They’re already getting a break. I live in California and a fucking McDonald’s “value” meal is $16! Plus it tastes like shit, is always poorly prepared and the employees still look miserable as fuck. They increased pay $3.50 and act like the fucking economy is going to implode because people aren’t willing to pay $20 for shitty food anymore. So instead they’re blaming it on the poor bastards working there because it’s the only good option for some around here. Fucking greedy pieces of shit, makes me so angry.
Poe’s Law is an adage stating that, without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, it is impossible to create a parody of extreme views so exaggerated that it cannot be mistaken for a sincere expression of those views. This law is often cited in discussions about online behavior, where satire and genuine extremism can be difficult to distinguish, particularly in written text without the aid of tone or facial expressions. The concept was named after Nathan Poe, who first articulated it in 2005 during an online discussion about creationism.
You’ve got to drop a “/s” at the end. This is the internet, and there are a lot of opinions out there. Plenty of people would have asked your question in seriousness.
Wow, the article even has a section detailing why the boys were there with BB guns:
The two surviving teens told police that they were at the store to return or exchange Hazrat Ali Rohani’s BB gun because he was having some issues with it, according to the police report. One of them also said that he had his own BB gun with him and brought it along so employees could check out a “magazine issue” he was having.
Myers straight up murdered the kid. Fortunately the article also points out he was arrested and the video evidence shows clear 2nd degree manslaughter, so he’s going to jail, losing his guns, and most likely won’t watch his kid grow up. His kid has a chance to grow up without a bad influence in his life now, so that’s good.
With the all-wheel drive Cybertruck’s current $79,990 price, it stands to reason the combined taxpayer cost for a vehicle and new UP.FIT features could easily top $90,000. <
I’d be pretty upset if my municipality was set to dump 100k on this trash.
if they’re anything like the ICE cruisers… they’re dropping another shitload in up grades. custom-built gun vaults, as well as other specially-built storage … first aid, extra handcuffs. leg cuffs. Kiddie cuffs. flex-cuffs. evidence collection. Road safety stuffs. Flashlights. speed radar thingies. rolls of printer paper for citation printers. Cameras. spare uniforms. Condoms for the badgebunnies. extra batteries for radios. extra batteries for flashlights. batteries for cameras. extra uniforms. all sorts of bullshit paperwork and forms that only get filled out when they come a cross a karen. Door breaching and lock out tools
needless to say, cops keep a lot of junk in the trunk. So much so the cop’s version of the ford explorer (“Police Interceptor Utility”) actually only has a special suspension to handle the extra weight, and 2 rows of seating instead of 3 to accommodate the entirely-custom storage rack.
oh. you thought they were talking about body armor… naw. They get APC’s for that.
There is also the extra radio, sirens, lights, and some have built in radar and plate scanning cameras. I’m pretty sure there are extra batteries and a stronger alternator to keep systems powered and ensure engine starts if auxiliary power is drained.
Different crusiers also have different set ups. Some are normal patrol cars while others have K-9 accomadations, shield and extra defensive gear, pursuit intervention tools like spikes and stop sticks. Cops use such a wide variety of tools that one crusier can’t fit every tool for every situation.
They’ve got a cop motor, a 440 cubic inch plant. They’ve got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks. They’re a model made before catalytic converters so they’ll run good on regular gas.
And you’d have to ask what makes it a good police vehicle. An electric vehicle probably makes Sense, but I’m not sure there’s anything else about it that does. Certainly not the price tag.
Idk. Cops can spend all day in their cruisers and blow through tons of fuel/power during a high speed chase. The EV would also have to power all the electronics on the cruiser including lights, sirens, radios, their laptop thing. Battery capacity might not be able to power the cruiser long enough. Especially if the crusier works a day and a night shift with different officers. Last thing a cop wants is back up cannot arrive because they are charging a battery.
You might have misunderstood, but I was saying the fact that it’s an EV is the only part that makes sense for a police cruiser (assuming they have enough to rotate them out while charging it can schedule that for breaks). Nothing else about the cyber truck makes sense.
Knowledge Fight takes a critical look at Alex Jones(I put this in every post I make about him because I can’t stand to listen to AJ direct, and I don’t want people thinking I do). Anyway, he goes out to break quite often shouting stuff like THEYRE COMING FOR YOU, THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU, THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU!!! after having discussed the “demonic antifa/BLM/democrats coming to your houses.”
Obviously not everyone is as sensationalist as Alex Jones, but he’s been bragging about how other places have started sounding like him. Including Joe Rogan (probably more on Vax and stuff like that, but still)
No he doesn’t, he’s a con man who frightens people to get donations and to sell survival scams. His listeners might believe that but he’s there when he makes some of that shit up himself and just uses the improv “yes, and” for other crazy shit he sees or listeners/viewers call on with (assuming they aren’t just actors saying what he’s told them to).
Sortof the defining characteristic of regressives is that they are easily brainwashed by media. An enlarged amygdala makes them fear and rage-addicted.
I vote for the party that wants to protect abortion rights. It would take quite a lot for me to vote for any anti-abortion Republican. I think Trump-level disrespect for democracy from the hypothetical Democrat would be enough to change my vote, but I’m not sure some people I know would vote for the Republican even then. Would expecting Republicans to vote for Biden be a double standard in this context?
(What this doesn’t explain is why Trump was so overwhelmingly popular in the primaries.)
My dad used to say “There’s too many Mexicans coming around my shop, I have to shoo them away with a rake.” I loved him for a lot of reasons, but that was not one.
Well, I would have said something similar about Republicans but then the dog actually caught the car, so to speak, and they managed to get Roe v. Wade overturned despite the fact that doing that is now predictably hurting them at the polls.
That law, had it been passed, would have been repealed the moment the R’s had the majority during Trump’s first two years. It would have been pointless, especially since abortion was then legal.
As you essentially noted, it requires a constitutional amendment to make it harder to overturn, and you know plenty of states would not sign off on that.
There was also literally no cost to repealing it. They would have done so, right before they passed the huge tax cuts for the rich. There would have been no “try”; it would have been repealed about 2 minutes after everyone was sworn in.
Okay I’ve tried to be civil, but you’re obviously not doing the same. My point, since you seem unable to grasp it, is that it even if they had it would have been repealed and nothing would be different now. Is that so difficult to understand?
I’m blocking you. I’m looking for real conversation, not people intentionally missing the point so they can stay angry at whatever boogeyman.
The worst part about this, besides all the other parts, is that the Biden administration is defending against this, like “Nuh-uh, We don’t even have a liberal agenda!”
I wish Biden was the progressive that conservatives pretend he is.
