And the voices. "Billy..."
"You fucked the whole thing up."
"Billy, your time is up."
"Your time... is up."
I'm not trying to have hubris but I feel like, yes, in some aspects, yes.
I'm sure they are more up to speed on the details and I'm sure if I were in the position and making decisions, I would start fucking up horribly on some things. But, definitely there can be people in positions of power who are making horrible decisions because of blindness to key factors that the activist community is aware of -- "Secrets" by Daniel Ellsberg probably has some of the best examples I'm aware of. It's not entirely just me talking out of my ass.
Yeah I feel like we could set them straight.
Honestly man, I wish I could say that the real high level professionals are aware of the reality in enough detail that they would also laugh at a story like this, but I have a deep fear that they may not be.
It would definitely explain a lot about US reactions to the endless series of “ooh just missed it” peace agreement failures this year if they thought this story accurately represented how Netanyahu thinks.
One of the most important things to understand in geopolitics is that every country is a schizophrenic mixture of all kinds of priorities and actions.
“The Americans” have no single specific goal or policy with Israel. Biden has his priorities: Some amount of wanting to get reelected, some amount of wanting to preserve America’s alliances and priorities on the world stage (of which human rights isn’t any kind of priority), and some amount of actual concern for human rights. He’s chiefly responsible for the US’s behavior here and so policy is most directly a balancing act between those different things. But even there, his Israel policy is also at the mercy of congress which has a variety of other priorities, fear of the voters who may have wildly “extreme” priorities on one end or the other of the scale, etc.
The defense lobby that wants as many wars in as many places as possible, supplied by the US, and for them to go on as long as possible is certainly not an unimportant factor in that equation but it’s not the only factor.
This article seems shockingly naive.
He knows that without American involvement he won’t be able to strike a deal to free the hostages Hamas is still holding in Gaza.
Netanyahu clearly doesn't give a shit about the hostages. It's better for him, politically, if they are still out there and justifying the atrocities he wants to commit, than if the hostages thing is resolved and he's just being a genocidal maniac.
He also understands that a military defeat of Hamas will matter little if the group can reconstitute itself
Same thing. Hamas being out there is clearly much better for Netanyahu's priorities. This is why the Israeli government likes to facilitate Hamas staying in power, route aid to them, support them against their less violent domestic opposition -- because Netanyahu has decided on taking land and killing Palestinians, and the more damage Hamas is doing, the better a flimsy excuse he will have in place for doing so.
Moreover, he understands that if he wants an alternative to Hamas rule in Gaza, he needs key Arab states—the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and maybe Morocco—to work with the United States and other actors to create an interim administration in Gaza that would assume responsibility for day-to-day governance and security.
Why on Earth would he want an alternative to Hamas rule in Gaza. Again, Netanyahu's government routes funding to Hamas. Some of their politicians have explicitly said that they like Hamas in charge because it delegitimizes Palestine on the world stage (meaning that the Israeli civilians who die to Hamas are, presumably, an acceptable cost for that diplomatic boost they're getting in exchange).
Etc etc
Stop taking lying governments at their word in their framing of their conflicts. That kind of "golly gee we're just trying to protect Israeli civilians and create peace, but these pesky Hamas people keep getting in the way, which we totally hate" stuff is meant for the rubes and the voters. It has no business being taken seriously by supposed professionals.
Interesting
How about Navalny? Also what's your take on the Venezuelan election?
I'm not asking that implying that the answer will be any particular type of way, just curious what you think about those issues.
No, working-class people are 12% richer (inflation adjusted) than they used to be, and that's a pretty fuckin significant number given the obstacles of Covid and Republicans that were standing in the way. The numbers are, 32% gains, 20% inflation, equals 12% gain inflation adjusted.
"Keep complaining" in the sense of advocating for better, finding more people who will help you get those outcomes and trying to work out how to get them in charge, sounds great. "Keep complaining" in the sense of blaming the people who are fighting for you for not doing a better job, and implying that them trying to give you trillions of dollars and partially succeeding is basically the same as the people who want to end democracy (and also steal back that money and more), is stupid. In my opinion.
People being dissatisfied with politics is the very first step required to actually change anything.
