Just leave 5 days as a recommendation. What’s the harm in that? fuckers.
Ed: CDC could do better to protect people, but instead bend to capitalist (mostly GQP) forces to ignore that edict and get sick people back out working.
e.g. stating that people should “take precautions”, which if someone can work from home could be that, and/or wearing masks if not, etc. Unfortunately, not everyone (single mothers?) has the luxury of taking a week off whenever they want or even NEED to.
Also, this is just a guess but I am fairly positive that this is based on all the EXTREME amount of push-back that they have been putting up with from Republicans over the last few years to CONTINUALLY get all up in their business, despite barely having finished a high school’s worth of edumacashiun. And probably also, to an enormously lesser degree, from Democrats who want to push the “pandemic is solved, b/c Biden won the last election” message that they believe will resonate with the handful of centrist people left in the country.
So this is once again a symptom of late-stage capitalism, where obstructionists shoot the department in the head, then complain how “ineffective” it is after that.
e.g. stating that people should “take precautions”, which if someone can work from home could be that, and/or wearing masks if not, etc. Unfortunately, not everyone (single mothers?) has the luxury of taking a week off whenever they want or even NEED to.
On the other hand, employers will take this to mean ‘come in or else,’ even if WFH is an option. I know for a fact that my previous hybrid job that claimed they were doing whatever the CDC suggested would interpret this as ‘you can come into the office after 24 hours of the symptoms ending.’ I guarantee you that they would be far from alone.
So yeah, this would help those single mothers. This will also spread a lot more COVID and possibly kill those single mothers.
First, this is (legit!) the first I am hearing about a job that actually pays attention to the advice of CDC. For multiple YEARS now we have been inundated by stories of corps that have ignored that, time and again, sometimes being more lenient than normal (e.g. allowing WFH 100% of the time) while other times being far less. I am saying that this “advice” from the CDC was never binding to begin with. I wonder how normal that situation you describe is? Maybe it is far more common than our media sources have led us to believe?
Second, they still say to “take precautions”, which now is expanded to include other respiratory viruses that can likewise kill - e.g. more severe flus that can be damaging especially to the elderly or those with compromised immune systems.
I haven’t even mentioned how the variants have changed the scope of the situation, and/or what expectations there are in the coming months (perhaps, although this article did not tell us, this merely describes the baseline but there may be special alerts during peak times and/or irt special variants that would modify this advice, specially to those particular circumstances?). I was just presuming that they, being the CDC, know more than me, who to be absolutely clear, does not have an M.D.
What I do know is that Republicans kept HOUNDING the agency, DEMANDING that they explain every tiny little thing down to the smallest detail, all without paying the slightest attention to its responses - i.e. like a DDoS attack, it just became another form of harassment that wasted an enormous fraction of their budget every year - it’s the election counting scenario all over again. Also, I note that despite the federal fiscal budget year having begun back on October 1, we are now IN THE SIXTH MONTH of that fiscal year, but still with no fiscal budget. i.e., the CDC, like every other federal agency, has come upon hard times. Will their budget increase (which seems as likely as flaming monkeys suddenly flying out of my butt), or will it be cut by some amount (i.e. they cannot really hire anyone until they know for sure), or will it be constrained to remain the same (which puts it into a legal quandary, b/c iirc there is some legal stipulation that federal staff salaries always have to increase by a certain amount each year, which was intended to help them keep pace with inflation although who are we kidding about keeping up with THAT in the modern era? but still, they HAVE to do it… except they CAN’T do it, if they are not given the funds, and to make matters worse, whatever budget eventually does get past the Congressional Obstructionist Wall will have to work retroactively back to have began on October 1… or something like that anyway).
So the CDC caved, it seems, yet managed to preserve its integrity in the process, by both keeping its standards within the realm of correct medicinal advice, while moving forward in a way as to “first do no harm” to those who would continue to be negatively impacted by it remaining under attack from Congress. Single mothers may die, yes, but that is not something that I would lay all of the blame at their feet for. With a gun to their head, and another one aimed at their crotch, they made a decision to move forward as best they could. I am not saying that blame should not be involved here, but I am saying that we should forget who did this to us all: conservatives. The CDC itself imho held up admirably, given what conditions they were operating under. If we want them to perform better in the future, perhaps we should exempt them from Congressional oversight, and allow doctors to give medical advice without having to pay overtures to powerful white geriatric men who for whatever reason continue to hold their strategy session get-togethers in Moscow even after it invaded Ukraine. i.e., look at what happened to the Post Office, and the IRS - it is remarkable to me that the CDC is one of the last bastions of government from the Golden Era of ye olden socialist (aka “sharing is caring”) United States that is actually most of the way functional. Like, if my car ran out of gas and then managed to limp along another 100 miles, I wouldn’t be blaming the car for refusing to go any further! Instead, I’d be praising how well it managed to perform in such a difficult scenario.
I worked for a company that absolutely took Covid seriously. If you went into the office, you walked through a visual IR scanner to make sure you did not have a fever. Conference rooms that could house 12 were restricted to for people with masks (nobody used the rooms). Anyone that came in had to check off that they sterilized their desk before leaving. The production line was masked up and properly distanced. I don’t know anyone in the building that died of COVID which seemed to be an extreme rarity in manufacturing. I visited a biopharma company and the first day I was there someone swung by to mention that one of their coworkers just died of COVID. They had a mask policy but it was also Indianapolis so masks outside of that workplace were pretty few and far between.
My company still requires regular testing and notifies of cases. In a company of ~100 or so employees I get an email every other week or so notifying of a new case. When the new CDC recommendation was brought up in our department meeting of scientists and engineers the reaction was bemused laughter and my boss immediately said “well, we’re definitely not doing that”.
Much better than Tyson Foods that wrote the executive order to stay open during the pandemic, ignored masking, and made bets on how many of their workers would die.
So the CDC caved, it seems, yet managed to preserve its integrity in the process, by both keeping its standards within the realm of correct medicinal advice
LOL, what? This is absolutely not correct medicinal advice. Doctors and scientists have been telling them that since the shortening to 5 days. You yourself say you don’t know what correct advice is earlier in this comment.
stating that people should “take precautions”, which if someone can work from home could be that, and/or wearing masks if not, etc.
Except that is not what is being reported, it not what managers will enforce, and it’s not what most people will do. It’s a poor decision because adding nuance will just make people ignore what they want to.
The pessimist looks down and hits his head. The optimist looks up and loses his footing. The realist looks forward and adjusts his path accordingly.
(1) Companies are going to do whatever they want, regardless; (2) the CDC “advice” was never anywhere close to binding; (3) they are real doctors - they know more about COVID and also other respiratory diseases than any of us here; but mostly what I wanted to say is (4) they did not make this decision entirely in isolation of all of the facts. They had a gun to their head, and it seems like they tried to do the best they were able given the circumstances.
But yes, I hear you, it is another victory for conservatives - and for some strange reason most Democrats as well - who want to pretend that the pandemic never happened. But it is not anywhere close to as bad as could have happened.
No they didn’t. 5 days of “normal activities with precautions” is not 5 days of “isolation”.