I really, really hate that it feels like there’s a new ethnicity it’s ok to distrust/suppress/wish harm upon. The article talks about official efforts to ban Pro-Palestinian voices, including (ironically) Jewish Voice for Peace. I am so much happier on Lemmy because there are far fewer posts with opinions like “Palestinians are only getting what they deserve because of Hamas” etc. Even though people have disagreed with me (albeit not often) I have yet to debate anyone making those kinds of arguments.
I’m frustrated waiting for the rest of the world to catch up and realize that there’s no “ok race” to assume is some brand of evil. There’s no ethnicity that it’s bad to advocate freedom, happiness, and healthiness for. E.g. even though I post a lot about Israel, I take time frequently to make it absolutely clear that I know Israel doesn’t represent all Jews and that judging based on ethnicity or birthplace/residence is wrong.
Unfortunately you can find similar arguments in some corners of Lemmy regarding violence against Israeli civilians. So I’m not sure how much better it truly is here.
This conflict has caused a disturbing number of people to suddenly think that hate, abuse, or even murder and kidnapping are acceptable when directed at people they associate with the appropriate ethnic, racial, or national group.
When it happens I just try to remind folks that while it’s ethical to oppose many Israeli policies, there are tons of Jewish dissenters who are allies. Basically every time people will agree. One of my most powerful examples is Breaking the Silence, an organization that gathers, confirms, and publishes testimonials from IDF veterans about the reality of life in Occupied Palestinian Territory. 100% Jewish, and Jewish soldiers no less, and still 100% dedicated to making sure the truth is known no matter the cost.
Good advice. Sometimes it’s hard to keep my frustration from overwhelming me when I see people saying such hateful things but it always helps to understand where people are coming from and respectfully point to the things that may challenge the foundation of that hate.
There are many of us (I'm in Israel and involved in anti-war and anti-genocide activism). And most of us lost people on October 7th, some of whom were peace activists (look up Vivian Silver, for example). Since then we have also lost Palestinian friends and partners in activism in the ethnic cleansing campaign currently going on in Gaza.
It is true that we are a minority, but it is so hard facing discrimination from both sides - I have a pro-Palestine sticker on my computer, but it is in Hebrew. So when I'm in Israel, I get harassed about it. When I'm not in Israel, anti-semites who can't read it assume it's something pro-israel (or just Jewish).
It feels very lonely sometimes, so thanks very much, @GrymEdm.
I have an American Jewish friend who, long story short, has been treated very badly by her Ashkenazi family since deciding to support Palestinian human rights. I’ve seen what it costs Jews to speak up, and so I have a lot of respect for dissenters who act with their conscience in spite of the target it puts on their backs. It’s a difficult spot to be in, and I hope you can find some peace and reward in staying true to your ethics even in hard times.
Isn’t this just human rights? The language that’s used in this conflict is a bit confusing, for example one does not have to particularly like Palestinians as a group to be against the ethnic cleansing of Palestine or the violations of human rights and international law perpetrated by Israel on a daily basis, yet they are called “pro-Palestinian”. Of course some accusations of antisemitism are intentionally deceptive to silence opposition to Israel’s regime (or labelling opposition as “pro-Hamas”), but even the conflict overall is labelled as Israel vs. Palestine when in reality it’s Israel vs. international law. Maybe this is a hasbara narrative, idk.
The kicker here is that by equating opposition to genocide with antisemitism it means that perpetrating genocide is a trait inherent in Jews, which is hella racist.
Anyway your “Palestinian human rights” phrase made me want to ask what you and others think, not trying to bash you or anything. For example, when the U.S. invaded Vietnam, those opposed to the war were called “anti-war protesters”, not “pro-Vietnam protesters”.
Thanks for doing what you do. Most people have never tried taking a moral stand on something so controversial in their own community, so they may not know how difficult it truly is.
I am lucky enough to exist in a very pro-peace bubble, so I don’t face such consequences. But I have incredible respect for those who do so despite their circumstances. And it is people like you who have the greatest opportunity to change the course of things.
He’s even lost half of their support according to the last November’s poll. Not to mention they only have 23% of the popular support now. It’s dwindled in the last decade.
Nah, fuck Israel. Israel was founded on ethnic cleansing and has continued the ethnic cleansing to this day. They won’t stop until Palestinians only exist as a people in exile.
Fuck America, too. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Veitnam, Iraq, Nicaragua, Guatamala, Indonesia, now Palestine. American democracy has run on blood since the slaughter of Native Americans in its infancy.
They weren’t protesting the treatment of Palestinians:
Israeli Jews, however, seem unperturbed by the scale of the suffering, if the polls are any indication. One of the questions in the Tel Aviv University poll deals with the amount of force the Israeli army is using in Gaza. Less than 2 percent of the respondents said they believed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was using too much firepower. Perhaps even more horrifyingly, nearly 58 percent said they were using too little firepower.
No, they mean fuck Israel. It can only exist as a Jewish state because all non-Jews have been stripped of their rights. Make it a secular state with equal rights for everyone, or allow the Palestinians their own state with no Israeli occupation. The current situation is straight up apartheid
Israeli’s Supreme Court ruled that Israeli nationality is not a thing. Israel is a Jewish state since 2018, and Israeli Arabs are second class citizens.
It states that “the right to exercise national self-determination” in Israel is “unique to the Jewish people.”
It establishes Hebrew as Israel’s official language, and downgrades Arabic — a language widely spoken by Arab Israelis — to a “special status.”
It establishes “Jewish settlement as a national value” and mandates that the state “will labor to encourage and promote its establishment and development.”
If only Jewish people have the right to self-determination, then all Israeli citizens do not have the same rights.
The comment I responded to said “they were stripped of their rights.” That’s simply not true. It is true that they are stripped of their nationality, and in that, I agree with you that the rights are not the same.
Israeli citizens have the same state rights in regards to government voting and state services.
You’re basically saying “those aren’t the rights I was talking about”.
They do not have the right to self-determination since 2018, thus they do not have the same rights. Several of the rights of non-Jews were stripped away with the 2018 law. Not all of them, but some very significant ones.
They have similar rights, and share many of the same rights, but Jewish people have more rights than non-Jews in Israel. Not just in practice, but per the law.
No, I’m saying the comment that claimed they are “stripped of their rights” is false. You’ve cited a difference in the law that I recognize, and disagree with. There are no limitations in their participation in government or government services. If there were, I’d agree their rights were “stripped.”
There’s imbalance for sure. Being accurate allows people to recognize the problems and address them. Being sensational creates ignorance.
I think you are misunderstanding, “stripped of their rights” does not necessarily mean they lose all rights, or certain rights in particular, it simply that they lose some rights. They lost some rights, therefore they have been stripped of their rights.
So we should say all Americans have been stripped of their rights, because women cannot access life-saving medical care in the event of a complication of a late-term pregnancy?
