lennybird

Anecdotal report from my area, but a retail worker I spoke with who works 2 jobs at a dollar gen and Walmart said this is the slowest holiday year they've seen since the pandemic.

Also, those signs at the TSA sicken the fuck out of me.

What are your thoughts on Mamdani? Are you a “Blue No Matter Who” voter in this context, or only without him? If Democrats want to win, he’s got a model that works. I’m scared that the party insiders demand Ezra Klein’s Reaganism repackaged in New Age “law of attraction”-pretending-to-be-Economics.

Couldn't agree more, honestly. I am pretty progressive-left and have much criticism of Democrats, much like Sanders or AOC do. I embrace the Fight Oligarchy movement; I denounce the Third Way enlightened centrism at every turn. Schumer, Jeffries, Martin need to go. Pelosi's seat needs to be taken by Chakrabarti and not some AIPAC centrist puppet. Major reforms must happen between now and through Primaries season. And yes, I absolutely cheer Mamdani on and hope he suceeds. Agreed, Ezra is basically as useless as Bill Maher.

But years ago I swear to fuck I was one of the first to use the term Pragmatic Progressive" title, in noting that I would vote for Sanders but vote for Hillary and vote for several other candidates ahead of Harris or Biden in 2020, but still vote for Biden; still voted for Harris even though I wished for something different. Why? Because the reality is that in a binary choice election — and my ultimate point in this discussion on Biden and Obama — they were objectively, logically, by every qualitative and quantifiable measure the better choice. I do not subscribe to the deeply selfish ideologies of accelerationism or nihilism that would see others like my children or anyone else's suffer as a sacrifice to meet another's ends, either.

I of course am not alone in that damage-control assessment; after all, the likes of Bernie and AOC adhere to the same principle.

I apologize for coming out strong on this. I've just seen so many people try to act like Obama wasn't a genuinely good person trying to do his best but confronting forces or failing, versus someone is genuinely pathologically evil and psychopathic, like Trump.

There is not a single quantifiable mark you can place that Republicans aren't exceedingly worse on, in every respect. The two proverbial poisons are nowhere near equal potency; and it always amuses me that these armchair leaders would've reacted especially nobly if they were in the hot-seat and privy to the intelligence Obama was. I look forward to their run for office.

Deportation number is irrelevant; the methodology is of course what matters. Obama prioritized violent offenders, for example; he also did not separate mothers from children the same way Trump did. Literally no pro-immigrant advocacy group would trade what Biden or Obama did for what Trump is doing right now.

MuH BoTh SiDes false equivalence fallacies are easy for the mind to comprehend, but when you actually examine with any particular depth and nuance, they tend to fall apart.

We aren't both-sidesing this, are we?

Obama was a breath of fresh air on the international stage and widely respected, globally for good reason. It was clear to anyone paying even half attention that he was confronting powerful forces.

Couple points of fact to mention:

Obama used drone strikes, yes.
These Drone Strikes are orders of magnitude more precise with far less collateral damage than traditional warfare strategies used by his predecessors.
Obama passed an executive order making these drone strikes transparent to the public, understanding the danger.
Trump came in and reversed that transparency, making them classified.
Obama's civilian death toll is significantly less than Trump's first term alone.

By the way:

Nearly all dissenting opinions on Iraq and Afghanistan originated from Democrats or Independents who caucused with Democrats for good reason.
Nearly all later dissent came from this side as well.
A Democrat is the one who actually got us out of Iraq
A Democrat is the one who actually got us out of Afghanistan
A Democrat is the one who actually stayed on task to eliminate Bin Laden.

Republicans start wars; Democrats usually get them out. Perfect? No. But there is a very, very clear trend.

Getting tired of seeing this false equivalence nonsense.

I remember watching a 48 Hours episode of a disgruntled Resident who murdered a bunch of physicians who refused to advance him. Basically crippled his chance to be a doctor (and rightfully so. The guy was a nut job).

Wonder if this was similar.

Obama and Biden should in unison say the conman has ODS and BDS.

When I feel that I can't improve the world, I improve myself and focus on my family.

You can have a fair and equitable court system, or you can have a fast one; rarely if ever both. True justice tends to be slow and steady and helps to account for public witch-hunts and reduce risk of someone innocent being wrongfully convicted. People always say, "Yeah well this one is obvious!" but that's not how justice works. It must be absolute. It must be there for the lowest of hanging fruit if it is to be there for the more nuanced cases just the same.

On the other hand, sadly, a slow and unfair one are not mutually-exclusive.

No good comes from this. This is the equivalent threatening or intending for violence.

And yet, I'm told by another user, a free speech absolutist, that this is absolutely normal and should be protected.

In your view then, should schooling, vaccinations, trans surgeries, social media access also be entirely up to the parent?

Second to that, the law doesn't prohibit anyone from accessing these things outright; but rather ensuring that children don't get access to these things absent of their parent's approval — just as you indicate is your view here. Put another way, an adult parent could indeed log into pornhub on their behalf, no?

