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Cake day: May 4th, 2024

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  • Just because they aren’t faceless doesn’t mean they aren’t as bad. In case of corporations, at the very least, anyone up to CEO could claim they were doing what their boss/investors told them/expected them to do, they have the mirage of fabricated innocence. The guilt is also spread more thinly, with many, often low paid employees contributing a small portion towards the greater legal crime.

    Small landlords have none of those delusions available, though from my personal, anecdotal experience, higher management in large corporations also often personally own real estate and rent it. I’m working in IT, but I have no reason to think it would be in any different elsewhere. I was led to understand it was “normal” and “smart”. So I’d say it’s the same kind of people that make decisions on top of the real estate corporations, and the petite landlords. And yeah, I’m excluding from that, obviously, renting a flat you’ve gotten as inheritance from your grandma or something, though I have more fundamental issues with the inheritance thing itself.


  • Russia invaded Ukraine under a very weak pretense of de-nazification, and buldozed over a lot of privately owned means of production, including foreign owned. They had some reputation to lose back then, now the worst that could happen would be Trump getting pissed at them and threatening them to escalate the war, but never doing so, because he’s still beholden to the capital interests, and this war has been extremely lucrative for the world’s main exporter of weapons. At best(for Putin) Trump would claim that Zelensky is using private contractors as human shields and that Zelensky broke the deal because the yield of the mining operations was lower than promised, and because of that USA will help Russia deal with the terrorists that overtook the land.

    As for the nuclear war - billionaires that push this war forward for their profit aren’t interested in living in bunkers, they want to lie on beaches and be sucked off by sex trafficed slaves. The war will never escalate beyond the point where it would endanger their profits, and definitely not to the point where they might worry for their lifes. No major player in this conflict that’s capable of employing a nuclear armaments will ever do so for those reasons, not to mention the soft power they would lose if they did - not that Trump and Putin are very concerned with soft power…

    Russia doesn’t mind continuing, USA doesn’t mind either, it’s just that Trump lied in his campaign promises that he did, and now he’s making a stink about it not being possible because Zelensky is a dictator. If they can cause an election in Ukraine and do a coup once Zelensky wins, or forge some different series of events that leads to Ukraine changing it’s president to one aligned with Russia, then it would be a preferable outcome for them, but it’s going to be difficult without losing a lot of influence and power, and Trump is already very unpopular, so I feel it’s unlikely they would try, but I wouldn’t put it past them. Trump antagonized both the world and his own citizens, and the backlash is growing to a degree where he might lack means to control it. Zelensky probably saw that as his most viable way out, so he chose to argue with Trump and J. D. Vance, and hoped that the backlash will limit their further meddling. Not that he had any good option there, but out of bad ones this one at least didn’t lock all Ukrainian cards in a bad deal. At this point Ukraine can try dealing with Europe, Turkey (was it Turkey? I think so) or even China, and they still have those tasty minerals that Trump helped advertise.

    Europe in general has to rethink their means of defence, and if Ukraine has something valuable, a new military alliance with more hawkish stance against both Russia and USA, one that would include security assurances for Ukraine and other member states, is not out of question. If fascism in USA keep getting worse, then Europe will definitely need it. If the bubble bursts, they may include USA in this alliance in the future, though probably without as much sway as it had in NATO. Not saying that it will happen, just a wild shot in the dark, but there are more options for Ukraine now, than if Zelensky went along with the farce, and, I don’t know, apologized for being a dictator and promised to be a good boy.


  • The idea that any deal with Russia that wouldn’t include rock solid security guarantees would lead to stopping the killing, much less any sort of peace, is extremely naive. This issue is ongoing ever since Russia annexed Crimea, there have been many deals and all of them failed to stop Putin from breaking them. The issue is very simple - Trump can not (and absolutely doesn’t want to, from the looks of things) convince Putin to stop the war, because Putin doesn’t want the war to stop. It was shown time and time again that they aren’t willing to stop their invasion, and only thing that ever thwarted their progress was military opposition. There is no reason to believe that Russia wouldn’t just continue the invasion after the deal with USA is made. And Ukraine wouldn’t have any benefit from this kind of deal, so why would they go through with it?