And the core problem is that 5 days was already not scientific and “fever” isn’t an indicator of infectiousness at all, it’s just a symptom that some infectious people experience for some of their infectious period.
“We showed that among the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant infected patients, viral shedding continues for ≥10 days in 13.5% of all cases and 11% in symptom-free cases. The decision for cessation of isolation according to the presence of symptoms could be reconsidered until further studies disapprove of our results.”
Unfortunately, not everyone (single mothers?) has the luxury of taking a week off whenever they want or even NEED to.
The CDC changing he recommendation doesn’t do anything for people who might need to leave the house for supplies or to pick up a child. They already could and would do that, because a recommendation to private citizens is just a recommendation. Where it matters is that it removes liability from their employers and “lets” them work, but that’s only “helpful” because so many people are desperately poor and they haven’t mandated paid sick leave when people have infectious diseases. This is the sort of “helping workers” where the help is just because they do absolutely nothing to require humane conditions from their employers. Taking a week off to not infect your fellow workers shouldn’t be a “luxury”.
Long CoVID is indeed real but the same issue happens with many other diseases including the flu. That said, Covid is still much deadlier than the flu should not be treated as such.
Long COVID happens at a WAY higher rate than ME/CFS does with any other illness. In an oversimplification, they’re basically the same thing. COVID is the first disease we’ve found that can reliably trigger ME/CFS, to the point where it got its own name.
My wife is a public library administrator. We are in Indiana, not West Virginia, but I could absolutely see the same thing happening here and I’m terrified. Between this, me being Jewish and having a queer daughter, I feel like my whole family is so fucked.
We can’t afford to. We also both have elderly mothers who are still living on their own but may not be for long. My mother is 82. Hers is in her late 70s and has lupus.
Effingham, Champaign/Urbana, and Bloomington/Normal are not that much further. I would personally pick blono as cost of living is cheaper with better job prospects than Champaign/Urbana. Effingham is going to be much more like Indiana.
Further enough that if there is an emergency, it would take way too long to get to our mothers. They’re already a 70-minute drive in the opposite direction.
My mother is a librarian past retirement age in Iowa. She’s the director and has been running the library for probably around 30 years. The state is working on killing library boards and giving all control to local government. It would be absolutely terrible for libraries. My mom won’t retire because she’s standing up for the library and can’t do the same in retirement, and she can’t find a replacement with the same passion to fight.
Republicans are doing everything in their power to hurt people, take away freedoms, and keep the population poorly educated. They are literally the worst thing for this country. I’d say pedophiles are worse, but they’re the same thing, so…
I'd encourage your mom to consider retiring and then running for local office.
We need the custodians of the public good to be in positions of authority. It's scary to give up control you know for a long shot, but at the same time, if enough people make the leap and give us solid options in every jurisdiction, we might be able to get out ahead of the regressives' next attack.
I think the library would die in the amount of time it would take to maybe get a local position. Further, she’s pushing 68 this year which imo is too old for something like that. Lastly, it’s a small Iowa town, and while it’s not as conservative as Western Iowa, she’s far too liberal to get mass support for a vote. That and her house is surrounded by family farm land that the city keeps trying to develop and she is fighting tool and nail against that. They wanted to build a massive horse arena right across the street some years ago, which would drastically lower her property value and qualify of life. The city keeps pushing forward trying to get things done and keeping her out of the loop like planning and land surveys for roads and shit. If I inherit some of that land when she passes, out of spite, I will ensure that the city never touches it because of how shady they’ve been. I’ll have it converted to protected prairie land before letting them ruin the area.
I am so sorry this is off topic. You’re not a woman? (I ask because you said wife and only specifying your daughter as part of the LGBTQA community)
Seriously was convinced you were a woman because everything I ever see you say is much more aligned with a woman’s perspective than I’m used to seeing on the internet.
That said I’m sorry you don’t feel secure and safe in your home state. I hope this backsliding ends soon
I live in Ohio, my husband is a librarian in a small-ish town. He’s had to start looking for jobs in Columbus and out-of-state, which sucks because he really loves his community and knows most of the patrons by name. It’s maddening watching people actively campaign and vote against things like library funding, then turn around and complain that programs are being cut and service quality is dropping…
It really is. My only hope is that the library board in this town really cares about the library and freedom of speech, so maybe they will help shield the employees. I hope your husband finds something that works for him and you. Good luck!
I don’t think y’all inside liberal spaces like lemmy and reddit are honestly aware of how politically ignorant most Americans are.
“How could they NOT know?! Head all up in Fox News and nothing else?!”
Couple of anecdotes, so take them as you will.
My wife is Filipina, been here 3-years. She didn’t think Trump was such a bad guy. All she knew was what her ex-husband told her.
We were at the Mexican restaurant the other day and the server saw a pic of Trump on my phone while I read CNN, wanted to engage me in a conversation about who I was voting for and clearly favored Trump. The man barely speaks English.
A year after Trump came into office my sister (62-yo at the time) only had a vague notion that he wasn’t a nice guy, not really on the up and up, but maybe the hate was just politics? If my sister got a robocall saying Biden ate a puppy, she would run right out and vote Trump.
Yes, these people are ignorant. But they’re not reading like you and I. We’re interested, engaged, or we wouldn’t be here, and you wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t.
Not even going to get into how the GOP is flooding the media and internet to make all this sound like white noise, “politics”. But these Trump voters are not all rabid lunatics. And don’t dare come in a space like this and say, “They actually have a point on this particular thing…” or “They’re wrong, but they believe this way because…” You will get shouted down and shut out.
If the Democrats don’t fight fire with fire, we’re fucked. No more “high road” bullshit. The GOP’s propaganda machine is winning, and no amount of gotchas or exposal of hypocrisy matters. We can no longer play fair, aspire to logic and reasoning. We have to fight dirty and WIN.
The problem is that they know people on the left will never be true assholes to them so it allows them to do anything they want.
The current example is the border crisis, Texas acts the way it does because it knows that the federal government will not actually do anything about it. If the situation was reversed though? Democrat State easing the entry of migrants and not letting the federal government manage the border? Republicans wouldn’t care, they would send in the big guns!
You don’t have to lie, you just have to appeal to emotion with your pitch. Bernie was a great example of a populist candidate who knew how to make people feel passionate about things without lying to them. He got a lot of flack for repeating the same lines, but that is all that some Americans can handle—a slogan. He was smart enough to pick ones where most Americans instantly knew what he was about, and it felt good.
Nobody really knows what “build back better” means, and it sort of implies that we’ve been damaged in some way and need repair. MAGA doesn’t really mean shit either, but it implies that we’ve tended to be pretty great, and all we need is to remember those times and recreate them. It is supercharged with Hollywood’s nostalgic eye towards the past, and it doesn’t even require you to know why Medicare is good to want to get on board with it.
So, from that perspective, democrats need marketing. They need meme reacts, iconic looks, and coolness, and they need to stop trying to stifle the candidates they have who exemplify those qualities.
If they can’t figure that shit out, they’re going to keep losing at moments that they sorely need to win.
