Imagine Vietnam-era US, but it was willing to sacrifice every warm body within its borders to win.

Like the US, I think Russia is on a collision course with failure. But they’re going to take it a lot farther before waving a white flag. So much so that it will take the country decades to recover.

And Ukraine won’t be looking too hot at that point anymore, either.

You ever watch Requiem For A Dream?

Italy, but everything is made of hot dogs.

Glizzaly.

I live in Taiwan.

Can confirm that plenty of shit is slathered in cheese and/or mayo, milk is readily available at any store, there’s an absurd amount of Häagen-Dazs, and milk tea is the most commonly purchased beverage in the whole country.

Butter can be a bit scarce, though, strangely.

Aquarium keeping.

Congratulations on your $3000 salt toilet.

I dunno about you, my dude, but the only people I’ve seen fucked up by antifascists were not saying that they didn’t want to bake a gay cake.

But I’ve seen the people who didn’t want to bake a gay cake be called pieces of shit who should do better. And I think that’s just called social consequences.

This is where I tend to disagree with Marx as well.

Capital is a fantastic book full of scathing and prophetic analyses of capitalism and its innate degradation of value and connection.

The Communist Manifesto is a book with some good ideas but some implementation that I find flawed. And that’s not a knock on Marx-- critiquing problems is a significantly easier prospect than offering solutions.

But a lot of Marx’s proposals for the implementation of Communism are rooted in authoritarianism, even if their end goal is the dissolution of the state and capital. Also, for an ideology versed in the formation and interdependence of worker communities, the Day of the Rope is kind of antithetical to establishing solidarity and mostly serves, I believe, as masturbatory schadenfreude.

But hey, I’m willing to fix some of the stuff that doesn’t work instead of throwing more fuel into the machine that over-harvests people and our planet to the point of destruction.

I really like this nuanced take, btw. Thanks for posting it.

Tell that to anarchocommunists.

I’m sure it will be news to them that they will want to hear.

Florida’s approach was just to give anyone with a police or military background a teaching license.

They won’t up teacher pay. They’ll just hire shittier teachers because the primary highlight of public education is that it is free daycare for their exhausted, working parents.

The Wheels On the Bus on loop and full blast is part of my shock and awe strategy.

Blocking an instance.

Ah.

So white ladies are going to start fleeing across the border to get abortions that they can’t get in the States.

Conservatives really ARE trying to bring us back to the 1950s, aren’t they?

Fart.

Can you name all of the actors that played Putties in the original English run of Power Rangers from the 90s?

See, I can set arbitrary, movable goal posts, too.

It doesn’t work that way. FBI documents remain classified for 50 years before being accessible to FOIA. That means that we don’t have the means to confirm culpability outside that 50-year window.

I can throw names at you. But here’s what I know will happen in response. You will either;

A) Claim the person was not innocent. Despite conflicting claims, they either had a weapon, attempted violence, whatever. So they deserved to be murdered.

Or

B) The situation is not clear. Nobody was outright blamed. Details are fuzzy. Investigations were inconclusive.

Regardless of what I post, the outcome will never be “Wow, you’re right. I guess law enforcement does kill innocent people without impetus sometimes.” You will always move the goal posts and claim that I did not meet your burden of proof. Because you’re arguing ideologically in bad faith. And since I’m not a fucking idiot, I’m not going to waste my time.

And if you want to say that you are, in fact, arguing in good faith, then my rebuttal is simple;

I’m not doing your fucking homework for you, Billy.

And everyone knows that the FBI was never involved in the extrajudicial killing of an innocent dissident besides that one time.

It goes beyond that.

With Saudi Arabia leaning increasingly towards BRICS and being more erratic in its support of the West, Israel is the last firm diplomatic beacon and region of influence the US has in the Middle East.

It also just so happens to be an apartheid state.

Even if public opinion sharply turned on Israel (it won’t), the US would still hold firm in supporting it. Not because it’s obligated to Israel or even because of sunk-cost fallacy. But because it would remove any chance of the US playing a part in regional hegemony.

I moved outside of the US and Facebook is the only way that I am able to keep in touch with the majority of my friends and family back home. Also, in my current country, it hosts the majority of business pages and local communities. Getting rid of it would severely impact my ability to function in socioeconomic contexts.

But Twitter and Reddit? Fuck 'em. Fediverse all the way.

Effective protest means accepting going without and inconvenience.

In an instant gratification society, that is anathema.

Fiduciary responsibility means maximum exploitation in all cases, all of the time.

Capitalism would look really different if it were ever satisfied with some of something, rather than all of it.

So it’s treason, then.

Dig in, folks. Time to bring the pain.