    Since you watched all of it, as unbearable to watch it was, you probably also heard the comments of Trump in the interview afterwards - that he organized and prolonged this discussion to show the world that Zelensky can not be negotiated with. Whatever you might believe in, it’s hard to imagine that as anything else other than admission that Trump never expected his “deal” to go through. They jumped and insulted the president of soverign country and blamed him for the war their close friend started. If your reaction to that is “he shouldn’t have reacted to the provocation”, then you’re missing the point of why they provoked him in the first place. This way, at the very least, he made sure the world despised Trump and that all other allies of Ukraine were sympathetic. His only choice is to weather this storm until the fascist bubble in USA bursts and there is some chance for diplomacy in the future.

    As for the economic entanglements, they mean nothing in times when USA is incapable of diplomacy and Russia is unwilling of adhering to any deals. Speaking of any trades where Ukraine is giving up their minerals before USA promises to push Russia outside of Ukraine borders is meaningless, and Ukraine wouldn’t get anything out of that.




  • How do you reconcile the understanding of her not being a good person and doing harm to the world with being a Swiftie? That’s a genuine question, I find identifying with the group supporting or admiring the person or idea I myself am opposed to on the ideological level hard to imagine. I can understand it being the case if one is defending the lesser evil, as they are coerced to do so by implied existence of the greater evil, but while I’m not well versed in the Swift lore I believe there isn’t any evil twin running around that she needs to stop. Unless.

    That’s not an attack, I believe that being a Swiftie might mean something else than what I understand by this term and I am making a fool out of myself. Still, it does seem to mean supporting what you’re opposed to. How do you resolve that contradiction?



  • IQ tests intentionally omit any questions related to empathy, emotional intelligence and creativity, so it can favour people from the top of the pile and act as accurate perdictor of success in ruthless capitalist society. It implicitly promotes lack of those traits in individuals and explicitly promotes the definition of intelligence that’s unrelated to them. While you don’t get lower scores if you’re highly creative or empathetic person, so it’s not directly a detrimental for society and can be a useful metric for some cases like specific jobs, it’s image as sole measure of intelect is manufactured to promote “specific kind of people”, to which group many republican businessmen would belong.

    I’m not disagreeing with what you said, just thought I’d expand on that.



  • While there were many detrimental factors Dems failed to properly address or apparently expected to be treated as positives, the obvious main one was attempting to outflank the GOP from the right. Every attempt to talk negatively about immigration or social issues was bound to result in more people taking Trump seriously instead of thinking Dems will do something. Everything about the illegal immigration rethoric was false, from the numbers to the effects, and Dems knew it - they decided they wanted to pretend this issue exists, so they can also play the right wing populist game. Pro-genocidal rethoric was also something right wing electorate knew Trump would do better, and some people disgusted with that rethoric decided not to vote. Dems wanted to become more right wing, to get that sweet ability to talk complete bullshit about everything and cover their inefficiencies with the mirages of bigotry. They believed their more “reasonable” right wing populist will win instead of wild maniacy like Trump - exactly as they did back in 2016, except this time Kamala had the chance to shape a different image for herself and she refused to do so. They gambled going to get away with moving further right and still getting elected, since Trump should have been very unpopular by all metrics they were capable of imagining. Instead, they gained no votes from the right and lost a fuck ton from the center and the left. Their arrogant and callous campaign sentenced many americans to likely death. They absolutely could have fought with all they had and ceded concessions to their voters instead of donors and “allies” like Israel. They could have went left instead of right, as many of us hoped after the Walz VP pick. Instead they lost, as the worse and less dedicated right wing party of US. They’re to blame for what’s going to happen next, not some abstract impossible to be pointed with finger voters. Yeah, Harris being a black woman in this deeply conservative society was a detriment to her chances. That was outside of her control, unlike everything else she did or didn’t do.