The Biden administration is quite possibly the worst administration I’ve ever seen when it comes to messaging, and I am in my 50s. Someday in the future someone will write a PhD dissertation on why they are so dysfunctional in this respect, but for now I just don’t get it. They are singularly inept when it comes to publicizing and taking credit for their wins.
Bernie, and Trump, and even Obama all had one thing in common: their campaigns were predicated on the notion that the status quo was bullshit and had to change. Obama was a once in a generation political talent, and he got elected on his message, and yeah he ultimately skewed to the center, but he demonstrated that the model could work.
When you get to 2016, your leading contenders are Trump, who is running on a platform of ‘break everything,’ Bernie, a socialist Jew from Vermont who was able to rocket to national significance on the basis of acknowledging populist anger, and Hillary, who squandered eight years of Obama administration goodwill and universal name recognition by basically coming across as a “let’s get back to business as usual” candidate.
Sure, Biden was also “let’s get back to normal” candidate, but that only works in the context of four years of Trumpish turbo insanity.
I’m amazed that Democrats seem to be so afraid to address the anger felt by people who feel abandoned by the rich and powerful in this country. Republicans were never going to deliver, but they have been able to seize power by billing themselves as champions of the common citizen and avatars of middle and lower class justice.
If Democrats can’t wrestle that narrative away from the Republicans and meaningfully address just how powerless and forgotten so many people in this country feel, then they are going to have a very hard time stopping our backwards slide into fascism.
I think part of the problem is that the democrats have been deep in bed with Wallstreet and tech since the 90’s. Populist anger may help them win, but the people they are angry at are the ones who are also paying the bills. It takes extraordinary self sacrifice and discipline to walk the tightrope of politics and keep your hands clean. Obama and Bernie did their best to do that, but both of them had a very difficult road without the traditional money banks.
I don’t think y’all inside liberal spaces like lemmy and reddit are honestly aware of how politically ignorant most Americans are.
I do. I just don’t excuse it. Some of it is willful. Some is negligent. Some is innocent to some degree. But I won’t excuse it away. The Internet put the world’s info at our fingertips. It’s about time people acted like it.
I think what you are describing is not a specifically American problem. In Germany, for example, the AfD, an extreme right-wing, openly fascist party, is unfortunately on the rise as well. This party uses almost exactly the same strategy as the conservatives in America - simplistic, often anecdotal explanations, false accusations, targeted disinformation, refusal to compromise on anything and so on. Unfortunately, this also works frighteningly well in many other countries. And the same problem seems to exist everywhere: People who are either hopelessly misinformed or not informed at all, or even unquestioningly and often downright sectarianly parroting what their leaders claim (plus those who are actually racists and fascists by conviction). I suspect that this is largely due to the fact that social media is the only source of information for many people today. The main problem with that imo is not only that social media logic favors offensive and particularly controversial content, but also that the owners of the largest platforms almost universally support authoritarian to fascist political currents because it is profitable for them. This is another reason why I think the mass demonstrations against fascism, racism and intolerance in Germany are quite important: they show people that there is still widespread rejection of these terrible ideas - and that seems essential to me, because social media easily gives a false impression of the “public opinion”. It certainly seems worth a try to me. That’s why I’m about to set off again to a demonstration against fascism. I recommend you Americans follow whether the IRL protests in Germany and elsewhere prove to be a suitable remedy to the general stupor in political debate. If so, this approach can easily be adopted in the US as well.
It’s all true but at the same time you’re missing very important thing: a lot of people support extreme right-wing parties because those are the only parties that offer solutions to their problems. One of the main issues conservative guys see today is losing privileges they used to enjoy. For example I heard a guy complaining about the fact, that when he was younger he got naked into some girl’s bed and she only screamed a bit and got angry but today he would go to jail. The big difference between liberals and conservatives is that liberals see this change as a good thing. AfD and other parties are the only groups that oppose those changes and a lot of white guys are attracted to that. And it’s hard to say they are wrong. For them it’s all about their status, they see stopping those changes as a net benefit for them. Accusations like the one against Kevin Spacey are not making things better. The farther left you push those things the more people will be worried about their status and will start pushing back. AfD is an example of this push back. It’s not all of it but it’s a very important part of this dynamic.
Yes, of course, there are many reasons why people vote for these parties. However, I very much doubt whether these parties actually offer any viable solutions or whether their popularity is due to proposals for actual solutions - imo they just make it seem that way. Just one example: the AfD does not pursue a social economic policy; quite the opposite. Nevertheless, they pretend to be on the side of the little guy by engaging in classic fascist agitation against foreigners who are supposedly taking jobs away from Germans and are therefore also supposedly to blame for the dire economic situation of many Germans. This is of course not only factually wrong, but is even aimed at a counterproductive, namely very restrictive immigration policy. It is nothing more than propaganda designed to attract voters in economically precarious circumstances, although this demographic group would be the one to suffer most from the AfD’s economic policy if this party ever forms a government (basically a 1-to-1 copy of the Trumpists’ strategy). Furthermore, the German economy does actually urgently need foreign workers due to demographics - and by no means only highly qualified ones. I have at least some hope that the protests currently taking place across Germany can help people understand what parties like the AfD actually stand for and thus realize that they are being duped. For those conservatives who are determined to hold on to their traditional values, I hope that the protests will make them realize that they are voting for fascists and perhaps remember what happened in 1933 when the fascists took power in Germany. For the more rational thinking folk, the protests bring a little hope because people can reassure themselves in real life that there are actually many others who neither tolerate fascism nor want this hateful political discourse that just plays into the hands of AfD and others - with all their enemy stereotypes, backwards thinking and simplistic explanations. It at least gives me a little hope when I see, as I did today, that 30,000 people took to the streets in my home town of 250,000 inhabitants to demonstrate against fascism and for an open, tolerant democracy. This might not stop the AfD, but I’d say if I can possibly contribute a bit to weaken the popularity of this fascist party, it’s well worth a few hours of my time.
You’re right about everything but what I’m saying is that there’s something hidden a bit deeper behind all this. A lot of people don’t support AfD, VOX of Konfederacja because they believe in their economic and anti-immigration policies. They are drawn to them because of they anti-progressive stances and once ‘converted’ they accept the other ideas. The main thing is that the further you take progressive policies the more people will start disagreeing with them and pushing back. And there’s really no good solution here. We either give more rights to women and minorities and face pushback from the right or limit those policies and face pushback from the left. It’s a kind of ‘two steps forward one step back’ situation where we took steps forward recently and I think we just have to be prepared for the step back.
Yes, that is certainly true. I just don’t have an answer as to how this attitude can be dealt with reasonably in a democracy. Looking at history, I don’t think there is a better system than democracy (you can of course be lucky and get a “good autocrat” of whatever couleur - but that was possible even in the days of monarchy and obviously never really worked). I realize of course that there will always be the backward-looking people. Brexit is a good example, I think (“we need to be the empire ruling the world again” - was isolationism the way to go? Doesn’t seem so to me). After all, this desire for long-gone greatness has little to do with the reality of a globalized world. This attitude becomes even more problematic when you think about the most pressing problems facing humanity. Climate change. There can be no endless growth with limited resources. I think this is a fact that people just have to deal with. Musk won’t be able to solve this problem with a new habitat on Mars and our promises to cut emissions seem to me nothing more than publicity promises. In short, I’ve come to the conclusion that this unworldly, backward-looking thinking is simply unacceptable. Nevertheless, I try to keep the peace by more or less pretending to understand the concerns of those backward-looking people. There’s not much more I can do, I’m afraid. All the less so when these people try to reverse civilizational achievements such as equal rights for women. I really can’t bring myself to have any sympathy for that. So yea, you are of course absolutely right: there is really no solution to this. But im affraid that there still has to be a solution as soon as possible.
