UnderpantsWeevil

joined 2 years ago
[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 34 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

This is why you have new leftists terrified that the UK or US or europe “might turn fascist!!”, betraying that the atrocities propagated by those empires against the global south was and is completely acceptable.

While the criticism is on point, I think you're underselling the legitimate dire fear modern leftists have when they see the brutality of the periphery returning home. We have to recognize that - individually - we're incredibly weak in the face of a mobilized police state. And we have every reason to be horrified of The Jakarta Method being visited on LA or Atlanta or Houston, particularly if we're members of that domestic political underclass so often targeted for abuse.

Any opposition must be a unified and organized resistance. But we are also plagued by mass surveillance, structural alienation, and a profound sense of vulnerability cultivated over decades of "War On" maximalist state propaganda. So we're feeling weak, we don't know who we can trust, and we see this horrifying inevitability cresting over our heads like a tsunami.

This isn't a betrayal of comrades abroad but a reflection of our own dismal moral, disunity, and despair. It represents one more hurdle for a modern western left to overcome and should be received as such, rather than used as a bludgeon to degrade left-wing moral even further.

Far better to be awake and aware and justifiably afraid of the threat of fascism than blind to it as the unaligned, compromised by it as the liberals, or enthusiastically participatory as the conservatives.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 8 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

Historically, the problem of "this is just like Hitler!!!" has been the way in which it numbs people to the invocation.

That is, in no small part, the appeal among conservatives of calling everyone from Hegel to Whole Foods a form of creeping fascism. Putting every liberal politician (and a fair number of conservatives) in Hitler Cosplay helped diminish the idea of an authoritarian police state to seat belt laws and smoking bans.

The flip side is that stodgy NYT Op-Ed Writers who casually reject that any fascist impulse exists at all. Everyone from Fransisco Franco to Sheriff Joe Arpaio was just interested in Law & Order. The game of explaining why a given genocidal policy or nakedly fascist aesthetic is actually something different, you idiot, you imbecile, goes right up to the point of denying migrant detention camps along the border and mass extermination of Semitic people in the Middle East and trillionaires doing the "Roman" salute are what they clearly appear to be.

In the end

gets you coming and going.

It becomes a casual invective to describe even the most mildly distasteful political views and a "you're just being hysterical" rebuttal to any policy that is quite literally adopting mass extermination.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

Swing through Omiya Bonsai Village if you have a chance. They've got Bonsai in spades.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago

Movie ads also seem to be particularly misery-inducing. Extra loud, often deliberately gross or otherwise unsettling, low-budget, and cringe. I've taken pains to avoid them for years.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago

Would be curious to see what cinemas would do if they were required to include pre-film advertisements/previews into the show runtime.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 7 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

"No: Florida is not a place where you are welcome with this type of behavior”, DeSantis said

Florida's 40 rapes/year per 100k residents isn't something to brag about, Ron. Its the one crime statistic you fucks don't seem to care about.

America is a country that celebrates and venerates rapists at every level of society and government. We love rape so much we put two known rapists on the Supreme Court. We pack our board rooms with rapists. We fill our airwaves with rapists. We stack our school boards with rapists. Don't even start on our clergy - the church is an All You Can Rape Buffet.

Let Tate in. Put his face on our fucking money. Few countries deserve this brand more deeply.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 8 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Dear Canada. This isn’t us. This is the new asshole in power. Americans don’t hate you.

Dear Canada. Native Americans still hate you.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 7 points 21 hours ago

Just make sure you catch the President in it this time.

World would have been a better place if Madison had gone out hot.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 22 points 21 hours ago

Could breath new life into the modding scene with this alone. Look at what a map editor did for the Warcraft franchise.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 7 points 21 hours ago

Trump is completely sidestepping the legislative branch. Congress passed more anti-trans legislation back in December, under Biden, than it has since Trump took office.

So much of the spotlight has been on DOGE running around the Treasury Office and hijacking servers, and rightfully so. Trump's plan to get around the legislature appears to be to pipe his cronies directly into the hardware that handles payment processing.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 54 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (10 children)

Name five Congressmen from the Bush Era.

Name five Congressmen from the Reagan Era.

Name five Congressmen from the Nixon Era.

These people won't be remembered at all. They're chaff in the wind. Nobody outside of some bespoke politics nerds will bemoan Paul Ryan or Bill Frist or Tip O'Neal or Mike Mansfield for their successes or failures of the political moment.

