If someone claims something happened on the fediverse without providing a link, they're lying.
Evidence or GTFO.
Somehow I think that if a president starts nationalizing the assets of rich white people, SCOTUS is going to decide it's not an official act.
No? Those warmongering psychos were perfectly fine with bombing schoolchildren, they're just upset that he stopped bombing schoolchildren:
Trump’s former vice president Mike Pence also issued a rare criticism of his former boss, arguing the Memorandum of Understanding “does smack of the kind of appeasement that our administration rejected in the Obama-Iran nuclear deal”.
“I would urge the President to take a step back, continue the blockade and pursue a negotiated settlement that commits Iran to dismantling their nuclear program, dismantling this missile program, ends support for terrorist proxies and opens the strait.
“Failing that, we should let our Armed Forces finish the job on our terms,” he wrote on social media.
Huh. This may be the first time "Trump just says what everyone's thinking" has actually been true.
You can only do that so much before people stop trusting your currency. Up until recently, the Saudis sold oil exclusively for USD, now they've started selling it for other currencies including yuan.
China sells consumer goods to the US for USD. China gives that USD to the Saudis for oil. The Saudis give that USD back to the US in exchange for bombing civilians in Yemen. That's how things have worked for the past like 50 years.
If the USD (and the US) stops being seen as reliable, then eventually the whole thing falls apart, and we're seeing the first signs of that already. The Saudis will start telling us our bombs are too expensive and China will say the scraps of paper we give them aren't worth it. If we're not dropping bombs on behalf of oppressive monarchies in exchange for oil, and importing cheap goods from underpaid overseas workers, then what do we even have left, as a country?
It's probably for the best for the world in the long term that that system falls apart (provided Americans don't go apeshit and start WWIII, which is a big assumption), and in the very short term of course using the infinite money hack solves a lot of problems, but in the medium term, it's gonna be rocky.
Fortunately, there aren't any other major crises we've been kicking down the road for short term benefits that are going to reach a head in the near future, so we can focus excluively on that.
Expected shitlibbery from The Atlantic.
The Iranians cagily linked Netanyahu’s war against Hezbollah in Lebanon to Trump’s war in the Gulf
Cagily? How tf is is "cagey" to link those two together?
I'll go even further: every military action taken by the US or Israel in the MENA region, from the Gulf War to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan to the overthrow of the Syrian and Libyan governments to Israel's invasion of Palestine, Lebanon, etc, all of it is linked as part of a consistent plan to subjugate the entire region by force.
The Israelis, for their part, have been left out in the cold.
When Netanyahu planned major strikes in Beirut at the beginning of June, Trump called him, swore at him, and said, “You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me.”
Good? Are you trying to turn me into an accelerationist?
No one should trust the Iranians...
No one should trust the Iranians? How about no one should trust the Americans, who launched this attack in the middle of negotiations?
The effort to claim that this war has defeated Iran’s nuclear ambitions is merely an effort to distract from the administration’s failure to achieve regime change, which was always its main goal.
No doubt the hawks at The Atlantic were jerking themselves off over the prospect of regime change from the moment the war started, but I don't think there was ever a clear "main goal."
Had Trump toppled the regime in Tehran, he would have had the thanks of most of the world—and congratulations from even his most dedicated critics.
Jesus fucking Christ! I wrote the previous line before I even got to this! They were, in fact, jerking off to the idea of regime change, and the only problem they have with Trump bombing schoolchildren is that he backed off! What a bunch of warmongering psychos!
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They absolutely are not.
I understand that you're not familiar with the symbol and that this is your first time encountering it. I can easily believe that a drunk soldier in the same boat wouldn't know the difference either. But the design of the Nazi version is distinct and recognizable, if you've seen it. The tattoo was indisputably a totenkopf and not a pirate flag. Nobody who knows what a totenkopf is would get the two confused.
The part that I take issue with is when you go around saying that nobody knew what a totenkopf was before this and therefore all criticism about it must be in bad faith. You're just projecting your own knowledge and experiences onto every other person on the planet. I knew what a totenkopf was years before this and my impression of the symbol has nothing to do with Platner, or like, Maine in general. Platner could be the greatest or the worst person in the world and it wouldn't change what I think about the symbol at all. My knowledge about and impression of the totenkopf is based on it being plastered on Nazi uniforms, and used by Neo-Nazis, not a controversy over some random Senate candidate.
It's just ridiculous that you won't even accept the possibility that people you disagree with are just wrong, that's not enough, they have to be actively malevolent and dishonest. Even in the most generous possible read of Platner, there are still red flags that would cause some people to have genuine concerns and doubts about him.
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Because, no matter how many times you repeat "it's just a pirate symbol!!!" (how many times in this thread?) that's doesn't make it true:
It's not just a "skull and crossbones," it's the specific design that was used by the Nazis and is known as a hate symbol.
