mozz

The rule that I was banned under was:

• No defending oppressive systems such as capitalism or the US "democracy."

I can't even tell whether to complain that it's weird to tell me I can't defend democracy, or that it's weird to call "it's bad to let the Nazis come to power" a pro-system-of-oppression viewpoint.

(I mean, I get it. I think it's safe to say that the real reason for the ban is neither of those things. I'm gonna let it go and move on with my day.)

I'm childish enough that I'm irritated at my comment here being removed. Here's the comment, which also applies to this meme:

You know that weak support for Hindenburg's party was what let Hitler come to power, right?

Not that I agree that Biden is a lesser evil, but even within those parameters, there's an absolutely glaring flaw in bringing up Nazi Germany while making the case that voting for the lesser evil is a bad idea

And when he asked for clarification:

My point is that the holocaust that gave rise to Niemöller's quote in the first place happened because of weakened resistance from the SPD (the establishment left), which wasn't getting support from the far-left of its day because it wasn't left enough. When as a result the fascist party gained control, it put all the far-left people in camps, outlawed the SPD, and began killing people by the millions. Which in retrospect made the complaint that the establishment left wasn't left enough to support, even against literal Hitler, seem short sighted.

Mod banned me. 🙂

It’s those damn lazy bolts, I set up a perfect environment for them and none of them stepped up and held the door closed, no one wants to work anymore, see this is why I hate immigrants and young people

I assume this is all some elaborate joke based on an alternate universe, since in our reality, the golden age of safe aviation and good engineering on the planes corresponded to strong safety regulations, and deregulation is exactly what cleared the way for Boeing management to cut corners in the exact negligent-homicidal way they are doing and have done. I can’t find the punch line though, can you help me?

One definition of neoliberalism

neoliberalism is often associated with policies of economic liberalization, including privatization, deregulation, globalization, free trade, monetarism, austerity, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy and society

What is any of that about what Biden is doing? You didn’t answer me on that, just repeated the label without explaining details or why it applies, and to me it sounds like the exact opposite.

Or, wait, are you saying that okay yes Biden’s policy is a trillion dollars in the exact opposite direction from neoliberalism, but it doesn’t count, because it’s only an “element” and the overall structure is still neoliberal? I.e. he didn’t seize the means of production, so you can call him a neoliberal no matter what he does, until that happens?

Biden's actual policies and impacts are actually quite good and have nothing to do with neoliberalism.

@umbrella@lemmy.ml What is neoliberal about what Biden is doing? I actually sort of suspect that you're doing precisely what you claim the NYT is doing, i.e. calling Biden "neoliberalism" because of who he is, instead of anything about what the actual policies are.

IDK, maybe that is unfair and you're saying that because of something I don't know, or out of general jadedness with the Democrats. If it's the second one I can 100% sympathize.

Which is why it is the perfect encounter table 🙂

I think they're talking about the Hamas rape allegations.

A big part of the art of bad faith-arguing is the taking one semi-related kernel of truth and inflating it like a balloon one step at a time until its massively outsized implied impact can eclipse the thing you want to disagree with, but which you can't or won't just deal with head-on.

In this case, this person maybe doesn't want to make the attempt to criticize this story directly, so instead they go with:

• Some of the allegations of rape in the NYT's reporting were probably wrong (true)
• Therefore they shouldn't have published the story (debatable -- literally, there was heated debate about it internally)
• And furthermore all the allegations and the main thrust of the story were wrong (untrue -- see the UN's report on sexual violence during the attack for example (content warning)).
• Therefore because a couple, but not all, of the accounts they published in that one story turned out to be suspect, the New York Times as a whole and every single thing it publishes is crappy
• Therefore this story is crappy and I don't even have to say why I think so; I can just say "rape allegations!" and call back to #1 and all the rest is implied.

I actually do think that the New York Times has a massive pro-Israel anti-Palestine bias and that that colored that particular story, them choosing to report it, and how. But it doesn't mean even that the story was falsified or that Hamas didn't rape anybody, let alone whatever else about the other 99.whatever% of the stories they publish.

There are two types of leader: One who wants to figure out, and one who wants to fight. They're both appropriate for different situations, and a ton of the profressional propaganda that 30-40% of the country consumes every single day is engineered to stimulate the part of the brain that sees enemies everywhere and wants a leader who's going to fight against the enemies. It’s honestly not even a conscious of consensual process; I think you just stimulate the right pathways enough different times and something clicks over and, whoops, that’s all of a sudden how they see it. That has been my observation at least.

I fully agree with you about how it should work in a normal world (and in this one), but the reality in a lot of these people's minds is not a normal world and it bears no resemblance at all to reality. In their world, minorities who can't fly the airplanes are being made into pilots because they're minorities, pedophiles are being invited into the schools to teach their children pedophilia, Mexican gang members are overrunning border towns and inner cities and good peaceful people just like them are being assaulted and robbed and the people in government refuse to do anything about it... it's just a wild and dangerous and lawless place, it's the end of the world and everything they stand for, and they'll grasp at any kind of straw for someone who will finally do something about it.

It's hard to really articulate because the words don't do justice to the level of emotional panic and desperation they're engineered to feel. But that's something along the lines of what's behind it. Whether or not this one black leader had anything to do with it is pretty much irrelevant; they're just trying to stand for sanity and against madness, in general. We have to do something and thank God won't someone, anyone do something about it all.

Fully agreed. And we may have precedent in addition to the moral high ground somehow on this issue -- I was totally unaware that the WTO had ruled in favor of China that American steel and aluminum tariffs weren't allowed, and the US simply told them both to get fucked.

That's honestly a bigger story than this one.

That's an easy answer: Talk all kinds of shit for domestic consumption, while not doing a goddamned thing to change the absolute waterfall of dollars for you and your friends which is the status quo.

Like 50% of Arab leaders have been doing this to a T for about 50 years, and it generally works quite well for them.

There are people in the world right now who really do wake up every day to hell on earth, like you or I can't imagine

And people who have no ability at all (at least right now) to change things

I'm not saying things are easy for you or sit in judgement or anything like that. I hope things get better and I really do. But at the same time if you're on Lemmy, you are not either one of those.