Systems created under the best-case-scenario will inevitably fail. The US legislative and executive branches were created under the assumption that all players have the best interest of the people and nation in mind and will act accordingly.
Burning books always reminds of the big book burnings the nazis organized in germany. Burning books seems wrong to me in general and burning a specific book just to provoke violent outrage of a certain group seems especially vile to me.
What you are doing is the equivalent of pointing fingers and whimpering. This is not a schoolyard, so please refrain from arguing on that level. The people who stormed the embassy were obviously a violent mob of religious fanatics - I assumed that to be trivial and not necessary to mention because it should be obvious.
What I was doing with that question was trying to ascertain whether you were just making excuses for religious extremists or trying to add more to the conversation. Maybe ask clarifying questions before assuming I’m “schoolyard arguing.”
I am happy to see that you agree that storming an embassy is bad. Seriously because it is NOT obvious by what I replied to.
I read a few of your replies and I think I understand your point of view better. I think just in general we should NOT act in a manner that would be considered offensive to another group just to be (for lack of a better work) a dick. The sad thing is, we already don’t live in that world and this refugee that burned the Quran might have been burning it as a “dick move” or maybe he was burning it because he has a very real and hurtful story of how he became a refugee from Iraq. People burn things (small idols, books, or letters) as ceremonies of release depending on where they are coming from or their culture.
I can tell you I am biased toward any religion trying to tell me how to act. If I want to burn every holy book that I buy/own then I should be able to. Pushing your beliefs on others is wrong. Me burning a book doesn’t effect you unless you decide that it does. You forcing your religious laws on me does actually effect me even if I don’t believe in your religion. What happens if I’m eating an unclean food infront of some extremist religious person? Do you think I’m trying to be offensive because I’m eating pork in public?
I’m not trying to schoolyard argue with you, but I think giving up some acts of freedom of speech to religious extremists is a bad path to follow. Appeasement doesn’t work with extremists because they always push for more.
I don’t think most Muslim are extremists. I do think many of these countries have parts of, if not all of their country run by extremists. That’s why I think it’s worth noting. We shouldn’t push people to violent acts, but one could argue that the refugee himself was pushed to this “violent act” by the extremists in his home country.
I am happy to see that you agree that storming an embassy is bad. Seriously because it is NOT obvious by what I replied to.
its not obvious whether they agree that storming an embassy is bad because they didnt say anything about the matter
I think just in general we should NOT act in a manner that would be considered offensive to another group just to be (for lack of a better work) a dick. The sad thing is, we already don’t live in that world and this refugee that burned the Quran might have been burning it as a “dick move” or maybe he was burning it because he has a very real and hurtful story of how he became a refugee from Iraq.
this does not sound like you think we should NOT act in a manner that would be considered offensive to another group just to be a dick
it sounds like making excuses, especially for someone complaining about folks making excuses
I can tell you I am biased toward any religion trying to tell me how to act. If I want to burn every holy book that I buy/own then I should be able to. Pushing your beliefs on others is wrong. Me burning a book doesn’t effect you unless you decide that it does. You forcing your religious laws on me does actually effect me even if I don’t believe in your religion
someone commenting that burning books to provoke violent outrage is vile falls under none of the above
What happens if I’m eating an unclean food infront of some extremist religious person? Do you think I’m trying to be offensive because I’m eating pork in public?
we arent talking about eating unclean food in front of some extremist person, equating the two is disingenuous
I’m not trying to schoolyard argue with you,
uhuh
I think giving up some acts of freedom of speech to religious extremists is a bad path to follow
someone commenting that burning books to provoke violent outrage is vile falls under none of the above
We shouldn’t push people to violent acts, but one could argue that the refugee himself was pushed to this “violent act” by the extremists in his home country
the man in sweden was not pushed to burn a book because of the political climate in another country a continent away
I think there is a lot of misunderstanding in this. I will not try to explain everything, because I feel I’m not using the correct words to explain my thoughts.
I will reply to
we arent talking about eating unclean food in front of some extremist person, equating the two is disingenuous>
I was mentioning this example in order to try to explain how appeasement doesn’t work with extremists. If burning a book is so offensive that they have a call to arms then I am against them. I don’t care what book. It’s all paper.
the man in sweden was not pushed to burn a book because of the political climate in another country a continent away>
Oh cool. I just assumed that the political climate of his country of origin had something to do with why he was a refugee, but I guess not?
I’m not familiar with all the details of why he was granted refugee status. I just agreed with him on principle. I’m not an edgelord, and I respect everyone’s religion in practice. Which is why I am attempting to advocate for his personal creed. Religion is personal and I respect it until someone tries to push their religious laws on someone else.
That’s an opinion about the death penalty in general. Fact is the state does have that power, so when faced with difficulty carrying out execution, why not the firing squad?
It’s considered unreliable and inhumane, I think. Yes, I am aware that apparently the current methods are also not reliable.
Personally, I’m against executions on principle, but if we are to have executions, I think I’d prefer mine to be by firing squad first, guillotine second. I would not like to have a lethal injection or electric chair.
“Back when we were kids, we all went to church and learned the difference between right and wrong,” (Sheriff Eddie Scott) said. “And we’re not seeing that now.”
Obviously he never learned the difference. Rapey, manipulative, power-hungry dudes rarely do.
Was getting serious a few years ago, it’s past that now. We’re to the point now where we could actually theoretically fall. We’re being generally outmaneuvered, as we’re mostly being modern and democratic, and they perceive themselves as fighting a war.
In a war, you do what you have to do to win, the normal rules no longer apply. Even human rights are irrelevant if your war can remake a world without them.
I see it as the last hurrah of the past. If they don’t stop the world now, fascism might be dead forever in western history. This is the last chance they may ever get to truly create the world that they want to see. Otherwise economic, technological and educational factors will deprive them of even the opportunity eventually.
