I’m not saying that Trump has embraced the divine light of Allah and is doing all this to ensure that the US has to keep giving the Islamic Republic money years and years after he’s gone.

I’m just saying, he did recently tweet “Praise be to Allah.” 🤔🤔🤔

Lol.

Presenting a crayon drawing reading “incels are bad” to the National Portrait Gallery and calling them incels when they refuse to frame it.

Traditionally, America has seen itself as standing for goodness, morality, doing the right thing, Democracy, etc… Most of the voters have, at least.

That’s extremely debatable. If anything, it’s the politicians who pretend to see it that way moreso than the voters. That’s why Trump became a thing.

Now maybe America has sometimes acted like this in the past, but Trump openly stating it is new.

Sometimes??

If you want to talk about “traditionally” and “new,” that depends on what time scale you’re talking about. Like, I suppose when the US was colonizing the Philippines it was nominally in the name of “democracy” (but of course those savages aren’t ready for democracy yet, so we’ll just manage things for a bit, while we take their resources and put in a naval base), but Trump is also nominally talking about “liberating” Iran. WWII was explicitly justified in terms of protecting the national interest, rather than humanitarianism.

In the post-WWII era, some people recognized the importance of soft power in maintaining the global empire we’d acquired, and for countering Soviet narratives, so extra effort was put into these pretences. Sure, we’d still go around invading poor countries like Vietnam, committing mass slaughter and bombing them back to the stone age, but it was in the name of “democracy.” While that was happening, the CIA was also overthrowing democratically elected leaders around the world and propping up dictators who could more easily be bribed to keep the resources flowing, and we didn’t have to worry about justifying any of that because the government could just lie about it.

The problem with all this propaganda is that it kind of worked too well. People thought that committing mass slaughter of the Vietnamese and dropping Agent Orange on them and propping up a puppet dictator was all done for their benefit. And when it failed spectacularly and got a ton of people killed, a lot of people took the lesson of “we need to stop helping anyone ever again.”

That’s why when Bush invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, he was so insistent that “this is not a nation-building exercise.” All of the early rhetoric was quite emphatic that we were not going there to help anyone or build democracy, it was just about “finding the killers.”

Low and behold, despite what the American public wanted, it did turn into a nation-building exercise. And low and behold, just like Vietnam, people didn’t appreciate us slaughtering them and bombing weddings and stealing their resources, so it was yet another failure in the “helping people” category.

As public dissatisfaction grew and grew, as the bodies stacked higher and higher, the establishment of both parties refused to bend. Trump seized on that dissisfaction and promised an alternative and received so much popular support that the Republican establishment couldn’t stop him.

Of course, Trump was merely seizing on that dissatisfaction for his own benefit as an opportunist, and the only real difference he offers is peeling away the ridiculous pretences that other politicians have paid lip service to, while doing the same shit of starting wars everywhere.

Meanwhile, the Democrats were delighted at this development because they believed there was a large contingent of center-right people who still believed in and valued these silly pretences. They were proven wrong twice. That Vietnam-Afghanistan “nation building” “spreading democracy” bullshit has clearly become discredited in the public consciousness. This is not something that’s Trump created or that will go away once he’s gone.

“Fighting evil” what on earth are you talking about?

It’s oil. Money. It’s material resources and power. It’s always been that.

Why did the CIA go around the world deposing democratically elected leaders, including Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran, who was replaced by a literal monarch? Do you think they genuinely believed the people they were overthrowing were “evil” and the dictators they installed were not? When they invaded Vietnam and funded Pol Pot, was that about “fighting evil?”

Of course not. Democratically elected leaders are more likely to respond to the public will and thereby assert control over their own country’s resources. Tin pot dictators can easily be bought off as long as you cut them in on the exploitation. US foreign policy has never been driven by any high-minded “morality.”

Right now, we are giving weapons to the Saudi royal family so they can continue murdering gays and journalists. If such things are so horrible that our “morality” drives us to forcible invade other countries that do that in the name of “liberation,” then why don’t we start by not actively supporting the Saudis? I’ll tell you why: because the Saudis keep the damn oil flowing! That’s all the US cares about and all it’s ever cared about.

Angron gets it!

He’s getting back to his roots.

God wants you to wear a hat

Many will say I should have seen this coming — that the right has and always will be against LGBT rights. And maybe there’s some truth to that. But that just wasn’t my experience.

Yeah, no shit dumbass. They were acting nice because they were using you. Divide and conquer, exactly like all those people screaming at you were saying.

If only there was some kind of historical precedent so we could know what would happen immediately afterwards if, say, a prominent gay Nazi helped the Nazis exterminate trans people. Like, maybe if somebody had just appeased them by helping them exterminate one or two small minorities, they’d have mellowed out! Unfortunately, there was just no way to know this would happen. I mean, other than all the people who did predict it, but they clearly just got lucky.

On an unrelated note, I wonder if I could interest her in a nice set of long kitchen knives.

