I’d rather have a ultralight carbon fiber donkey carriage

I thought the republicans only had to threaten a filibuster but didn’t actually have to do it. But democrats have to do it live?

The other, lesser known Hindenburg disaster is coming. Cue for democratic leaders to talk about how such acts of terrorism absolutely mustn’t be tolerated!

They’ll either keep it quite or make a huge investigation and issue out of this.

Some socialist theory defines fascism as capitalism in decline. I don’t really agree with that definition but it’s not wrong with their critique of capitalism. So if you want to learn more about that, you should look into the (few) socialist academics.

One simple example would be corporate or capitalist ownership of media or the “fifth estate”. How could you have a democracy when voters are deliberately misinformed about reality? And not because of ideology but for profit and to create better rules to increase corporate profits? What else do you expect to happen?

I don’t get how people honestly think Trump is Putin’s bitch. Trump is a malignant narcissist and impossible to be “handled”. He’ll throw anyone and everyone under the buss and had no problem escalating with Russia. The thing is that Trump like his base simply don’t give a shit about any Slavic people, even if they’re married to one. The republicans are simply not susceptible to the “justice and democracy” nonsense the liberals are selling. So Trump does whatever serves Trump and he had no problem arming the worse of the far right elements in Ukraine:

From this

Manafort duly resigned, and the RussiaGate racket erupted–a connivance that went some way to ensuring the “pro-Ukrainian agenda in American foreign policy” wasn’t compromised one iota.

Indeed, Trump’s term in office was typified by ever-escalating hostility between Washington and Moscow, the Oval Office resident going to dangerous lengths his predecessor had consistently refrained from to arm and galvanize the most reactionary and violent elements of the Ukrainian armed forces, including the notorious Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, and tear up Cold War arms control treaties, much to Moscow’s chagrin.

I never realized until now why they use the “45” so much. Just move one of the black bars and it’s a fucking swastika… And Haitians are really a stand-in for black people.

The real problem is that we allowed the plutocrats to control both the news and social media and the government. Basically the US doesn’t have a free press any more but a quasi-government controlled oligarch media. As long as these neoliberal policies continue the degradation of institutions and politics continues.

Something drastic would need to happen to purge this incredibly power imbalance from the captured state. A kind of reformation or practically a coup.

“his target was the hypocrisy of suburban life”

Oh, it’s in the definition! It’s suburban life that made the claim!

There doesn’t have to be a hypocrite for hypocrisy to exist. Maybe it was spontaneously formed by a preponderance of misinformation and dumbassery?

Of course not, the Israel lobby would get her before Biden and the democrats could shake themselves out of absolutely flabbergasted horror.

But that just makes the hypocrisy more delicious. Nobody can take the USA seriously any more.

Biden is Harris’ boss.

Exactly! Jill Stein only presumably works for Putin the war criminal, and if so in a far less stringent capacity, compared to Harris who definitely absolutely works for Biden the war criminal.

Absolutely a far worse situation! :D

I don’t care for Jill Stein and Putin. But the hypocrisy is still astounding. Lets ask Harris to call Biden a war criminal. Because he is one too. This is all just performative politics.

Would that be before or after you elect a fascist “dictator on day one”? In a country where living costs make it impossible to have kids? Where healthcare spirals out of control and people don’t call an ambulance because of fear of bankruptcy? Where 12 year kids are forced to bear their rape babies to term? You are literally on the cusp of fascism you moron.

There is plenty wrong with China and ramming boats is not nice. But your ghoulish lust for blood and destruction is disgusting your fucking fascist prick.

China bad propaganda. Instead of talking about the horrific civil war in Sudan, lets talk about ramming some ships and get the US involved in that… fucking insanity.

PS: Let me make this clear: I don’t give a shit about what China does unless it involves actual ethnic cleansing and mass rape. If we don’t give a shit about the latter, we shouldn’t “get involved” in the former.

And they name is tragedeih

The trouble is that they do need to compete with people who do pursue power (or wealth) relentlessly. So there are hard calculations. Those who don’t play don’t get power and won’t change anything. Those who do want to chance things and want other things than just power are at a (big) disadvantage. Even with the best of intention, the game plays you.

I believe the solution would be something like more rules or systems in place to focus on this kind of pursuit and call it out and dissuade it. Like develop social tools to change the rules of the game. No clue how though. Maybe AGI.

Yeah true. But like @[email protected] write it’s also that confident behavior is rewarded. And narrow minded focus on profit is more efficient than being focused on other things. And they need to compete with others on this “game” who pursue the calculus of power. So humility is a really hard sell to them. And media is not looking at politics or politicians in that way at all.

I sometimes feel this lack of emotional fortitude when thinking about reading a book, because books often break up your worldview and require you to adjust. There is a kind of intellectual pain of disillusionment.

No he’s not. But he’s also far from dumb.

‘On Stupidity’ (1937). At its heart was the idea that stupidity was not mere ‘dumbness’, not a brute lack of processing power. Dumbness, for Musil, was ‘straightforward’, indeed almost ‘honourable’. Stupidity was something very different and much more dangerous: dangerous precisely because some of the smartest people, the least dumb, were often the most stupid.

Musk is far from genius level but above average intelligence. He does have knowledge about rockets on a non-engineering level which you can see e.g. in this video talking about his starfactory (EDIT: Yes watching him in his element is kinda painful, knowing he’s a fascist)

But he and others like him focus their thinking narrow mindedly on the pursuit of profit. Every decision is based on gaining wealth. THAT is by far the bigger problem.

Besides the focus of all education towards profit seeking, technical nerds also seem to “want to” see other fields like sociology or politics or history in a simple and easy to explain way. So they seek principles or the most simplistic social theories that don’t explain anything real. Musk certainly falls into that.

Except now where he seems to go completely off the rails. Possibly a symptom of narcissism ever since he became unpopular, he’s doubling down to find new validation for his fragile ego. So yeah in that sense he is not the best example.

My point was not just about Musk but about the idea of “finding the smartest people to rule”. Because to anybody who is above intelligence that sounds smart except - stupidity can be more dangerous in intelligent people.

Why some of the smartest people can be so very stupid | Psyche Ideas

Basically many people who have the raw processing power or “IQ” to understand and analyse things can still lack certain “mental infrastructure” or education to understand things. This is especially atrocious for narrow minded people who actively rejected new information that doesn’t fit into their mental comfort zone. Musk is definitely one of them.

This is the reason why we can’t have nice things.

List the number of wars, conflicts or proxy wars China was involved with the last 50 years. I wonder what it is about those people that makes you think they are so untrustworthy and dangerous? Like contrary to actual historical facts of who is dangerous and kills people and destroys countries.