771–780 of 803 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Baby Assassins sounds interesting, I see there’s a few movies with that name from the past few years, maybe some are sequels I’m not sure. Is the one you’re talking about from 2021 with director Yugo Sakamoto?
That’s the one https://m.imdb.com/title/tt15028452/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk There is a sequel, but I haven’t watched it yet
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Interesting. I suppose I was not wrong with my assumptions. More to the point, what do you think led to Trump's government? What leads to fascism? Discontent stemming from decades of neoliberalist policies, that left many impoverished and without social nets to catch them. Neoliberalism doesn't sell anymore, so the choice is now between social-democracy and far right populism. Guess which one the capital class pref…
It is an interesting question and we may be actually getting to a more interesting piece of this conversation ( I was mildly concerned we will not be able to get there ). I think opportunity met an opportunist, but that may be tad too glib. Allow me to elaborate as it partially builds on what you wrote. Way back when I remember going on a mini vacation driving through some states, which included Ohio, West Virginia a…
IMO, this is an extremely shallow understanding of politics and ignores the material forces that led to someone like Trump getting into power.
You can't look at the US in a vacuum. What is happening here has happened dozens of times elsewhere. Was Orban elected because the opposition was too woke? Was Mussolini elected because the opposition was too progressive? Of course not.
Trump voters have a really warped perception of the democrats, thanks to decades of well-funded propaganda. They believe the neoliberal party that holds mildy rainbow-capitalist social views is actually a "degenerate trans gang" out to trans their kids or whatever.
In truth, the democrats are socially very mild compared to actually progressive parties around the world. Blaming their mild social policies instead of the massive campaigns of disinformation that made them pass for extremists is ludicrous.
Here: I'll posit that if the democrats actually fixed the country through more corporate taxes, socialized universal healthcare, free university and such, we'd have heard none of Trump. Without them ever needing to abandon their social policies.
But they did not, as they too rely on corporate donors and are too afraid to lose their support by addressing the actual issues this country faces: growing inequalities, etc.
> After first Trump win, all the networks tried to do attempt some soul searching with added bonus of melodramatic hand wringing ( whether it was sincere or theater, I leave up to you to interpret ) on how could this have happened
Yes, liberal media is condemned to be forever clueless, as they can't reason about the prevalence of money in US politics, and couldn't foresee the very obvious consequences of the wealthy channeling hundreds of billions of dollars toward promoting right-wing populism.
> You might not be wrong here. However, I would like you to entertain the alternative, because I am not sure you did that in any kind of serious way. "They go low, we go high" at its core is adherence to the existing standard, which is basically what the society is built around. If you tell me that standard is degrading. Maybe the degradation does not quite make it null and void, but it further erodes existing standards eventually leading to societal collapse and a vacuum and I hope that you do understand that humans are not exactly great in a vacuum.
For better or worse, I believe the only solution is for an hypothetical economically progressive party to "play dirty", that is to say employ a form of "left-wing populism".
Bernie has been kind of successful in his "oligarchy tour", redirecting the anger of Americans from minorites and unto the billionaires, which largely contribute to this country's actual issues for one.
There is no fixing this mess through an appeal to "centrism" or "status quo".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is an interesting question and we may be actually getting to a more interesting piece of this conversation ( I was mildly concerned we will not be able to get there ). I think opportunity met an opportunist, but that may be tad too glib. Allow me to elaborate as it partially builds on what you wrote. Way back when I remember going on a mini vacation driving through some states, which included Ohio, West Virginia a…
If I understand you well, you seem to believe that Trump's government is a reaction to the democrats going too... what? Too woke? Too progressive? IMO, this is an extremely shallow understanding of politics and ignores the material forces that led to someone like Trump getting into power. You can't look at the US in a vacuum. What is happening here has happened dozens of times elsewhere. Was Orban elected because the…
I give him credit. He made those policies 'cool' among young people. Were it not for his age, he would have been a real threat to the existing power centers.
Eh, best I can say is that whatever they are doing now is definitely not working well. We might be in disagreement about the way, but I would not mind being on the 'winning side' for once.
