I’ve listened to Mélenchon when he came to Montreal, and I’ve listened to a few of his discours online afterwards. I did not hear any of the things you’re describing. I also don’t trust the accusations you’re making because it’s exactly the kind of shit neoliberal centrists have been accusing the Left of since the Iraq War, all the while actually doing all of the same things in practice. So I’m giving LFI the benefit of the doubt in general and I’m disappointed about this in particular.

Well that’s fucking disappointing for an LFI spokesperson to be saying.

That Wenders quote is incredibly stupid. It’s like saying literature or painting should stay out of politics.

<Gestures wildly at the entirety of western civilization>

The guy should be mocked about that phrase on every occasion.

Oh I get it, it’s a bit like how it’s super annoying that America is used to refer to the US and American is commonly used to mean Estadounidense. Yea that’s frustrating.

It’s Varoufakis. And yes the whole affair is extremely ridiculous.

Whataburger whataboutism whataboutit.

Sure yes.

Got an issue with that?

Your analysis focuses on the “worse off” part of the inequality equation. You are seeing “worse off” people voting far right and you’re arguing for removing that option for them.

You are ignoring the “better off” part of the inequality equation. The reason why the discourse is flooded with right wing shit is not because the “worse off” people are racists. It’s because the “better off” people want them to be racists.

See, it doesn’t matter whether today’s economy is better than in the 1990s. What matters is that today’s “better off” people have way more political power than in the 1990s. Which they use by exercising their free speech by flooding the discourse with right wing shit. Which is also why your “banning” approach just won’t work: they will just shit on you stronger and you’ll lose the next election.

The economic strategy to actually tackle fascism is not to make the worse off less worse off. As you argue, they are less worse off now than before. But that’s looking it from the wrong side. The point is to cut down the much much better off so they no longer can translate their economic power to political power.

Focus on Sauron, not on the Haradrim. Saruman, not the Dunlendings.

My whole point at the start was about the price point.

Angry guy responds misunderstanding my point, as if I were saying that we don’t need the equipment.

To that I responded “yes we need an update, no we shouldn’t do it in a dumb way. We are notoriously bad at using military budgets, so we should not be accepting anything at any price, we should be doing it in ways that create investment in our industrial base and create economies of scale to benefit the civilian economy.”

That’s where you came in, focusing on the bit “we should not be accepting anything at any price” and started listing necessary features for arctic vehicles. So you’re repeating the misunderstanding of the angry guy. You’re assuming I am saying we don’t need the equipment, whereas what I’m saying is that we do need it but we need to make sure we don’t overpay for it.

So I responded to you with “Did I debate the need of any of that capability? Like, I literally wrote “yes we need an update”.” Meaning, we agree on the premise about the need for these features. I went on to make a point about the strategic importance of cost.

And then you started talking about what else we could be doing with the money in the civilian economy. Which to me is a nonsensical question. Because if I have 10 units of money and need to spend it on military materiel and social programs, well, if I can get good materiel for 8, that means I have 2 for social programs. Or if I can get good materiel at 4, and a gun factory for 6, that will generate income for making materiel cheaper and fund social programs after, that’s even better. Just because they gave you 10 units of money for materiel now, and given you are not going to be shooting someone in the next 5 minutes it doesn’t mean that you should go buy whatever guns exist. Being smart about purchases is a good thing, actually, and I assume we share that because that’s like an obvious thing.

Which is why I say I don’t understand what we’re disagreeing about. We both agree on the need for this equipment, with these characteristics. And I assume we both agree that the government should do its best to spend the money to get this equipment in a smart way (suppress costs, invest in Canadian manufacturing, avoid waste, etc). So what the hell is the disagreement here? I still don’t understand.

============ edit: just to stupid-proof my text: Let’s go back to my dumb example: you got 10 units of money. You need to buy materiel and run social programs. Is your question “if I buy materiel for 8 units, what can I do with the other 2”? Like, assume that 8 buys you good materiel to spec, and to the required amount. And you’re left with 2 units to go. Is it the case that what you’re asking about a “clearly better use of this money for up north”? Because the answer to that to me again is obvious: improve civilian infrastructure (e.g., improve food security, healthcare, education etc). I mean fuck, even if you HAVE to use it on military equipment, the answer is still obvious: buy more equipment, more parts, and build maintenance infrastructure.

============

edit2: to make it as clear as possible:

I’m not arguing against buying these vehicles. I’m arguing that cost discipline and domestic industrial strategy should be part of the conversation. If $5.8M is market price for spec-compliant Arctic vehicles, fine. But we shouldn’t treat “it’s defense” as a blank cheque.

At this point I don’t know what we’re disagreeing about.

Honestly didn’t think the Liberals would do this. Chapeau.

Dual use technology and infrastructure is an entirely uncontroversial topic in the defense procurement sector, so I don’t know what exactly you’re trolling for here.

You know what’s cheaper than building fucking castles and living in fucking fear all the fucking time?

Paying your taxes to fund a proper welfare state. Simple as.

You can’t piss in my tea and expect good faith engagement afterwards.

Did I debate the need of any of that capability? Like, I literally wrote “yes we need an update”. The point is “we should not be accepting anything at any price”. I can’t understand how that simple common sense statement is a “bad take”. The point of military procurement, or of any procurement really, is to maximize utility while minimizing cost. Ukraine has already shown us that the drone revolution means that modern wars are now back to being wars of attrition. And in wars of attrition, cost is a strategic resource.

Ой, извини, я больше не заинтересован в общении с тобой.

Rough morning? Pipe down bud.

EDIT: Like if you hadn’t written in such a rude and abrasive way, I might have responded with something like: yes we need an update, no we shouldn’t do it in a dumb way. We are notoriously bad at using military budgets, so we should not be accepting anything at any price, we should be doing it in ways that create investment in our industrial base and create economies of scale to benefit the civilian economy. But, when I’m being told to “stfu you fuck you have no field experience”, I’m going to respond in kind. So pipe the fuck down.

What a lazy, stereotypical response.

I don’t like Olympic bean counting.

With that kind of attitude any price is unassailable. Edit: why not 6.8 million per vehicle, why not 15.8 million per vehicle, did you ever buy one?

Look, that 1 billion is being taken away from my public services and climate change adaptation programs. At the very least, I get to demand my tax dollars are not being wasted the way the Estadounidenses throw money down the military industrial complex money pit.