I know exactly what you’re talking about. I fucking hate that mission too. The game railroads you into their forced moral dilemma of “hey du u forgive Nelly for being a terrorist now that she’s stopping terror attacks” and I’m just sitting there like “I’ve seen the shit biotechnica does, let me blow up that net bomb myself.” And the fact that Johnny is there too saying exactly what I’m thinking and the game is still not letting you agree with him at all is ridiculous. (The faction is called the crimson road btw)

Honestly the phantom liberty side content really varies between really fun and fairly well written (the Zetatech scav mission, dazed and confused) to insanely railroaded and boring (this mission and shot by both sides comes to mind)

I don’t think you quite understood disco-elysium. I don’t have time to do a full in depth analysis, but a few things from what I remember of the path.

1.Communism does work in Disco. It should be remembered that the game was made (and primarily written) by people who hung portraits of Stalin on their wall. The games version of communism didn’t really fail, it was more crushed by the moralistic international.

2.Communism is different in Disco Elysium because it intersects with two things. The paranormal magic stuff of the universe and Harry Dubois’s booze addled brain (that might have also intersected with the magic stuff)

2a.The “magic” system mainly focuses around the Pale. In essence, it’s entropy and despair. The less people believe in the future and hope and etc., the faster the ever consuming pale grows. It essentially devours everything and starts turning anything that enters it lifeless. Communism (as expanded in “the sacred and terrible air” which is a book set in the same universe) actually pushes the pale back and repairs the world

2b.This is on your sarcasm thing. Harry believes in things, yes, but they can be very basic. He essentially believes whatever ideology he does because of his depression, so he goes so hard-core into them that even proponents of the ideology he agrees with finds him wierd. You’ll notice how communists are a little confused by his obsession with literal meat grinders. This happens in the fascist path too, where Harry literally wants to rewind time. (However, they are not presented as equals. The communist path, I feel, is actually a little hopeful, while the fascist path is downright sad and pitiful)

3.Communism in Disco is written with a kinda familiarity. Basically every leftist I’ve seen who plays or watches the game finds the sarcasm funny. “Arguing with other leftists is a core Tennant of being a communist.” And, well, doesn’t that sound familiar.

4.There aren’t any real communists in game (somewhat), and the game comments on it.

Harry:Where are the real communists

The deserter:They died, fighting for communism.

Again, the game takes place a few years after the communist revolution was crushed. In those times (similarly to Eastern Europe, where the devs are from) there aren’t many real communists. There are isolationist intellectuals, edgy radicals, wayward souls, and walking corpses. The point isn’t “oh all these commies are stupid.” The point is to find common ground with those class allies around you.

Personally, I do want you to take another crack at the game, but if you don’t want to I understand

I’m guessing its just hot air when it comes to Greenland and Canada (they’re already fairly in the US camp, why rock the boat once he’s in office) but I am worried about Panama. The US already invaded it before against Noriega, and Central America and South America has become relatively more independent and socialist in recent years.

Also thanks for catching the Mcarlson thing. I actually didn’t know you could do anything else in that mission besides give him the scrolls. (To be fair, usually the file tab is literally useless), but still, oops, sorry for missing that

Other games: “noooo you can’t kill cops they’re just good people in the le bad org”

Watch dogs two: blows up cops with mind

(Note:only issue with watch dogs is that the Zuckerberg stand in is arrested and that’s kinda treated as problem solved. But I get that killing him would’ve been a little grim for the most happy go lucky game in the series. Also I could be wrong about the general implications since it’s been a fair few years since I played it)

I think this is a fair analysis, although I’m not really sure if it really fulfills the purpose of settler colonialism (which, from my perspective, is living space. In a literal sense it does give white people an advantage in literal space to live, but it doesn’t give them an advantage in cheaper resources and petite landowning/Bourgeoisie property ownership.) But i honestly find this very convincing. (Edit: the suburbs and gated communities do help engage in stratification and alienation which might also help in solidifying the definition.)

On the tactics part, however, I would say it doesn’t matter too much. Like you said yourself, the life is becoming more and more unstastainable for obvious reasons. More and more people who used to live in suburbs are either going to have their houses crowded when they can’t afford living space, or move into traditional inner city homes.

My concern is what to do with them after a revolution. I mean yeah material conditions will change over that time (it’s certainly not happening tomorrow) it’s just…they’re very artificial, but they are homes for people. Idk

insert parenti quote about the Pax Romana here

I was writing this at like, 3 in the morning dude cut me some slack.

What I mean is that, essentially, class divides are lessened between the classes of settler colonialists. You can see this in Israel, for instance, in that white Israelis get to live in “socialist” kittibutzes (however you spell that infernal thing) while underpaid migrant workers and such do much of the work. Ergo it gives white Israelis much more economic and consequently political and social freedom compared to those oppressed people’s.

In the same way imperialism uses super exploitation to create a labor aristocracy. Settler colonialism does something similar with land. If you were a poor prole in America, an option you had was to “go west young man.” Land monopolization could be delayed in the western terroritories with the expulsion of natives, while the labor power could be bought cheaper from the waves of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, etc.

This isn’t to say that it was “good” or avtually slowed down capitalism at all, in fact I’d argue, concurrently with you, that it did indeed speed up the adoption of capitalism. Its a complete mischaricterization of my response. Class conflict and monopolization still occurred, and mainly occurred in the states settled earliest that weren’t dominated by slave owning plantations (like new York, Philadelphia, Ohio, Michigan, etc.) However i argue that it occurred to a lesser extent because of the lack of resource competition on the continent, along with the aforementioned boons of settlement and such. This is my general explanation for the lack of class consciousness for much of American history (combined with other factors of course). I use “reset” as a term in comparison to other states on the two continents. In Mexico and other Spanish colonized states, the encomienda system made lesser even the people considered Spanish who did not come from Spain. Of course they held a higher position than slaves and indigenous peoples, but the land owning class was quickly centralized (at least in comparison to the United states). And so class conflict was accelerated in these nations. I’d argue that you can even see this in the American south, where instead of Yeoman farmers you had the slave ran plantations which stifled the growth of capitalism in these areas.

Ergo, what I was arguing in my comment is that, while the legacy still exists, the American proletariat no longer profits primarily from settler colonialism. Rather I say they benefit mainly from imperialism, same as in Europe (i.e, France and Britain). So while I do think that white Americans definitely benefit from the latent boons, it is just as possible for white Americans to be as revolutionary as white Brits or French people in comparison to Israelis because the class contradictions between them and the Bourgeoisie are greater than the material differences between the white proletariat and the black, Latino, etc. population.

This is of course not ignoring the labor aristocracy created by imperialist super profits and such, and so them being revolutionary is unlikely, but not as impossible as, say, a 1900s Boer or modern Israeli.

I think my main issue with your stance here is that it’s based much more in absolutism than actual material conditions.

What does settler colonialism provide for its benefittors? Well, as they themselves will often say, land. I resent the term “reset” but settler colonialism is the closest humanity gets to actually turning back time in class society. It slows down the centralization of capitalism and allows for the creation of a large petite landowning population. Of course as well it makes room for large immigrant populations who are generally more friendly to being the exploited proletariat than either the conquered peoples or the settling population.

The problem is, how much does the American proletariat benefit from these things today? How easy is it for a American proletariat to gain land, how many resources remain completely untapped and can be exploited to increase the rate of profit? Etc.

This isn’t to say that America and Americans don’t benefit from the legacy of settler colonialism, but I agree with the CPUSA that it is not the primary contradiction. It certainly is an existing contradiction, but it isn’t the primary one that determines the material conditions of the American proletariat.