I do not think you are wrong about any of this, but it is impossible to say for sure one way or another.
The interesting part here is that the democrat party was partly forced to consider changing their stances a little as a result of that propaganda. The internal party conversation still seems to be ongoing, but the impact has been clear ( calls to 'not focus' on minorities that are too small to matter and too, whats a good word, visible to the general population ).
I do not claim to be some political whiz, but I am still somewhat attuned to the local 'vibe'. As always, it is possible that I simply see what I want to see and just form satisfying explanation afterwards, but I did see some of the things coming. So even if it is shallow, it appears to work as a heuristic more often than not. I admit that sometimes I wish it did not.
That said, if you can offer a counter explanation of the forces at play, I am all ears. Believe it or not, I am actually listening now.
Hmm, close. I think we can start with that. Democrats were in a weird spot, because, as you noted, they were putting a facade of a working man's party, while getting fairly cozy with interests that do not exactly align with those. From that perspective alone, internal conflicts of interests were inevitable. That helped build some of the discontent you mentioned ( and help build narrative about uniparty and bolster both sides are the same conversations ).
That said, to your point about going too woke, it did not help with people already being in a rather foul mood over being on the wrong end of the stick of economic policies and, as as results, were looking for something to focus that anger on. And the right was able to find at least two very viable scapegoats, who were both explicitly supported by the democratic party ( immigrants and trans ).
So in a sense, dems went too far on dumb stuff, while reps were playing for keeps.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who controls the media - controls the population. Who controls the population controls the government. Every democracy will become oligarchy eventually if we don't regulate social media. Most of them won't even be controlled domestically (because the media are global). There's like 50 people who decide 99% of information people consume worldwide. Or at least what algorithm should decide. These people know what power…
An oligarchy is only one of many outcomes. We could end up with a totalitarian state, feudalism, or a monarchy to name a few. I do agree, though, that media plays a large role and (should) hold a strong responsibility for where we end up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just a suggestion but make the canary/alias less obvious. Companies caught onto this and are treating aliases with their name in it as "fraud" which is of course a load of crap. That is how tractor supply stole a gift card from me so I have turned many of their customers away from them and they have lost exponentially more than they stole from me. So now I use realistic looking aliases and just have my own lookup tab…
Thanks for the heads up. It hasn't caused me any issues yet but if it does, I will think long and hard about whether I want to use that service.
> It hasn't caused me any issues yet [...]
Ugh, I ran into this earlier this year when creating an Airbnb account. I tried registering with "airbnb_[randomcode]@[mydomain.com]" and was confused when account creation would error out with an unhelpful error message (don't remember what exactly). After checking with multiple browsers to make sure it's not some browser or uBlock Origin problem, I suspected it might have something to do with the "airbnb" in the alias. Sure enough, I created some temporary alias without "airbnb" in it and ... it worked. I wasn't willing to tolerate their sh— "load of crap" though, so once the account was created I tried to change the email back to "airbnb_[randomcode]@[mydomain.com]" and ... it worked. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They are two different things, though. One is actually producing content, and the others deciding which content host and share. And there are all kinds of various legal and illegal combinations, here. For instance maybe they decide that it's okay to host Nazi content, something that is absolutely protected under the first amendment. Or maybe they decide that it's not okay to host Nazi content, even though it's defini…
I think using the example of Nazi content and the first amendment is a distraction. What’s relevant is speech that is not legally protected. Should the New York Times have civil libel liability for what they publish in a newspaper? Should Google have civil libel liability for what they publish on YouTube?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In March 2020, an Arizona man died and his wife was hospitalized after ingesting chloroquine phosphate, a substance used in fish tanks to clean aquariums, in an attempt to prevent or treat COVID-19. They reportedly mixed the substance with liquid and drank it, experiencing immediate effects. The man's wife told NBC News she had seen televised briefings where President Trump discussed the potential benefits of chloroq…
