Supposedly, I am a human, who does very human things.
You’ve absolutely built a strawman. You obviously understand the new risks we’re talking about given the subject of the article and the context, but yet you continue to imply this is about traditional gun statistics and not the ever increasing and looming threat of violence from neighbors who support the regime.
You are seemingly purposefully misconstruing my argument and that is annoying.
Clearly the point is a new danger exists, why you keep insisting on the strawman argument against the position that gun stats arent real, something I’ve never indicated, I do not know.
I can only think its in bad faith because you don’t have arguments against the actual opinions I’ve shared.
Did you not at all read my comment?
I knew the stats before you mentioned them, I’m pointing out there are clear differences to society right now that make this data far less relevant.
Your actually implies you’re arguing against an argument I’ve made but you aren’t at all.
That’s nice, but those statistics are from a different time with a different threat profile.
We are long done with pretending we’re living in a reasonable society.
They’re pretty incompetent, but also, it does present significant deterrence to ICE especially if people aren’t charged for legal self defence.
I still think this is mostly about defending yourself from emboldened neighbors though.
A gun does not defend you from a drone. It defends you from other people who are emboldened to commit crimes against you.
The point later in the comment is about what happens if the government fully turns in the citizens. Protecting yourself is midway to that.
You basically can’t let it get that far or you’re just cooked.
We’re clearly at a unproductive point in this conversation where you are slinging accusations and we clearly are at an impasse. I think your position ignores the valid perspective of others, you think it outweighs every other position even from people who try to do better just as you claim to.
That seems to be it. I can’t convince you, and you certainly haven’t convinced me.
You can see me as braindead, as a troll, as engaging in “double speak”, as being condescending, as being ignorant, and so forth.
Sure can, and thus far you arent beating the charges. Also kinda funny you decided to purposefully twist words there to portray my criticisms of your argument as insults against you. Typical bad faith behaviour. Troll is accurate though, because I don’t believe you even believe what you are arguing.
this conversation has quickly devolved into shit-slinging
You having incoherent responses and this accurately being pointed out doesnt give you a license to pretend that this is errant shit slinging as opposed to you being unable to come up with cogent backing for your stated opinions.
It seems like you are in an incredibly bad headspace - maybe I’m off-base, but I’m not looking down on you by pointing this out and asking you to consider untangling yourself from narratives strung by our media.
The obvious projection here is incredible. I’m supposedly shit slinging while you pretend that not buying your insane opinions with no reasoning to them must mean I am clueless. Most obvious bad faith participation there has ever been.
focusing on the likelihood of a civil war or mass violence perpetrated by MAGA.
You focused on the first rather than the latter because the latter is pretty obviously a likely occurrence. You’ve indicated multiple times in the previous comment you can’t even deny that ICE ramping up isnt disastrous.
There are already plenty of people calling these secret police on their neighbors.
You’re just playing with semantics if you continue to pretend this isnt a real concern.
We are both just as aware of what’s going on as the other one, but I’m attempting to have a cooler head about it.
No. You are attempting to downplay the seriousness of the situation because it makes you feel comfortable or you support it. Not sure which one, but neither is a good faith or objective view.
I live in an area that is overwhelmingly occupied by MAGA voters and I’m not seeing the overflowing hate and violence here as an openly gay person.
The ol “If I don’t see it, it doesnt exist” after the “As a [minority] things are fine”. Your demographic literally is not one of the ones currently on the chopping block yet, but you can clearly see them ramping up for that too with the supreme court rumoured to be looking at what constitutes marriage next. You’re up right after interracial marriage.
More than that, as a white man, who passes social norms, you wouldn’t be seeing this as someone who clearly does not know many if any marginalized people given your responses here.
Further, given that its a very vanishingly small amount of high density areas that are not blue, it likely means you aren’t living where the troubles are happening. Somehow this makes you believe they wont spread.
Trump wouldn’t have been able to run for the highest office in the country and assume office if they did do something concrete.
This isn’t a point that is being debated. Its just something you’ve thrown up as if its at all relevant to the current discussion of whether future violence is likely.
A large portion of these 77 million people are Christians, likely.
The Nazis also ran with a tuned version of Christianity. This is literally not a point of worth in any respect. The fact they have choosen a religion to band around politically is actually a huge red flag.
I’m attempting to point out here are over 250 million people who are not radicalized.
By lying through omission, which I pointed out, and which you still have not addressed in any capacity whatsoever.
Being propagandized is not exactly the same thing as being hateful.
