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Okay, I wanted to drop this because bucket seemed to be spinning out pretty hard after getting his world view repeatedly fact checked and proven repeatedly wrong, but I’m a big fan of treating others the way they want to treat others and this sort of conspiracy theory nonsense is 100% some “bullshit that needs to be thrown back in their faces”
So are you going to engage at all with the material of the conversation or are you just going to spread conspiracy theories because the worldview being expressed isn’t your own?
The messaging I’m seeing (and assuming that it is what you’re referencing) doesn’t seem to be arguing against “resistance” it’s arguing against “performative resistance”. If you don’t understand the difference between the two I can definitely see why that would come across as demotivating.
Personally that same messaging you are finding demotivating gives me lots of hope in the future as there seems to be an upswelling of desire to actually fix things and coming to terms with the scope and reality of the situation.
It’s bad. The work to fix the last 50+ years of buried/ignored problems is a monumental amount of work, but facing it head on means that we can start making progress instead of just leaving it to pile up further and to get worse.
Hoping this "bot-farm"s perspective helps a bit with the whole “hopeless and helpless” feeling.
What is the argument you are trying to make with repeating that?
Is your argument that was a massive blow to the material holdings of US law enforcement? There are 17,985 police agencies in the US, we’ll pretend they only have one station per agency (that’s a gross underestimate, the Minneapolis 3rd precinct should make that clear…) then 0.000056% of police precincts were burnt down during the protests. I would argue a number that small is negligible.
Is your argument that a burnt down precinct is a form of justice that was achieved? There were ~1200 police killings in 2020. If that is your argument, then only 0.083% of people murdered that year got justice, much less any from previous/subsequent years.
I actually don’t think that’s accurate.
Here’s another source you’re turn, shop around a bit see if you can find anyone who publishes a number that agrees with you. Nobody agrees with your speculation.
We need to talk about unjustified killings.
This is a uniquely American problem. Either ‘Americans are just soooo unbelievably violent and deadly that they must be put down like the rabid dogs they are’ or something else is going on. Please stop insinuating people like George Floyd are rabid dogs that need to be put down.
You could literally do whatever you wanted.
It’s a nice idea, but not how any of that works because we don’t live in anything like a true confederation.
no-trial no-warrant neo-Gestapo
98% of criminal cases in the US already don’t get a trial. If we’re going to talk about the George Floyd protests we should talk about Breanna Taylor and the fraudulent warrant that led to her death.
ICE is something different.
And worse. I agree, but it’s a continuation of, and supported by, the same police you are claiming are “fixed”. ICE cannot operate effectively without direct LEO support.
Your turn! Point out where what I said is bullshit.
I’m not
“insisting that nothing anyone can do could possibly help and the no one has ever done anything meaningful to resist”
I’m saying that we have the benefit of hindsight now and can look back and see the results of actions taken and determine what tactics were and weren’t effective. If you don’t do that and instead only focus on how much “hard work” was put in instead of the results of the labor you’re going to be constantly wearing yourself out and accomplishing nothing.
I’m begging you to focus less on the “how many people showed up” and focus more on the “what did it accomplish” and update your tactics accordingly.
(pretty rarely) they actually rioted
That’s fair, and you’re right that in my frustration I’m not giving proper credit where credit is due. It was definitely the last time I had hope of things improving somewhat and the bad takes/wrong lessons learned sometimes make me forget that.
they changed the language of policing and basically made it clear that the people wouldn’t tolerate anything other than change and would back it up with direct action.
Some localities did, but largely no. I’m assuming you’re referencing the George Floyd bill, go look at what it actually says.
Yes. Do you remember those walls of names of people who got killed with no particular justice, and notice that the names basically stop in 2020
Police killings in the US have been rapidly increasing since 2020 your anecdotes and what the media chooses to report are not going to be good/accurate reflections of reality.
we’re switching away from the democratic justice system completely and into ICE as the new Gestapo
The US justice system was never democratic, and DHS (ICE as a subsidiary) was explicitly created by Bush Jr. to function that way. I apologize for my frustration and I’m glad you’re finally on board/aware of it but you’re also 25 years late my dude.