You’re also missing something very important. A lot of the things these people see as “their problems” have been implanted into their heads by shitheads on talk radio, TV, social media, YouTube, etc for the benefit of the wealthy. If you’re too busy worrying about trans people and illegal immigrants, you’re not going to pay much attention to the rich fucks paying you a pittance and hoovering up the planet’s resources for themselves.
I know a guy that got accused by some family member of rape 20 years ago, lost his job and spend years awaiting trial only to be found not guilty but with broken career and a debt. Now go tell this guy and many other guys thinking that “me too” movement went to far that “their problems” were only implanted into their heads. You and me we understand the power dynamics here and can still support “me too” despite it’s flaws but many guys simply see the privileges they lost because of it. I’m assuming you would agree with me that they shouldn’t have had those privileges in the first place but the fact that they are loosing them is real. That’s why they are worried and are pushing back.
I don’t buy into that. There’s a difference in pushing the bully back assertively without necessarily stooping to their level.
Nobody is advocating we attempt to cheat like Republicans, for instance (at least I hope that wasn’t what was meant by fighting dirty). Just stop coddling them and pretending they’re acting in good faith when clearly they are not. I’ve seen more of this assertiveness come out over the years from Democrats and it’s long past due and could be tripled easily.
TFA: Greta Thunberg and four co-defendants have been found not guilty of breaking the law when they refused to follow police instructions to move on during a climate protest.
District Judge John Laws threw out a public order charge due to “no evidence” and added police attempted to impose “unlawful” conditions during a protest.
I hate the cops as much as everyone but thats not what the ruling says at all.
The case was thrown out not because the cope were doing anything illegal, but because their instructions to the protestors were so unclear they couldn’t be considered a lawful order.
As well as the fact that the incompetent cops didn’t take statements from anyone so there’s no evidence to prove they violated section 14.
Honestly part of me suspects the cops might have did it on purpose because they were ordered to stop it but didn’t really want to. But that’s probably giving them too much credit honestly, incompetence is the most likely answer.
Plausible deniability would certainly be a fun one. But as much as I am pro climate action, cops should generally be neutral. Otherwise it would be very hypocritical if cops acted on different kind of views that I don't agree with. Either way, the system kinda worked as intended here. That's a good thing.
oopsy woopsy we made a little fucky boingo that dragged you through the criminal justice system through no fault of your own and at no cost to us, all because of an unknown mix of malice and incompetence
Well there is a law that they were in theory breaking.
A shitty authoritarian law, but still a law.
And the whole point of the criminal justice system is to interpret cases like these and interpret the law and decide if someone is culpable. This is what happens when you have a properly separated system where cops are not judge joury and executioner, so while cops need to have some understanding of the law, its not their job to make those finer interpretations when cases could or could not be illegal. It might seem dumb in this case, but if cops have that power it would allow them to selectively enforce the law and you would have them saying “oh I didn’t arrest the rapist because of this [nonexistent] technicality that makes it not a crime”
your argument is that the police need to be allowed to act with as much malice or incompetence as they like because if there was more oversight in the system they could choose to not arrest rapists?
you're saying that more oversight would lead to the police having more freedom to enforce the law as they see fit?
No. And I would rather you didn’t purposefully misinterpret what am saying for the sake of trying to “win” a pointless internet argument like a redditor would.
you're the one attempting to reframe "there should be more oversight on the police's actions" as "the police should be granted more power to interpret the law as they see fit"
the cops might have did it on purpose because they were ordered to stop it
Yep.
The UK gvmt have been increasingly cracking down on the right to protest. For example, during the proclamation of Charles coronation (royal officers go to towns and read an official proclamation out loud) a man who said (direct quote) “Not in my name” was arrested on a public order offence and dragged through the system until the CPS said they weren’t going to take it any further.
At every turn the current Tory gvmt have urged the Police to be heavy handed with public order ‘offences’ and sort it out later.
I do love how the government and the police are trying to impose a police state, while at the same time having giant arguments with each other and criticizing each other even though they both want the same thing, while at the same time the courts are not having any of it from either group.
I suppose it’s a good thing that these fascist idiots can’t organize themselves, but I really wish they weren’t in positions of authority to begin with.
Plaintiff’s lawyers argued that the pay package was dictated by Musk and was the product of sham negotiations with directors who were not independent of him.
Shams pretty much some up the whole of his career.
The spokespeople for the right are full of individuals like this. It’s insane they feel the need to invent elaborate conspiracy theories about others when these people are right in front of their faces.
They need the other side to also be terrible to maintain the ‘both sides are the same’ narrative. It’s why they’re desperate to impeach Biden for something.
Trump was found liable for rape and they still don’t call him a rapist. I wish they’d just come out and admit they’re fine with rape instead of all of this pussyfooting around.
Unless the Trump is held accountable, He will most likely win. People’s material needs are important and Dem messaging has basically been hey we showed this graph so you’re not struggling and anything popular you want won’t happen. But everything bad will happen with the other guy. Being not Trump once again is a dangerous way to win the election. Trump’s cultist ass should be getting crushed.
I really don’t want another run of Trump pardoning psychopaths and doing what he wants. But democracy is basically in the hands of Dems and they scrap by when it comes to connecting with people or even giving them a vision post beating Trump.
Project 2025 and the fact that donny spray-tan has multiple times in the last few weeks stated on public and on camera that he will be a day 1 dictator.
It’s kinda crazy since, what will the other wlsode do to help? There is a strong history of actively harming everyone but the ultra rich.
It’s like being mad at my boss because he isn’t telling me how he’s going to help me on my career progression, and deciding I’ll switch bosses to a corrupt prison guard instead.
At this point Bernie’s lost at least some of it; I can’t disagree with those who’ve accused him of sheepdogging, although I think he was trying to do the best he could with what he had.
Sanders not burning his own party cost him much of his clout. Frankly they deserved it for what they did to him and his show of weakness backing the warhawk Clinton was awful to see from someone who usually has so much fire.
What alternative would you propose? Say what you will about Sanders, but he actually wants the Republic to last, imperfect though it may be. Apparently many of his critics prefer a politician who will throw a tantrum if things don’t go his way and then try to bring down the whole nation. That reminds me of someone else.
Your change involves kids in cages, dead immigrants in rivers, American military deployment in American cities, assassinated political opponents, and dead women in American hospitals. I think I prefer Joe Biden.