I don't think there is a shortage of dissatisfaction with politics in this country. There might be some imaginary country where if everyone would just get disaffected and cynical enough, the problems would get dealt with, but I think most of America's problem at this point is in the action piece.
Yes, the current administration has done some good things, but none of it is nearly enough, and we should still be plenty mad about all of it.
Plenty mad at the ones who are responsible, and invested in solutions that will move it in the right direction, yes. The reason I disagreed with the original poster is not that I don't want to fix things, it is that their proposed solution is mostly disaffectation instead of anything that will be that solution.
Specific side note: you say reduce income inequality, but regular people are way worse off financially than their parents were and that's not going away without some real change and we haven't actually seen anything moving in that direction
Low-income wages went up 32% since 2019, as a result of a stronger NLRB backstopping a bunch of union gains and the results of spending a trillion dollars of increased corporate taxes on domestic manufacturing. Covid inflation ate up most but not all of that boost; if Biden hadn't been handed an unfolding apocalypse with a lot of people still dependent on Covid assistance to live, I think it would have been a much more dramatic change, but it's definitely not nothing. He also spent about 10 times what anyone else has spent on climate change, putting us on track for a 40% reduction in emissions by 2030.
Is any of that enough? Fuck no. But it's also definitely not "haven't actually seen anything." You may not have seen anything, because I think a lot of Lemmy posters are employed in tech, and that sector has still been a shit show where people aren't keeping up with inflation. But the working class is actually doing substantially better than they were even before Covid, even under historic inflation. That's pretty fuckin unusual. And shitting on it (saying those working-class people don't represent "regular people"), or saying that because we haven't undone multiple generations of fuckery in the space of a couple of years, it doesn't count, is not something I agree with.
I don't expect to win but I'd rather vote for who I want and lose than vote for who I don't want and win.
What about people who don't have that luxury, who may literally not make it to the end of a second Trump administration with their life undestroyed by it? Hispanic immigrants are the most obvious candidates, although honestly it could expand to encompass quite a few people.
Why are you not worried about Trump ending the democratic machinery that you might use to vote in a Green candidate in the future? Trump seems like just as big a disaster for third-party democracy as he does for two-party democracy.
Do you agree with Stein about disbanding NATO? Is that one of those things you would rather vote for and lose than etc etc? I actually think most of her platform looks excellent if it could be pulled off, but that one is a little bit of a random red flag in the mixture.
I'm just happy they didn't double down and pick the IDF guy.
I feel like the Democratic party is, slowly and gradually as is its nature, learning its fucking lesson. If they went far enough to actually stop supporting genocide, that might be nice.
Yeah I was a constant Biden promoter and moderately opposed to replacing him just because I thought that, as big a problem as his age was, the prospect of the Democrats figuring out a plan B without cocking it up was remote enough that it might be better to keep him on.
Having seen the way it happened (so far) I've never been so happy to be so wrong.
Why would you ask the question if someone who's going to be enthusiastic about their answer is going to be confusing to you
IDK if you've noticed but a lot of people are excited about Harris, although maybe that's just happiness because it's not the guy who might have a sundown moment on stage or something
Yeah. I've been at rallies and protests (antiwar for me). I haven't done as much as I should have; I'm feeling pretty guilty about that now. Friends and family of mine have done more than I have, inside and outside of the political system.
I've also been friends with people who've tangled with the US system of immigration, whose heads might be on the block if Trump wins. That's why I am strongly opposed to your "the shit sandwich we're being served by the two party system" "don't even agree with the half of the democrat platform because they're capitalist stooges perfectly willing to bend over for oligarchs" stuff. One, it isn't true, in this election (although in general I'll agree about the Democrats). Biden was the first Democrat in decades who actually seemed to make some inclinations in favor of the American underclass. Two, the alternative right now is horrifyingly dangerous. That's why I use the fireman analogy -- like whether the building is clean or dirty or we need to bring it up to code is simply not relevant when it's going to burn down with your and my family inside.
If you were spending this much energy on saying "holy shit we gotta fix the system now more than ever", then sure, I'd be right there with you. You can let me know the protest and we can go and get our asses kicked together. If your energy is "ew ugh Democrats I hate this both parties amirite," then please excuse me if I explain in my own smug shit fashion why that is 1,000% objectively wrong as applied to this election. I am saying that because I do care about the very same vulnerable people you are trying to mobilize to make the point, somehow, in the opposite direction.
lemmy.ml in particular is quite bad. lemmy.world is a little less bad but still has some annoyances. Most of the other ones are fine.
