Over July 4th I went to visit family and argued with some chuds. The conversation turned to the Civil War and lost cause nonsense. Somebody had brought up the treatment of slaves and democracy in the context of Lincoln being a tyrant. I then had the brilliant idea that the freed slaves should have been allowed to vote on what to do with their former owners.
I kept bringing up that this would be the most democratic and American thing to do and that only the bad slave owners would be killed. I just kept repeating that all the good masters who treated their slaves well would have their slaves vote to keep things as they are. The strange thing is, the guys who were talking about how well southerners treated their slaves didn't say that the former slaves would have voted to keep things as they were. Even past all their ideology they realized that that just wasn't something that would happen.
I didn't bring up that I was inspired by Mao.
Weaponizing “democratic” or common “American” (in my case, “Canadian”) values to own libs or chuds is never not fun and hilarious
Competition, meritocracy, freedom, democracy, etc…. Capitalism’s contradictions makes it kinda easy
I really think you're onto something here. "Heightening the contradictions" isn't something that only applies to capitalism but also to the systems that support it.