Finally

Worse horses

This is some seriously weak shit. The only connection is that the poster “teases” that he’s Elon Musk. Speaking as Beyoncè, even if he outright said “I am Elon Musk” it still wouldn’t be strong evidence, but he didn’t even say that, he just posted a bunch of random gibberish that some people read as metaphorically suggesting a connection.

This is QAnon conspiracy nonsense, and repeating it on the pretext of “I’m not saying this, I’m just talking about what other people are saying” is still spreading it.

I mean, sure, maybe this account was Elon Musk in the same way Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer, but like, it’s not actually.

Slippery slope arguments aren’t inherently fallicious.

The main thing is the bigotry and making marginalized people feel unwelcome and unsafe. Having trans people and Nazis existing in the same space isn’t really tenable, in practice, most marginalized people would rather be in a space where their existence and basic rights aren’t up for debate and where they won’t receive slurs and threats of violence. So the question is, who would you rather have in your community, oppressor or oppressed?

Of course, this person applies this standard blindly by including “tankies” as “right-wingers.” She’s just abusing a valid argument by using it to dismiss any perspective she doesn’t like, left or right, bigoted or accepting, bad faith or good faith, as “right-wing.”

Vietnam. Decent enough government and standard of living, and they whooped America’s ass so bad that it’d be political suicide to go back there. I mean, what kind of timeline would we have to be on for someone to be stupid enough to… hmm.

Considering that fucking Greenland is caught up in it now, idk that anywhere is safe.

I’ll believe Trump actually intends to cut the military when he does it and not a minute sooner. People on both sides like to pretend he’s an isolationist but military spending only went up in his first term. Likely, he’s just going to pivot to China.

Ofc it’s congress who sets the budget so he can just quietly sign off on the increases the same way he quietly gives tax cuts to the rich.

What they think they’re doing and what they’re actually doing are two different questions. What they’re aiming to do is keep things trucking along while making as much profit as possible, more or less the same as most politicians, but with a bit more of a realpolitic approach. There is no long term plan, and that goes for basically anyone remotely near to the levers of power. What we have is a system of competing groups all singularly focused on maximizing their profits for the next quarter, nobody’s actually at the helm and it’s an open question whether anyone could take the helm and alter the course from the natural progression determined by systemic forces.

Where we are actually headed, regardless of who’s in charge, is a matter of several inconvertible facts. First, the US is clearly in decline and will eventually lost its spot as global hegemon, at this point, there is a serious risk that it will start WWIII in response, as Americans are not ones to accept defeat gracefully. Second, climate change will render more and more areas in developing nations unstable or uninhabitable, causing a major refugee crisis which has already started and is going to get considerably worse. What measures will be taken to maintain the dividing lines that keep people from poor countries out of rich countries is another question, and it may well be answered with genocide.

If, by some miracle, cooler heads prevail and we don’t start WWIII, and you’re lucky enough to have been born in a rich country, then we will likely just see things get gradually and progressively worse. But it will be the kind of apocalypse where you still have to go to work. Day to day life will carry on, just with more uncomfortable things you have to push out of mind, more frequent shootings, the reemergence of all kinds diseases and more pandemics that you’ll be expected to work through. There isn’t going to be a tipping point that causes a revolution, nor are the elites going to unveil a secret plot to make everyone eat bugs or whatever. You’re just going to be working longer hours, affording less, retiring later (if at all), and probably having to navigate and even more bullshit process for applying for jobs. Going further into this sort of “boring dystopia” is almost certainly where we’re headed.

The two most important political priorities, arguably the only two priorities that really matter, are demilitarization andopposing war with China, and opposing genocide of foreigners/refugees/immigrants. These are the things we will be facing, perhaps within the next 10 years (but if not then certainly later), and if we aren’t able to organize resistance along those lines, things are going to get very ugly. Actually stopping the decline is very unrealistic/implausible and has been for some time.

I was raised Catholic but rejected it pretty much immediately when I reached the age of reason (~13 or so).

So all I have to do is listen to and obey everything my parents, teachers, and religious leaders tell me and I’ll go to heaven, but, if I had been born into a Muslim family in one of the countries we were bombing, doing that would get me sent to Hell and I need to reject everything I was taught, get on a plane, randomly walk into the right church, and believe everything they tell me. Oh, and if I was like some random Chinese farmer a thousand years before planes were invented, I guess I’m just fucked. Yeah somehow I don’t believe that an all-good perfectly-just god would have every soul play fucking roulette to determine what their chances in life will be of getting into heaven.