Free speech answers that, too. Expressing an opinion we disapprove of isn’t an exception to free speech: for that we can express our condemnation.

Yeah that's all fine and dandy to free-speech hard-righty absolutists, conveniently enough, but no, that's not my view; nor is it a representative of some V For vendetta authoritarianism to recognize objectively-wrong speech.

Tell me, do you or do you not subscribe to the "punch a nazi" notion of not being tolerant to intolerance?

Restricting private access to information while raising risk of identity fraud & abusing the rights of protesters with loose definitions of terrorism isn’t heading to your cartoonish idea of a dystopia?

As I had originally stated in my response, this would be a step towards that, yes, as I felt it was the most substantive point of your response to me; but not on the "doorstep"—as I had stated—itself. We will circle back to this following the Three High Court ruling in the coming weeks.

Far-right extremists want nothing more than free speech absolutism because it is convenient to their shallow tropes to dupe the masses; hence why far-right extremism is on the rise throughout the globe in the first place. So goes the adage, a lie travels half-way around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.

To reiterate, the source that you cited is not in reference to those cases, but specifically about hate speech and cyber-bullying — both clear problems that have aided in the rise of far-right extremism across the globe already. Put another way, we've had free speech absolutist social media and internet for decades, and we've only gone further rightward as a result. I'll quote directly the source you cited in which I'm referring:

The application of Germany's decades-old speech laws were strengthened after its darkest chapter, and then was accelerated online after an assassination of a politician, fueled by the internet, sent shockwaves through the country. In 2015, a video of a local politician named Walter Lübcke went viral after he defended then-Chancellor Angela Merkel's progressive immigration policy.

"People with a very right political world view, they started hating him on the internet. They started insulting him. They started to incite people to kill him. And that went on for about four years," Meininghaus said.

This Stochastic terrorism threat is real, and in fact was utilized in Israel just the same when then-candidate Bibi engaged in the same stochastic rhetoric and inspired a radical to assassinate Yitzhak Rabin.

Defamation, Slander, Libel cases are common. Misattribution even under plagiarism is another aspect of commonly regulated speech. I don't have much a problem with false quotes on high-profile figures not classified directly as comedy having some capacity for removal. This is how lies travel faster than truths around the world. Again, hardly a sign that UK is turning fascist.

So, what exactly IS your solution to inhibit the far-right except for moderate or left-wing governments to directly deal with said hate speech? (And no, I don't consider Pro-Palestinian protesters hate speech of course; which is why this Court ruling is so pivotal).

Finally, hateful words are still words. Has this generation forgotten how to handle words?

It is extremely ironic one says this, considering the strict Hate Speech laws of Germany originated from their direct experience with propagating fascism at home in the 1930s, 1940s and learning through pain and suffering inflicted on others as well as themselves. Volksverhetzung was suspended conveniently enough during the Nazi era, and only post-war was it codified into law. So the question may be reversed: Have YOU forgotten the potency of these words, gone unchecked?

You raise valid points and I'm certainly opposed to the notion of non-violent Pro-Palestinian protesters being labeled a terrorist organization (no differently than Antifa in the US, or the absurdity of stopping campus protesters against Israel). I am curious what people's thoughts here on laws that seek to prohibit minors from using social media, and how that differs from ensuring loopholes are cut to prevent minors from seeing porn.

When I reacted to the other user's comment, most of the rhetoric I was hearing was from disgruntled far-right extremists upset that islamophobes and various racist, sexist bigots were being held accountable on social media for hate speech, and even then the few instances they pointed to also basically dried up with either nothing or a proverbial slap on the wrist.

On the flip-side, if we step back and look at this, none of what has been mentioned is really some indication that UK is on the doorstep of V for Vendetta-like dystopia. Put another way, preventing children's access to porn -- whether agreed with or not -- has kind of been a presumed given, and only recently did it seem like a bunch of politicians became aware that it wasn't actually restricted in the first place or something...

On another note, when you cite, "penalizing vitriol, insults," that article actually is in reference to combating Hate Speech and cyber-bullying in Germany, which is a bit different is it not? That is in reference to Intolerance to Intolerance, yeah? To that I mostly say good!

And I'm simply answering that they're really not, or at least not in the falsely-equivalent picture you painted with the US. USA is closer to Russia in terms of its fast-track to authoritarianism. UK? They're engaging in what many here claim to support: no tolerance for intolerance.

If by keeping losers who run their mouths with hate speech in check, then sure.

UK and Germany kind of felt the worst effects of fascism and so have less tolerance for intolerance. This doesn't seem like a bad thing.

Don't promote talking-points originating from far-right propaganda outlets. This isn't when remotely the same as the blatantly unconstitutional Gestapo-like actions of ICE thugs going on in America. Friendly reminder this administration is actively trying to remove political satirist from television by leveraging their oversight of corporate mergers and the FCC. They succeeded with Colbert.

