No. I agree that liberal “democracy” is a sham. But the so-called “ratchet effect” is a useless meme. Democrats push us into reactionary politics too; they don’t just “keep us from going left”. The current head of the Democratic Party, occupying the most powerful political position in the world—more powerful than any king throughout the history of human kind—is the one of the most devout supporters of zionist genocide you’ll find, chose to crush the rialroad strike, largely architected our system of mass incarceration and mass surveillance (he boasts of having authored the Patriot Act, and he actually pushed Ronald Reagan to go harder on the “Drug War” than the latter was inclined to do on his own), led the charge on indebting generations of college students, and is now on the brink of starting WW3 in the Middle East (after risking it in Ukraine).

Genocide is a non-starter, period. It is not, and can never seriously be construed as, harm reduction. Don’t vote for fascists. Those actively enabling genocide against Palestine are fascists. Thankfully, there’s no debating the genocide now if you have any honesty whatsoever. Liberals advocating for voting for genocidal candidates of either/any party can fuck right off and [redacted].

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Nah, dude. There’s plenty to disagree with in the parts of this message and your other reply down below where you try to imply modern nuclear weapons are clean and pose little to no risk beyond that of conventional weapons. Gaslight all you like, but your words are right there for all to see (unless suddenly they gain an edit timestamp after that of this comment, of course…).

This is a terrible take by someone who has heard plenty of propaganda by the arms industry but knows absolutely nothing about physics. Many of the products of the primary and even secondary nuclear reactions from a nuclear warhead are themselves radioactive and have long enough half-lives to do tons of damage in both the short and long terms. Whether or not there is radioactive material spread around is not simply a question of whether some of the original fuel remains unspent.

If all you’re doing is spreading war propaganda, log off and go rethink your life.

EDIT: Folks, start here and read other materials by the Union of Concerned Scientists. Don’t let this bullshit whitewashing of the dangers of nuclear weapons, their use, and their testing go unaddressed. And speak up against this kind of propaganda showing up in our communities—especially leftist ones.

Only thing I’m going to (have to, unfortunately) buy today is a round in a couple dryers at the laundromat, because I’ve put it off too long already and the clothes line is currently a no-go due to weather. sigh

Freedom of speech and assembly clearly in action, here. Wow. Imagine a court figuring it could tell a union not to decide its stance on something. Fascist state.

They killed over 1000 innocent people in their latest attack, raped a bunch of people, and kidnapped people, including foreign nationals.

Turns out probably not. You should really stop believing Israeli propaganda at face value. A thousand or so people were killed, yes. Many of who were Israeli militants, and many more definitely settlers and not “innocents”. Some were definitely killed by Palestinian militants (some of whom were Hamas members) during the prison break. But many were killed by IDF and Israeli police, who didn’t care who got caught in the crossfire and literally shot Israeli homes with Israelis sheltering inside using tanks. And also literally did air raids on their own military facilities, where IDF soldiers were defending themselves until being killed by their own friendly (missile) fire. And reports of rape during that particular incident have, so far at least, been debunked.

This might, at least, be a bare start to actually educating yourself (though its clear from the sense of your participation here that that is not a priority for you): A growing number of reports indicate Israeli forces responsible for Israeli civilian and military deaths following October 7 attack

Anyway, Hamas good/bad is a distraction from basically everything. It’s irrelevant when there’s millions of people who have no choice but to engage in violent struggle against their oppressors or be (with more or less speed) genocided.

Their stated goal is the complete destruction of Israel and the Jews

Destruction of the apartheid state of Israel, yes. Not of Jews. You should pay more attention. And destruction of states is good. Destruction of colonialist states is even better. And destruction of apartheid states is an absolute necessity. That doesn’t make other aspects of Hamas good, necessarily, but the destruction of Israel is most definitely not a point against them. Israel must, indeed, be destroyed.

Someone get this Zionist fucker out of here, eh?

Yeah, pretty much. The president has enormous power, and that power is even greater outside the country’s borders. Especially because of things like the “Authorization to Use Military Force” which gives him pretty much carte blanche to “fight terrorism” anytime and anywhere he likes.