It wasn’t until much later that I learned about the history of this contradiction, which goes back to a 400’s debate between Augustine and Pelagius regarding original sin. Pelagius argued that it was theoretically possible, but incredibly difficult, to live a life free of sin and therefore not need Jesus’ forgiveness. He was also critical of the way Christians were integrating with the Roman empire, with all the same practices but now the social climbers called themselves Christian to win the emperor’s favor while otherwise doing all the same shit they would otherwise. Augustine rejected this, arguing that the Father would not sacrifice the Son unless it was strictly necessary, furthermore, Pelagius’ arguments would undermine the authority of the church (this was stated explicitly). Augustine invented the concept of original sin as something passed down through generations (despite this making zero sense), cited a mistranslated passage from scripture to support it, and used that to explain how even someone who lived a perfectly innocent life deserved to go to hell. This included, of course, fetuses. It was the Church’s position for a very long time that if you have an abortion, or even a miscarriage, then your baby’s soul is burning in hell.

What’s particularly funny to me about this is that, after Pelagius was denounced as a heretic for saying people needed to actually live virtuously instead of just relying on Jesus to forgive them, he became so reviled that people were often accused of “semi-Pelagianism.” All through the Reformation, everyone was accusing each other of being “semi-Pelagians” and trying to position themselves as the true inheritors of the Augustinian tradition. It wasn’t until relatively recently that anyone started saying, “Hey, maybe the Augustinian position is actually kinda fucked up.”

This thing I don’t understand

What don’t I understand about it?

I will refuse to believe any evidence to the contrary

There is no evidence to the contrary. The only way there could be would be if they got caught.

Plus I just happe to know you’re already conservative from your other posts so it’s just more evidence to back it up.

Lmao of course you do.

As I always say, “If someone claims something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they’re lying.” Please cite any evidence at all that I’m conservative.

I apologize for my mistake earlier, when I said my suspicions about Anonymous were more reasonable than your belief that I’m a Russian bot, what I should’ve said is that they’re more reasonable than your baseless and unfalsifiable belief that I’m secretly a conservative. Huge difference.

Lmao, “conservative conspiracy hole.” I guess “being suspicious of anonymous sources” makes me a conservative conspiracy theorist, somehow 🤣

This is just basic critical thinking lol.

In this case? Yeah, probably. If there was proof of their identity they would no longer be anonymous, would they?

It’s a much more reasonable assumption than how your lot assumes anyone who disagrees with you for any reason is a Russian bot, and can’t be convinced by any amount of proof otherwise.

deleted by creator

Anytime I see something about “Anonymous” I just assume it’s some kind of fed psyop until proven otherwise.

I’m on the side of both Palestinians and Jews, extremely opposed to the side of Zionism.

Congresswoman Sarah McBride is the one that really hurts for me. First trans member of congress at a time when that kind of representation is desperately needed. She would be a ray of hope and a rare bit of uplifting news, but she has to be a fucking Zionist. Many trans spaces I’m in want nothing to do with her over it.

Seems more like the standard fascist approach to me. It’s probably not going to stay government owned.

1. Demonize a minority group

2. Government takes control of businesses owned by members of that minority

3. Government gives control of the business to (typically larger) businesses owned by the dominant group, allowing them to artificially produce growth (what Zucc is likely aiming for)

4. Narrow the scope of who is accepted in the dominant group, move on to the next minority, and repeat.

This is why communists often describe fascism as “capitalism in decay.” Because of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, it becomes harder and harder for companies to find new ways of producing growth, and have to find methods that aren’t involved with actually increasing productivity, which is where you get enshittification. The fascist economic solution is obviously unsustainable, it’s like eating your own arm, but corporations that are desperately focused on short term growth (the vast majority of them) will happily sign on.

Socialism, otoh, is not about finding more stuff to feed into corporations, but, upon reaching that point, transforming the economy to remove the need for endless growth through nationalization. But socialism is not synonymous with nationalization, especially when the nationalization is selectively targeted and (most likely) temporary.

Putting aside everything else, approximately when do you believe that happened?

As much as we might criticize the whole, “End of History” idea, I feel like the 90’s was the last time Americans had anything like that kind of optimism. There was a feeling that we were entering a new age of international cooperation, and although I was only a child that was something I really believed in. But we soon found new conflicts to be embroiled in a the dream has died and was proven to be foolish and naive, and now everyone across the political spectrum is highly cynical.

I’m sure that there are many cynical people in China too, but I can hardly remember the last time I saw someone who wasn’t cynical when it comes to politics. Whether or not it’s naive, it hits me on an emotional level.