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Lol, not engaging with any of the specific counterpoints I made because you know your wrong, and instead using a throwaway line to hide your own incompetence?

Yea, that’s about all I expected, because that’s all your good for

In order:

1.No

2. To be a joke it would have to be funny

3. yes because federal agents can operate locally anywhere, which is obvious to anyone but the village idiot

4. As you said, they “have to” cooperate, which kind of goes against your point of them being willing

5. America absolutely has been facist for generations, but more so in republican administrations (gauntenmo and patriot act under bush, Nixon shooting protestors, and now)

6. black sites were Chicago PD operated, Obama had nothing to do with them.

7. Put your dunce cap back on and go sit in the corner

I’m all for sanctioning authoritarian oligarchies, but unfortunately for you, that is the Trump administration.

US cabinet average wealth by far the highest in US history? Oligopoly

Armed masked men are abducting US citizens into unmarked vans? Authoritarian

NYC has neither of those things. Nice try though?

Life was better when people like you were just known as village idiots and we could chuck produce at you whenever you spoke so you knew your opinions were comically stupid

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Nothing by itself. But if it can encourage other senators to filibuster, and more importantly, to organize to filibuster together , the impact could be paralyzing.

To take an obvious example, for half a century, from say 1910 to 1964-5, there were more than enough votes in the US senate to enact civil rights legislation, as southerners only made up 22 or so of the 96-100 senators then (no Hawaii or Alaska for part of that).

But that legislation never happened. And the reason why it didn’t was that southern senators were able to filibuster so effectively that the legislation could never be brought to the floor, or to force its withdrawal if it got there.

It’s not that the votes on that specific bill weren’t there. It’s just that under the leadership of Sen Richard Russel of Georgia (who the “Russel Senate Office Building” is named after), the southern senators understood the way to block legislation was to filibuster not just the bill in question, but any law that was about to lapse that was so important economically that senators couldn’t afford to let that happen.

So they organized, filibustered key bills, set up “watches” where at least one senator had to be on the floor to defeat any quorum calls (which ends a filibuster, as you do not actually have to be talking to filibuster a bill), and filibustered not just votes on key bills, but even votes on motions to bring those bills out of committee to the floor.

Moreover, since these filibusters weren’t on the bill itself, it was easy for an individual senator to say they were against another bill, or another motion, and make it seem like an unrelated objection, when it was really all part of a comprehensive strategy.

Eventually, the impending economic doom created enough pressure to get any civil rights bill withdrawn in order to let those other bills pass, which was the southerners asking price.

Obviously, the democrats now aren’t doing that. But they could. And by generating headlines by filibustering, he encourages other senators to do so, if only for popularity.

They did write this manual on how to resist facism, which went viral recently, so I guess there’s that?

https://www.404media.co/content/files/2025/02/simplesabotage.pdf

Also operation Argo to rescue 6 trapped US diplomats during the Iranian hostage crisis.

Depending on your perspective, operation paperclip, which brought 1,600 German scientists to the US after WW2, might also qualify, though that will depend on:

A. How “forced” you think their Nazi party affiliations were, and how culpable you believe they were for the Nazi’s crimes in general

B. What you think their lives would have been like had they stayed in Germany or, more likely, been “recruited” by Russia in their own competing operation, as indeed many were.

Are you a good swimmer? If so, lifeguard certification only takes a few hours for training, and if you do it at a pool, no chance of you missing a drowning person/dealing with a strong current.

Did it in HS and college, great summer job, also can flirt with girls. Highly recommend

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You don’t want that guy. What you want is attention, and he was the last person to give it to you, therefore you think you want him.

Just get dressed up and go to a bar, and you’ll find enough guys who will give you that, without the red flags.

Not military but my understanding is:

Commissioned officer: starts at second lieutenant, can go all the way to lieutenant general, have to go to specialized school (like West Point) to be eligible. Receive their “commission”/assignment directly from president. As the other commenter mentioned, BG is fairly high up.

Each service can have slightly different names for certain positions. And yes they split CO positions into three types, company, field and general, BG is the lowest “general officer”. As to how, you could always ask, but some combination of seniority/achievements. He almost certainly serviced in combat in Afghanistan/iraq as a field officer given the timelines.

Non-commissioned officer: these people joined as rank and file, and got promoted to oversee/command people below them, but didn’t go to specialized school, and can’t rise above sergeant major. So you could have a guy with 20 years of experience commanded by a brand new second lieutenant.

Rank and file: privates and the like.

“Langer demonstrated this fact by asking a small favor of people waiting in line to use a library copying machine: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I’m in a rush?”

The effectiveness of this request-plus-reason was nearly total: Ninety-four percent of those asked let her skip ahead of them in line.

Compare this success rate to the results when she made the request only: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine?” Under those circumstances, only 60 percent of those asked complied.

At first glance, it appears that the crucial difference between the two requests was the additional information provided by the words “because I’m in a rush.”

But a third type of request tried by Langer showed that this was not the case. It seems that it was not the whole series of words, but the first one, “because,” that made the difference.

Instead of including a real reason for compliance, Langer’s third type of request used the word “because” and then, adding nothing new, merely restated the obvious: “Excuse me, I have five pages. May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make some copies?”

The result was that once again nearly all (93 percent) agreed, even though no real reason, no new information, was added to justify their compliance.”

Excerpt From Influence Robert B. Cialdini, PhD

So speaking as an American, the Indian diaspora here is typically thought of positively, at least in the sense they tend to be responsible members of the community.

Unfortunately, Americans are pretty geopolitically ignorant, and so end up developing views on countries based on the behavior of their American communities.

So I would say most Americans impression of India is “vaguely positive”. This notably includes at least tacit approval from American conservatives, in that Indians are left off their “which minority group are we targeting today” bingo card.

This is probably mutually reinforcing with America’s geopolitical priorities, which is essentially deepening ties with India as a counterbalance to China.

As to your “too proud of your country” comment, obviously as an American I sympathize, but they’re not wrong in that because of your country’s size and growth, India will become more prominent in global affairs.

Unfortunately as you’ve noticed, that leads to some people having an inflated view of themselves. It’s just something you have to live with as a world power.

Anyway, the below article actually answers your question, and overall, generally positive is the answer (but what did you guys do to South Africa though?)

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2023/08/29/international-views-of-india-and-modi/

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Those are also some of my favorites, the only reason I didn’t recommend is because I didn’t consider it to be quite the same genre, but agree they are excellent!

They are also in the same universe, as foundation makes a few references to that series, which are also fun to catch.

Two obvious suggestions are Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series, and Issac Asimov’s “Foundation” series.

Both are sci-fi classics (Dune is still the best selling sci-fi book of all time I believe) and are space operas of a massive scope.

They are also some of my personal favorites.

I think part of it is early adopters of any new, not-yet-mainstream technology are more open to differences, after all, we’re all doing something different.

Also, when you’re an early part of something, you want it to be the best that it can be, whereas when you are part of this massive corporate social network you don’t feel that same responsibility.