There’s also this general process by which the president historically just does what he wants, and the rest of the government shrugs its shoulders and rolls over, and thus his office essentially just has that de facto power, no matter what the constitution or other laws say: Renegade Cut: No More Presidents.

The U.S. president is more powerful than any empire in the world has ever been, is pretty much a king, and basically does what he wants. Liberals often make excuses about how his hands are tied. It would be great if that were the case, but it’s really, really not.

Where the heck is the notion that the U.S. government’s hands are tied coming from?

At least part of the claim is that the president himself has little power. It’s the stupid finger-pointing game. “Biden needs Congress’ permission to do anything at all, ever.” 🙄

A useful excuse when the president doesn’t want to do anything. Falls flat on its face when he actually wants to bomb, shoot, or cage the shit out of any brown people, foreign or domestic.

He could use that fucking awful AUMF bullshit to send in the U.S. military to attack the IDF, for that matter. “No power” is fucking nonsense.

Yeah, I know that is never going to happen, nor would I particularly want it to. But when you have the power to go that far, you have a fuck ton of options in between that and doing absolutely nothing (or worse than nothing, which is what Biden is doing now: providing them cover by pretending the empire doesn’t 100% have the fascists’ backs).

That last line in the video. That’s exactly what happens when they finally realize you caught them in the racist/revisionist shit. They go on the attack with something absolutely inane.

It’s good to document the resulting problems, but the analysis of the root cause is absolute shit and is clearly done by liberals (confirmed by them interviewing AOC and uncritically broadcasting what she says without calling her on her own support of colonialism, genocide, and capitalist exploitation). They blame this on a “lack of rules.” Bullshit. If there were no rules (laws), the local population would simply kick the rich people out and expropriate their shit. I think you’ll find there are plenty of rules and plenty of enforcement. The problem is just that all of that law and order is directed squarely against the working class and indigenous populations.

“More rules” isn’t a recipe for fixing anything. People rising up is. Fortunately there was a little anarchist graffiti on that school’s wall. So these liberal journalists are not the only people advocating for solutions.

What’s clear is that each decision — whether to fund a treatment facility or buy a squad car — is a trade-off.

No. Not at all, really. When “sparks debate” is the best you can do. God, I hate the mainstream news so fucking much.

Still pretty weak, TBH. Language calling Hamas’ actions “attacks on random Israeli civilians” while giving at least some credence to the phrase “Israel’s right to defend itself.” That’s a lot of giveaway to imperialist and Zionist propaganda while allegedly trying to clear the air on who holds what opinions.

This is an anti-colonial struggle. Colonized people have a right to defend themselves. Nation-states absolutely fucking do not, nor do colonizers while they violently expand their colonies, uphold apartheid, and continue to commit genocide. Upholding one’s oppression is not coherent with self-defense, sorry.

What, they didn’t trot out Joe the Plumber again? SMH.

I don’t take that as a doomer view at all. It’s the view that we must eliminate bosses. Which, to me, is actually a far more positive view than the one that sees having bosses as inevitable, but simply wants slightly higher compensation from the slave masters.

I’d say more that there’s no such thing as a fair share as long as bosses exist. But yeah, also true: to take real steps in the right direction definitely requires exerting power, not begging.

Excellent. Was going to recommend another, similar video, but it’s one of the ones Second Thought links to at the end. Nice.

Paywall bypass on the linked article: https://archive.ph/bRBjE

Of course political speech is illegal. Always has been. It just isn’t nominally legal on paper. People have been indicted, prosecuted, and imprisoned for it constantly. A famous example is Eugene Debs, who was prosecuted under the Espionage Act and imprisoned for an anti-war speech he made in 1918.

Please don’t be taken in by the veneer of moronic constitutionalist liberalism. The state punishes people when it feels like punishing people, and does so especially for political speech and dissent…for being an anarchist; for being a leftist. The propaganda it puts down on paper has never changed that.