Thank you, I’m glad we could reach an understanding.

My view on that is that voting in a presidential election (especially if you’re not in a swing state) is primarily performative and an expression of loyalty, rather than actually influencing the outcome. The presidential race is, unfortunately, the only thing anybody cares about. I voted for democratic candidates in downballot races, where my vote is far more likely to matter, but nobody I talk to cares about that, at all.

The fact that this is the way that everyone engages with politics and forms their political identities makes me see it as all the more important to make a point of voting third party in presidential elections, as part of defining myself and my positions as distinct from the democrats. I sometimes feel that people use the talking point of third parties starting small in local races as a way to shove them into something they don’t give two shits about so they can stop thinking about them entirely. Because presidential races are such a spectacle, the primary way in which people engage in politics, I view it as necessary to engage with them on that front.

If someone makes a big deal out of my third party vote (particularly in a safe state, like most Americans), that’s a clear sign to me that their perspective is all out of whack. And conveniently, they tend to come at me for it, which gives me a perfect window to criticize their views.

Because:

All the other presidents:

My worry with that approach is that this plan may be too long-term. That, in the attempt to save democracy, you’d let a regime seize power that proceeds to dismantle democracy. When Trump’s campaign includes the promise that you’ll never (“have to”) vote again, attempting to use votes as leverage is gambling whether they will have any value as leverage when the next election comes around.

In my view, Trumpism is not a spontaneous thing that came out of nowhere and might disappear just as easily, but rather something that emerged as a natural result of declining material conditions. You can’t hope to just weather the storm, because it’s not just Trump as an individual, and when Trump is gone whoever the right turns to will be just as bad, if not worse. Furthermore, as things stand, they will continue to gain power over time and will become an inevitability. This inevitability is caused by two things.

The first is the tendency of the rate of profit to decline. In regular language, what that means is that as an economy gets more developed, the number of untapped, productive ventures shrinks, it becomes harder and harder to make profits through the development or expansion of productive industries. That’s why we get things like the enshittification of the internet, because companies have to find ways to increase their profits and if there’s no more room to grow, all you can do is squeeze customers more. This is the general, overarching cause of economic decline.

The second part of the inevitability of the far-right is that they are the only ones who are positioning themselves as an alternative to the existing status quo. Liberals are very much wed to the existing system, and they do their best to shut down any leftist voices calling for change.

Now, what happens when you have an economy that is declining because of fundamental structural reasons, and the options are sticking with that forever, or… the Mystery Box? People are going to chose the Mystery Box. And as it stands, the only Mystery Box out there is fascism. Now, we could offer our own Mystery Box, but any time we endorse a status quo candidate, we discredit ourselves as actually being distinct from the status quo. We are telling people, “This is acceptable, this is good enough” even when we know that’s not true, and as a result, when they fail they drag us down with them and discredit our messaging.

Because I see defeat as a near-certainty in the long term, I am willing to accept risks of the whole thing blowing up in the short term in an effort to avert that. There is no gamble if we were doomed anyway. If it is a political impossibility to actually address the structural problems, then we at least have to provide alternative explanations and an alternative vision. We have to hold a candle in the darkness, even if all we accomplish is guiding a few lost, confused souls towards the truth and away from the enemy.

The ship is sinking, and I’m saying, “We have to plug these holes,” and the liberals respond, “It’s actually really antisemitic for you to say the holes exist, and if you try to fix them we’ll break your legs.” And so, what can I do except rip planks off so I at least have something to cling to when it all goes down?

You ran out of ink too, didn’t you, ya bastards?

Personally I like to compare it to my favorite anime, Revolutionary Girl Utena, as they both have some surrealist themes and weird symbolism and homoerotic undertones with some normal episodes but overall being a mindfuck. I kinda see Evangelion as the shounen version and Utena as the shojo version, and I’m more into the latter but a lot of that is just which aesthetics you prefer.

Utena vs Evangelion, see, practically identical 😆

And some point they just need to cut out the middleman and start selling ad space in politicians’ speeches.

Military spending under Biden was the highest it had ever been (and more than the next 9 countries combined).

Sure, that money could’ve gone towards reducing the cost of living and giving them a chance at reelection, but at least this way they ensured the Republicans have a bunch more planes and shit to play with. Great job!

For me, the most ironic token of [the first human moon landing] is the plaque signed by President Richard M. Nixon that Apollo 11 took to the moon. It reads: “We came in peace for all Mankind.” As the United States was dropping 7 ½ megatons of conventional explosives on small nations in Southeast Asia, we congratulated ourselves on our humanity. We would harm no one on a lifeless rock.

• Carl Sagan

Your cousin reveals that he, a brilliant scientist, and the only other person to ever be affected by the Hulk condition that you’ve just been inflicted with, has been studying and learning how to deal with it for the past 15 years on both a personal and scientific level, and he offers to share what he’s learned.