C’mon. You’re arguing semantics to justify sensationalism. There are plenty of legitimate criticisms that you could aim at the Israeli government. Selecting choice words to exaggerate only obscures the point, fuels outrage, and perpetuates ignorance.
In a time when we can’t trust most news sources, it’s become more important to be accurate than ever.
So we should say all Americans have been stripped of their rights, because women cannot access life-saving medical care in the event of a complication of a late-term pregnancy?
We can say that all American cis women have been stripped of their rights, yes. However more accurately this would be on a state by state basis.
We are arguing semantics, but you’re the one justifying a sensationalist response to an accurate statement.
Accuracy looks like “American cis women have been stripped of their right to abortion” or “non-Jewish Israelis have been stripped of their right to recognize previous nationality.”
“Stripped of their rights” implies all rights. If you can’t see the difference, then you’re unknowingly part of the misinformation.
No, it doesn’t. You can lost rights without losing all your rights. All it implies is that more than 1 right was removed, and that it was done so unwillingly.
If you can’t see the difference, then you’re unknowingly part of the misinformation.
Please back this statement up with some sound reasoning.
It seems more likely that you are stubbornly refusing to admit you were wrong about something very minor.
Please provide a definition or rationalisation that supports your position. I’ve looked myself, and all the ones I’ve found make no mention of “all” rights being removed. Here’s one: dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/…/strip-of
I think you don’t know what else to say because you are wrong and have nothing to support your position. It is you who clearly doesn’t understand, but I think that’s more stubbornness than anything else.
Anti-muslim sentiment has been going on for a really long time. I thought it was just a few racist uncles who overreacted to 9/11.
But now that the propaganda and suppression is in full swing, it’s become abundantly clear. It’s not just normal people, it’s a coordinated disinformation campaign.
Lemmy is still a relatively safe and reasonable space.
Anti-muslim sentiment grows easily here because many of the groups who would normally speak out against intolerance are the same groups that would not be tolerated in a Muslim society.
Lol I swear hexbear is a psyop designed to radicalise LGBTQ people and turn them against the moderate middle, thereby creating exactly the villain the gender/sexuality wedge issue calls for.
I mean the community is pretty clearly astroturfed, as otherwise no such group could exist while fundamentally contradicting itself. Being gay and supporting Putin just does not make any rational sense. For all their talk of CIA psy ops left and right, I can’t help but see a pot calling the kettle black.
And I would argue that support for Trump is clearly astroturfed, also. Reddit basically nurtured the community leading up to and throughout his presidency, then it spread from there.
I’m glad people like you’ve noticed. It’s been going on for a long time and it legit makes you feel crazy when you realize it and it still doesn’t help when you realize scholars have been studying and writing about this stuff for hundreds of years.
Are there examples of economic theories that better value the worker? The only I’ve ever seen is high unionized social democracies, which are themselves still capitalist in nature
Looking for “economic theories” is already buying into their bullshit. The economic theory championed by major political parties and media networks the world over is neoliberalism. You know, trickle down, self-regulation, free market will fix it, that kind of shit.
None of it works and none of it ever did. Maybe, for a brief moment around Thatcher and Reagan, they genuinely thought it might. These days though, they try neoliberalism over and over again because it doesn’t work and they grow richer with every failure. Money didn’t trickle down, they just got a tax break. They didn’t self regulate, they increased their profits by exploiting foreign workers and literal slaves. The free market didn’t fix it, because people were desperately trying to keep their head above water, forcing them to be complicit in the horrors or drown.
You don’t need economic theories. You just need regulations to stop businesses doing unethical, exploitative things. Politicians could solve most of the issues facing us today with the stroke of a pen. It’s not even complicated policy. “Foreign workers pay and working conditions must meet domestic standards. Failure to do so will result in criminal charges”.
You’d see industry return to wealthy countries overnight. Consumers wouldn’t be blamed for multi-billion dollar companies using child slaves. Sure, everything would also become more expensive, but that’s your bosses problem now. They’ve been pocketing your wealth for decades, distracting you with cheap junk, subsidised by the misery of foreign workers.
That’s why the world over, every election has become “red neoliberal” vs “blue neoliberal”. They might pantomime fight over social issues but when it comes to economics, the only disagreement is about whose buddies from school get to be first snout in the trough. Their children are bred for it. The moment a progressive get anywhere near power, watch as these mortal enemies suddenly unite in solidarity to attack them.
Whatever economic theory you find, there will always be greedy sociopaths trying to murder and manipulate their way to the top.
Part of it is that having a large captive audience hanging on to your every word really starts to amplify toxic characteristics in those with the predisposition for shittiness. Like Musk or Trump, their descend only came when they became active on social media.
Trump thought the day the Twin Towers fell was a good time to mention his property was closer to the tallest building in New York. That very evening, on the news, in 2001. Here’s a link.
Honestly he did so many “Career Suicides” for Politicians that it broke the system, I get that’s why he won, but… still how the shit did he not get sunk by his 9/11 response, I mean, yeah he said stupid shit ages ago… but the dude straight up got 9/11 and 7/11 mixed up.
The fuck did we go from “A weird yell will disqualify you!” to this!?!?
Because the journalists didn’t do their job. They should have been blasting the “tallest building” and his weird infatuation with his daughter, but he was profitable, so they let it slide.
I really dont think Rowling started off this shitty. From what I’ve heard it sounds like she has baggage regarding men she hasnt dealt with and its led her down this incredibly shitty path
The books have some really problematic themes that add up over time. If HP ended with the first book, they would be a curiosity, but they add up and JK had a really crooked world view when she wrote them. It’s likely her editor soften them in the beginning, but they had less control as they got more popular.
I stopped reading about halfway though and that was when they were being released. I’d say my mounting issues at the time was the weird pettiness of the good characters, the cheapness of Harry(why didn’t he pay for the car he helped wreak? Why didn’t he pay rent to the Weasley family?), and books ending with cheap drama(how many times did Harry loose a positive father figure?). If you want a larger breakdown, here’s a good one that goes into a lot of detail.
I don’t like Harry Potter to begin with, but I don’t really have a huge problem separating the artist from the art if the only thing they did was be hateful.
Roald Dahl was a major antisemite, but I still think he wrote great children’s books and suspense/horror stories. H. P. Lovecraft was bigoted about pretty much anyone who wasn’t a white man. Again, a really good writer.
Where is becomes hard to separate them is when they actually do something about their disgusting ideas. Roman Polanski and Woody Allen are pedophiles. I will never watch either of their movies. And I think both have made very good movies. I feel that I was wrong to watch the ones I did.
So yeah, Rowling is an utterly contemptible piece of shit, but if you like Harry Potter, it’s okay.
There were always questionable elements from the books, like the depictions of goblins and elves. But knowing what we know now, these elements cannot be brushed off any more.
