English transcript

Political maturity is realizing the commies

were correct. Political maturity is finally

admitting to yourself that the angriest, most

disconcerting communist you've ever met was

pretty much right about everything. If you learn

enough, stay humble enough, and pay close enough

attention, eventually that's what happens. You

realize that, generally speaking, the really

high-octane commies have the most lucid understanding

of the world out of any group out there. And

the only reason this wasn't always obvious to

you was because you live under a capitalist

power structure which aggressively indoctrinates

its populace from birth into believing that

communism is no-no bad-bad. They have the most

lucid and correct understanding of capitalism.

They have the most lucid and correct understanding

of imperialist extraction. They have the most

lucid and correct understanding of Western warmongering,

global power dynamics, white supremacy, institutional

racism and misogyny. That's why they keep being

proven right, about everything from US military

actions, to the fascism of the far right, to

the abusive nature of the so-called moderate

liberal, to the moral depravity of billionaires

and the capitalist class. It's still an open

question how best to give rise to their vision

for the world, because it would be a world which

has never existed before, and because all their

efforts to build that world have consistently

been aggressively assaulted and sabotaged by

the capitalist empire. But no group's criticisms

of the current status quo world order are more

incisive and accurate than theirs. If you've

spent your life moving in sufficiently diverse

and interesting circles, you've encountered

outspoken Marxists in the past. What they said

may have made you uncomfortable at the time,

either because you were still too indoctrinated

into the worldview of the capitalist empire,

or because you were still too interested in

youthful frivolity to grapple with the serious

subjects they were discussing. And eventually

you realize that the discomfort you were experiencing

is called cognitive dissonance, which is what

being wrong feels like. Maybe you got annoyed

because they took their politics way too seriously

and made it their whole thing, constantly pointing

out the injustices and abuses in whatever subject

came up when you were just trying to relax and

enjoy life. And eventually you realize that

the only reason you were able to just drift

along without thinking about politics too much

was because your worldview was sufficiently

aligned with the political status quo to keep

you from noticing all the exploitation, oppression,

injustice and propaganda which pervades every

aspect of our society. You didn't notice it

because it didn't clash with your understanding

of the world at the time. If you keep your mind

open, keep learning about the world, stay humble

enough to see your errors and course-correct

accordingly, you eventually see through all

those distortions and understand that you had

the commies all wrong. There are still individual

communists who get things wrong, of course,

and like most people in this psychologically

disordered world, a lot of them are emotional

train wrecks who still need to do a lot of inner

healing. But there is no group which perceives

the abusive dynamics of this civilization with

a greater degree of intellectual clarity as

a whole.