As She-Hulk, do you:

1. Respect the Hulk as a teacher in light of his scientific expertise and lived experience?

2. Realize that this Hulk stuff works differently for you, but that your cousin has been suffering alone for a decade and a half, and empathize with him and hang out for a bit to keep him company, understanding that society may one day fear you as a monster too?

3. Make fun of everything he tries to teach you, tell him you already know how to handle anger because you’re a woman, call him a dumb idiot loser, and immediately leave to go back to your job as a lawyer?

The show was entirely about cheap Twitter dunks and triggering chuds, rather than about interesting plots or believable characters. It’s really disappointing because some of her comics were incredible.

However, if the Republicans were wiped off the electoral map, people could still vote third party, form a progressive opposition and attempt to wrest control of tne Democrats thay way, while a one-party state wouldn’t even have that option.

So in your mind, the thing that makes our system more democratic than a one party state is what would happen if the Republican party disappeared one day, but also, it’s also impossible to change from the current party system?

Your response to the Trolley Problem wouldn’t be “I divert it to save lives” or “I refrain because I can’t condemn one person to death”, just “What does it matter? People die either anyway.”

I have absolutely no idea how you got there, other than trying to read my position in the least charitable way possible. Humor me, why did you conclude it would be that rather than “I refrain because I can’t condemn one person to death?” My reasoning for not voting for Harris is that I refuse to enable one population to be genocided.

If you want to understand my moral framework, I’m a rule utilitarian. In fact, while I consider either position defensible, I would pull the lever in the trolley problem. However, that’s only because of the constraints of the hypothetical, constraints which make it not applicable to most real world situations, and particularly not this one.

This “trolley problem” situation did not come about accidentally. Democrats are partially responsible for upholding the system that forces us into this situation. What’s more, they have also funded far-right candidates (including Trump himself) because they believe they will be easier to beat - that they can essentially use them to force people to vote for them even if they offer nothing (the infamous “pied piper” strategy). This engineered, coercive element, and the element of rewarding the people who engineered the situation, and the element of the problem being repeated, none of those are present in the trolley problem, and they fundamentally change the question.

When Putin sent troops into Ukraine, the quickest path to peace, to minimize bloodshed, would have been to negotiate an agreement even if it meant territorial concessions. All the people who are constantly talking about voting for the lesser evil seem remarkably willing to accept an outcome where more people die. Why? Because, they argue, if we don’t fight him here, he’ll just keep pushing further and further. Because we have to make sure that he is punished, or at least not rewarded for engineering such a situation. Instead of just looking at “which option directly minimizes the loss of life,” you also look at what precedent you’re setting on a broader scope. Everyone has a hill they’ll die on.

Or if you’d prefer, there’s a relevant Star Trek episode that examines that sort of question.

I am simply applying the same framework domestically. If you try to force me into a situation where I have no choice but to support you and give you power, then I’m going to tell you to fuck off even if it means accepting a worse outcome in the short term. If they learn that they can get away with all this stuff, funding far-right candidates, maintaining an undemocratic system, literal genocide, and I’ll still fall in line, then what incentive would they ever have to refrain from such tactics? It is precisely because the left has historically been willing to accept lesser evil candidates that they thought they could push this far in the first place.

Because then I will agree with those who think your ideology is stupid, not for its motives but for its short-sightedness.

What an incredibly backwards criticism. My perspective is looking much more at the long term than yours is. You’re looking solely at the immediate outcome of the election, I’m looking at how to either force the Democrats to adopt better positions or how to build a new party capable of posing a realistic threat. I didn’t expect either of those effects to happen last election, I don’t really expect them next election either. But I’m in it for the long haul, I will keep voting third party unless and until they cave to my core demands (and if “no genocide” is not a reasonable core demand, then nothing is). They need our votes as much as we need them and I’m not going to be the one to flinch first in this game of chicken. Not when the stakes include genocide.

If it is more important to you that you have a pristine conscience

Are you not making a moral argument right now? Talking about “more important to have a pristine conscience” is meaningless then. If I didn’t care about having a clear conscience, then why would I vote democrat even if I accepted that that was the moral position? You vote democrat because it’s what you believe is right, what gives you a “pristine” conscience. Unless you’re going to start arguing based on nihilism or something, you can leave that nonsense at the door.

Then what do you call inaction?

I don’t support inaction.

Or are you hoping it gets so bad people start revolting, but not so bad they can no longer revolt?

Please stop putting stances into my mouth that have nothing whatsoever to do with anything I’ve actually said. I am not an accelerationist, accelerationism is stupid and wrong. If I were an accelerationist, wouldn’t I be arguing for voting for the worst candidate instead of third party?

Netanyahu is clearly just being blackmailed by Putin to intentionally make Israel look bad. Anyone who disagrees with you on the internet? Russian bot. A massive wave of protests across university campuses? Believe it or not, Russian bots.

Vietnam is changing on that. Hard to imagine anything that would change the minds of the other two.