cfgaussian

My coworkers are fighting to be able to wear hijabs

Which shows that this was never about freedom for women to dress however they want. I don't know how it is in the US but all over Europe Muslim women have to constantly fight against societal and sometimes legal discrimination against wearing the hijab. Even when the state doesn't get involved like it does in France, you still have to deal with other people around you looking at you with either fear or disgust and treating you differently because of how you choose to dress, not to mention the fact that sometimes there are outright physical attacks. Westerners don't want women to dress the way women want, they want women to dress the way western men want them to.

Blumenthal's anti-vax views are cringe, but i don't see the problem with this tweet (assuming that it's true, which feel free to correct me if it's not) What is worse, having some idiot grifter at your anti-imperialist event, or marching alongside weapons manufacturers who are fueling imperialist wars and a genocide? I'm not saying PSL shouldn't take part in a march for a good cause just because these evil organizations are trying to co-opt it, but it does seem hypocritical to attack others with guilt by association while doing worse yourself.

Why?

Communism is not necessarily totally incompatible with religion on a superficial level (though the different philosophical frameworks, materialism vs idealism, obviously will clash at some point), and in particular there are social elements in many religions, including in Christianity and Islam, that communists would approve of.

That being said the Catholic church is a deeply reactionary institution. They cooperated with the Nazis and were instrumental in destroying socialism in some eastern European countries, most notably Poland. The same goes for the Orthodox church to a lesser extent.

While personal religious beliefs can be progressive, institutionalized religion is almost always inherently reactionary. Exceptions such as liberation theology in Latin America exist but are rare (another positive example is the tradition of resistance struggle within Shia Islam).

Yeah, the part about the historical separation is definitely true. As for crusades, i think their impact on the game is really pretty minimal. I've always thought the name of the series doesn't really fit with what you actually end up playing most of the time. I mean you can play entire campaigns without ever really having to interact with an actual Crusade crusade depending on where and when you start.

Plus, crusades aren't even really that special because any at least somewhat militant faith gets its own version of holy wars, so in a way it's equal opportunity problematic (though that in itself could be criticized as a form of propaganda by projection, because in reality most of the rest of the world did NOT have their own version of the crusades).

I would say the most problematic aspect of CK is that by its very nature it puts aristocratic elites ("noble" families) in the driver's seat of history. It implicitly adopts a "great man theory" view on (pseudo-)history, and does it more so than any other Paradox grand strategy title. And that's not really fixable, it's built into the DNA of the game, as its whole gimmick is that it's character/roleplay driven.

You just have to be aware that what you're playing is closer to fantasy than actual history. That's probably also why it lends itself so well to fantasy mods.

Judging by those names i'd say Asia Times is more a brand of crackers than a news outlet.

It's not a big problem because landless adventurer NPCs don't really do anything atm, but the game doesn't pause when you get a blackmail and it is really bad to suddenly have your screen obscured by a popup window while in-game time is still passing.

They may be rare but based USians do exist.

I think the game currently has a problem with landless characters blackmailing you too often, but otherwise the new plot system seems fine.

I know next to nothing about the Vic series, but isn't it sort of an imperialism simulator?

Honestly though, despite the incest and murder memes CK is probably the least problematic Paradox grand strategy title and has one of the less toxic fanbases, relatively speaking. HOI attracts straight up Nazis and propagates anti-communist myths, while EU is deeply eurocentric and literally rewards you for doing colonialism.

This requires some dialectical thinking. Seeing KMT as blanket bad in all circumstances is too simplistic. Depending on the historical context they are also able to fulfil a positive role. Mao recognized this and allied with them in the context of national liberation. When the context changed, when they became an imperialist proxy and therefore an obstacle to liberation, then the calculus also changed. Also, there were huge defections from the left wing of the KMT to the People's Liberation Army. As for nationalism in China, that requires much the same kind of dialectical approach. Marxists have long recognized that nationalism can have a progressive character in circumstances of anti-imperialist/anti-colonialist struggle.