Don't forget all the publicly-funded universities that caved to pressure on bogus claims of antisemitism with protesters exercising their first amendment rights. Hell, some when tried to stop protests of Israel itself.

All adults in our family agreed to not buy gifts. Just for kids. I'd rather save and not contribute to this already-shitty economy.

Echoing this: If you set out to finds someone directly, more often than not you're going to have a bad time I think. The most organic way is through self-improvement and a certain inner-peace or contentment with being on your own. Combine this with getting involved in communities of ANY sort that you find comfort or passion in, from a pick-up sports league to DnD group to renaissance festival — whatever. Start finding community, and from there organic connection is bound to occur.

But again, it's not something you pursue directly but almost always by serendipitous, indirect means.

For me, it was like a flip of the switch. The moment I started to focus on self-improvement and be content with being on my own was the moment I started to be invited to things; which then gave me the confidence to say, "yeah, sure I'll go." It was one of these times I met my partner, soul mate, of going on 2 decades.

I'm very much an introvert, and my partner is extremely extroverted. She asked me out on our first date, actually lol.

It's like The Office meme; "They're the same picture."

Also, more importantly, what do Meta, Google, and Apple have to do with picking tariff wars with Canada and fighting over Greenland with Denmark? Like I'm all for shitting on corporations and their pathological pursuit of profit, but I'm not yet seeing the connection.

Did you read Putin's own essay on his imperial fantasies? The Foundations of geopolitics; Surkov theater? Let's not pull the Glenn Greenwald blind-eye RussiaGate nonsense and pretend that russia is innocent in all this. There is an absurd amount of evidence that this is the exact goal of Putin for many, many years — particularly the fragmentation of NATO, and why he was hinging on Trump's reelection ideally to invade Ukraine in the first place. The one piece of puzzle that luckily failed and likely led to Ukraine being able to mount an effective defense against his main invasion.

Moreover it has also been very obvious that the Republican administration, and that includes think-tanks like Heritage, have been infiltrated. There's a reason Trump is Agent Krasnov. There's a reason former Trump officials were literally imprisoned before they were pardoned for essentially spying on behalf of russia. There is a reason Putin spent a lot of time and resources seeking Trump's winning every election. There is a reason Trump is picking fights with Denmark over Greenland and right out of the gate picked a fight with our closest ally both literally and figuratively, Canada. There is no better explanation than to divide and fracture the west and to give Putin his return on his investment.

You can even look to Hungary (and again the obsession with right-wing domestic media interest) as a proving-ground for Putin.

Never said it was. I said it would be wise for them to do so and ultimately in their own interest to do so, though.

They would be wise to caveat the security risk being only when Republicans are in power as it currently stands.

This is much of Putin's plan to fracture long held western alliances. He sees these headlines and sees his return on investment.

lennybird

@ lennybird @lemmy.world

Posts

8
Comments

1781
Joined

2 yr. ago

lennybird

Jim Beam shutting down bourbon production at Kentucky distillery for a year as Trump’s trade wars hit sales

Four died in ICE custody this week as 2025 deaths reach 20-year high

Here we go again...

Here we go again...

Here we go again...

Live Updates: Suspect in Brown University Shooting Is Found Dead in New Hampshire

White House adds plaques below Biden and Obama portraits, calling them ‘the worst President in American history’ and ‘divisive’

What personal actions you take to stay optimistic?

Member of far-right AfD party charged with making Nazi salute at Reichstag

Member of far-right AfD party charged with making Nazi salute at Reichstag

US engaging in ‘extreme rightwing tropes’ reminiscent of 1930s, British MPs warn

US engaging in ‘extreme rightwing tropes’ reminiscent of 1930s, British MPs warn

US engaging in ‘extreme rightwing tropes’ reminiscent of 1930s, British MPs warn

US engaging in ‘extreme rightwing tropes’ reminiscent of 1930s, British MPs warn

Damning poll reveals Americans struggling to buy holiday gifts under billionaire Trump

A question for those who have a partner, how did you manage to do it and how long did it take?

Denmark Flags the United States as a Security Risk for the First Time

Denmark Flags the United States as a Security Risk for the First Time

Denmark Flags the United States as a Security Risk for the First Time

Denmark Flags the United States as a Security Risk for the First Time

Why is blocking so common nowadays?

What P2P intranet(?) mesh services are there?

For younger generations, what was it like growing up with the internet?

'I am absolutely voting for Donald Trump': Undecided voters react to Biden's debate performance

Undecided voter focus group leans toward Trump after debate

UK ban on selling arms to Israel would strengthen Hamas, says Cameron

US public support for Israel drops; majority backs a ceasefire, Reuters/Ipsos shows | Reuters

PSA: You are legally entitled to receive a .zip file of all data related to your account that is stored on Reddit's servers.