I think it’s an important distinction. They loath the general population of America, but love America as a country because it facilitates their wealth.

I also heartily disagree with your characterization of the founding fathers.

I disagree, it’s just a divergence in belief in what America truly is. The sad fact is that their portrayal of America may be closer to the truth.

America was primarily built by rum running slave owners who hated paying taxes. It was founded by rich men to protect the interest of rich men, and not a lot has changed over time.

I like to remind them that during the revolution the Founding Fathers would have been called radical left lunatics by the conservatives of the day.

Maybe if you only read the popular history about people like Benjamin Franklin or Hamilton. In reality most of the founding fathers would be seen as rabid libertarians by today’s means. Some of their ideas about religion would seem liberal, but you would have to ignore issues like slavery, the brutality towards native populations, women’s suffrage, voting rights for the poor, and taxation to label them as leftist in general.

It’s just the economics of late stage capitalism. Companies are mandated to increase profits year over year. In the beginning stages of capitalism this can be achieved by cornering new markets by out competing/taking over your competition. Once the market is cornered you can do things like innovate and streamline. Once this is tapped out the only real way to continue the profits is to conglomerate, monopolize, and racketeer.

We are pretty much past all of these options, or at the final stages, so the only option on the table is to reduce cost, and the largest cost of just about any company is labor. This is why all the mega corps are sinking their hopes into ai, it’s their last way to squeeze as much money out of their organization as possible.

The hilarious thing is that the American voter is supposed to be thinking of themselves when he says “we”. I would kinda understand the logic of continuing the forever war as a voter if everyone got a fat check once we ended the Iraq war. At least then I could understand that it is pure greed driving people to vote for war mongers.

In the end “we” is a small group of oil barons who made billions while footing the multi trillion bill to the tax payer. Unfortunately this just means that the average voter is greedy, but to stupid to actually benefit from their own avarice.

Sarcasm

My favorite was “no more politically correct wars”… So I guess the only option moving forward is politically incorrect wars? I don’t think I can keep up with the Machiavellian minds of this 4d chess administration.

It’s unfortunately hard to find out the sum total of spending spurred by executive orders. Which you think if we had a real free press would be something someone was tracking.

You’d kinda run into the same issue either way, you’d either have not enough ammo or not enough battery storage. Plus, there isn’t really a reason to have rotary barrels on something like a laser. They would theoretically be more of a sustained fire kind of weapon.

Even if it’s not completely impossible, it would be completely useless. What would be the point of rotary chain guns on a drone? Assuming the thing had enough lifting capacity to carry the barrels, there isn’t enough space in that thing to carry enough ammo to fire for more than a second.

I think your issue is that you are perceiving them as government workers. In reality they are violent gangs with the backing of the judiciary system and state representatives.

The entire purpose of police in America has always been to protect property and to oppress minority groups. They are the evolution of slave hunters and mercenary groups like the Pinkertons. The monied class of America just found a way to socialize their monopoly on violence.

I knew this guy was going to be a crazed maga dude just because they called him a crazy gunman and not some kind of leftist antifa assassin.

Untrained masked men kidnapping children from schools doesn’t entail political violence?

Enabling or advocating for these actions is a form of political violence itself. Himmler never killed anyone himself, does that mean he disengaged from the use of political violence?

Idk, I just think he just gets off on being an intransigent asshole. For some people being a vindictive ass is their higher calling.

There seems to be at least some level of neglect.

Especially since he is claimed to have quite a bit of alpine experience compared to her. That’s really what brings the liability of negligence to the whole scenario.

Alpine hiking at night is already incredibly dangerous, but not ensuring the person with the least amount of experience has the correct equipment and knows how to use it is just wild.

I wonder, though, did she not have a phone? Was there no reception, or why did she not call or signal for help herself?

Well the confusing thing is that they had helicopters overfly them multiple times as they made their climb and both failed to signal and continued their way to the summit. The person on trial claims that she was doing fine until right after the last flyover and then suddenly started to get worse.

As someone with a mild amount of cold weather experience… I don’t really believe this at all. If I were a betting guy I would wager that she was already suffering from the mental affects of hypothermia. You can enter a super suggestive state the colder you get and your mental faculties and decision making ability rapidly deteriorate to the point where you can get lost and just start walking in circles.

Were there other ways to make it through the night?

She did have a bivy sack that could have provided at least a decent amount of shelter, but he didn’t help her set it up before he left her on the mountain.

Tbh it really seems like he was purposely trying to endanger her, or at very least is a huge piece of shit that didn’t care about her well-being. This would be like a scuba diver taking an amateur on a night dive, not teaching them how to operate their regulator, and than abandoning them a hundred feet underwater in the dark. It really is criminal.