I don't like the president, but I don't remember seeing him say to take chloroquine phosphate tablets. I definitely heard him say that he though hydroxychloroquine might me a possible treatment, presumably referring to hydroxychloroquine sulfate tablets. More importantly though, the then (and unfortunately now) president isn't a doctor and didn't directly tell people to take it. If a person heard that and decided to…
Let's say for example the President keeps his yap shut about hydroxychloroquine or drinking bleach [0] etc and 10 people listening to Alex Jones die taking it because they are frightened. Now lets say POTUS goes on televised News and suggest doing dangerous things to 100 times the size of Alex Jones's audience and we end up with 1000 needless deaths of people that may not get COVID anyway. I expect Alex Jones to be an irresponsible sleaze bag but POTUS should have some restraint/intelligence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In March 2020, an Arizona man died and his wife was hospitalized after ingesting chloroquine phosphate, a substance used in fish tanks to clean aquariums, in an attempt to prevent or treat COVID-19. They reportedly mixed the substance with liquid and drank it, experiencing immediate effects. The man's wife told NBC News she had seen televised briefings where President Trump discussed the potential benefits of chloroq…
I don't like the president, but I don't remember seeing him say to take chloroquine phosphate tablets. I definitely heard him say that he though hydroxychloroquine might me a possible treatment, presumably referring to hydroxychloroquine sulfate tablets. More importantly though, the then (and unfortunately now) president isn't a doctor and didn't directly tell people to take it. If a person heard that and decided to…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Novavax's vaccine was also spike-protein-only, the difference between theirs and the mRNA ones was they created it artificially in moths then extracted it for the vaccine instead of generating inside the human body.
No, it was a vector vaccine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I understand you well, you seem to believe that Trump's government is a reaction to the democrats going too... what? Too woke? Too progressive? IMO, this is an extremely shallow understanding of politics and ignores the material forces that led to someone like Trump getting into power. You can't look at the US in a vacuum. What is happening here has happened dozens of times elsewhere. Was Orban elected because the…
I personally do not think it can be fixed in its current form, which is primarily why I argue to maintain what we do have. I give him credit. He made those policies 'cool' among young people. Were it not for his age, he would have been a real threat to the existing power centers. Eh, best I can say is that whatever they are doing now is definitely not working well. We might be in disagreement about the way, but I wou…
There are legitimate critics of the democratic party, like their abandon of class matters, or how hollow their social militantism feels because of it. None of those are the reasons the dems are bad mouthed in conservative media.
Democrats can't win by appealing to an ever-elusive and shifting "center". They will forever be the party of child-eating degenerates to the people that voted for Trump, no matter how many causes they drop.
> That said, if you can offer a counter explanation of the forces at play, I am all ears. Believe it or not, I am actually listening now.
I didn't invent most of my ideas on fascism. I look into history books and attempt to apply the lessons of the past on our current situation. Here's a summary of what I think I have learned:
While fascism is an internally inconsistent ideology, it does exhibit consistent aspects. One of them is support from the capitalist class. For example, this connects Mussolini, Hitler, Putin, Trump...
Once the current liberal-democratic model starts malfunctioning because of its internal contradictions* (and it always does), the mask slips and the wealthy start supporting far right populism.
This is the only way for them to prevent the rise of socialism (by redirecting the middle class' anger toward minorities) while keeping on deregulating and privatizing the economy.
Evidently, this doesn't fix anything and only makes things worse, which is part of why fascism always fails in the end, although that can take a relatively long time.
I don't believe there's anything to be done but wait, once the cogs of the terrible machine are set in motion. Wether we're here yet, I do not claim to know.
* Imbalance of power between classes. Capital always gets his ways, and so the material conditions of the rest of the population are left to slowly degrade.
---
Last time, America got lucky in the person of FDR (and what he represented). Through the New Deal, he was able to rekindle the flailing economy by essentially pumping money to the working class, curbing discontent. At least for a time. The wealthy of the time absolutely didn't like that, and attempts on his life were made.
He didn't actually fix the underlying issues though, and 80 years later, we're back to square one.