It’s also highly unusual that elves were depicted this way, considering most fantasy stories hold them in high regard as being magical beings seeing themselves above humanity for reasons that are normally geniunely sound (Better moral compass, natural magical talents… Whereas in Harry Potter it’s the exact opposite, humanity seems to be the highest creature and Elves feel like to squabble before them…
There’s no way the “Brownie” similarity is unintentional
So what’s a Brownie? Well it was a way of explaining slaves to young children back in those days, to brush off the casual cruelty by lying to kids. Essentially the myth of the “Brownie” was to re contextualize the suffering of the black slave as a magical event, a beautiful mysterious thing to be observed not with horror, but with wonder. A big part of the myth claimed that you can’t give a Brownie anything nice like proper clothing, or else this “breaks the contract between Man and Fae” and they run back into the woods never to be seen again.
“No it’s okay children, they’re magical forest people called Brownies! And they LIKE doing that work for us! Oh and we can’t give them anything nice, or they’ll disappear forever! And you wouldn’t want that to happen! No no, really, they’re faeries, and they like being whipped like that!”
Feeling disgusted? Good, that sickness in your stomach is proof that you’re a better person than JK Rowling.
tl;dr Harry Potter elves are a resurrection of Pro-Slavery Propaganda used to indoctrinate children into thinking it’s okay to treat people like shit. They had to GASLIGHT LITERAL CHILDREN into thinking that black people were magical elves, in order to stop them from feeling bad about slavery… and JK decided to bring that back for her kid’s book.
As much fun as Hogwarts Legacy is, I hope she rots in hell and then is reborn as a transgender woman to learn basic empathy.
most fantasy stories hold them in high regard as being magical beings seeing themselves above humanity for reasons that are normally geniunely sound (Better moral compass, natural magical talents…
Oh sweet summer child… You better not know about elves in folklore…
And even if we only look at Tolkin’s Elves, who basically are the base of the whole modern conception of them, they certainly aren’t better as a general rule. Some of them are really shitty fucks.
It’s also highly unusual that elves were depicted this way, considering most fantasy stories hold them in high regard as being magical beings seeing themselves above humanity for reasons that are normally geniunely sound (Better moral compass, natural magical talents… Whereas in Harry Potter it’s the exact opposite, humanity seems to be the highest creature and Elves feel like to squabble before them…
Have you never heard of Santa’s elves? Or Elves in Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’?
I’m very torn on this issue, like I 100% agree on Polanski and Allen(especially Woody not that Polanski isn’t incredibly shitty too but most of his work isn’t about sexualizing minors, whereas the primary and ultimate love interest for Woodys stand in character in Manhattan is a child). I might, and big emphasis on might watch Chinatown or the Ninth Gate again after he’s dead and in the cold cold ground, but I damn sure won’t pay for any of them if I decide to make that call.
And I only say this because there have been so many shitty people in Hollywood and the movie making business in general I think it’s impossible to watch most without supporting someone awful. Weinstein produced a ton of great films, Brando anally raped Maria Schneider in Last Tango and the scene we see is the one and only take if memory serves(I don’t watch that film anymore but I still watch the Godfather every few years), Kevin Spacey and Brian Singer are predators but I’m sure I’ll watch the Usual Suspects again at some point in my life.
I obviously don’t besmirch anyone that simply can’t bring themselves to engage in art by people we know to be bastards. But I kinda look at it the same way as buying a pair of Nikes, there is certainly a lot of profit from suffering that produced those shoes but I don’t necessarily think anyone is a bad person for wanting some new Jordans
Edit: the following isn’t what I think about him, but I do think he’d have been more likely to suffer the proper consequences had the Manson family not murdered Sharon Tate, it in no way should give him any sympathy or protection and it’s pretty fucking gross that it does, but I don’t think it’s a non factor
Honestly learning everyone in Hollywood is a fucking creep explains a lot about how genuinely disturbing the actions of male leads in “Romantic Comedies” tend to be
Try half the shot in a “Romance” movie in real life and even at the time most of them originally came out, you’d go to jail and no one would feel sorry for you.
Yeah honestly if history remembering who Edison and Dahl were didn’t sink GE and Wonka, Harry Potter will be fine… but fuck, she did suicide her own legacy
I don’t think you can ethically separate art from artist when the artist is still alive, profiting from their work, and using those profits to further causes that you abhor. JKR doesn’t limit herself to expressing her views on social media.
Even there, I think it’s a grey area. I was already in middle school when Roald Dahl died and I’m Jewish, but my dad (who was remarkably sensitive to antisemitism in almost every other case) still read me his children’s books. He did profit off of them and he shouldn’t, but it’s hard to deny that books like James and the Giant Peach or The BFG aren’t amazingly good children’s books which don’t themselves have any bigotry issues (Willy Wonka not so much re the original Oompa Loompas) and it would be hard to say that children shouldn’t have been reading books that good just because the guy who wrote them was horrible.
I just don’t know how to feel about such things. At what point is a work so good that it transcends how horrible the person who made it is? I don’t have an answer there.
As I said, I’ve never been a fan of Harry Potter, so this particular issue does not apply to me in this case and I honestly do not know what I would do about it if I did.
I don’t know the extent of Dahl’s antisemitism, and am not currently inclined to research it. I also enjoyed his stories growing up, as well as Lovecraft’s, and lots of other authors who held views that I strongly disagree with. I don’t think all art created by deeply flawed people is worthless, by any means.
However, I strongly disagree with the notion that a piece of high-quality art is some kind of ethical trump card; it’s a bald-faced cop-out. Providing material support to someone who habitually crusades against an oppressed minority isn’t a gray area because you(rhetorically—I don’t mean you, personally) like their stories. Art is everywhere. There’s really no dearth of excellent stories written by people that are either dead, or don’t spend their time stirring up hate.
I don’t mean to suggest that the work somehow justifies the abhorrent views of the author, just that sometimes art transcends the artist. It’s in no way a universal thing and maybe it doesn’t and/or shouldn’t apply to Rowling’s works. I only read part of the first book and I didn’t enjoy it, so I personally don’t think so.
But my post was more about not beating yourself up about liking something made by a terrible person.
If I remember correctly, it all started when she retweeted something that was a bit ignorant and was called out for it on Twitter, but then she kept doubling down until it got to this point, when she could have just stopped talking about it.
It’s not that Twitter suddenly turned her into a bad person, but it definitely brought out the worst in her.
No it just revealed her beliefs to a wider audience. Twitter like all social media doesn’t bring out anything - it’s just a lens that gives the viewer a perspective they might never have seen and these view are then amplified by others who share them. Rowling was always this person, social media just allowed her to share and amplify her views.