Make no mistake, the goal for many is some kind of WW3. A significant portion lean towards a doomsday cult. They look to things like global warming and they see the second coming. They are not interested in concerns about disaster whatsoever, if anyone hasn’t noticed yet.
It’s cyclical, so I don’t think this is the last hurrah of fascism.
Additionally, when everyone has a phone in their pocket with access to confirmation bias, it was inevitable that this would be the result. Social media has amplified echo chambers to levels never seen before, and it’s made even worse by the fact that those social media sites use algorithms to keep users engaged as much as possible for increased ad exposure. Unfortunately, those algorithms will show you inflammatory content, as that’s been shown to grab users’ attention the most: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2024292118
However, social media may be creating perverse incentives for divisive content because this content is particularly likely to go “viral.” We report evidence that posts about political opponents are substantially more likely to be shared on social media and that this out-group effect is much stronger than other established predictors of social media sharing, such as emotional language. These findings contribute to scholarly debates about the role of social media in political polarization and can inform solutions for creating healthier social media environments.
We have seen this unfold in virtually real time over the last decade or so. The result is an ever more divided and radicalized society that becomes more and more exploitable by populists.
I find it difficult to look at the breadth of recorded history and see anything cyclical about it. Never saw people flying through the sky in machines until pretty recently, or communicating instantly across the globe.
Regarding social media, yes, that is a major concern. I think we need to wreck the market locks of the major tech giants. Which is why I picked a Fediverse service and not any of the other reddit competitors.
When people say that history is cyclical, they don’t mean that it is literally repeating itself verbatim. They’re referring to human nature/behavior. There’s been numerous cycles in that regard that haven’t varied that drastically. One only needs to even examine the last 150 years and see that we’re once again experiencing a modern version of the Robber Baron Era (in the US at least for this one), the rise of fascism and populism, an increase in xenophobia and demand for isolationism, etc.
Look at human history, on a global scale technological development has been constantly increasing over time. Locally there are plateaus and even valleys like the middle ages but those have always been temporary and afterwards canceled out when development went back to going up again. Overall the technological knowledge of humanity has always been increasing and it seems like a trend that is almost impossible to stop. Example for directional technological progress : pointy stick -> bow & arrow -> sword -> cannon -> rifle -> tank -> nuke -> drones
Social development of societies on the other hand seems to be oscillating between several poles instead of having a general direction. Examples for social oscillations:
authoritarian rule <-> individual freedom
capitalism <-> socialism
aggressive expansionism <-> peaceful cooperation
Germany is a good example for this oscillation process, it went monarchy -> democracy -> fascist authoritarian dictatorship -> democracy -> today the AfD (neo nazi party of Germany) has the best polls ever, so the direction is changing again.
I see what you’re saying, I noticed similar things in my youth. As I studied more though, I realized I was simply cherry-picking, and filling in the gaps with pop culture misconceptions.
The plateaus and valleys you describe, for instance, are some of these misconceptions, stemming from old schools of thought. Modern scholarship points how how progress in many arenas continued through the dark ages and medieval period. You could look at the history of something like military fortifications and see this progress very clearly, in a situation where we have a great many old examples to study.
Regarding this social oscillation you describe, I think it’s fairly cherry picked. With the whole data set, this starts to become more clear. How about the history of Denmark or the UK? How about Chinese or Japanese history? These will all break your hypothesis.
We can talk about these things, it’s completely okay. You did nothing wrong and neither did I, we’re just two people having a conversation. We’re all good here man.
Faschism is to eventually win unless you do something to oppose it. There would always be ones who’d try to recover it for their own benefit. It requires conscious effort, education and empathy to not give in into that set of ideas, like it needs a decision to skip fastfood and go to the gym\walk but for society as a whole. It’s unhealthy and causes cancer, but it always somewhere there.
Security services have been warning us of inhouse terrorism for years. This is what we are seeing now.
The US for one could just stop their war on drugs, which has been ravaging the world for decades, and only has like 1% efficacy, and use that money in programs to prevent this. But unfortunately we no longer live in times where reason rules.
Zero-sum ideologies have taken over. We live in societies where other people’s gain are seen as our loss. And then what we get are huge society splits which will eventually and inevitably be the end of that society as it was.
Yea, the US helped the war on drugs by selling less heroin. Who was guarding and smuggling it out? Poppy fields inreacesd dramatically during the occupation and dropped after. The US is a mayor part of the dugtrade
Just highlighting the difference between the government that protects its people and a government that throws a political circus. And at the same time, I showed where they could get the funding to do so, since lack of funding is made the excuse too often.
The political system is highly intertwined and it’s often just a matter of looking for the strings you’d like to connect. Sure I’m trying to paint a picture here since I don’t believe these people and others deserve to be targets of such pointless crime.
Hard to say since news organizations had to sue this department to get these numbers and pretty much every department is always trying to sweep dirt under the rug like that
According to the FBI, around 51% of murders in 2021 were solved. So this is just a bit lower than the federal numbers. The number doesn’t shock me, I think solving a murder is very hard and technology can only offer so much more info. Proving murder beyond a doubt is also very difficult, like OJ. We all know he killed his ex wife and her boyfriend, but prosecutors couldn’t prove he did it within the court context. An “unsolved” murder that has a solution.
That’s 51% in one year though, in STL if they only did 60% over the 6 year span of 2017 to 2023 then they haven’t hit 51% in any given year, unless they just completely stopped post covid.
I live in stl and can say it feels like they did completely stop post covid but I don’t know for sure, I know they had a “silent protest” for a while while Kim Gardner was in office but that’s over now that she’s resigned as circuit attorney and someone competent took over.
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