Just to be clear–I’m not a fan of the ongoing Palestinian genocide. It’s reprehensible. But Biden didn’t cause that. The US supports the state of Israel for complex geopolitical reasons that aren’t that different from why it also supports other regimes that lack stirling human rights records, and those reasons date back nearly a hundred years. That’s realpolitik, and you might not like how the diplomatic sausage is made. It’s not pretty for the US, and I hate to be the one to break it to you, but it’s not pretty for other nations either. But guess what? If Bernie Sanders were president, or if Donald Trump were president, you know what would be different about America’s foreign policy position re Israel? Not a goddamned thing. Because this is as good as it gets. It’s a calculated diplomatic position. Not pretty, and not fun politically, but every alternative is as morally black or worse, and absolutely worse for US interests.
The US is an empire. It does empire things. Sometimes I don’t like those things. But I live here. So yeah, 1000 years sounds nice. Certainly beats trying to kill the whole experiment in less than four. That’s what the other guy wants. Personally, I’d rather keep it around to try to do some fixing.
But keep it coming with the hyperbole if it makes you feel righteous.
Kids in cages? How about malnourished kids in cages but they’re actively beaten up and tear gassed by the IDF.
Assasinating political opponents? How about blowing up their entire neighborhood.
Dead women in hospitals? How about blowing up the entire hospital. How about having kids getting their legs sawn off without anesthetics because they need to get them amputated from being bombed.
If you have to choose between Hitler and Stalin, maybe wake up to reality and stop abiding this insanity.
You’re right. All of those things are happening, and they’re despicable. The Israeli people should be marching in the streets, and Netanyahu should be tried as a war criminal.
I don’t live in Israel. And in any event, we’re talking about American domestic policy. The Israel state is an evil institution–like a lot of states–but the US interest in that part of the world means that the US is going to continue to give Israel its full-throated support, and it doesn’t really matter which party is in control of the US government. That one party is using that support to attack the other is just political theater, and everyone who studies global politics knows it.
Godwin’s maxim notwithstanding, the mention of Hitler and Stalin is actually a decent example: You realize Stalin was the US’s ally in World War II, don’t you? Sometimes nations don’t get to choose desirable company. The US’s reasons for supporting Israel may not be noble, but they’re rational. More importantly, what’s the alternative you’d prefer? The US should carpet bomb Israeli cities? let Russia have the Middle East (e.g., Syria)? or maybe just send a strongly worded letter? There isn’t a more humanitarian alternative that doesn’t have worse geopolitical consequences.
The point is to illustrate how both of those leaders are not figures that you want to lead your country.
Stalin was not just an ally, he was the guy that won WW2 by just throwing Russian bodies at the Germans. He was not exactly known for his human rights views though. He has books about his genocide
I still remember trying to explain to someone back in my reddit days that many media sources played clips of people saying they are voting for Biden in the primaries because they believe Bernie would lose. The only places saying that were the same media sources.
Well progressives are to blame for their incessant whining that any candidate that is not 100% progressive is absolute shit. Progressives are bitching about PEOPLE while corporatists are controlling the narrative about ISSUES.
Until progressives learn to play and win the messaging game, we’re wasting our time. But it has to start with positive messaging not negative messaging. Trumpists have that market cornered.
It’s not a messaging issue. Boomers are intentionally voting against progressives and leftists in primaries because boomers are selfish pieces of shit who enjoy fucking over anybody younger than 65 years old.
What on earth are you talking about? Progressives and leftists didn’t lose the 2020 primaries due to infighting. Having multiple candidates running with similar perspectives is a sign of a healthy movement. I wanted Bernie but I would’ve happily supported others.
But Boomers couldn’t resist the chance to vote against progressive and leftist efforts and since Biden was the only viable procorporate trash candidate they rallied around him.
Unfortunately the way I see it is Biden will lose for two reasons:
Hes old af
Inflation
Regardless of policies or how terrible the alternative is. I dont think most people are going to think much past “Things are expensive now, and oh great a super old white dude”.
Man I would love to see this, but its one of those things that I will believe when I see. I hope I have to eat my words on that too. Even if so, I dont think decriminalization would mean much to people in terms of getting out to vote. Most people who are really passionate about this over other issues have had the states handle it for them already. Dems waited too long for Federal Decriminalization to be a big motivator in a national election in my opinion.
They also divy it up so that it’s not really a victory. “We legalized weed*!”
For everyone over the age of 65, anybody who was born rich, if you own three patagonia jackets and people who attended an invitation only dinner with a bunch of billionaires.
Then moderates turn around and whine “Why doesn’t anyone give credit to Democrats for all the good they’ve done???”
Different types of people. Its a shame Democrats have such an uphill battle to rally around candidates because those voters hold their leaders accountable, almost to a fault. The republican voter base is made of people who are basically in a cult, or are one issue voters.
Just pointing out the facts. If you’re falling for some perception then you are the problem because not only are you not paying attention but you have no concept of history or facts.
Unfortunately this country is filled to the brim with people that are clueless, can’t remember what happened yesterday, and are misled by media to believe whatever nonsense they are gaslighting today.
So ultimately you are right but people need to be reminded that Trump was front and center of all of this inflation instead of blaming someone that came in after the damage was already done.
With all of this said, why would anyone look at Biden and say “oh just another old white dude”, but not come to the same conclusion with Trump? They are both old white dudes. So where are you getting this from? This is YOUR perception.
The bare minimum job requirement to being a politician is getting elected. If democrats can’t nail messaging like republicans then that’s on them, not on the average voter. Inflation didn’t really ramp up until trump left office and even though his actions contributed to this ramp up, the effects weren’t felt in full force until after he left. So what happens if you run on “we’re not trump”? People think back to the trump years, and other than when covid hit (which people can excuse as not the fault of the president), the economy seemed to be doing great, and there certainly wasn’t as big of an inflation problem as now.
Also, democrats had multiple candidates running in 2020 who weren’t “another old white dude” but they asked all the candidates they could to clear the way for biden because they needed to focus their efforts to defeat their most feared enemy: Bernie Sanders.
If biden loses, a big part of why will be the single issue “genocide Joe” kids who, like their predecessors, The Bernie Bros, took their vote and went home over something that was much smaller than the potential loss of democracy.
Downvote all wish, the fact remains: had the Bernie bros not thrown a temper tantrum, there’s a good chance 2016 could have turned out differently.
When do we get to blame the shit candidate who lost instead? Bernie didn’t ignore and not campaign in multiple states because he thought they were in the bag, that was Hillary. Bernie didn’t conspire with the dnc to put up the worse polling candidate because it was “their turn”, that was Hillary. Bernie supporters didn’t say “we don’t need your vote” to the progressive voters, those were Hillary supporters.
This shit makes me want to write Bernie in instead of holding my nose and voting for Biden like I did last time.
If you’re acknowledging you need our votes in the general then made better choices in the primaries. Don’t elect procorporate trash in the primaries like Joe Biden.
Multiple issues. You think it’s one issue because you aren’t paying attention. Biden argued about the amount of stimulus money he campaigned on, he negotiated down on student loan forgiveness, he fucked the BBB, he created a corporate handout with the CHIPs act, he blocked the rail strike, gave the most limp dicked support possible to the UAW, enlisted Yellen and Powell to fight American Workers… and he supports genocide.
The candidate you selected in the 2020 primaries is garbage. That’s on you.
