I think it was proctor gamble that zeroed out their $200 million yearly adtech spend and saw zero impact to their sales from it. There's a good possibility we're making everything terrible just so that Zuckerberg and friends can keep getting richer to nobody else's actual benefit.
There have been many different eras in America, and although the current one is terrible, there will be another, one way or another.
When you see America as being a single static thing, you view it as an unchanging monolith that has never had periods of time where elements of it were better -- making it so that the only choice you have is to "love it, or leave it".
But these are faulty views, and that is a false dichotomy. We are participants in the history of the country, not merely spectators. Through collective action we can change its direction. We did this before via blood, sweat, and tears in the first gilded age, and we will have to do it again here in the second.
Even if, as I put it in my other reply to a similarly limp dicked Atlantic article, you're so late to the party that the caterers that were hired for it were deported by ICE months ago.
Trump also ordered the extrajudicial execution of a white man, Michael Reinoehl, in his first term. I have no idea why no one ever talks about that.
Because we continue to pretend that the police and military always act lawfully, unless there's incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.
Even with that the news media continues to couch the video of the murders of Good and Pretti as "appearing to show" things and provides ample room on their platforms for people to lie and copagandize the American public.
I mean really, it’s shocking how fast it ramped up but I cannot say that I’m truly surprised it did happen, and if I look back at the people involved in it, it seems more like a gentle increase of the knob than a sudden twist. It’s also just that the higher you are on the dial, the closer together are the red lines.
Yeah I wouldn't say I'm surprised, and I wouldn't say it's entirely "UnPReCEDenTeD" or anything, but it is new and different in terms of scope, brazenness, and certainly technology. We've struggled with periods of waxing and waning fascism and fascist-like governance for practically the entire history of the country. The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed into law when the country was less than two decades old. But this is still shocking, smothering, abhorrent and a departure from even ten years ago.
The argument that the US is or was always like this and could only be like this is, in my view, made intentionally to paralyze and further demoralize those of us in the US who wake to a fresh, new hell on a daily basis.
I don't think Americans are even willing to admit to themselves that law enforcement, even in ocean blue regions, are not under democratic control and the orders elected officials give them are mainly suggestions.
I understand not wanting to believe this as it is deeply disturbing. But things cannot be changed until basic realities are understood.
I would say that while neither group is under full democratic control, that local and state LEOs are at least hemmed in somewhat by often living amongst those they are policing and are usually experienced enough to know that following some of their most block-headed instincts (e.g., no knock, no announcement entries into residences) will earn you a bullet in the face as if you are a home invader, and that if the shooter survives the encounter, the system will likely let the person who put the bullet in you walk.
ICE are brazen because while they are not a new force, they haven't had significant enough field experience in America to know that rules of engagement aren't followed solely to protect the people subject to your patrols.
Reactionary: The contemplated action attempts to change permanent structural characteristics ("laws") of the social order; it is therefore bound to be wholly ineffective, futile.
Yeah I get it, but I just grow tired of the argument -- and it doesn't solely come from .ml users but is broadly-speaking a tiring recurrent Internet argument -- that nothing ever changes and that everything has always been like this even when it obviously and provably has not.
Which, if anything, is evidence the police should have been fired and the whole system retooled a long time ago.
Of course, but until qualified immunity is repealed, Democrats have plenty of (non-conspiratorial) motivation not to give police orders that they know the police won't follow: it makes them look like weaklings.
Both parties pretend that law enforcement is under democratic control. It is not.
Republicans obtain the loyalty of law enforcement by catering to their demands, providing them moral support, taking their side, and telling them they can do "whatever the hell they want" to quote Trump. Republicans are less afraid of what the police might do when unleashed, and are reasonably certain that the police will follow their orders because of all of this.
It also helps that what Republicans would order a LEO to do are the things they already want to do (i.e., harass, arrest, and even murder brown people, liberals, and anyone else who gives them lip).
I can assure you that in the US a presidential paramilitary invading cities that are overwhelmingly white and shooting citizens in the face live on social media is indeed a new phenomenon.
The Atlantic continues its role as the rag of choice for hand-wringing, neo-liberal stupidity with this piece. Its content is a constant stream of bad takes by people that have fundamental misunderstandings of the way power and politics have or would ever work making fanciful predictions that betray a Disney princess's understanding of America, history, and geopolitics.
I read some amount of free Atlantic articles because their RSS feed -- probably unbeknownst to them -- provides a large amount of their magazine to you for free. Despite this, I find them to be fundamentally unserious and often not even worthy of the small amount of ad-free attention I pay to their writing, nor the effort to swipe their articles out of my feed. Without looking at the header, I could likely tell 100% of the time that what I'm reading is an Atlantic article, because the consistent tone of their contributors -- who are seemingly vetted by the editorial staff to guarantee that only the most lame-brained, navel-gazing positions will ever be published.
Just today, I read a piece of theirs by someone who thought it was important to dedicate such a large amount of nuance and verbiage to a discussion of whether or not Trumpism could be categorized as a form of fascism that he published at least a thousand words in what was practically a lengthy description of the odor over time of his own flatulence. All of this flowery bullshit purely to conclude how it was time -- finally time -- to say out loud that Trump is a fascist.
Like not only are you so late to the party that the caterers that were hired for it were deported by ICE months ago, but who fucking cares what you call it you stupid, pedantic fuck?
To return to a discussion about this specific Disney princess prediction posted here, the police will "collide" with ICE agents in the exact same way they haven't at all in previous days and weeks. The best you can hope for is that the police will not eventually collaborate with Trump's paramilitary and help brutalize the people of this country, and even that is something of a long shot.
This all being said I don’t think even the managers aim to become more evil and more terrible as their goal.
Of course, most managers' goal is not to become more evil and more terrible. Their goal is to attain more money and power. Becoming more evil and more terrible is simply the means toward those ends.
I think it was proctor gamble that zeroed out their $200 million yearly adtech spend and saw zero impact to their sales from it. There's a good possibility we're making everything terrible just so that Zuckerberg and friends can keep getting richer to nobody else's actual benefit.