I disagree. Social media and the “contrarian” attitude they carry, especially Twitter, can help consolidating and radicalizing your opinions. You get exposed to a very toxic way to carry out conversation (especially on Twitter, where you have constant dogpiling and wannabe famous people who try to “blast” others) so that if they are the only places you discuss about certain subjects, can bring you to shift your views as well.
I am not saying this is the case for J.K. Rowling (I don’t know), but I don’t think we can immediately discard the idea that the dynamics of the medium also affected the result.
I see your point but there are about a hundred or so thoughts I have a day that I am way way cowardly to record. The position she is in with a large fanbase, lots of money, and interacting with pixels probably contributed to her lack of filter.
So right she might have been intrinsically not a very good person prior but all this stuff hasn’t helped her keep a lid on it.
I possess the books and movies, and never interact with the fandom or the author. There is zero need to. Let the art exist in isolation.
NEXT POINT: the stories have their own issues regarding certain portrayals but that is aside from the context of “new developments” a la the author’s modern opinions on things outside the plot of the books.
Yeah, like, I don’t know what Frank Herbert or J.R.R.Tolkein’s stances on trans rights would have been either, and it doesn’t impact me reading their work at all.
On the other hand, I do not want to give this person any money, so there’s that. I won’t be spending money on her stuff.
I miss when my biggest problem with JK Rowling was her desire to keep writing new material for Harry Potter, but instead of ya know… making spinoff books, maybe do a TV Show, maybe get in touch with Archie at some point for an expanded universe comic: I mean God knows they need the money after Sonic went out for a pack of cigarettes and never came back… oh right Warner Bros. owns the franchise… so I guess DC could have done the Expanded Universe comic?
No instead of doing any of that she just randomly dripped out plotpoints from the internet, and always stuff that made no fucking sense… like
“Dumbledore was gay the whole time, despite the fact that I NEVER HINTED AT THIS! Also Wizards don’t have toilets! They shit themselves and magic away the poop! By the way, Hermonie was always black despite the fact I always described her as being pale skinned!”
The “Dumbledore was gay” was especially infuriating because she wrote the “Fantastic Breasts” movies, and instead of expanding upon the Dumbledore’s gay thing at all, they just use the “They’re just really good friends!” cover, ya know, the one that’s an amazing progressive way to imply that without running afoul of the “Moral Majority”… in 1992…
But the medal ultimately goes to “Hermonie is black!”, because the only reason she came up with it was to try to better canonize the “Cursed Child” play… which wound up having a black actress play Hermonie.
Instead of doing the adult thing and admitting that most writers accepted by the mainstream are white, and therefore an overwhelming majority of characters in fiction are white, and that’s… kind of not good as it shows the bias we’ve given in favor of one specific group over all others, and that maybe in the future we’ll have more racially diverse character casts… but until then, because we have more white characters than white actors, sometimes white characters are going to be played by non-white actors, and even if that’s not how we typically envision the character… Get over it.
No instead of doing that, she just felt the need to make another fucking retcon and claimed she intended to have Hermonie be black the whole fucking time! I hope they fired the moron who cast Emma Watson for the role in the movie then… that talentless hack who knew nothing of the books… checks notes Joanne Kathleen Rowling
I’m sorry but it takes a special kind of narcissim to attempt to retcon, not just a fictional work, but reality itself!
While I am not defending Twitter by any means. I feel like what actually breaks people’s brains is becoming a billionaire. You lose all empathy for other humans.
I think the mistake we make is thinking that people are better than they are. I probably have some hidden bigotry that I am unaware of right now but given a space to be exposed to it someone would notice and point it out. If you only know of someone from one thing they did you can form an opinion of them based on very limited information. Get to know them better and you find that hidden awful. Twitter is a tool of constant broad interaction and it preserves bad takes long enough to see them. Add a culture of never admiting to being wrong and filtering by who you agree with and you have a cycle of awful that turns perfectly boringly not great but OK people into monsters defending genocide. Maybe we shouldn’t know anything about the author, replace their name with a serial number or pseudonym and let the art stand on it’s own. Though the racist jewish, wait no goblin, bankers was fairly intense tbh.
Dude… my friend’s and I get together (video conference) to watch the film every year in late October. It also features Charolette Rae (the matriarch on Facts of Life) Dianna Rigg (Queen of Thorns on Game of Thrones) and Fariuza Balk (The Craft, Waterboy etc.)
The Worst Witch was a series of books though that Rowling absolutely read before “coming up with” a boarding school for magic using students, but get this: In Rowling’s imagination its BOYS instead of girls who are the main focus, and the protoganist is the messiah instead of a girl screw-up with a heart of gold. Its not in the film but there are houses with colorful characteristics, the protoganist is from a non-magical family and the scary, raven haired potion teacher seems to hate the protoganist while the kind, grey haired headmaster is patient and understanding. She has two friends in the invisible (to non magic users) castlesque boardings school thats surrounded by a forbidden forest where she hangs out with two friends, one who’s straight laced and academically sharp and the other who’s a bit goofy.
I mean tbf, the books were written for children. If you don’t like them, then maybe it’s because they’re not for you anymore. Or are you referring to something else?
As a kid in the target age range, I bailed after the second or third time Harry gained and lost a positive father figure. There were mounting little issues and the longer the books got, the less rewarding the payoff got. But even I assumed that setting up normalized slavery in your world would lead into a story line that denounces it. Instead, JK didn’t address it in a positive manner and we ended up with HP Adults writing essays defending House Elf Slavery.
Fair enough. Probably also doesn’t help that the civil rights organization that Hermione founded, or rather attempted to found, was called SPEW. As in, synonym for “vomit”
My first time reading them, at the age of like, 10? 11? I was so excited for Order of the Phoenix because it was coming out soon and I’d loved the first one that I got as a birthday gift. I slammed through 2 and 3, then 4 just kept going and felt so bad that by the end I wasn’t excited for Order anymore and didn’t finish the series until Order was releasing as a film. They weren’t even that good as a kid if you read anything else
She’s not a conservative, she’s a liberal (in the political science sense of the word, not the USian synonym for leftist).
It’s not 100% clear where Rowling’s transphobia comes from. She certainly fits into the group of transphobic cis women who have been abused by cis men and concluded that all men are evil, including the ones that want to be women.
But there’s also a dynamic which I think you can see with Graham Linehan and Dave Chappelle as well. Born into comfortable middle-class families, well-educated, never really thought about their bog-standard liberalism. Became extremely successful, became accustomed to near universal adoration, made a thoughtless transphobic comment/skit, received criticism and reacted with absolute fury at the idea they could possibly be prejudiced about anything. Because they’re liberals, you see.
All three just keep digging that hole deeper rather than face up to the idea that maybe they got something wrong. Linehan’s career is over (as is his marriage), Dave Chappelle is hanging on by a thread and flirting with the right, and Rowling doesn’t give a shit because she’s a billionaire and does not have to give a shit about anything at all.
