lennybird @ lennybird @lemmy.world

Posts

9

Comments

3,039

Joined

2 yr. ago

Moderating

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lol the bitch fled, wore a disguise, and FBI (when under legitimate direction) rooted her out. Not too many innocent people go into hiding for 3 years.

Side note but I was literally just thinking the other day that the accelerated rise of corruption and right-wing pivot of the globe also coincides with encrypted / anonymous communications. Mobsters and state actors must be having an absolute field day this past decade.

lol, oh Chamberlain... By all means, you first.

Evil is a biblical term based on bullshit. If I'm forced to consume one of two poisons but one has less potency or lethality than the other, I'm taking the less potent one. Obviously.

Would I prefer to take neither? Sure. But we don't live in a fairy-tale utopia where that is an option.

This user ended up agreeing by the way with that assessment.

Haha!

Okay, tankie. Thanks for the chuckle.

Shame I can't tag multiple comments.

lol if you think that's insane then you should see the comment I tagged you with! ;)

No. All are dyed in the wool trumpers these days and didn't do jack shit for me in younger years in the midst of very hard times of family problems (eg, parental divorce).

I have my true family and loved ones, and would rather not complicate things. I've already spent hundreds of thousands of words mending one close relationship successfully; but that was one worth saving as taxing as it was.

As far as older people go you mention, the funny thing is I've always been more comfortable around people much older than me. Always felt distant from my peers, generally.

Well, they kind of have but that's also relative. Were it not for AIPAC's grip in the party, I wonder how much further they would've gone.

It's going to have the opposite effect in time. If center-right moderates are called radical Marxists, then they might as well at least be social democrats or democratic socialists anyway and at least have some sound policies instead of watered-down right-wing garbage.

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.

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.