I looked over it just now... I thought it was just me that I couldn't find the sign up link. I think you are right. And there's been some sort of controversy about it although I can't really make head or tail of it.
What the fuck man where do I go to have a productive impact
Are you under the impression that "militia" means "anti-government"?
Yes. Government means a civil structure which ostensibly (though in practice, not completely) represents the will of the people. A militia is an armed body accountable to one person or a small group of people, as opposed to the overall governmental and legal system. In the sense that I'm using the word, it represents a challenge to the existing government's monopoly on violence, and not in a good way.
(If you're familiar with how it works in places like India where the establishment police are often not that powerful / motivated to help, and powerful families may have their own militias who sometimes skirmish with each other, you will know the difference.)
For as many things as there are to criticize about the anti-democratic nature of the US justice system, switching to individual MAGA people having their own military power base to use to tear down the existing system is a terrifying development. The replacement of accountable law enforcement which in theory provides equal protection under the law, with a violent body which is explicitly protective of one political class only, and explicitly and unaccountably violent to anyone who would oppose it, is a key part of late-stage fascism. (The SA and SS fell into this category and were key to Hitler being able to seize power.) It's basically the last brick to fall into place before the real horrors can begin.
I have a gift for you. I don't necessarily disagree with the idea that jawing about it online is a waste of time, but also, with the energy devoted to this post you could have signed up with them. I also scattered some links to some other organizations and etc somewhere down in the threads.
A global apocalypse has already happened (and is continuing, within what wreckage remains) in the insect and amphibian populations. Almost no one outside a small community of scientists that are specifically in that field has even noticed, let alone has a theory for why, or a guess as to whether it is an urgent problem.
But yes it seems like an urgent problem.
Biden has forgiven about $150 billion in student loan debt, has passed some big economic reforms which led to wealth inequality falling for the first time in quite a long time, wages at the bottom 10% of wage earners are going up faster than inflation even under fairly historic levels of inflation, his climate bill put the US on track for a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, and he's been raising corporate taxes by quite a lot in order to pay for all that stuff. Given how unified most of the US government is against things like that happening it's actually fairly impressive.
There's some other stuff but those are the big ones I'm aware of. It's just that the news media doesn't have any reason to report on that type of boring progress stuff, and actually has a couple of big reasons not to report it in favor of some other more titillating types of stories.
It's like the people who try to run from the cops and then once they get caught and asked why they did it, they say "because I didn't want to go to jail." My bro you have articulated the problem and I get it, but the solution you have chosen is going to make it quite a lot worse.
The response of "I'm not debating this with you" is sane.
Not really. Or, not reasonable or responsible, I would say.
Not wanting to have a public debate about it sounds fine. Hearing the CEO out and then saying "I'm sorry but it sounds like we're just not on the same page on this and talking more is not productive" sounds fine.
Deciding to make statements in a public forum that could materially impact someone's livelihood, and not being at all open on any level to someone who wants to tell you hey I think some of these statements are just factually wrong and this person you're convinced is a bad person and are publicly saying is a bad person, is not actually a bad person, that seems like middle-school levels of weird and hostile and self-centered.
Imo he should've just let the guy be after he told him to not contact me again
Yeah. In my armchair mode, I feel like at that point you should back off and maybe make a short public response like "Hey I saw this and tried to reach out privately, not to get into a big back-and-forth but here's why I think most of this is a misunderstanding of what we're about. (point a, b, c) Happy to talk more if you change your mind."
Yeah, is bullshit
I mean, the CEO's response seems a little over the top, unless you bear in mind that this is his livelihood.
Everyone's within their rights to say whatever they want about whatever private company, whether it's accurate or not, of course. But imagine that someone made a post at your workplace that was filled with things that weren't true about what you were doing in your job performance, and then you reached out to them to say "yo what's up with this" and they refused to talk with you about it. Given the context, I think the CEO's response is perfectly sane and that response of, no I'm not interested in talking with you on any level get away from me, is totally irresponsible and unreasonable.
If anything I bet this results in a net subscriber gain for Kagi.
I tend to agree
Yeah. I really don't like the mindset that Trump voters are evil or racist, they fully understand what he's about and they want it. A tiny percentage of them are that way; most are not. In my experience, Trump supporters I've talked to have been victimized by extremely powerful extremely expensive / well produced propaganda that's created this whole alternate reality in their minds that's extremely convincing, and they're just trying to do the right thing within that reality.
I don't know what the solution to that is, but treating them as bad people (and particularly, ignoring or downplaying the economic / societal abandonment of them that created legitimate anger and resentment which the propaganda can play into) is definitely not the answer.
It didn't used to be that way. Big blowouts used to be common.
I think it's a result of the GOP holding on to electoral legitimacy purely through electoral tricks which are expensive / criminal to a pretty large degree, since except for a little violent minority, almost all of the country has moved on from supporting them or anything they stand for. They don't want to expend more money or risk than is needed, so they'll do more or less the minimum that seems like it'll let them hold on to power. Even that isn't really working that well anymore, and so their grip is slipping, and with Trump now running the show and demolishing the RNC's effectiveness just as thoroughly as he does everything else he touches, all bets are off for the upcoming election.
I think they're planning to move to simple explicit violence during this election, since that's all that is left if they want to avoid defeat, but you can't completely write off how effective their propaganda is at convincing people.
Fascinating. Your account actually had already caught my attention a little bit, previous to this -- are you open to me explaining why, even if it'll be a little bit unfair accusation?
Right out of the gate, you've elected a strawman. I'm actually fine with criticism of the Democratic party; I've done some of it lower down in this thread, and elsewhere I compared the Biden state department to Nazis because of what they're enabling in Gaza. Criticism sounds great.
If you want to disagree with my post and argue that voting is a bad idea, please be honest and do so explicitly; I think it will not be a popular view.
If you want to tell me most of the Democrats are bad or that reforming the voting system is a good idea, I'm all for it and would probably agree with you.
If you want to construct a little edifice where you're saying those sensible things while cunningly pretending that I'm saying the opposite of those sensible things when I'm not, I'm going to assume you're in this conversation for a dishonest reason. So please don't do that. Sounds fair, no?