She’s a blairist, and blairists are only slightly less morally bankrupt thatcherites.
For all their sins, a true European style liberal wouldn’t want the state to tell you which restroom you use or what medical treatment they have access to - of course they also believe that trans people that were born into poor families don’t deserve access to any medical treatment at all but that’s another story.
A really tragic trajectory. His work was genuinely great. And there isn’t going to be any more of it (unless his new fascist pals persuade him to do a Leni Riefenstahl for them).
I think the trans thing started as a sincerely held conviction very much a long the lines as you’re describing, and while this is and can only be utter speculation, I have a feeling a lot of what comes after as in Chappelle, probably with Linehan (but I don’t really know anything about his case) and also other examples like the vaccines cause autism guy, I think these people are seeing an opportunity in their ostracism to keeping their profiles high and business opportunities as well.
I think it’s a sort of a ‘hung for a sheep as for a lamb’ kind of logic where you mightn’t really have had any particular common cause with a lot of conservative views, or fringe elements before, but their willingness to embrace and lionize you for this one particular stance creates a new audience and market for you just as others are shrinking. From there it makes sense to gradually dole out hints and allusions to more conservative talking points and just keep ratcheting it up piecemeal to keep that profile up. For this to work you have to eventually be less hinting and more direct and the positions have to be more extreme and on more and more diverse matters, even ones you probably never had any opinion on because this is a pathway to becoming a kind professional provocateur and shock jock.
Her world views are absolutely conservative by today’s standard. Especially her views on gender roles. I mean have you read Harry Potter when you were younger? All important characters that actually shape the plot are male. She went out of her way to give Harry different father figures, believing that‘s what a boy needs when he grows up. But it‘s enough when his mother just loved him. Her female characters are far less layered than the male ones and more often than not reduced to mere tropes. The most prominent one being the pedantically strict auntie, a template which wich gets pasted a lot. There’s also the crazy auntie character and the tomboy. But that‘s pretty much it, really. Hermione herself ranges between overly strict and tomboy throughout the books and the only way she managed to escape this pattern is by… magic plastic surgery to shrink her front teeth. Rowling has clearly defined genders to be a black or white kind of thing for herself and she clearly outlined which gender has to fill what role.
No. We’re talking political categorisations, not the dictionary definition.
Conservatives are socially conservative and economically liberal.
Liberals are socially liberal and economically liberal.
Liberals have never had a problem abandoning their high-minded ideals when there were savages to civilise. Because liberalism has no analysis of power, and an absolute belief in the fundamental impossibility that they could be wrong about anything.
There’s no doubt that she is shifting to the right, because they are fawning over her and she has no politics. See also Linehan and Chappelle. They were all bog-standard liberals before being criticised.
Chappelle was only liberal where racism was concerned. Otherwise he has been squarely neo-liberal when pushed into any political discussion. I believe Rowling has also always been neo-liberal.
Neo-liberals are conservatives. They toy with progressivism only when it benefits them. But, neo-liberals are otherwise conservatives with a bit more tact than typical conservatives.
I no longer confuse classical liberalism with progressivism. I was corrected on that topic a few years ago and learned my lesson.
I hate that conservatives in the U.S. worked so hard to use these terms interchangably. They’ve gleefully created chaos with their misuse of words as pejoratives and it makes having adult conversations so much more complicated. Which I suppose was their goal all along.
Don’t get me started on centrists. What a wonderfully convenient way for a conservative to hide their shame in social settings! Ten years ago, that word meant nothing to me. Now, it just means “embarrassed conservative” to me.
Ahh, yes. Here in the U.S., some conservatives have become ashamed to admit they are conservatives, especially after the Trump presidency. So now they call themselves centrists.
They are still very conservative. They just don’t want to be equated with the most extreme of their party. They think being somewhere between neo-nazi and neo-liberal is called “centrist”.
In the established party-political sense, Liberal is now clear enough. But liberal as a term of political discourse is complex. It has been under regular and heavy attack from conservative positions, where the senses of lack of restraint and lack of discipline have been brought to bear, and also the sense of a (weak and sentimental) generosity. The sense of a lack of rigour has also been drawn on in intellectual disputes. Against this kind of attack, liberal has often been a group term for PROGRESSIVE or RADICAL (qq.v.) opinions, and is still clear in this sense, notably in USA. But liberal as a pejorative term has also been widely used by socialists and especially Marxists. This use shares the conservative sense of lack of rigour and of weak and sentimental beliefs. Thus far it is interpreted by liberals as a familiar complaint, and there is a special edge in their reply to socialists, that they are concerned with political freedom and that socialists are not. But this masks the most serious sense of the socialist use, which is the historically accurate observation that liberalism is a doctrine based on INDIVIDUALIST (q.v.) theories of man and society and is thus in fundamental conflict not only with SOCIALIST (q.v.) but with most strictly SOCIAL (q.v.) theories. The further observation, that liberalism is the highest form of thought developed within BOURGEOIS (q.v.) society and in terms of CAPITALISM (q.v.), is also relevant, for when liberal is not being used as a loose swear-word, it is to this mixture of liberating and limiting ideas that it is intended to refer. Liberalism is then a doctrine of certain necessary kinds of freedom but also, and essentially, a doctrine of possessive individualism.
Good point that is also true and it’s the reason no leftist self-identifies as a liberal. However, my comment was in response to this statement:
She’s not a conservative, she’s a liberal (in the political science sense of the word, not the USian synonym for leftist).
My point (which you are supporting) is that leftist and liberal are not synonyms in the US except to people in the US who apply the term liberal wrongly.
Basically when a virtue-signaling crowd wants you to confess your sins or something, not giving a shit is the right response. One can make it even better if in possession of a machine gun, of course.
For some feminists, especially older ones, the transphobia comes from the long fight against the patriarchy and the feeling that men are trying to encroach on everything they fought for by becoming women. I had that explained to me by multiple (three) feminists in the last few years.
Yes, that’s the divide within ‘radical feminism’. The trans-exclusionary TERFs and the trans-inclusionary TIRFs. They both start with “gender is a social construct” but the TERFs have somehow got from there to biological essentialism. They’re a minority of a minority. But they tend to be middle-class so they make a lot of noise.
So you’re saying we should just turn the children of all conservatives queer? Alright, bring in the cat girls, 196 memes and let’s pounce!
Joking aside, there’s two archetypes of conservative:
The Xenofobe, who is afraid of a changing world and that fear is strengthened by anything they experience as threatening to their image of how the world works. These people are more likely to warm to LGBTQIA+ people if they learn they’re not so different, and everyone is just trying to exist, be themselves and love who they love. There is no agenda for taking over the world.