Of course you can participate in communities anywhere from any server; about the only thing that will impact you is reputational impacts and maybe the occasional instance block or admin fuckery. I have heard rumors of admin fuckery on lemmy.ml (moderation actions and then editing the modlog to make it look like it didn't happen), but IDK whether that is accurate.
Some instances block one or both of Lemmy.ml or Lemmy.world because their users are known for being, in the aggregate, a pain in the ass.
This is like the fireman saying "But it's whatever, these assholes with their cigarettes and fireworks combined with shoddy building materials and false alarms mean I'm stuck responding to the fire again. I'm not one to not respond at all, because that's just pointless to me. But…”
I could bring up a half a trillion dollars on climate change, reduced income inequality, gains in wages for working people even outpacing pretty historic inflation in 2022, etc etc fa la la, reasons why the Biden/Harris ticket was actually substantially better than most of the horseshit that is the modern Democrats, but "oh great I guess we gotta vote against fascism, it feels like this shit keeps happening" as a demoralizing thing as opposed to "holy shit the system is fucked how do we make some actual progress because we have to fucking live here" honestly just seems so childish and I feel like people are aware of the difference between the options and the gravity involved here
If getting up and voting is all that offensive to you, I can't imagine how you would react to the level of effort and risk it will take to actually make the system good, and fix the 2-party system problems you're talking about. It involves a hell of a lot more than showing up one particular day and being willing to pick "not the end of the world" instead of "yes end of world."
OP has a history of posting slightly off kilter things. At one point they posted a “meme” that was a screen shot of a news story about how North Korean defectors reported that they preferred life in North Korea (e.g. there are no homeless people there unlike in the West), and when the reaction in the comments was UNANIMOUS confusion and scorn, they stopped answering questions about it and deleted the post and never spoke of it again.
You gotta have your game plan for why the curse isn’t solvable
Maybe it’s a disease, not a curse. Maybe it’s an evil magical sword, but it’s not cursed per se, it’s just an asshole. Maybe the magic that operates the McGuffin is set to detonate like a bomb if you make an attempt to disable it. You can feel the balance of energies, such that a slight slip will release an incredible conflagration. Do you really want to continue? You’ll have to do a wisdom check with a pretty high DC. If you’re down for that though, you might be able to remove the curse.
Yeah I know that’s not what it says in the books. This amulet isn’t from the books. Do you want to keep going with remove curse? Or try to find another way?
There are always solutions. Remove Curse is bullshit; IDK what they were thinking with it. But yeah you just gotta plan ahead a little bit. Let your players still have their agency; don’t just declare that it doesn’t work (unless you all wanna agree to house rule that it just doesn’t exist or something). Just plan your way around it. Best case is something like your players looking for some way to buff their wisdom enough so they feel confident taking on the Remove Curse, and then you all get to find out what transpires.
I'm not your citation monkey
I actually found one, because I was wondering if me and the dictionary were the wrong ones, but I refuse to send it because what I already sent is accurate + sufficient. You can accept or not; it's up to you.
His friend hit it with her car, and he decided he wanted to take the body home and cut it up for meat.
The decision to get out of your car and start fuckin' with the dead bear cub's body, just assuming that it has no family in the area, seems to me like honestly the most serious mistake of the entire bad idea adventure.
If you haven’t read about it, do yourself a favor. I ignored it for quite a while because I don’t care, but that was a serious mistake. The whole account is wonderful.
The other thing I took away from it is that the NYPD homicide detectives (who, for some reason, were involved) sure know their stuff. They sorted out that it was hit by a car, died somewhere else (like pretty far away), and then someone moved it to Central Park. To me that was impressive.
Also, RFK Jr wants everyone to know that he was NOT drinking. Everyone else involved was drunk as shit. But not him, because he wouldn’t do that; that would clearly be a bad decision when you’re dropping a dead bear cub in a staged bicycle accident in Central Park.
backs away gingerly
(I feel like you may not know who Daniel Ellsberg is)