In another forty years we'll remember Trump in the same way we remember James Polk or Calvin Coolidge or Harry Truman, as an artifact of history that wins praise or scorn in cloistered corners of the ideological landscape based on the hagiographies written by modern shills and propagandists. But the middle-management Congress that facilitated/obstructed their rein? Barely a byline in the history books.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

"Conservatives are dumb, not like us liberals" is a coping mechanism liberals rely on to displace blame for failed policy. Its never the fault of the Democratic establishment when a liberal initiative fails. Its never the fault of a bloc of moderate voters, prone to selecting the most conservative voices in their own policy for fear of upsetting the Swing MAGA Voter, for backing conservative Democrats during a primary. Its never the fault of party Mega-Donors for squashing legislation inside a Dem legislative committee or bright-blue state legislature.

The lies liberals tend to believe live somewhere between "We're helplessly outnumbered by conservatives even in states we dominate" and "Don't trust the Radical Left, their views are too extreme and will never work!" It is the lie of impotency relative to the conservative lie of hubris. Republicans believe they can Do As Thou Wilt and mold the world to their reactionary beliefs. Democrats believe they need permission from the billionaire class and their media troglodytes before they can impose any kind of policy change.

 

"Indivisible is urging people who are scared to call their member of Congress, whether they have a Democrat or Republican, and make specific procedural asks," Greenberg said.

"Our supporters are asking Democrats to demand specific red lines are met before they offer their vote to House Republicans on the budget, when Republicans inevitably fail to pass a bill on their own."

 

Sponsor: Rep. Carter, Earl L. "Buddy" [R-GA-1] (Introduced 02/10/2025)

Committees: House - Foreign Affairs; Natural Resources

Latest Action: House - 02/10/2025 Referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and in addition to the Committee on Natural Resources, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

 

 

Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, has said that any immigrants who pose “public safety and national security threats” will be targeted for deportation first. Rhetoric that paints America’s 45 million immigrants as “threats” to public safety is a key Republican strategy to drum up support for mass deportations. One of the first bills passed by the Republican House in the new Congress was the Laken Riley Act, after the 22-year-old nursing student who was killed in February 2024 by a Venezuelan man who had entered the country illegally. The bill would require any undocumented person or DACA recipient arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting-related offenses to be detained, even if they are ultimately never charged with a crime.

 

"CPS will continue to protect our students and their families in alignment with the Illinois TRUST Act and Chicago's Welcoming City Ordinance," one school official said.

Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates called the situation "unprecedented" at a news conference Friday afternoon.

 

After receiving the text for the ad quoted above, a representative from the advertising team suggested AFSC use the word “war” instead of “genocide” – a word with an entirely different meaning both colloquially and under international law. When AFSC rejected this approach, the New York Times Ad Acceptability Team sent an email that read in part: “Various international bodies, human rights organizations, and governments have differing views on the situation. In line with our commitment to factual accuracy and adherence to legal standards, we must ensure that all advertising content complies with these widely applied definitions.”

 

After more than two years undercover, he’d been growing rash and impulsive. He had feared someone was in danger and tried to warn him, but it backfired. Williams was sure at least one person knew he was a double agent now, he said into his phone. “It’s only a matter of time before it gets back to the rest.”

In the daylight, Williams dropped an envelope with no return address in a U.S. Postal Service mailbox. He’d loaded it with a flash drive and a gold Oath Keepers medallion.

It was addressed to me.

The documents laid out a remarkable odyssey. Posing as an ideological compatriot, Williams had penetrated the top ranks of two of the most prominent right-wing militias in the country. He’d slept in the home of the man who claims to be the new head of the Oath Keepers, rifling through his files in the middle of the night. He’d devised elaborate ruses to gather evidence of militias’ ties to high-ranking law enforcement officials. He’d uncovered secret operations like the surveillance of a young journalist, then improvised ways to sabotage the militants’ schemes. In one group, his ploys were so successful that he became the militia’s top commander in the state of Utah.

 

Body camera footage shows the moment an LMPD officer hands a woman in labor a citation for unlawful camping as she waits for an ambulance.

 

In 2025, Mexico’s current challenges are likely to worsen, as the recently inaugurated Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo administration (2024–30) has shown an unwillingness to depart from the policy playbook of the Andrés Manuel López Obrador administration (2018–24) — a playbook that has already proven unable to resolve most of the country’s problems.Political and diplomatic relations are headed for a rocky year, as Mexico drifts further away from a strategic allyship position with the United States on several items.

 

Anyway, please stay safe and don't be afraid to defend yourself.

 

We spent the whole day in Pyongyang and visited:

Mansudae Fountain Park
Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum
Juche Tower
Pyongyang Metro
Mangyongdae Children's Palace
Pyongyang Circus

Cost of a five-day tour to the DPRK: $1378.

The five-day tour included 4 flights (Vladivostok - Pyongyang - Orang - Pyongyang - Vladivostok), accommodation, meals, excursion program (Pyongyang and Chilbo), visa, insurance. Some entertainment is paid for additionally ($20 - circus, $7 boat ride, etc.).

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