Propaganda is the mechanism, hate is the outcome. You arent making a point here.
Christians are indeed manipulated into hate, but would quickly be shown the light if people assuaged their fears.
No, no they would not. The democratic party tried to do that. They went with racism instead.
That is, unless you mean somehow minorities need to prove to the hateful that they deserve life, which would be an absurd take.
Most Democrats are not as squeaky clean as we are led to believe. Our last president was a Zionist who committed a genocide, even Kamala wrestled with that reality - as detailed in her book.
Literally no one is arguing that they are squeaky clean. Not a single person doesnt advocate for them as the significantly less evil of 2 evils.
This is reality.
This point right here to me is the think that has really stuck out. This makes me think you are a closeted conservative. That you are currently pretending to have liberal/leftist viewpoints, because not a single democrat I have ever talked to has ever believed this, and no one would even believe someone would honestly feel the need to make such an argument given that no one believes it.
Everybody would benefit from calming down.
This is the same ol rhetoric of “meet in the middle” where non maga takes one step forward, and maga takes 2 steps back, and then says “meet in the middle” again.
People have mostly wizened up to this nonsense. There is no “calm” middle ground between fascism and not fascism.
but rather just calm down and stop seeing violence as inevitable.
“Hey people just ignore reality because if you point out the obvious heading, that means you support it!” - Your logic right now.
Given the point above with me being convinced you aren’t honest with your views, Im sure youll have some long reply, but I doubt its in good faith, and I don’t think anyone is reading down this far, so it probably won’t be worth spending this much time on responding to.
I would say I hope you become a better person, but anyone willing to be this deceitful isnt the type of person who even internally believes that they are doing what is right.
There was no substance in this reply. You haven’t shown knowledge of anything, and havent addressed any criticisms levied.
And yet he hasn’t been able to
Its only been ramping up, not down.
They have to resort to playing old protest footage and making up easily disprovable lies to rile people up - does that not read as desperate to you?
No. That reads as a disinformation campaign, and one that is working as they have ICE members ready and willing, currently committing heinous acts against the people.,
Despite the world population exploding, there has historically been much worse happening - and at much greater scales.
This arugment couldn’t be more brain dead
“There are worse things than modern genocides, so its not that bad”.
I’m finding it hard to think you arent a troll with logic like that.
Which unfortunately isn’t an entirely new occurrence if you look it up.
Is every single bit of logic you have false equivalences in bad faith? That seems like it might be it.
Under this administration, it’s certainly much more well-funded, it’s much more chaotic, it’s much more performative in the way it’s being done, and people being denied due process and getting shipped away to death camps and countries they’ve never been to is obviously extremely concerning and is not a positive trajectory (and is not performative, it’s very real). It’s not an indicator that there is a civil war on the horizon though.
This is tremendously brain dead logic once again, and it starts with you inserting a civil war angle to try to bait this discussion into going a specific way so we can’t discuss the details of whats happening through their logical stages.
When this ramps up further, and people need to defend themselves, it doesn’t matter what you call it.
Everybody was free to do something tangible about that, including the people who held power after that event.
This does not change anything. This is just you pointing out a separate failure.
More than that, they didn’t do nothing, as otherwise there wouldnt be any people to pardon.
No, you are hearing the most vocal and insane examples through social media and other forms of media.
Polls repeatedly show that his supporters support him basically no matter what. You’re just trying to downplay this, when in reality double digit percentages more republicans own guns than democrats, and their rhetoric for years has been to find a purpose for them.
People are densely packed in with each other
Its almost like there is a reason that cities are blue, and anywhere that isn’t a city is red.
Surely though this means everyone loves thy neighbor according to you.
They are being manipulated into believing this is a matter of survival.
How are you in one breath saying its no big deal and they don’t think like this, then in the other breath, in the same god damn comment, saying that they think its a matter of survival?
that the other side is demonic, woke, and ineffectual. Hate doesn’t factor into the equation for most of these people.
This is crazy double speak. You are literally stating here that they think the other side is demonic, that they hate them for being woke (acknowledging the hardships of marginalized people), and ineffectual (similarly to how in Nazi germany jews were portrayed as weak, yet powerful and coniving), and somehow you pretend its not about hate.
Craaaaaazy set of clearly contradicting sentences.
The world is a different place outside of social media and partisan media.
The difference you are portraying is one where you stick your head in the sand and ignore what is actually happening in order to believe that everything is fine and nothing ever happens.