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I don't even think getting the tattoo is disqualifying, but the way he handled it was sus. Even if it was a stupid, drunk decision, it's likely he figured it out at some point afterwards, and only got it covered up when it started hurting the campaign.
The part about being a Blackwater merc though, that's pretty hard to look past. "Killer for hire turned politician." One way or another, it's a sad state of affairs that this is where we're at.
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The claim that WoodScientist is trying to argue is not just that he didn't know what it meant when he got it (and that it's fine he left it after learning about it), but also that anyone criticizing the tattoo must be disingenuous, because nobody knew what the symbol was before this controversy. In fact, lots of people knew what it was, some from that sketch, some from movies and stuff, some from keeping an eye on far-right groups, etc. If anything, the only thing I'm learning about from this controversy is just how many people don't recognize it.
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I 100% accept that people can change, but that doesn't mean I trust them in positions of power. I don't know what this weird parasocial thing is where I'm expected to never hold politicians accountable for anything.
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The only people with obsessive knowledge of SS iconography are WW2 buffs, neonazis, and neonazi WW2 buffs.
And those of us who are high enough on their lists to spend five minutes learning to identify common symbols that indicate danger.
I think you may be the actual Nazi here.
Seriously? This is the worst thing about y'all. You simply won't allow for the possibility that criticism is even genuine, let alone legitimate. Every single time someone raises a potential concern, it's always, "You're the real Nazi!" or "You're a DNC bot!" or whatnot. As if there isn't a single person on the planet who gets worried when a guy with a Nazi tattoo and a history as a mercenary is running for office.
You can argue that Platner is a lesser evil or whatever, but this, "If you have a problem with a totenkopf tattoo, you're the real Nazi" shit is just straight up cult behavior.
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I can only lead a horse to water, I can't make you think.
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Don't try to explain things you neither understand nor care about then.
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But you're explaining it with such a bad example that it undermines the whole point, it's like if you said, "Some things are just objective facts, like which poems are good." That to me indicates that it's not really a simple concept at all, you just don't see the depth because you haven't examined it. Being unwilling to examine it, framing that examination as "the bottomless argument of philosophical truth," only reinforces that. If you're not willing to examine the question, then don't assert that you know the answer in the first place.
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Yes.
Not trying to say that everything is subjective, but that in particular is kind of a bad example.
I just think you're being dismissive, while setting your own ideas as being apart from philosophy.
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The whole point of objectivity is that it allows for cooperation and understanding between people with different experiences. People can invent whatever ideas they like, but by testing those ideas against an objective physical standard, it becomes possible to determine which one is more correct. Without that, when views diverge, people default to stuff like "might makes right."
Critical thinking is a process of examining and questioning of one's preexisting beliefs, through rationality. Without that process, what you have is either the ideas that you have passively absorbed through society (primarily, the ideas of the ruling class), or your own made up stuff that other people have no reason to agree with, leading to an inability to unite around an alternative and a de facto victory for the status quo. Subjectivity is not true freedom, because it leads to division and confusion, and division is incapable of resisting oppression, "For what force on earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one?"
It's such a pet peeve for me the way you're always trying to tie the validity of trans identities to a rejection of objectivity. Trans rights are objective! It is factual, testable, observable, that supporting trans identities has a positive effect on people's mental health. In rejecting objectivity, you are, in fact, opening the door to say that subjective perspectives that are transphobic are just as true as anything else.
That which is subjective is debatable, and trans rights are not up for debate.
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Apparently? You keep making philosophical assertions.
You don't get to assert your philosophical views and then say, "I'm not interested is discussing philosophy" to avoid examination and criticism of those views.
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I see, so you're only interested in asserting your own philosophical positions, not examining or defending them in any way.
You're blaming completely the wrong people.
What if, instead of taking sick leave, a coworker just quit? Do they have a responsibility to keep working at a job they don't like, because you'll have more work to do? Are you going to blame every person on the planet for not applying to work at your company to lighten your workload? No, if the company increases your workload instead of just hiring someone else, that's on the company.
Assuming you're able to see that, then suppose a full-time employee changes to part-time. Again, if the company places more on your plate rather than finding someone else to make up the hours, that's on them, not your coworker.
So now, we can consider if a coworker takes medical leave. All they're doing is reducing the numbers of hours they end up working, for lower pay. How is that any different from the other two cases? If the company simply puts it on you to make up the difference, it is 0% the coworker's fault and 100% on the company.
How can you not see how completely backwards your logic is? It's the company making the decision to make your work more rather than bringing on more staff. This is like, if a husband beats his wife after the kid makes too much noise, and the wife blames the kid instead of the husband! Maybe your company decides to treat you worse when they're short-staffed but that's 100% the company's decision to do that and it's also 100% the company's decision to not hire more people. You're making huge leaps to blame your coworkers and lick the company's boots.
Redirecting money from the budgets of the people keeping himself alive is certainly a choice.