The Cultist. These people are beyond saving and generally consist of the hardcore christofascist bible belt inbred morons that are generally dumb as fuck, but loud as hell. They are indoctrinated by their own bubble of conspiracy theorists to the point where they are firmly dug into their own story and nothing will change their views.
It is not worth fighting either group with animosity, condemnation or attacks, as they are more than capable of spinning the story their side and reinforcing their ideas that queers are somehow threatening.
But at least we should be capable of showing the xenofobes that there is no monster in that closet (pun intended), or under their beds.
As for Rowling, she is likely part of the cultist group, which means we’re going to have issues. Her status as a celebrity and her wealth further isolates her from the rest of society, which is a real problem because that makes you able to opt out of confrontation with reality. She can just stategically isolate herself from ever coming into contact and having a real human interaction with the people she’s having all these misguided ideas about.
I think everyone should be made more aware of the damage that social bubbles cause to society. Whether it’s conservative communities, religious indoctrination, closed internet discussion groups or just the wealthy and famous distancing themselves from society (which is usually not by choice but because we treat them to a permanent dose of spotlights).
I wonder if you have read/heard the things Rowling has actually said about trans issues.
I also find it ironic that you liken her to a chrisofachist, when in the early 00s she was basically crucified by those people.
I certainly don’t agree with everything she has said. But some of her points are genuine “maybe this is something that deserves conversation and contemplating”, which are immediately construed as transphobic or hateful by many people who haven’t personally read/heard what she said. People jump to screaming online instead of trying to refute her points.
Again, I do NOT agree with her on many, many things!
I am a private music teacher, and while most private teachers will go through a school to do lessons, I’ve just gone freelance and do it all myself. I get to set prices and recruit or not and I have so much freedom, but one thing I found was that in setting prices, people will pay what you say. If they can’t I’ll chat a bit to see what the situation is and see where I can make discounts of course, but wealthy families are willing to do $100 an hour easy. I know I could bump it to $150 for some.
Basically all I’m saying is inflation is BS for companies making up higher prices.
That’s the weirdest comparison you could make. Private teaching isn’t a necessity, even more so music. People aren’t picking between store brand music lessons and locally sourced organic free range lessons of higher quality because budget constraints.
Add to it. People don’t haggle. If you state a price and they’re fine with it? Then you priced it within their expectations.
But we are going to elect him anyway, because the other guy forgot a thing once. Just like we elected him 8 years ago, because the other one ran her own email server.
Everyone also likes to forget that she won the poplar vote. She lost the electoral college, an anti-democratic institution that Democrats seem to think is really important to keep, despite the fact that keeping it often makes them impotent.
It frankly doesn’t matter whether they want to keep it or not. It would take a constitutional convention to change and in the current climate that’s going to go make things worse, not better.
There is one interesting workaround I've heard about from time to time, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. It's a state-level agreement where all the participating member states commit to allocating their electoral college votes to whomever won the popular vote nationally. No need for a constitutional convention since the allocation of electoral college votes is in the hands of state governments, they can decide to do this under the existing constitution.
However the states likely to agree are the ones that reliably vote Democrat, and the GOP has only won one popular vote in the last 30 years. So again, it won’t make a difference.
The comment I was responding to at the root of this said:
It would take a constitutional convention to change
And my response was to point out that no, it wouldn't. It doesn't. It's still difficult, sure, but it doesn't require a constitutional convention to change.
Also, if you actually look it up, there are enough states that have already enacted the compact or are "pending" to get it done. So it's closer to being done than you are implying.
Of the ones that are ‘done’, they were already consistently democrat and haven’t had to vote against their usual leaning.
Of the ones that are marked as ‘pending’, it is very optimistic to presume that is on its way to anything. It merely requires that some state legislature person proposed it. Maine is “Pending” but has already failed 7 prior attempts over the past 15 years. Many of those “pending” have been “in committee” for about a year. No way it takes a year to seriously bake such a simplistic proposal, it’s dead in committee, just waiting for an election cycle for it to be official.
The reason this is doomed to fail is you’d need states to join that explicitly enjoy political advantage from the current system. A die-hard “red” state will not sign on to a system that basically hands the presidential election to whoever the northeast and west coast vote for. A swing state that may be more ok with a democrat winning consistently would still not want to cede the political influence afforded to them by virtue of being a “swing” state.
All of that can be true and this is still easier than a constitutional amendment.
That is all that I was saying from the start. It remains the case. You don't need a constitutional convention to make this change, there is an easier way to do it.
It will. To change the constitution you need 2/3 of the states. For this plan to work, you need only 50.1% of the electoral votes to agree. Doesn’t matter if they primarily swing democrat, it just has to be a majority.
Not a single “swing” or red state will go through with it. It may be numerically closer, but ideologically, it’s not going to happen. The red states know their favored candidate would lose, the swing states would forfeit their leverage to basically “go with whatever the northeast and west coast say”. Since this requires holdouts to surrender some measure of political power they have, won’t happen.
We can also double the size of the House (if not more). Electoral college votes are distributed according to the number of House districts (plus 2 for the senators of each state). Congress can simply pass that law. This is a good idea, anyway, since it was last set in 1911 with a total US population that’s less than a third of what it is today. It becomes harder gerrymander lots of smaller districts, as well, and it dilutes the effect of small states having outsized influence with their guaranteed 2 senate seats.
Would probably need to build new chambers for the House. The current one has 450 seats on the floor, plus 500 in the gallery that are normally for staff and guests, not elected members.
It’d be nice to ditch the electoral college system altogether instead of coming up with these workarounds.
Sorry, but no. You elected him. You don't get to no-true-Scotsman the responsibility of the American voters for this, enough Americans support this loon that he can indeed win elections.
We’re going to get Trump again (barf) because the DNC insists on running shit candidates and refuses to acknowledge that they are bad, instead insisting that the voters are just too ignorant to understand how good their candidates really are.
Hillary Clinton was a horrible candidate: immensely unpopular even with the Democrat base, running on a status quo platform right in the wake of disappointment with Obama’s failure to deliver on “hope and change”, and acting as if she was somehow entitled to the position.
Biden is not as bad as Clinton in most ways, but is utterly lackluster and feels more like a moderate Republican. His unwavering support for Israel during their campaign of atrocities is despicable and shameful. The fact that he’s totally ancient and losing his mind isn’t helpful in the least. Why can’t we have a more compelling candidate from the DNC?!
This post will get modded down and ignored, as will the incredibly common and widespread sentiment that it expresses, and we will get Trump again as the nation and the DNC acts shocked yet again. It’s so predictable and infuriating.
His unwavering support for Israel during their campaign of atrocities is despicable and shameful.