Ground yourself, considering connecting with your community by attending an event or group or volunteering your time, and understand that things are not always exactly how they are presented by those that literally thrive on our attention.
Your attempts at condescension while being completely ignorant are astounding.
77 million people voted for Trump. There are over 340 million people in the US.
Less people voted for the only alternative, and of those polled, for the eligible non-voters (Which you know is the number that matters and is exactly why you used total population to be misleading), surveys have said that trump would have still won if they voted.
Proclaiming Matthew 25 would diffuse a large part of what is going on - that’s how much of a house of cards this all is.
Quoting the religious text of the regime to me after all you’ve just said is the icing on this shit cake.
There are millions of people in the US - if there was really an appetite for mass violence in the populace, it would’ve already revealed itself.
This is insane logic to me when the president is clearly gearing up to do violence against the people, and the violent rhetoric is at an all time high.
“it hasn’t happened yet, so it wont happen despite all the signs saying it will” is such a bad take its unimaginably bad.
Accept that we are relatively peaceful in modern times and rethink your beliefs.
There are literally multiple genocides happening right now. There are literally people being disappeared off the streets with no trials, identification and we don’t know where they are ending up.
This is just an insane take.
They fucking stormed the capital!
Would even the people deepest in the MAGA movement want their children to exist in a world where they aren’t safe due to political violence and civil war?
Yes??? Are you not hearing these people. Holy fuck.
This is a new level of sticking ones head in the sand.
Could they reasonably protect them in such a reality?
No, but they value hate above incredible personal sacrifice, hence their voting choices.
Good to know you have no idea what you’re talking about. Climate change is already causing serious deaths, now.
Far less than the issues listed to the people affected.
Climate change deathes currently are largely avoidable and it comes up as a relatively small source of death.
You’re nitpicking here to try to ignore the point.
It’s my generation that will be dying because of this.
Nope. No one alive today will witness any kind of apocalypse generation killing event.
Because climate change won’t… ??
You must worry about your house fire first before you fear the flood next month.
Yes, fascism is important. But not nearly as important as fighting climate change.
This is the type of “I’m a priveleged cisgendered straight white person so the marginalized people can be fed to the machine” ass comment I would expect from you.
They’ll come for you eventually too bud.
There isn’t a future to fight for if climate change isn’t blocked, you do understand that, right?
Hysterics don’t make you right. That is in more than 100 years when anyone talking right now is long dead.
Fascism could have you or I in a death camp within our lives, or trigger nuclear war, given it actually did the last time it flared up this seriously, except this time a shit ton of countries have nukes. Nukes? Talk about climate changing.
It could be solved in under a decade if people cared.
You continue to think from a perspective of blame rather than pragmatism.
People are the biggest hurdle for literally every major problem. Learning how the general public is propagandized too, what regulations reinforce and or strengthen the problem, how and which politicians are bought and paid off for to fight the problem and more.
The root cause and key is making the Overton window shift left. It is therefore the biggest problem, even to you, by being in the way for solving your problem as the actual biggest problem.
You don’t seem to actually understand how dangerous climate change is presently. You still see it as an abstract future rather than an awful and worsening present
I completely understand it. You clearly do not understand how bad the other problems I listed are.
You care far more about the rock we float on, than the people on said rock. Everything you say is in service of the rock rather than the people. What has more influence in peoples lives right now? All the things I mentioned.
Other people have good reason to be focused on those first.
I see what happened when voters and people actually cared. The cities changed, improved.
Oh which American cities are these? Are they per chance small mostly urban areas with progressive leaders?
I mean fuck it, I won’t be coy, we all see Mamdani. Somehow you won’t connect the dot’s though.
It proves that propaganda is not some magical convincing force that forces people to think one way, the way you pretend it is.
This is once again you doing mental gymnastics to pretend that blaming people will solve the problem any at all. Blaming people does not work.
I expect them to care about the potential mass death of most humans and environments that has been blasting on the news and taught to most for decades … and I think that’s reasonable.
I promise you there are topics more important to other people than that.
Many, reasonably, care about the wave of fascism poised to severely harm them, their families, their loved ones or their fellow countryman, a more immediate threat.
Many, reasonably, care about the insane unaffordability of housing due to corruption, corporate landlords, landlords in general, and houses being treated as investment vehicles.
Many, reasonably are worried about the massively accelerating wealth inequality and the disaster this spells for them and their future generations.
Many…
The point is, every single one of these points is more not less important than the point you care about primarily to many people. They aren’t wrong or stupid for having different priorities to you.
