, what's the point?

I mean ... supporting Russia when it was a purportedly communist state was also really fucking dumb

I really, really winds me up with folks valorize the USSR. I really do not think most folks understand the sheer scale of horror and baseline violence society operated under, how totally pervasive the kleptocracy was, how incompetent it was, how vicious it was, or how nationalistic and expansionist.

my advisor grew up in the soviet union, he was in the science world so he played by a laxer set of rules (his beatles album that he bought on the black market with a month's salary would be confiscated but he wouldn't be thrown into prison for it, for instance), and it still sounded horrible

My aunt visiting from the Baltics to the USA in the 70s/80s broke down and cried when she saw American grocery stores, she couldn't believe it. An uncle was tortured by Soviets, and lived in paranoid fear in the USA thereafter. Just two small examples of many in my family. Really gets to me.

My grandfather had a story: he helped a lady he knew pick up her aunt who had gotten to the US from Hungary in the 50s - they drove in a car - they went to the store to pick up some stuff - and when the new arrival saw what was in the store, saw my grandpa had a car, asked the lady: "COMMISSAR???"

That's true, at the time only party functionaries had cars. On the other thing, that was about variety, not fully stocked shelves.

Yeah, I assume the aunt in this story saw a neat-pressed young man, with a new looking car, who dropped by a store which was full of a range of diverse goods, and assumed he must have juice. But in America you don't need juice for that. Just the money. May the money spread more evenly.

We agree but I can't look past the fact how Hungary was postfeudal until 1945 hence why people had no mindset for ordinary non nobles having money.

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