It's undoubtedly made of some kind of fantasy metal like mithril, orichalcum, or adamantium. So it weighs less than a pen and can cut through solid blocks of steel. It's not getting stuck in anything let alone something like human bones.
ToastedPlanet
joined 2 years ago
To answer your question, no, I don't believe everything a political party says.
I had to go back to the post from 22 days ago to figure out who you even were. I recommended you read that comment section again, because our conversation was not the most memorable comment chain there. I had a conversation with an openly racist troll. I figured it had to be that user again, but your username and user icon didn't look right.
If the Uncommited Movement won't endorse Harris then they are making a mistake. There's still time for them to change their mind. What the Uncommitted Movement cited seemed to be ethical concerns. Moral reasoning cannot help us against fascism and genocide. We need to think in terms of utility. It is useful to endorse Harris because in a two party system either Harris or Trump will be elected. And Harris is the candidate that will do the least harm to the Palestinians. Where as Trump will allow Israel to complete its genocide.
Withholding votes and endorsements isn't a meaningful way to create change in our democracy. We need to push the Overton window to the left. We do this by both voting for the most viable progressive and/or socialist option in elections and advocating for progressive and/or socialist causes between elections. Allowing fascists to takeover our democracy and kill us in death camps to avoid personal ethical quandaries does nothing to further a progressive and/or socialist agenda.
Also, to be clear, we need a socialist agenda, but a lot of progressives probably haven't realized that yet. Regardless, a progressive majority would still be preferable over the current neoliberal majority. Any legitimate progressive movement is going to realize they will need to redistribute the owner class' wealth. Every reform a progressive enacts will be undermined by the wealthy who are incentivized to overturn our democracy to enrich themselves.
I'm not a Democrat. I have no interest in going to bat for the Democrats. I was referencing an article that had an interview with the Uncommited Movement's preferred speaker and speech. I'm going to advocate for strategies that I think are most the useful for achieving goals such as majority rule democracy, socialism, ending Israel's genocide, etc. So while Biden was the nominee I advocated voting for him. Now that Kamala is the nominee I advocate voting for her.
edit: Also, to be even more clear, Kamala is a neoliberal, but she is the closest we can get to a progressive this election.
🔺Triangles for the Triangles God!🔻
That's the best kind of cheese burger.
I would say it's very weird. No sense in normalizing a useless practice like false equivalencies. No one benefits from being unable to determine the difference between a neo-liberal politician and fascist cult leader.
The useful way to report on Donald Trump is to identify him as a fascist and his mass deportation plan as ethnic cleansing.
Reporters think it violates journalist integrity if they correctly identify the MAGA movement as a fascist movement. As if a view point from no where would be biased by the act of calling a fascist a fascist. We should not want the news to have a neutral view point on fascists. There is nothing neutral about an ideology that will kill us all. A viewpoint from no where isn't something we should even want. Rather than being unbiased the news should be biased in favor of the people's common interests.
Trump's tariffs will hurt the economy. We know this because when faced with new tariffs countries raise tariffs in response. There is historic evidence for this, the most recent is Trump's first term. When Trump raised tariffs on China, China responded with their own tariffs and American farmers paid the price.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/eriksherman/2019/12/27/trump-china-tariffs-farmers-subsidies/
News that attempts to make equivalency between Kamala Harris' and Donald Trump's policies in the pursuit of an unbiased viewpoint is not useful to the American people because it's not accurate. Donald Trump's policies are bad for the economy and news reporting that explains that to the American people would be useful because it's provably true information.
The news media should be a mechanism on delivering measurable, falsifiable, verifiable reality to the American public. Not a balancing act of attempting to appear unbiased from a political perspective. There is no utility in a institution that can't call out a death cult like MAGA for what it is. We are on the tipping point between incrementally improving society and death camps. Meanwhile the news media is worried they might be accused of media bias if they point that out to the public. edit: typo
The fascists can always wait, they only have to win once.
You brought up a personal story, which I appreciate. I am going to share my own as well. It is not my intention to compete with you. I have two stories I can share where I did intervene and was prepared to use violence. When presented with new evidence it became clear in both cases that violence was not the answer. Here's the one that happened the earliest in my life that also happens to involve cars.
When I was in high school, either junior or senior year, I was hanging out with my friend by the school parking lot. We were waiting for the traffic to clear out. There were about ten people left in the area in total. I think while I had my back turned talking to a different friend, my friend spotted a guy trying to jack a car in the school parking lot with what looked like a metal ruler. I couldn't believe someone would do that in broad daylight. I had to get a closer look. My friend said it wasn't worth dying over a car. I said it wasn't about the car and I didn't want to live in the world where we did nothing. By then the eight guys nearby were walking with us. We surrounded the guy. It turned out the man was trying to break into his daughter's car because she had locked herself out. Apparently this had happened more than once. I abruptly asked his daughter's name and he immediately said his daughter's name. My friend bought the guys story and he seemed to be telling the truth so we backed off.
The other story is more recent. I was alone in my apartment bedroom, a year or two before covid. I heard smashing noises and screaming coming from the apartment on the other side of the wall. I was tired and wasn't sure if someone was being murdered or just being noisy. I threw on some stuff for going outside. I went to the neighbors' apartment. The door was open and there was a guy sitting at the top of the stairs. He asked me who I was. I introduced myself. He asked me to be more specific. He then seemed really concerned when I told I was one of his neighbors. It turned out his 18 year old daughter was throwing a temper tantrum and was breaking stuff. He shouted multiple times to his daughter that there was an uber driver to pick her up. I could hear her clearly in the background asking what he meant by that. I said good luck with that and I left.