I would even go so far as saying that I think it’s foolish to value something so large scale and existential like global collapse over the next few hundred years due to climate change than a lot of the societal elements that contribute to it.
What does it matter what climate future humans live in if they’re enslaved or being murdered by fascists?
What does it matter if your descendants don’t exist because they can’t afford to live.
If someone tells you to kill a guy and you do, does it make sense to exclusively blame the person who told you? No. They’ve been given the information and tools to find more information.
Again, many people think the same thing for you, and they’re just as right, yet completely uselessly so as you are.
This is purely a self masturbatory blame assignment rather than a useful piece of information to accomplish goals.
Worse than that, it chooses to ignorantly fundamentally misunderstand how people work, yet expect to change what it doesn’t understand.
The standard I want is “trying” to do better. I want people to actually try to reduce their impact. That’s it. It’s not a high standard.
There you are again, missing the point and it feels like it has to be purposeful at this point.
Many people try to do better but can’t be as focused on this as you are because they’re being better in areas you are not being better in.
And simply, if you think propaganda can influence everyone enough that it makes changing individuals impossible, why do you think that convincing them to vote differently is possible?
This is an obvious and silly strawman.
I literally list why directly convincing people on this topic is less important and likely to work than impacting political systems that are used to uphold the propaganda points that cause these problems in the first place.
You’re slamming into a brick wall rather than trying to pick the lock on the door.
It is a tad ironic that you talk about the influence of propaganda and are still stuck on the idea that people need cars.
Its crazy to be this ignorant and with a bad faith point to boot.
Carcentricity has made it such that many people do in fact need cars.
This is not a problem. that can be solved quickly.
You pretending that acknowledging this reality means that I can’t conceive of anything else despite that obviously not being the case is you being dishonest in discussion, which at that point, why are you arguing? Why bother?
Climate change is the single most important issue, bar none.
An extremely naive and privileged perspective.
You’re worrying about the future of the species like that is an entity that can feel pain. No, it’s an idea, a prediction. It’s something that absolutely is not the top concern of the people struggling and facing real issues to their lives right now at this very moment. Just about the only people I can imagine could possibly hold this opinion are out of touch well to do people.
I did not watch your video as I’m already well aware
You are clearly missing a lot, so if you actually walked the walk, you’d watch it and see what you’re missing, because in this conversation alone you’ve made it clear you don’t understand how deep or effective it has been, what policies have been put in place due to it, etc.
North American roads are the way they are due to it.
I don’t believe people blindly believing clearly false propaganda are faultless
You are so impossibly stuck up your own ass, sniffing your own farts.
There are literally thousands if not millions of you people on every conceivable issue under the sun, and you’d all hate each other if you met, because you all are so lacking in empathy and perspective that you’d all be befuddled and enraged you didn’t all center around the single issues you all think are most important bar none. You’d all be irrate that the others dare “blindly believe this” and “foolishly follow that”.
Until you people realize what a problem this mentality is, you’ll literally never make substantive change.
I’m not sure you can even vocalize what you’re trying to say here.
The facts are just not in your favour.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/24/key-facts-about-americans-and-guns/
Key excerpt:
45% of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents say they personally own a gun, compared with 20% of Democrats and Democratic leaners.
You’ll find that all available information says similar.
Republicans have a much higher percentage of gun ownership than democrats.
It’s not just that they own more guns per individual. They have more individuals with guns.
You was speaking in countr terms as was the your before it.
Even still, its like, there is no “we only support the non fascists” from a foreign perspective when it comes to tourism unfortunately.
I mean there is a little bit when it comes to trade, like trading with blue states, but like, its all very intertwined to where youll be funding the fascist regime.
You’re ignoring usecase, and the fact that even according to your facts, they’re super popular.
Yeah nah bud. You’re arresting people trying to leave your country, tourists are getting roughed up, and violence from the government is increasing.
I think your tourism deserves to decrease and you deserve to sleep in the bed you’ve made.
Ok, at this point I’ve explained the hell out of my point and can only conclude you are a troll. You’ve made 0 effort to figure out what I am saying, so clearly the strawman you started with is the hill you want to go to die on.
The fact you call this conversation “on par with brainless maga trolls” is more evidence you just intended to rile me up while completely knowing exactly what threat I am talking about as people are being disappeared off of streets and hate crimes are being covered up. Clearly people should wait for the historians to have a perspective on this as the regime increasingly cancels studies on societal problems.
I don’t have the energy for that.