"Rules Based International Order" is just what the american empire calls itself in public. It's sum total of the structures set up by and for US hegemony. Like how the Athenian Empire called itself the Delian League.
In a sense, there's no purer expression of the rules based international order than illegally annexing territories for their oil.
Israel is an important and well-intergrated piece of the US empire so they get a say in how the empire is run. Working class new yorkers don't matter in the same way.
To translate into the lies of empire: israel's importance to foreign policy goals and deep cultural ties make it an interested commentator on domestic politics.
People always seem to think killing hitler would help, but part of the reason no one assassinated him is because the allies wanted hitler alive to continue making terrible decisions.
Imagine how much worse the first trump regime would've been if trump wasn't making any of the decisions - we don't have to imagine because we're living it now.
Back in the 60s, Phil Ochs described a liberal as "10 degrees to the left of center in good times and 10 degrees to the right if it affects them personally".
I agree that most people understand it to mean anyone left of center, but the meaning of a weak or disingenuous leftist who often sides with the enemies of the left goes back a while.
Ah yeah fair enough, tbh i was worried i got the SW characters wrong, i saw phantom menance and decided i didnt really need to see the other two prequels.
I love all the desperate apologetics over this passage. The lackeys of the rich always try to talk about how this means the rich need to unburden themselves before getting into heaven, like a laden camel passing through a narrow city gate.
But "camel through the eye of a needle" was a fairly common idiom at the time used to mean impossible - the equivilant of "when pigs fly".
The intent of this passage is crystal clear: "the rich will never ever get into heaven".
You can't argue a person out of an irrational view.
Explaining brain chemistry and how dopamine works won't do it.
A belief like that is a way of signalling membership in an identity that the individual thinks benefits them. It's unlikely to change until that identity stops looking beneficial.
Isn't internal propaganda like that just a way to sell a decision you've already made, rather than the cause of the decision?
I'm very skeptical of the idea that states go to war for ideological reasons. I'd always heard they were afraid of being contained and believed that their unfavourable position could only possibly get worse so they decided to roll the dice now.
He was in jail already, he knew he was about to die and he wrote to a fellow imprisoned pedophile to say trump's one of us, but we're the ones in jail, life's not fair.
When people don't like the present, they almost always assume the past was better. When people are broadly happy with the way things are, they argue the past was worse.
Our take on the past almost always says more about our take on the present rather than anything true about the past.
Have you listened to gamelan music, from indonesia? You might like it.
That quote instantly reminded me of my "i have boring work to do" music, which also includes gamelan orchestras and beiguan music, though beiguan can be a little too distracting at times.
Bono was briefly into these.
That's right, U2 grew a shrew loo.