The whole ‘bernie bros’ voting red is a digital propaganda point started by t_d, and spun off into 3 different Bernie subreddits that coincidentally were all modded by people from t_d.
They worked tirelessly to flood facebook so it LOOKED like ‘bernie bros are gonna vote against their best interests in spite’.
I mean there were a few actual progressives that flip flopped but most of them voted Jill Stein.
Are you deliberately trying to shift the goalposts? I’m not talking about ‘people who stayed home’ because it is functionally useless to try and estimate the absence of considering a third or more of eligible voters just simply never turn up in any election.
The claim was disenfranchised Bernie supporters switched their votes to trumpty dumpty. The articles you linked do not support that, which is why you shifted to ‘stayed home’
Talk about shifting goalposts…. I’m not talking about Bernie bros voting for Trump, you are. I never was, yet YOU comment to me about to change the subject to what YOU wanted it to be.
I was talking about everyone staying home and not voting like the “gEnOciDe jOe” people now. are now. Like the Bernie bros- they got butthurt over something smaller than the big picture and fucked it all up for everyone.
Then, in the aftermath, they claimed innocence and pointed the finger at other factors that were irrelevant. Which is VERY similar to what you are doing.
I’m done arguing about this. It’s pointless here. Lemmy is as bad as Reddit when it comes to hive mind mentality.
>Bernie bros- they got butthurt iver something smaller than the big picture and fucked it all up for everyone.
>Then, in the aftermath, they claimed innocence and pointed the finger at other factors that were irrelevant. Which is VERY similar to what you are doing.
Not about to get my account banned for disagreeing with you. Seems that happens a lot around you so, I’ll just block you so as to avoid it becoming a problem.
It's sad because technically the fediverse is a huge improvement over reddit and other social media platforms, but many of the users are so toxic that it just bleeds users with every wave of new people who try it. There's a lot of unreasonable and angry people on here out to start fights and hurl insults at anyone who isn't a Hamas apologist that is left of Lenin.
There’s a damn good chance that even more will die per minute if Trump is elected- but you can add to that his promise that he will absolutely be a dictator from day one. He’s already said he has no issue using our own military against us if necessary.
Are you having difficulty keeping up with the point of my original comment?
It’s entirely fair and necessary to criticize ANYONE for the things they do that fly in the face of human decency…
But I’m not talking about criticism. I’m talking about the people that admittedly are blatantly refusing to vote because of it- while simultaneously thinking it won’t be their fault when we wind up with a dictator in a throne.
It won’t be their fault. It’s their vote. It’s up to the candidate to win the vote. If they don’t win the voter’s vote; say, by aiding in a genocide, then it’s the candidate’s fault. We need to stop blaming voters because they don’t condone genocide, and start blaming candidates for abiding it.
If you sit at home doing nothing- you can’t in your right mind expect to make any change in the world. When Trump gets elected because theres not enough votes to cancel out his droves of mindless supporters- it WILL be the fault of those staying home and pouting.
Want change? Make change. But doing nothing will net you exactly that.
israel’s end goal is complete ethnic cleansing of Palestine. They will achieve that whether biden or trump is in office. There is no worse candidate in this particular case, because both unconditionally lick the ass of israel.
You’re right, those children deserved to die!!! In fact, democrats should run on the messaging of “fuck them kids”, that’ll get voters to eagerly run out and vote for them.
You appear to have more concern for their children's safety than 74% of Palestinians do. Hamas puts their lives in jeopardy, uses them as human shields, yet still remains popular.
Do you honestly think the Palestinians don’t care about their children? You’re just repeating israeli propaganda that dehumanizes Palestinians. Please think before spreading such fascist sentiments.
They care about their children, just evidently not as much as score settling. If they cared more about protecting their young, this popular intifada and constant provocation in a city of mostly children wouldn't make sense. Instead they indoctrinate children to violence and intifada from a young age, making child soldiers of them.
Are you aware that MEMRI is little more than a propaganda arm of israel? Anyway, you could argue that israel doesn’t care about their people, seeing as how they’ve bombed and shot up hostages they supposedly wanted to rescue. Following your logic, should israel be ethnically cleansed?
Memri translations can be suspect but there is nothing to translate in that clip, it speaks for itself. There are many clips like it if you search for them. Hamas even runs a summer camp for children that looks a lot like a boot camp.
This isn't about ethnicity, it's about Israel's neighbor trying to murder them for 70+ years.
Palestinians largely have not been trying to murder Israelis, that’s Hamas. On the other hand, ethnic cleansing of Palestine is official policy of Israel. From settlements to outright genocide.
As someone active in politics since the late 80s, I can say we have certainly lost a number of our civil liberties, fascists feel emboldened enough to go full masks-off on the floor of Congress, and we just had a fucking soft coup attempt, so yea our trajectory has been on the downward side of parabolic since Ragass Reagan was allowed to ooze into the white house.
Absolutely yes! Though it might be hard to find issues I don’t at least have mimeographed copies of.
It’s not wise for a government to signal so hard that the choices of the common person are irrelevant. In those times free speech comes in the form of ballistic cocktails.
I have been given very careful instructions to my friends to NEVER mix styrofoam with gasoline as that will make a jelly fuel mixture which is very dangerous and shouldn’t be done by any happy and represented citizen who has faith that their government has their best interest at heart.
Taking a sitting president into custody without impeachment when he is not an immediate threat would be a coup, which I imagine would be worse for democracy, though maybe not for america.
Pretty sure the final outcome of letting donny spray tan go with zero consequences is going to be him winning the last election our country ever has, so pardon me if I don’t agree with you that taking a sitting president into custody is more of a problem than a legit dictator being allowed to run for office.
No point worrying about Trump desteoying democracy if you destroy it yourself first. Its not like you can’t stop an insurrectionist from running for office legally without violating the constitution and laws by taking him into custody.
In a less corrupt world I would say that peaceful protests are a legal way to keep him out of office but we all know cop hypocrisy and the right wing media machine will spin it just like they did for all the George Floyd protests.
I hate it when people downvote questions that aren’t obviously sealioning.
I think they’re referring to how non-democratic workplaces are the norm in capitalist societies, i.e., the employees who form the vast majority of a business have little to no influence on its operations.
I remember back when someone first ran the idea by me. I initially was confused - that’s the way things are, after all! Business owners OWN a business, so they should get to call the shots.
Then I gave it some thought and I began to realize how weird that is. Why should one or a small group of people get to steer the lives of large groups of people with no say in their decisions? For example, if you have a 1000 employee business owned by one person, that single person can make decisions that can result in consequences that strongly affect all of those employees, e.g., reduced income or joblessness, life incompatible changes to work schedule, inhospitable work environments, etc., and face no repercussions from their employees. They’re just shit out of luck. It’s effectively a mini dictatorship or a part-time fiefdom. This is somewhat antithetical to the premises on which many countries are founded, but many are okay with it because of some combination of it having been the way things have been done and because it directly benefits them.