DUDE THEY BURNED DOWN THE FUCKING POLICE STATION
You are correct that I am not giving those involved enough credit for that level of bravery and action, but it also wasn’t a consistent trend and with the benefit of foresight we can look back and realize that no police reform came from any of it.
Millions of people were in the streets this past weekend. Is it enough? Fuck no. Did any of them get gunned down by state or city level cops? Or even rubber-bulleted? Not that I’m aware of.
Because they threw a parade instead of a riot. The pro-palestinian protests absolutely did face that level of repression.
The real issue is that you keep contradicting yourself so which is it:
A. the 2020 protests reformed the police and we’re all safe now.
B. We’re entering an era where the already abysmal human rights abuses are about to become far worse.
Motivated people to get off the couch and do what exactly? Other than skulls caved in what was the result? Was there any actual police reform? Was there a massive shift of funding away from incarceration as the cure-all? Have the number of extrajudicial murders decreased?
Yes, I am saying that police militarization has resulted in a populace that is unable/unwilling to revolt in even the slightest of ways since the uncomfortable truth that all Americans live under is that even something as minor, routine and unintentional as speeding can be reason for death. Much less any meaningful/intentional disobedience.
It is a very direct, but often overlooked, reason for a lot of what we are currently seeing today. It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone as even the US founders knew you can’t have a functioning democracy while staring down the barrel of a gun. That’s what the whole “standing military” thing was about.
As an aside, why are you coming at a “I completely agree, here’s another interesting facet/perspective” comment where you don’t see the connection with such hostility and defensiveness instead of curiosity?
The context for the DEFUSE program is that SARS-cov-1 was of pretty significant concern that it could mutate into a global pandemic similar to the Cov-2 pandemic that actually happened. The program was funded to investigate, learn and prepare for what were predicted to be some of the more dangerous possible mutations.
The “smoking gun” here is all correlation. Saying “they predicted correctly what was dangerous and were proactively studying it” is not a good argument for causation.
However, the theory that I haven’t seen well debunked/studied is that improper handling/disposal of dead viruses/plasmids/etc. increased the risk of/allowed for recombinants with the endemic Cov strain resulting in those mutations of greatest concern… Have you come across anything on that?
Lmao, what is this list?! ICE comes in with guns and the authors advice is to “print red cards” to “resist” them. How detached from reality can you get? There is not one single useful action on this list!
Especially infuriating is the “LGBTQ neighbors in danger? Call the police!” Motherfucker, who do you think is the danger?!
I mean, let’s assume that we somehow regulate AI so that people have to pay to use copyrighted works for training (as absurd as that is).
ISBNDB approximates there to be 158,464,880 published books in existence.
Meta’s annual income was ~156 billion last year.
Assuming a one time purchase scenario and a $20 average cost that’s ~3.2 billion dollars. ~2% of their annual revenue.
Or you could assume assuming a $0.2 annual license (similar to a lot of technology licenses), or a 0.002 per “stream” (which I. This instance would be ‘use of data to train model’)
I agree with most of what you said, but if you buy into a lot of the economic paradigms your arguments are based on you must also realize that those require the copyrighted works must be paid for and it’s not unreasonable to do so.
deal with illegals
You mean be the one putting them in cages? Running the
concentration campsimmigrant detention centers? Using their legal status as leverage for the modern equivalent of indentured servitude?It turns out people aren’t very nice when they’re being abused.
champagne communists
So let’s stop speaking in euphemisms. When you say “illegals” that is explicitly genocidal language, little different than the usual ‘insects’, ‘vermin’, etc.
So why don’t we just kill them all? Just set up a militarized zone on the border and shoot anything that moves?
Same, you have a said a lot of words while mostly refusing to seriously engage with anything I’ve said. If I may though; some parting thoughts:
please stop wasting people’s time with obviously false arguments like “trump and harris are the same”. not only is it wrong, it’s painfully simplistic and reductive. no nuance, just black and white thinking so that you never have to think critically.
