Ah yes, the fascist plan of “Look, we all know the foregone conclusion. X person will never change their mind (certainly not saying I support them), so you shouldn’t stand against them.”

Zionists believe in the supremacy of the jewish population. Nazis believe in supremacy of the white race, but also exterminating jews.

It’s easy to see how both systems of hate can be used to goad lower class sects into eliminating “the enemy” instead of visualizing the class war. There are very likely much smaller camps of rich elites that play both sides, but outside of that, the two groups are distinct. Trump has supported both before, since both have sucked up to him.

I mean, yes…but I also see this as “The vampire party could be so much more popular if they came out in favor of a bloodsucking ban.”

They likely have their own objectives beyond getting elected. They might even prefer being in the losing position if “they are our only hope and we all gotta donate real hard”.

I’ll agree with that. A nice way of summarizing, in my eye, is: If you pictured your civilly responsible, experienced neighbor deciding to run for office to fix the state or the country, which political party do you think they’d join?

Even if you believe an entity like the Democratic Party to be profit-driven and corporate, you can still pull what useful value you can from them where they’re behaving correctly.

I’ve been very worried about the mentality that, just because a MAGA has internalized one single mistake or fault in the Trump party, that they will ever actively champion or vote for the “Evil Demon-crats”. Many of them are just going to become “enlightened centrists” that feel both sides are corrupt.

I’m reminded of a recent debate about fixing ICE, where someone said “What do you mean, fix them? They’re working as intended.”

To me, the Democratic party evokes a similar problem: I believe their goal is to maintain between 40-60% popularity. So, the champagne is uncorked at 40, not 50; because they don’t care about winning. They just care about people being scared of a loss, and viewing them as a strong-enough alternative to send them massive numbers of donations. If they were below 40, then people might lose hope in them or form an alternative. If they were above 60, then they could stand to cozy up to some corrupt billionaires, get away with some horrible legislative corruption for profit, and stand to drop a few points.

But the key here is, all of this only works because of fear of a far, far worse alternative. I’ve voted in elections where I had reasonable faith that every candidate on the ballet wanted the best for their constituents, and voted based on policy improvement and experience. As long as one party is so far below the basic standards that a corrupt career politician seems better if he can promise “No secret police”, then the Democrats’ way of maintaining 40-60 is easy.

So, next time they run a candidate that gets a “failure” of 45% of the vote, remember, they’re not your friends and they don’t care; they hit their goal. It’s still a failure of people that voted for a wolf in wolf’s clothing.

Like how in Stranger Things, instead of the whistleblowing heroes telling the media that “The government covered up a dimensional lab connected to an alien world that summoned a monster that lead to deaths in town”, they tell the media “The government covered up an infectious disease laboratory that lead to deaths in town”.

Same general point, but far more acceptable to most people.

So, a bit of a spoiler, but…This is basically the plot of the ending of “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas”.

It is horrifying, and really sad. But the look of dismay on that officer’s face at the end gives a very small touch of karma to it.

this just in sale of speedboat now illegal because they are drug

There’s definitely been some fallacious “appeals to popularity” from them. Like, someone will say that “I empathize with other human beings”, and they’ll snicker “Oh, buddy. You just outed yourself. The days are coming for people like you.” and the first person will just reply “WTF are you talking about? I don’t care if there are only 2 other people like me in the world, or if you’re threatening me, I’ll still hold to empathy.”

Those conversations worry them. Learning that they’re the minority, especially when the majority is not easily typecast as “illegal immigrants”, scares them.

Same. I never bought the “They control the government” reasoning, and I doubt MAGA does either. But the key bit is what they’re fighting over.

The fact that evil people have joined ICE to invade communities is due to their own evil - it’s not “because of” anything Trump said. He’s just a lump of flesh desperately trying to justify the abductions.

Basically, I’m suggesting we reduce how much we view his importance in the current chaos. If he suddenly decided ICE was bad for his image, he’d still be powerless to stop it. Look at how bad he is at pretending to care about Russian invasions.

Understood. I will not oppose Fa. I still, however, oppose Fascism.

We need to stop instantly panicking over “Donald Trump declares …” headlines. He can declare that pigeons are spies sent by Martian aliens. He has no qualifications to say so, nobody intelligent should be paying attention, his zealots will still follow his orders, and it doesn’t matter.

It at least makes me very happy how plausible it is for a completely independent artist to make games on Steam or Itch that are universally enjoyed. Sadly there is a current trend of “NSFW” games getting banned on those platforms…

I wanted to plug one game that had been particularly victimized. It was an “unreliable narrator” game where you played as a stalker obsessively trying to find the real name of his favorite pornstar. It was uncomfortable, artistic, thought-provoking, and immediately tripped the ban filters. I thought I bookmarked it but if someone else knows it a reminder would be awesome.

My understanding is that they also aim that way to reduce moving parts - since knobs, buttons, and switches are more likely to fail after 5000 uses. That, and they can update touchscreens to do whatever they want differently, like serve up ads.

I think there’s multiple ways it can happen. Sometimes, incoming cultures aim to be inviting and inclusive, and do what they can to become involved with the surrounding community. But other cultures really silo themselves and never speak to “the foreigners” - while continuing to take up more and more of the area. They speak their home language, don’t discuss the existing culture or even share their own. They don’t act like guests, just tenants - sometimes not realizing that thanks to refugee programs they’re often paying “guest rate”, not “tenant rate”.

However, that certainly isn’t always the case. I’d point to the Italian and Hispanic cultures in America as some that have become distinctly American. It’s harder for me to give examples of the “silos” since, by definition, you don’t see much of them; but sometimes during elections, church gatherings, or other census-related actions, you’re reminded they exist.

Whenever I hear about these town halls, I’m really unsure if it’s actually Trump voters turning up. Chances are, if the cult “won” they’re celebrating and believing every paper-thin lie, right up until they suffer direct personal consequence, not attending town halls with a list of questions and concerns.

I hear this a lot, but I don’t think it’s the gotcha people claim it is. Most genocide in the modern day tries to aim for economic strangling by eliminating/stealing what few opportunities exist for some populations. See, for instance, the IDF’s efforts to starve Gaza rather than shoot every single Palestinian. Or fascist America’s efforts to deny jobs (even the ones that are not in competition) to disabled or minorities.

I don’t see it as “I’ma move and get rich”, I see it as “I’ma move and not starve on the street”.

I agree their censorship is too high in China, though, but I think it’s a result of siege theory.

Buddy, fuck right the hell off. The USA is not the only country with free media. Small countries do it too. Al Jazeera is quartered in Qatar, and is critical of both the USA and China. China enacts the Great Firewall because they’re power-hungry, not because they want to fucking stay safe, and they are not in any regard a third world country.

Split semantics on exact wording if you’d like. A better word might be “solely”. The Nazi party collected anyone of a variety of demographics they didn’t like, including foreigners, LGBT, physically/mentally disabled, scholars, etc.