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conditional_soup

@ conditional_soup @lemm.ee

Posts
5
Comments
1673
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • where are worker rights parades? why are we focusing on very limited issues?

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  • Basically, the cold war was already starting to wind down in the 80s and late 70s. We were comfortable enough that we'd won the Cold war that Reagan embarked us on the 40 year project of strip-mining worker benefits and social welfare programs. The most culturally aggressive aspects of the cold war happened during the mid-60s.

  • It's just down the road.

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  • It's really incredible how easy HSR should be to build for most of the country and how completely hard it would fuck for so many people. Instead, we do unlimited airline shareholder subsidies and rebuild eight lane interstates every ten years

  • When tyranny becomes law, resistance becomes duty.

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  • I'm just gonna leave this full upload of "Winter on Fire" here. Maybe people will see the part where protestors get sick of the cops' shit and finally decide to do an explicitly armed march, which the police helpfully decide to not be present for. Spoiler: unlike the unarmed march, nobody got shot, because there were no cops to shoot anybody.

    https://youtu.be/yzNxLzFfR5w

  • 'Something much much bigger': Ex-Trump insider warns of 'chilling' new plan

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  • 'Something much much bigger': Ex-Trump insider warns of 'chilling' new plan

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  • You don't need violence per se, as much as the threat of it. Take the 2014 Maidan protests; the cops were happy to set up a sniper corridor along the planned peaceful march route and cut down unarmed protestors. That night the protestors announced they'd be coming back tomorrow, only all of them armed with guns. Cops today might be militarized, but that's nothing in the face of 90,000 people with guns, and they know it, so they miraculously found somewhere else to be the next day and nobody got shot.

  • "You have no say in this at all. Federal law is supreme and federal law will be enforced."

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  • Fascists are never to be taken seriously when they say that they're very worried about protecting anything.

  • +3 to Saving Throws! Roll for initiative!

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  • Not enough pixels here, where's the instrument?

  • I take back everything I've ever said. Self-driving rideshares are cool now.

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  • Holy based LA

  • My neighbors GMC Denali parked illegally in front of a stop sign and crosswalk, next to my other neighbors Mazda Miata

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  • And tennis shoes

  • Presidential Memoranda to approve use of US Armed Forces against American protesters, labeling riots as an act of rebellion.

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  • Yeah, the LA "riots" where super tame by riot AND LA standards. Like, they didn't even have to bust out the water cannons. A skateboarder tanked some tear gas and flipped them off. It's not like a bunch of people stormed the capitol building or something. This is the flimsiest excuse ever for martial law, so I have to assume it's another step towards tyranny.

  • Trump deploys National Guard after second day of Los Angeles immigration protests | CNN

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  • Well, to be fair, he did issue a bunch of flimsy ass pardons for his closest friends and family, he just didn't do anything to help the rest of us.

  • Trump deploys National Guard after second day of Los Angeles immigration protests | CNN

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  • As deranged as DC may be, I seriously doubt it. Especially because, being as old as he is, Donald was probably raised through the fever pitch of the cold war. He's probably shit scared of the use of nuclear weapons. Did you notice how quickly the Trump administration jumped in to try and cool things off between India and Pakistan? I'd bet anything that it's because Donald has a deep-seated urge to avoid nuclear weapons use.

  • Trump deploys National Guard after second day of Los Angeles immigration protests | CNN

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  • So, there's a cool documentary called Winter On Fire that covers the 2014 Maidan revolts in Ukraine. The relevant bit is at the end; after the police open fire on an unarmed march, the protestors announce that by 0900 tomorrow, they're marching on the capitol building and they're all going to be armed with guns (all 90,000 of them), and the cops can choose to be there or not. Well, the cops fucking skipped town that night, along with the president. Nobody has ever accused LA of being a city that is deficient in guns, or if they have, then they're fucking stupid.

  • Trump says Elon Musk will face 'very serious consequences' if he funds Democratic candidates

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  • Dude, America casts a huge shadow. We've spent the last seventy years fucking the rest of the world up, and now we've just got done ripping a meth pipe and telling ourselves how reasonable we've actually been this whole time. Other people are going to have opinions about our politics because we're a loaded gun.

  • where are worker rights parades? why are we focusing on very limited issues?

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  • Hell yeah. When the right asks you which group's rights you want to sacrifice to save your own rights, you tell them to eat shit. They're going to come for your rights too, especially if they succeed in taking away those other people's rights. There is no sufficiently small in group for conservatism.

  • Trump deploys National Guard after second day of Los Angeles immigration protests | CNN

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  • Going to be watching this with great curiosity and excitement. Hopefully other places get the idea. Going to be very curious where Newsom comes down on this.

  • Trump deploys National Guard after second day of Los Angeles immigration protests | CNN

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  • Oh, that happened the instant the SCOTUS declared the president above the law and Biden didn't say "fuck you, idiots", fire all the justices who ruled in favor of that decision at gunpoint, appoint all new justices in their place, and then declare that ruling void by fiat. If you're about to say "the president can't do that", the SCOTUS declared the president above the law, he actually can.

  • Trump preparing large-scale cancellation of federal funding for California, sources say

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  • Yeah. I'm out here fighting the NIMBYs in my city, they're almost all older white dudes, not even that wealthy by California standards. It was super cool to see Newsom twist their arm like that, way less cool to see him bulldoze the homeless afterward.

  • where are worker rights parades? why are we focusing on very limited issues?

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  • Okay, it's a really complicated issue but you've got three big things that are all kind of working together here:

    1. Political capture: the US' first past the post electoral system basically guarantees that there's going to only be two main parties. They were always vulnerable to capture by the wealthy, but the Citizens United decision functionally guaranteed their capture by the groups with the deepest pockets. The democrats themselves are shit scared of any serious left policy because they know it'll scare off their big donors, and despite the fact that fundraising has not directly translated into winning for them, they're terrified that they're going to lose the support of the wealthiest and that'll guarantee election losses. At least, that's the optimistic interpretation.
    2. Cold war reaction: the US didn't just have one red scare, we've had two or three spread out over several decades. There was a huge cultural reaction against communism after WWII, and being an open communist during the Cold war would just get your ass disappeared (according to my now dead boomer dad, though I've seen no evidence to support it), beaten up or killed by locals, or shunned. A lot of folks were terrified of espousing left policies because they could easily be suspected of or painted as communist. While the cold war is passing out of living memory, the chill that it left on American leftism for the better part of 100 years is hard to overstate.
    3. Our intelligence agencies have consistently worked across all levels of government (local, state, federal) to harass, discredit, and sometimes kill left leadership and organizations. The CIA itself ran a very successful multi-decade campaign of overthrowing peaceful, democratically elected left-wing governments across the global south by directly sponsoring, aiding, and training right wing reactionary movements, and there's not really any evidence that they stopped. There's no reason to think that they're not still working hard today to prevent any serious left movement.