It is if that leadership consistently refuses to learn from their mistakes and fails to mount any meaningful opposition to fascism as it creeps into more and more control over decades.

Just take a moment to marvel at the naked fiction that is law and order in this country. This is the entrenched oligarchy leaping into action, if full public view, to preserve their insulation from the very laws they use to rule you. The grotesque irony here, of course, is that this is the very “swamp” that maga dupes blab on and on about. Their lord and savior thinks so little of his moronic minions that he has no shame in flaunting his very own participation in that swamp right in front of them. Never pretend that we live in a rules-based society, nor doubt that the vast majority of Americans are among the dumbest motherfuckers to ever grace this earth. Sure assholes, take another swig of that milky self aggrievement from that feudal teet. I could not have more contempt for the reality of this fucked up, corrupt, hypocritical, and thoroughly evil nation.

This is basically the big thing that has been weighing on me. It’s very clear that the culture I thought I was brought up in, the thing that gave me pride, was not really US culture. It’s very clear to me that US culture values justice, democracy, truth, and the general wellbeing of people in no meaningful ways beyond the PR value of pretending to value these things. It’s very clear to me that this culture is way more racist, sexist, and classist than I was led to believe. It’s also very clear that this culture has an active disdain for education. In aggregate we are a gullible, irrationally emotional, entitled and greedy population with a nearly insatiable bloodlust for violence. We are, on the whole, a profoundly evil country made up of willfully ignorant masses that are ruled by duplicitous oligarchs. Now, I know that there are a lot of good people here. But there is nothing intrinsically American about their goodness. If anything they are an aberration from the seething awfulness that is America.

For the record, I’m pro-Tucker’s demon. Good job demon.

At the height of digg, I thought Rose was kind of cool. One of those Silicon Valley success stories that used to inspire tech enthusiasts like me. I watched diggnation and bought in to the culture being presented. But I’ll never forget that when digg 4 released, and bombed, Kevin threw his own employees and developers under the bus instead of taking responsibility for strategic mistakes. It was really eye opening to me about him and many of the other frauds that Silicon Valley hoists up as role models. Since then, he’s done nothing to dissuade me that he’s just another talentless tech-bro asshole that got way more attention and money than he deserved.

I feel so bad for the people being deployed and their families. These people are being positioned to be triggers for a war against Iran. They believe it will be easier to manufacture consent for that war if the administration (whichever one we have) can point to dead Americans. Sick shit.

Please note the momentum shift that started just around the DNC convention. Ask yourself what changed in the Harris campaign at that time.

Trailer: https://youtu.be/iSF0KGsFuI8?si=ZF7KAiSOFYnADzzk

First off, it’s not about majority, it’s about plurality. But that’s just nitpicking.

The disagreement here is about how a party achieves pluralities. They could follow a strategy of running toward the positions in their opposition, or they can do it by attempting to convince members of their opposition about the merits of their principled positions. Some compromises will frequently be practical, but enshrining compromise itself as a core principle, as opposed to policy, is only a strategy for maintaining power for power’s sake. Democracy should be more than team sports IMO.

Again, just look at what happened in the last 40 years. Asymmetrical consensus seeking has fueled the march of American fascism. Unless you want to argue that democracies will always inevitably slide toward fascism, I refuse to accept your characterization of democracy.

This is the strategy that Democrats have followed since 1988. In that time, the Overton window has relentlessly shifted to the right. It is the dynamic that makes it politically practical for Republicans to also relentlessly shift further right. It’s a positive feedback loop that eventually spirals toward fascism. Just examine the last four decades. It’s right there.

It’s not ‘consensus building’ when the other party has a principled opposition to consensus. It’s just a pre-negotiated concession. It is a lack leadership. That is the Democratic Party in a nutshell.

And just think, President Biden is just sorta okay with this.

Justice would be hauling Joe and his Secretary of State in front of congress and appropriate courts, to be tried for violating the Leahy laws and actively lying to congress. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a rules-based society.

Israel is a cancer.

Netflix, Ford, Tesla, T-Mobile, AIG, NextEra, Darden, MetLife, Duke Energy, First Energy, DISH, Principal Financial, American Electrical Power, Kinder Morgan, Dominion, Oneok, Williams, Xcel Energy, NRG Energy, Salesforce, DTE Energy, Ameren, Sempra Energy, U.S. Steel, Entergy, AmerisourceBergen, PPL, CMS Energy, Evergy, Voya Financial, Atmos Energy, Alliant Energy, Match Group, UGI, Agilent Tech

Why should it feel a need to respond? This administration and congress have shown nothing but breathless support for every illegal and inhuman action they’ve taken and imposed exactly zero meaningful consequences for violating the few feckless ‘red lines’ Biden has feigned to impose. They have nearly complete ideological and/or monetary capture of the administration and congress, and the US professional media is salivating about having more wars to cover. Both presidential candidates have promised no change in policy. Furthermore, the international community seems to be largely unwilling to meaningfully intervene and challenge US hegemony.

I really cannot fully express how much I have grown to hate all these motherfuckers and their awful work - and I work in Silicon Valley.

I’m willing to argue that the unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor was replete with war crimes by modern standards. I’ve cited some documentation above. Since doing that I’ve learned that there are also specific prohibitions against booby-trapping: https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/en/ihl-treaties/ccw-amended-protocol-ii-1996/article-7 Turns out that Israel has violated many international standards for war crimes and terrorism. It’s simple mystifying to me that any of this is controversial.

First of all, there was no way for Israel to know whether the people they claim to be targeting were combatants when the attack occurred since Israel had no information about the status of these bombs when they chose to detonate them.

Secondly, placing a bomb in a common device that you have every reason to believe will spend much of its time in the proximity of civilians, in homes, markets and other public spaces, and choosing to detonate it without knowledge of the location of the bomb, or it’s proximity to your supposed target, is actively avoiding distinguishing between ‘combatants’ and civilians. I can’t believe that western brain rot requires this to be spelled out for it.

On the prohibition of indiscriminate attacks:

“© those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol; and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.”

https://www.justsecurity.org/81351/the-prohibition-on-indiscriminate-attacks-the-us-position-vs-the-dod-law-of-war-manual/

It’s important to note that this is the consensus of much of the international community and the US (and I presume its surrogate Israel) have not signed on to the above provision despite speaking to support it. The weasely approach we (the US) have taken to these standards really demonstrates how hollow our sentiments are when we feign moral authority in international affairs.

18 U.S. Code § 2441 - War crimes

Prohibited conduct: “(D) Murder.— The act of a person who intentionally kills, or conspires or attempts to kill, or kills whether intentionally or unintentionally in the course of committing any other offense under this subsection, one or more persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including those placed out of combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause”

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2441