MUH 40 MILLION

You don't need to be stupid to be wrong. A lot of scientific fields (in the social sciences at least) are very contentious and lack any coherent consensus. Often, the consensus is wrong. Economics is one such field (as we all know), and international relations is another. The result is that you could have absolutely brilliant minds making fatal mistakes simply because they've been taught a fallacious theory in university, interpreted something wrong, or similar.
Smart people are in no way immune to ideology either.

Yeah but "mistakes" for the country aren't necessarily mistakes for the beneficiaries. Sure, Iraq could be a "mistake", but a select few benefited immensely off the war. This leads onto another point, the narrative that we share the same consequences and interests of the elite. That our suffering is also their suffering, and vi versa. Simply not true. We as proles see the elite as being "dumb" or erronous in some manner because their behaviour is detrimental to the working class. But they're working in their interests, we should never forget that.

This is undeniably true, and we should never forget the divergence and conflict of interests between the different classes and economic actors. That said, I don't doubt that many of the bourgie political leaders of today actually believe they have the people's best interest at heart, where I guess the self-deception of ideology comes into play, enabling them to fuck over the common folk supposedly for the greater "common good". And then you have people like John Bolton who obviously don't give a fuck.

Man the bourgeois of old didn't give a single fuck about the poor. What convinces you that the modern day elite aren't manipulative, uncaring cunts too? Is it literally just words?

A lot of them are manipulative uncaring cunts (especially since the capitalist and political systems select for those traits), but many aren't. I just feel like a lot of nuance gets lost in all the rhetoric (I'm often guilty of this too when shitposting which i do 90% of the time). But that literally doesn't matter. At the end of the day I'm not an anti-capitalist because the elites are mean, but mainly because I'm convinced capitalism is an existential threat to our species.

Which is also a point I think many would find more palatable. If you go around saying that all elites are scum of the Earth and deserves the gulag (and many do), you'll always have someone pointing out how this or that capitalist is a virtuous person and yadda yadda yadda.

The point should rather be that the abolishment of capitalism is an absolute necessity, not something we engage in out of revenge fantasies against porky.

I don't really care about their personal behaviour either, or for how "mean" they are. What I was getting at was something larger, that liberalism is all about image, and it still tricks a great many people including leftists. So when I was saying that these people ARE smart and malicious, even though they give off a clumsy or harmless vibe, it's just them exhibiting the dissonance of their system as a whole. Rainbow capitalism and all that. You should treat capitalism and its agents as actual threats instead of "stupid people who accidentally got into positions of power". It's like the entire George Bush criticism that fucks me off.

Stop right there, negro!

Attached: negroes beware.jpg (500x710, 114.63K)

I think I get where you're coming from now, and I completely agree that we shouldn't trivialize apparently harmless bourgie politicians or the roles they play in the system. I guess the balancing act is in making clear the contradiction between their interests and actions and the interests of the working class as a whole without us appearing like bloodthirsty jacobin avengers.

But that's less than the proprted number we killed!?
Even then the earth is communist so that is also going under the tally.