420blazeit69 [he/him] @ 420blazeit69 @hexbear.net

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15

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1,675

Joined

4 yr. ago

At this point your faced with 2 options. Assassination or choosing the lesser evil.

The most absurd false dichotomy I've seen in a while, nice.

"Honestly the first choice just makes you the greater evil."

"Killing Hitler just makes you worse than Hitler" -- outstanding logic. Literally everyone outside of hardcore pacifists would agree there are certain politicians that it is OK to assassinate.

the inspectors said they share only what they can see on the outside of the mail; the Fourth Amendment requires them to get a warrant to peek inside.

Not too egregious (at least the part they're telling us!). This is best filed under "imagine the coverage if China did this."

Yeah, is there a source on this? The tweet just has a photo and I don't have twitter so I can't tell if there's anything in the comments.

I think you have a little of that, and a little of this showing that the giga-rich didn't get that way because they are these perfect human multi-specialty geniuses like they all claim.

Sure, maybe they're pretty bright in one or two areas. Many successful people are. But they also do real stupid, shortsighted shit like this all the time. They got as rich as they did not on merit, but on family wealth, luck, and exploiting the labor of others.

I'd imagine, but I found this interesting:

Currently the maximum Q value achieved by humans is 1.53.

Had no idea someone had managed to get more energy out of a fusion device than they put in. Must have been unable to sustain it for any significant length of time, but still seems important.

He's still not good, but he's a rational actor. The west is living in the world of what plays well in the media; he's at least living in reality.

Bicycle posting is one of the best types of posting on here

It's a decently prominent line of leftist thinking, going at least back to Angela Davis. I agree it's a bad talking point, though. Virtually no one means abolition abolition, so any conversation on the topic immediately gets sidetracked with a semantic debate. It's also silly to re-define what abolition means then use it as a slogan, especially when there's a closely related conversation about how we didn't actually abolish slavery due to the 13th amendment carve-out for prisoners.

Mob justice isn't a good idea, either. The Cultural Revolution is widely regarded as a bad time.

I'm not a prison abolitionist

Yeah, it's good to highlight ways people can help (or at least get out of the way) that don't require as much of a commitment. Because not everyone is fully committed, at least not at first, and doing a little can lead to doing more.

I don't think that's true, unfortunately. A lot of people will acknowledge all sorts of injustices, but then they get to this choice:

1. Try to do something about it, despite no clear path, a ton of failed attempts before you, and the knowledge that any serious effort will require sacrificing time and money, or maybe even more. Or,
2. Fire up that grill, baby, and try to enjoy what you can in life.

And choose Option 2.

I can fix h-

Weird take -- people get charged with arson all the time, and a building burning down always gets investigated because it's a huge danger and there's a lot of insurance money on the line.

There's a chance he skates on this, but it's far from a guarantee.

so they take/sell your house by force

It's a forced sale -- they take your house but pay you market value for it. And it can only occur after you get an opportunity to oppose it in court.

It's one of those things that can be done better or worse, but it's a power every state has because there are material constraints on where public works can be built.

they'll openly say that america is great because "we" dominate the globe through force and that is what makes our lives great and it needs to stay that way

I don't think it's quite this, certainly not in lib circles, and I don't think it's even common among Republicans. The justification for empire comes more in the form of "every non-ally is an evil authoritarian nightmare country that's impoverished and backward and has a rogue government that will kill untold numbers of people because they're evil." And would you rather have us running the show, or them?? Throw in a sprinkling of "they will greet us as liberators" where appropriate.

There's a real resistance to thinking of America as an empire. A ton of propaganda effort is poured into the idea that America is fundamentally good, and the bad parts were either isolated lapses or regrettably necessary to keep the barbarian foreigners from winning.

USA is special in their minds because of how willingly cruel we can be/have been.

It's very much the opposite. The propaganda narrative of American Exceptionalism is that the U.S. is morally superior. We aren't peasants ruled by some far off king, we rule ourselves with a democracy! Society isn't dominated by aristocratic failsons, your success or failure is based on merit! There's so much opportunity here, anyone can make it if they work hard! Capitalism raises all boats! We never had anything so gauche as an empire, we managed a bunch of territory for a while but either granted them independence or made them states! We're the only country to win a bunch of land after a major war and give most of it up!

Of course the reality is far different, but that's the American Exceptionalism narrative. The whole idea is that we aren't just another great power, we're the good guys. A shining city on a hill.

Today, Biden could:

• End all U.S. military support for Israel
• Veto any bill that contains one cent of funding for Israel
• Publically call a genocide a genocide
• Direct U.S. agencies to cancel contracts with companies that work with Israel, citing existing U.S. human rights laws
• Join the ICJ case against Israel
• Arrest Netanyahu's son Yair, who's just chilling in Miami
• Direct the National Guard to protect anti-genocide protesters
• Clean house at the State Department and other NatSec agencies to fire the people who have supported this genocide most vociferously
• Use the vast overseas surveillance power of the U.S. to document Israeli atrocities

How quickly would this stop?

And that's not even considering options like a decapitation strike on the Israeli government, which should absolutely be on the table to stop a genocide.

That lady is a casualty of the right-wing media sphere. She didn't come up with shit like bikes causing four-mile traffic jams; she was propagandized. She bears some responsibility for being gullible, but what kind of tools did her civics class give her to see through this?

Under a better government, she'd have started with better education and there wouldn't be a firehose of reactionary media pointed at her 24/7.