It’s almost like utilities are a natural monopoly that do not fit within the economic ideology of “free market” capitalism…

People seem to be forgetting that unless green power or nuclear power are socialized projects they would by default have to find a way to capitalize their products by some means. Whether it would be by capitalization via consumption rates, maintenance fees, or even subscription, a private business would have to be able to make ever increasing profits.

Trump is incredibly different from everything in your lifetime. You either haven’t been paying attention, or your a frog in a pot and just didn’t notice the temperature rising.

Did you miss the part where I said worse…?

things were never super great under either party but your country didn’t collapse either. So you’re expecting things to go on like that for the rest of your life.

It has been in perpetual decline for decades. Trump didn’t just happen overnight, nor will America be ghosted overnight, Empires die slow deaths.

It rhymes with guys like Putin, Erdogan, Mussolini, and Hitler.

Not a fan of Putin or erdogan… But I think falsely conflating them with Mussolini or Hitler is a bit much.

Americans won’t stop him because of the false sense of complacency.

Fascism is rising in all western democracies as a response to late stage capitalism. It’s not inherent to America, nor is from a false sense of complacency.

while Americans stick the sand, the rest of the world is noticing. And we don’t see Trump as the cause of the problems, he’s a symptom of the rot in American culture.

Yeah… I don’t think the fascist movements ballooning all over Europe have been made aware they appropriating American culture.

all hoped you would just vote for the black lady and things would have indeed gone back to normal. But that didn’t happen. Americans either voted for fascism or were complacent about it as you are.

Lol, who said I didn’t vote for as you said “the black lady”?

Trade will be routed around the US. Alliances with the US are just paper now, they’re meaningless. The US will be isolated as Spain was under Franco.

I’m willing to bet the corporations in your country still care more about money than they do about policy. America still has a bunch of capital to swing around and in the end that’s really what liberal democracies care about.

I think nations should boycot America, I just don’t really expect them too.

You could’ve just voted in primaries and got some people in power that would tax the wealthy.

When did I say I didn’t?

The US is the wealthiest country in the world, just the wealth didn’t trickle down as Reagan told you it would. But if you thought being a wealthy country with a population indoctrinated into apathy on wealth distribution was bad?

Do you think everyone in America shares a hive mind or something?

The US is fucked and the rest of the world is trying to distance itself from you before it all collapses. But go on and keep thinking everything is going to keep on as it always has.

Again… What do you think everything progressively getting worse means? What do you think a “collapse” actually means? How exactly is a country like Canada going to shield itself from a collapsing America when America is by far its largest trading party?

If you think this problem is just in America, or that canda doesn’t have a problem with income inequality… I really don’t know what to tell you. This is just what happens to any nation who bases their economy on the idea that infinite growth on a planet with finite resources is possible.

My point of contention is largely that the issue isn’t with the will of the voters, and that the direction of policy is largely directed from the top down.

Most American progressives are vastly more progressive than their representatives. It’s just that the DNC’s leadership is filled with thirdway democrats who refuse to support anyone left of center.

Edit: just reread you original comment. I misread it the first time round and thought you had said it was as far left as the people were willing to go. My bad.

Americans expect a lot from their Presidents. But the real problem is Congress.

I mean it’s definitely both… Congress has empowered the executive to an incredible degree, and this has been rarified by the judiciary.

Plus, most people ignore most elections other than when electing a new president. So your presidential candidate has a huge influence over the makeup and political agenda of Congress.

Okay, but the reason we have had centerist presidents is because that’s as far left as the people running the government and the media were willing to go.

Eh… That’s debatable. The modern democratic party being center right is kinda a byproduct of Thirdway politics. Which was largely popularized by the party leaders itself, specifically by the Clinton’s.

Bill Clinton rose to power by advocating for compromise as a way to get through the growing gridlock in Congress. This worked for his career, but it gave the Republican party a huge amount of influence over defining what that middle ground was. They would work with Democratic candidates with policy that served their purposes and completely ignore the ones that served anyone left of center.

This had the overall effect of not only controlling policy in congress, but actually being able to vicariously control the opposition. As time went on the only people who reached seniority in the DNC were those who would compromise with the rnc to create a “mutually” beneficial policy.

Don’t worry… Our next president will be a center right candidate and be declared both a rabid leftist and simultaneously the saviour of democracy. They’ll only predator drone strike a few weddings, thus securing their Nobel peace prize. Everything will return to normal, with just a little shift of the Overton window to the right. But hey, at least it won’t be Trump and full on fascism…

All sarcasm aside, the older I get the more headlines give me dejavu. I can remember article like this after the Gulf war where I felt like other countries were actually stepping away from America’s lead, and then the Clinton’s rose to power to make things better. Then Bush v2 and Afghanistan and then Obama promised to make it all better. Now we have trump and I’m beginning to wonder what kind of centerist compromise the Democrats are cooking up.

History may not repeat itself but it sure does rhyme, and seemingly the tune it does it to just gets worse every iteration.