    I’ll be honest, unless most of the Democratic Party gets purged, it’s probably meaningless to vote for them (assuming you even can) in 2028. There couldn’t have been easier victory to be had, and they fucked it up. They should have called Trump a pedophile, but were afraid that their own pedophiles like Clinton would get hit with a shrapnell. They could have promised to tax the ultra rich, like Elon Musk down to the fucking ground, but they wanted their money themselves. They didn’t want to promise anything big, knowing fully well that no one would believe them with their terrible track record of implementing any meaningful and radical chances, while Trump claimed everything was the fault of immigrants and foreign adversaries and promised radical actions against them. Believing that they wont pull the same bullshit in 2028 is naive, they will refuse to learn anything from this catastrophe, move further right and campaign on “returning to the norm”. Fuck them. Let the greedy fucks burn, just as you will because of them. USA needs a third (and fourth, and fifth…) party, and it needs it now instead of in 4 years. Dems should be completely discarded, and I hope the pain you will feel in next 4 years, pain that they could have prevented but chose not to instead, will convince you as well.

    Yeah, I’m done, sorry for the rant. Posts casting blame on voters instead of Dems majorly piss me off right now.


  • I’m Polish and believe me when I say that I would also prefer Germany to learn different lessons from those your government claims to follow. The very idea that what nazis did wrong was targeting Jews instead of creating authoritarian stratified far right society that eventualy decided to displace and genocide people based on somewhat loosely described traits is not only a gross and dumb oversimplification, it’s gross and end evil to even propose. Fascism fits the class interests of the rich and powerfull of today just as much, if not more, as it did a century ago. Germany government siding with Israel in favour of the genocide they’re commiting is not just for show, they’re very happy that defending genocide became a position close to political center. In my opinion, that is.


  • Yeah well Germany does seem a bit anxious for some reason when someone mentions Israel and genocide in one sentence, but if anyone in the world should have any reasons to be unreasonably pro-Israel, that would be them. And even then, their performative support pales in comparison to USA. IDF literally murdered USA citizens and USA congratulated them for that. That takes real dedication to the cause!


  • I don’t think that’s really the case though? I’m pretty sure most nations condemned Israel except for USA, but USA blocked all attempts from anyone to do anything. And when USA says that commiting genocide with their weapons is on the table, I doubt any country wishes to find out what would happen should any concrete action against Israel be taken. It’s a big part of the reason why everyone calls USA complicit in genocide of Palestinians.


  • voldage@lemmy.worldtoComics@lemmy.mlCrapitalism
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    1 year ago

    Yeah, but you could rent from the government instead of private owners. You have completely no leverage over them, and government could use the rent money to build more housing for renting or sale and drive prices of housing down instead.


  • They could have memed it to hell and back with stuff like “I did not have a sexual relationship with that furniture mr. Clinton” or “only inanimate thing im horny for is democracy” but they had to go full serious damage control mode. Like, if they told us there are no aliens invading and put soldiers in the streets we would look out for ufos. What did they think they were going to gain by that kind of response? Completely detached from the ether, they are.


  • I think pretending there are A LOT of people like you that want this specific thing that is kind of weird is an attempt to appeal to authority of slightly more invested in politics “masses”. If someone tells a conservative and disconnected corn farmer that ALL conservatives care about that trans thing and that it’s a danger to your style of life, and that they mutilate children, then they might not check if any of that is true. Just assume that someone did, since apparently all their conservative friends are in on it. And you might just make a fool out of yourself if you ask any questions, since you know you don’t really belong with “silent conservative majority” because unlike them you’re not invested in politics and didn’t do your research… So you better keep your mouth shut and go along with the flow. Same thing with facism. Also preys on embarassed ignorance of the “silent majority” …imo



  • I also have felt unburdened by what has been, as if a spell was cast on me. I had no doubt though that replacing Joe Biden with literally anyone, including his son or dog, would increase democrats chance of winning. I think in my case it was more of letting go of pent up anger towards the rotting carcass of the current president and all those who campaigned for his reelection. Including the lovely folk of lemmy, for whom I still might hold some animosity. To those that rode hard for Biden, a sincere fuck you.