The response I often hear is “they can just get new jobs”. The issue is when businesses are run similarly, they tend to settle into comparable compensation and operation parameters.When the majority of your applicable job market is dominated by similar companies who have settled into similar benefits, having no reason to do otherwise and with many facing investor pressure NOT to do otherwise, moving from one company to the other is just like hopping from one abusive relationship to another: it seems like an improvement, but you’re ultimately still tied to yet another scumbag. You can get a new job but, without working to make significant change, you’re just repeating the previous cycle.
In this situation, as most businesses are set up to specifically prevent employees from being able to make substantive change to the businesses that employ them, unionization provides a means by which employees can gain sufficient influence to make those changes.
This comprises part of what I would’ve answered so I’ll just add a couple of points.
That decisions made by the exec layers in private corporations extend far beyond their employees via externalities. For example DuPont’s actions that lead to polluting everyone’s blood with PFOA whether or not they had any relationship with DuPont, business or otherwise. Or Norfolk Soithern’s decisions that led to the reduction of home values in East Palestine following the freight train derailment earlier this year. Or the decisions made by Exxon’s execs to misinform the public about climate change resulting in climate action delayed by decades and thus all of us suffering the current and future destruction and death. We have to live with all of the decisions made in the private sector that affect us and voting with our wallets clearly isn’t an effective way to influence them.
The other is the ability for the same narrow class of people to decide what politicians to buy and what laws to have tbem write for their own benefit. And if this sounds a bit disconnected from unionization, consider where the money to do this comes from, and where would a lot of that money go in a strongly unionized corporation. The money goes into the workers pockets and there’s a lot less left to buy politicians with. And that directly amplifies the votes of the many individual voters in the political democratic sphere. Of course there’s also the amplification factor that is the higher disposable income in the workers pockets that allows for lobbying of their own. And then there’s the amplification factor that is the unions themselves which can lobby politicians on behalf of their members.
Democratic workplaces such as worker coops are likely even better than unionization at improving on all of these points but that model is less familiar to people and it can’t be applied to established corporations via unilateral employee action.
So to answer the question of what actual democracy means to me, think about the above and picture democraticy as a pie chart. One part corresponds to decisions affected by your political vote, the other - decisions that aren’t. Currently the part that you have no say in is significantly larger than the other. In an actual democracy as I have it in my mind, the proportions would be reversed. The 80/20 would have the 80% of the decisions made in the country by people who represent me or my class. An actual democracy in economic speak is one where the balance of power between capital and labor is heavily tilted towards labor, because labor comprises the vast majority of people in the country. Here labor means anyone who has to work to earn a living instead of living off capital. Therefore it includes anyone from the burger flipper through middle management to the theoretical physics researcher.
I do think even in a worker coop there would be benefits to maintaining a labor union in parallel to that, even if it’s all the same people, since it separates goals and efforts between the labor and the advocacy for the workers. Also if the union spans multiple companies
Then imagine the bargaining power we’d wield if we had large and strong union. If you lack imagination, consider the example of what the power of collective action achieved during the recent upheaval at Open AI. CEO replacement, changes to the board of directors. Wow! We prefer being deluded by the fact that we’re getting a better deal than many others, but it’s only as much as corporations can get away with while having us work for them and not put up a lot of fuss. We saw the swift switch of attitude over the last year once they figured they had a few more workers than they needed.
My dad worked in the semiconductor industry. As kids, we just knew that occasionally dad would be spending more time with us at home. As an adult, now I just see how frequently he got laid off.
The industry could have had more than enough money to keep everyone afloat during downturns but so much of the profit was funneled to the do-nothing class. Shareholders.
What’s interesting is a family friend I know gets laid off twice a year in his unionized workplace at a steel mill(?), but he always gets the same job back. The company just can’t afford to keep everyone on staff during slow months. He makes bank though, so it works out
Developers have great mobility, yes, but barring a few “key” employees, we’re all pretty replaceable.
Wouldn’t it be awesome if, instead of having to change jobs every 2 - 3 years to get a decent raise, the union just negotiated raises across the board for everyone?
No… leadership roles, managers, r&d, finance, process engineers, contractors etc. If they have any say in how a company will operate, they cant join a union.
They aren’t wrong though. Kicking Palestinians out of areas so they can convert them to Israeli settlements is a thing that’s been happening for decades and is happening right now.
This comment section is hilarious. Some people are praising his suicide simply because he was a part of the republican party, while others are saying that “no one deserves being bullied for being trans” yet what everyone seems to miss is this guy was a grade A pervert who was posting pictures of real children in his transition fetish memes that he posted online. He also stalked a local business woman and wrote erotica about taking over her life and becoming her through hormones and surgery then murdering her and replacing her. A real woman btw.
So much cognitive dissonance in this thread and I’m here for it.
because he holds public office and is posting pictures of children to porn sites and stalking local women? Do you not think public officials should have their disgusting misdeeds documented?
I think it’s worthwhile to question an unknown outlet. If it’s a tabloid level rag then perhaps I should doubt the pilling on, if any of the smear worthy stuff might be fabricated.
No matter the outlet, if the material is accurate, then yes it’s reasonable. However we always have to be wary of folks outright making up stuff.
You think this random conservative blog decided to write a whole fake erotic fan fiction? Which parts are you claiming to be false, they provide a lot of evidence.
I’m not claiming it to be true or false, just saying I understand why someone might sincerely ask for folks to share anything they might know about the outlet in general.
However, the stance of “well, you better have a lot of evidence to be skeptical of a random unkown outlet” seems to be setting oneself up to be a sucker to anyone from any side.
I think the issue is that the question doesn’t appear to have been asked earnestly. Preemptively answering your own question with “sounds like activism” communicates you have already formed an opinion. If you’re asking out of genuine interest, check your preconceived notions at the door and only ask the question. Just “what is this 1819 site? Are they known to be a reputable source and do they demonstrate bias?” Is a good way to ask it.
I didn’t say it was child porn. Also there are archives out there of his accounts where he posted these pictures. But sure you can cover your ears and run away if you want.
It’s not only a sexual harassment, but also a documented intention to kill. The guy deserves to be thrown in jail. But it worked out even better in the end.
Because it would make you feel better? Or because anybody who disagrees with you automatically faces a higher standard to prove their values than anybody who agrees with you?
I haven’t noticed a single person praising this persons death. It seems you really enjoy the website the news came from though. Another poster says they’re extreme right wing garbage. You also act as if you have a personal stake in the destruction of this persons reputation. Granted he had some immoral fantasies. He was definitely terrible and I’m not trying to defend him, but What’s your horse in this race?
Damn you really want everyone to shut up about this. It’s definitely relevant to bring up the fact that this dude made murder fantasy erotica as part of his grotesque fetish. I would wager that’s why he felt the need to kill himself, not because he was trans. It’s not doxxing to post the disgusting history of a sick person. The only thing even close to dox is his real name, which I think we can all agree doesn’t constitute as doxxing, especially if he’s a public figure.
Hardly. He was a mayor in bum fuck Alabama, fiction is fiction. Are we on thought crime now? I’m more worried about the kids actively being raped in church than something this deceased person has done. You seem to really think you have some sort of moral authority to pass judgement on people.
Keep defending a pervert who harassed a woman, weirdo. Dude was posting children’s pictures in his transition fetish memes and you are full force defending him.