I am not going to analyze our stories. I bring this up to show that I do have the kind of criteria that you seem to think is required to discuss this topic. My point is that it's not a requirement. We have nothing to do with what we are discussing. This is about how people as a society respond to threats from fascists.
The woman in question is also not relevant to this discussion. Her choice is. That is it. It is not my intention to talk shit about this woman nor do I think any energy should be put towards that end.
Self-defense is when a person defends themselves from an attacker. What society would be doing by agreeing with her choice is saying that when push comes to shove people should trade liberty for life. There can be no resistance to fascism without risking all of our lives, because fascists will threaten everyone and anyone.
If people want a future that is worth living in for future generations then people as a society must uphold the idea of liberty or death. Society must accept the idea that people would be better off dead than in a fascist dictatorship or else people will end up in a fascist dictatorship. Liberty must be held above human life or else liberty will be lost.
This means being willing to risk every child. There is no life worth living under tyranny. Life under fascist rule is hollow and meaningless. If we trade in liberty for life then future generations will have a pointless existence. People should want future generations to have lives worth living.
The good news is that the Army put out a statement backing up the woman and criticizing the behavior of Trump and his campaign staffers. At the very least the Army stood up to Trump in writing.
Trump and the MAGA movement are the fascists. Snowden and Assange didn't stand against them. In fact, what happened to them is very likely to happen to lots of people if the fascists take power.
We have to stand up to fascists even when they threaten us with violence otherwise the fascists win. There is no sign up sheet to stop fascism. There is no safe way to stand against fascists. There is no future worth living in under fascist rule. Fascists do not go away if the society that spawned them stays the same.
If threats to someone's safety is where we decide our resistance to fascism ends that is where our freedoms end. We do not have to shame this woman, but we do have to disagree with her decision. If we allow her decision to be incorrectly labeled as a reasonable strategy for self-preservation then we will all be living in a christo-fascist dictatorship.
It's liberty or death. That idea is one of the last remaining cornerstones of our democracy. If living is more valuable to use than freedom then we will be incapable of stopping the fascists.
Fascism proceeds one step at a time. One day you wake up and everything is different. Today is that day. The people saying to stand up to fascists got it right. The people calling them armchair warriors and telling people to choose life over liberty lost the plot. The fascists plan is to take power by any means necessary and then kill the people they hate indiscriminately. To stop them we must stand against them even if that means risking death.
The premise of the Uncommitted Movement is to protest in the primary election by voting uncommitted, but not in the general election. It's in the name. Anyone involved in the movement or advocating for it will explain this. It's public knowledge. The goal is to move the Democratic Party to the left on issues related to the Palestinian people.
Still, the war in Gaza remains a flashpoint dividing the Democratic Party. Many of the “uncommitted” delegates say they want Harris to win — but they also want her to listen to the antiwar voters who elected them to the convention.
These aren't mutually exclusive positions. Elected politicians are supposed to listen to their constituents. That's how representative democracy is supposed to work.
Your argument refuses to acknowledge the publicly stated premise of the Uncommitted Movement. It misrepresents or ignores all sources related to the topic. This is disingenuous at best or trolling at worst.
https://philosophyterms.com/paradox-of-tolerance/
There is a concept called the paradox of tolerance. In order for a society to be tolerant, it needs to accept all people. However, there are people who are intolerant. If society accepts them, they will have to elevate the speech of the intolerant which means incorporating intolerance into society. If society rejects them, they will have to be intolerant to a group of people which means incorporating intolerance into society. The paradox seems unsolvable until it is reframed.
https://conversational-leadership.net/tolerance-is-a-social-contract/
Rather than tolerance being a straight jacket it is instead a contract or peace treaty. As long as everyone is tolerant to each other everything is fine. As soon as a group chooses to be intolerant, they have breached the agreement. This means the intolerant group is no longer protected by the agreement. The rest of society no longer has to tolerate the intolerant group. Nor should they, because to do so would be to condone intolerance against members of society. The society as a whole remains tolerant because all the rest of the groups practice tolerance to each other.
https://www.healthline.com/health/what-is-gender-affirming-care
Gender affirming care involves helping trans people, both youths and adults, to transition to their gender identity through the use of therapy, puberty blockers, and hormone therapy. It is lifesaving care. Unsubstantiated attacks to gender affirming care are a threat to the lives of all trans people. Threatening the lives of people with a disinformation campaign is a breach of the social contract of tolerance. When fascists attempt to spread life-threatening disinformation campaigns, people at all levels of society should stand up to them.
This woman did the right thing. She put human life and liberty over the mail. Standing up to fascists doesn't always mean punching Nazis. It means seeing intolerance for what it is and refusing to tolerate it. We may all find ourselves in similar situations sooner rather than later. We should all seek to emulate this woman.
https://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/harm-principle
To be as clear as possible, banning gender affirming care will put trans people in a life threatening situation. So this disinformation campaign to ban gender affirming care, if successful, can only lead to putting trans people in a life threatening situation. A person's freedoms should not extend to the point where they are free to harm other people. Disinformation that can only harm a group of people should not be protected speech.
I know this topic can be contentious as the mail is an essential service for many people. And I'm aware not everyone is familiar with trans issues. I spoke up because I saw people falling into a common trap. Standing up to fascists doesn't make us fascists. Freedom of speech rests on the foundation of the truth. If we tolerate lies, elevating them to the same status as the truth, we undermine free speech. My hope is that people will see this was not a moral disagreement. This was a strategic decision to defend a group's right to exist, that did not infringe on anyone else's freedoms. The right of an apolitical, uninterrupted mail service should not supersede a group's right to exist. edit: updated the third link edit: typo