They are not the same, they are 2 sides to the same coin. I fail to see how that heads/tails isn’t the “black and white, no nuance” mindset.
I have noticed that you threw my “parroting” and “idealism” criticisms back at me
Yeah, because I was hoping it would be a moment for you to stop and do some self-reflection because I actually listened to what you had to say warts and all.
trump will send my trans ass to a camp
No he will send our asses to a prison the same ones black, Hispanic, indigenous, poor, marganalized etc. people are currently in. The same ones Harris is repeatedly saying she wants to expand and build more of, the same ones Biden has been building out for the last 4 years.
No. It was a shortcut I took to shortcircuit your argument that Biden is fascist. Not all dictators are fascists, but all fascists are dictators.
Then provide your definition of the term “fascist” because it clearly differs from the dictionary definition.
The U.S. government is set up in a way that makes it extremely resistant to change, both good and bad. This means that the Democrats, who at least make a token effort towards progress, face an uphill battle. Republicans, on the other hand, just want to stymie progress and roll back everything they can, and it’s always a lot easier to tear things down than build things up.
Many of the things that we see are not “stymied progress” or “roll back everything”. The modern US government today is in many ways very different than it was even 20 years ago. Republicans and Democrats have been building and modifying how the US government operates and they are making changes that directly change the form and function of government. The supreme Court and presidency did not have as much power as they do now. If you read the “Project 2025 agenda” it is not rolling things back, it is a plan for building a new thing.
If that is your argument then why don’t the Democrats simply roll back many of the extensions that have been made? If it’s easier to tear down, then the citizen’s united case should be easy to destroy? We could revert to 1960s federal tax rates? Repeal the homeland security act? That argument requires an extremely ahistorical understanding, but one you seem to share with the “make America great again” crowd.
Our system is inherently dysfunctional, with many of the advances in progress that we’ve made lately have been due to Supreme Court decisions, and, well, the Republicans seized control of it and are now using it to roll back those advances. In fact, now that they’re obviously in the bag for Trump, they’re making nonsensical and unconstitutional decisions that will hand Trump a lot of power that will make things a lot worse for all of us.
If only we could’ve elected a democratic president in between Trump’s first and second term…
your weak grasp on how the American government works
You have a good grasp on how the de jure government works, but seem to be rather ignorant (seemingly intentionally) of how the de facto government works. That ignorance is what I’m trying to highlight and why you keep ending up in disagreements. You can keep repeating what you read in your AP US history book but you should really be paying more attention to when it doesn’t match the present material conditions.
I do know that we need to do something actionable, and not throw our hands up and go “we’ve tried everything and we’re all out of ideas”. Your idealism clouds your mind to the point where you’re actively working against what you’re professing to believe
Funny, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Your idealism surrounding what the Democratic party is, and it’s purpose, has you actively working and arguing against your beliefs.
compare and contrast Harris’s proposed policy agenda and Trump’s Agenda 47/Project 2025 and tell me that they’re the same.
I don’t care what they say, I care what they do and they will both do the same thing.
if you somehow view even Trump and Romney as the same
They are not, but the messaging surrounding them at the time was. Similiarly going from the first black president to Jim Crow Joe is quite the difference on the Democratic side as well.
I don’t think that leftist organizing will face quite that amount of pushback.
Then you live under a rock.
the man sent goons in unmarked vans to harass, detain, and intimidate BLM protesters in Portland.
Using presidential powers created under Bush and expanded under Obama. It was a more brazen use of those powers than usual, but not too out of the ordinary if you’ve paid attention to events in Ferguson, standing rock, etc.
you can’t discern the painfully obvious difference between the mediocre status quo Harris and the absolutely fascist Donald Trump
The “mediocre status quo” is absolutely fascist.
Stats. Facts. Stop gish galloping and ad homenen-ing.
You can pick another of the arguments I made if you’d preferable.