If we're going to get Trump again it's in part because of the absolutely all-or-nothing brook-no-compromise attitude of voters. Like this, for example. Biden's support has not been unwavering, he's criticized Israel's actions. But not enough for you, and so he gets no credit whatsoever for any moderation he might have. And that's why you say he "feels like a Republican" to you, because someone can only be 100% totally on your side or they must be on the other side.
I'd love for there to be a viable fully-progressive candidate who happened to agree with everything I believe in. I'd also love to have a pet unicorn. When elections actually roll around in reality, though, none of the candidates are going to be perfect. And unfortunately in many first-past-the-post electorates the system is set up in such a way that there are only two viable candidates. So pick the one that's closest to your views. Push for better candidates in the primary, of course, but accept that you won't always get everything you want.
Then you’re doing it right my friend. Hexbear and lemmy.world are overrun by Putin sympathizers who want nothing more than chaos and the continued decline of western democracy.
Hey, sorry to bother you, but apparently within less than one day ive been banned from World News after calling out russian propagandists. I would like to ask for a bit of clarification on which rules of the sub ive broken. Its concerning that clear kremlin talking posts are not only espoused and upvoted, but that they hold enough sway to get those who call them out for being what they are banned.
I did not call for violence, at worst you could call this a difference of opinion. Is Lemmy this far down the propaganda hole as well?
I have not found lemmy mods to be reasonable or empathetic at all. They don’t give a shit about your opinion so you are likely wasting your time. If it bothers you, just block that instance. If you still want to torture yourself just make another lemmy user. I moved to lemm.ee and cancelled my lemmy.world for this reason.
I was on lemmy.world and no difference. Just pure, unadulterated, kremlin talking points at every corner. But dont u dare call em out! I saw someone point out the accidental russian spelling of a word to being swarmed downvotes.
That’s the thing though. Biden doesn’t represent my views and voting for him to keep Trump out will be interpreted by the DNC as an endorsement of him and a reason not to change their platform to better suit the electorate. I’ve been doing this lesser-of-two-evils thing for decades now and the outcome keeps getting worse. Maybe it’s just a bad strategy.
The platform of “vote for us or we’ll let the other guy ravage society” is not a compelling platform and rewarding them for running on that platform isn’t going to end well for us. This will turn out for us how paying the Danegeld always does.
Maybe it's a bad strategy, but it may still be the best strategy.
The main point of my post is that even if you don't like Biden, you should at least be truthful in your complaints about him. If you paint him as worse than he actually is then instead of people holding their nose and voting for him they may just not vote at all, or worse.
I don’t like him in that he’s further down the wrong path than we’ve ever been with a Democrat president. He’s further down that path than Nixon or Bush Sr. Holding our noses isn’t working out for us.
I think that the Democratic Party needs to really grasp that it has to work for its votes and build a platform that genuinely attracts voters instead of talking them for granted. I thought the first Trump incident would drive that home for them, but maybe it will take another. Holding our noses will only tell them that they will reliably get votes as long as they’re not as bad as the other guy.
Getting rid of first-past-the-post and breaking up the stranglehold that the D/R dichotomy has on our government is the best strategy, and is in progress, but it’s slow and resisted by the same parties.
Just to elaborate, the only real currency we have with the parties is cold hard cash (where we’re hopelessly outgunned) and votes. Giving away our votes without demanding something in return is selling ourselves short. We will /never/ have any sort of real change or progress if we hold our nose and vote for the lesser of two evils. We will only continue to lose ground as we devalue our votes by giving them away for nothing.
I see what you’re saying and I subscribed to that strategy long ago, but in the long run it’s clearly a losing strategy.
So what's the winning strategy? Let Trump win instead?
The world isn't perfect. Holding out for a perfect candidate means never voting, at which point you have nothing to bargain with either.
Go ahead and vote your conscience in the primaries, sure. It's not such a big deal if you hold out for perfect in those. But in the American election system the actual vote for president is going to be between Trump and Biden. It sucks but you get just those two options there.
There’s a phrase I’m reminded of as it’s used in Australian politics quite often when it comes to our Greens party trying amend Labor legislation:
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
That is, don’t let your quest for the best possible outcome one prevent you from supporting a lesser outcome. Don’t let wanting a super progressive president prevent you from voting for the mildly progressive president which lets the regressive president end up winning.
You’ll vote lesser of two evils in most elections pretty much until the other side starts putting up reasonable candidates. Blaming Democrats for not giving you decent choice just completely misses the point: The Republicans choosing fascism means they aren’t a viable choice. They are removing choice from the ballot, not Democrats. You’re not being forced into anything by Democrats, they are simply running a platform that you should have the opportunity to disagree with, but you can’t, because the other side is fascism.
But let’s take the approach of “not rewarding them” for putting out shitty candidates (that aren’t fascist). Do you think once the fascists get into power, that Dems will even have the opportunity to change? What is your end game, because not voting for the lesser evil is the acceptance and indifference of either evil, and allows the worst evil to win.
The time for that fight is the primary, local elections, and between election cycles. Refusing to participate at the ballot box because you don’t like the choices you’ve been given is counterproductive, not just pointless.
All the people critisizing “”“Genocide Joe”“” give me a aneurysm when cosidering their alternative:
Attacking Biden, Ben Gvir says Trump would have been more supportive of Israel
National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir harshly criticized the Biden administration’s handling of the war in Gaza, accusing it of benefitting Hamas and arguing that Israel would have been better off dealing with a second Trump administration.
“Instead of giving us his full backing, [President Joe] Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel, which goes to Hamas,” Ben Gvir declared in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Sunday. “If Trump was in power, the U.S. conduct would be completely different.”
Yep. The uninformed gEnoCiDe jOe kids are obnoxious. I’ve tried in the beginning to calmly reason with them and explain how things work and I’ve been met with being reported and even banned from a few instances.
Now, when I see them- I just block them from my feed. It’s not worth it. They don’t want to know what they’re doing is dangerous to democracy.
If Trump wins and dissolves NATO, and Russia, China, North Korea and Iran start a massive conflict as an axis of evil, tens of millions, if not a hundred million or more could die. More, if nuclear weapons are used.
40-50,000,000 were killed in WW2. And that was with ancient technology, by comparison. Going to Normandy and seeing the endless rows of graves stretching as far as the eye can see shows the incalculable loss of global war, something that must not ever be repeated. Far too many paid the ultimate price to keep evil at bay.
Biden has bypassed congress to sell arms to Israel.
Doesn’t congress know those artillery shells aren’t going to be fired into Gaza? Are they just antisemitic?
Despite how abhorrent Trump is, what if he actually got elected again simply because Americans are that fed up with establishment politics status quo? Maybe Americans are desperate for change, anything but the same abuse by corporate overlords we’ve suffered since the 1970s, even if we know it’s going to do more harm than good?
Also, if you think the main reason Hillary lost is because of email-gate, consider that your own point of view may be compromised by Republican framing.
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