Seems like you’re harassing this person even in death. Now you’re harassing me. The debate has been long over.
There were no allegations of harassment or kiddie diddling. That’s more than can be said about many pastors. Judge and shame all you want but thoughts are not crimes. You seem obsessed with what this guy did in private. Now I’m the weirdo. Lol ok.
On the day of the killings, Veltman denied that he went out on the day with the intention of conducting murders despite the fact he had written a manifesto, put on a military helmet, a bulletproof vest, and a white shirt with a cross on it that was a reference to an online meme about crusaders killing Muslims.
Dude is just trying to save his skin and pass the blame for what he did elsewhere.
You're right, but the blame does lie with multiple people too. Yeah, his only chance of saving his skin is if other's responsibility somehow diminishes his own culpability, but he will soon find out this is not a zero-sum game.
But shouting "fire!" In a crowded theater isn't free speech and will get you a jail sentence if it creates a disaster. Infowars (and Alex Jones specifically), and other organisations (they identify libertarian and mainstream conservative content plus youtube algorithm) also need to be held to account for inflammatory speech that encourages violence; provided that it can be demonstrated that they're pushing dangerous misinformation. Especially if they are making money doing it.
I won't hold my breath waiting to see that happen though.
People who legitimately have a disability that affects their cognition are at increased risk of being abused and scammed. They are also more likely to not be able to afford help, especially when they need it most. Exploiting people's disabilities for personal gain is not only unethical, but arguably already illegal financial exploitation.
If a person provides a steady supply of lies and manipulation with the intention of stirring up xenophobic outrage to fill their wallet, then... yes. They do hold some responsibility for the foreseeable risk that promoting outrage inspires outrage. At best, the liar believe their own lies, in which case they still need to show their math when claiming very specific things like "crime by Muslims is being systemically under-reported". That's not just an opinion like "i don't trust Muslims" anymore, it's a quantifiable and verifiable or falsifiable claim. There are multiple laws around fraud, libel, etc. that deal with these sorts of arguments daily.
Just like we condemn phone scammers for preying on grandparents with dementia, it is very much not ok to steal from people who are ill and need real genuine help.
The same way we know who is going to commit what crime now. There are no guaranteed signs, just clues and maybe even historical patterns of behaviour. So ultimately, you don't and can't know for certain.
But you do assume a portion of the population (currently estimated at 15-20%) may have medical problems that affect their daily life and provide enough accessible public welfare systems that try to help people experiencing those problems, and you also foster a culture where getting help isn't a declaration that you're broken or weak. You also keep an eye out for your friends and family who might have been behaving unusually or... you know, radicalising. Normal collaborative society stuff.
None of us know when we might experience illness of any variety, including ones that affect our brains. Biology and chemistry often do weird shit, organic creatures have significant construction variation.
Society and community is a large part of how humans have prevented unexpected problems from killing humans unnecessarily. It is also how we should be preventing people from exploiting others.
The part where they would need to prove "imminent" danger (without it being defined) and the Supreme Court overturned its previous decisions in making that ruling? Sure, it's not a clear cut crime and would need to be its own case. That's also why I originally qualified it with "if it creates a disaster". I'm not suggesting immediate conviction without trial(s).
I also think the media landscape is very different from 1969 when that ruling was made, and I disagree that calling for "revenge" against non-white people on the day of a specific rally is "abstract" like the ruling said, but that's a topic for a different day.
It has been at least temporarily narrowed in scope by US courts, which I wouldn't quite consider to be the same as defined - given we're getting into the unnecessary details here. I'm not even convinced the US Supreme Court is always the best choice for ethical decision-making, let alone if the first amendment prevents all culpability for foreseeable risks.
I'm also not the Supreme Court, or a lawyer. Hell, I'm not even American, and neither were the victims or the defendant. In my opinion, Jones is responsible and in my opinion, there is enough ambiguity in the law for Jones' actions to be debated in courts in legal systems across the world where his audience lives.
From what I can tell this typically falls under political speech and is very much protected unless there is fraud or some other crime involved.
In the US, from a 1st amendment standpoint, probably, yes. This is why I also mentioned libel, financial extortion and fraud though as possible crimes. Culpability / responsibility doesn't even need to be criminal or a violation of any jurisdiction's free speech laws though, even if it has better odds of preventing future bullshit. Infowars may not only have obligations under the jurisdiction of their local courts.
tl;dr shit is too complicated for social media posts written on my phone to convey with 100% accuracy for every audience member's context. I did not intend to suggest that my opinion of responsibility matches the US Supreme Court's in full or that the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" implies the US court system has jurisdiction over the entire concept of free speech and responsibility or a murder case in Canadian court. I apologise for not making that clearer up front. The point was around cases where speech can create clear and foreseeable risks.
But falsely shouting “fire!” In a crowded theater isn’t free speech if it creates a disaster and/or summons emergency services in various US jurisdictions
FTFYFMFY
My point was more around the idea that you are/can be held responsible for the things you say rather than exact implementation requirements though.
Yes. It is still important to recognize that yelling “fire” in a crowded theater would qualify as protected speech if the theater is on fire, regardless of whether it creates a disaster.
He didn’t intend to do any murdering, he just was fully prepared just in case the opportunity for some murdering came up. You know how one might pack a few snacks just in case they get peckish between meals.
Couldn’t be happening to a more deserving guy. Between the racism lawsuits, his ex-girlfriend lawsuit, investor lawsuits, former executive suing him, and now the SEC? I hope this is the year we take all of Elon’s money.
Just shows how weak our government is against the rich. If the SEC order any of us to appear we would appear or go to jail. These fucker can even ignore subpoena.
They couldn’t even enforce their settlement with him over the fraud he was investigated for at Tesla. Which doesn’t even count all the fraud they turned a blind eye to.
I’m extremely aware of what the SEC is. They explicitly chose not to go back to court when Musk refused to abide by the terms of the agreement that was further clarified by the court after he refused to abide by the settlement terms initially.
Having to type a whole extra paragraph just to make pedants happy makes the internet suck.
As much as I would love for that to happen, money just gets shuffled around between companies and people like cards at a casino. It's exceptionally easy to launder it when you're that wealthy.
And then even if you do somehow manage to remove all his assets, he still maintains his existing social networks and connections, which may be enough to get him back to a similar position.
Prison is necessary if he has committed financial crimes. Anything less is merely finger-wagging.
What’s even crazier, from some of what I have seen online, she was/is Mormon and many/good portion of her viewers seem to be too… they all claim this lifestyle as normal and it is quite frankly scary and jarring to see some of the comments saying she was just a ‘strict parent’.
I’ve learned how powerful the unelected bureaucracy is.
You fucking clown, you are the unelected bureaucracy. It was you (unelected) and the people you put in charge of the economy (unelected) who fucked everything up.
It’s also a little amusing that what brought her down was ultimately the markets doing their thing. Assets in the free market changing in price is not the work of some unelected bureaucracy, that’s capitalism.
Liz Truss was brought down by capitalism, and greedy investors being smarter than her at predicting the future. She just can’t say that, or perhaps refuses to believe it.
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