Charapaso

Late to the party, but I'll bet at least a few right wingers we're surprised at the turnout. Maybe helped get a few people out of their bubbles, seeing neighbors and friends out on the street. Maybe not, but I know i saw a lot of older rural folks out protesting last time that I'm sure rocked the perceptions some right wings nuts have about it all being teenage anarchists in the street.

I'm not claiming the US is being punished: that was a metaphor.

My point was critiquing folks who are gleefully reveling in the suffering of folks in the USA because of the actions of despots. It's easy to do when it's the USA, but when applying the same reasoning to other regions, it's more obviously shitty behavior. I have empathy for Persians suffering under the Iranian regime. I have empathy for folks living in El Salvador dealing with an autocrat abusing power. I have empathy for the kids growing up in Mississippi. I even have some amount of empathy for the redneck down the street who is too fucking stupid to understand that their Republican "leaders" are taking advantage of them. Just like despots around the world. Plenty of innocent enough folks still live in terrible regimes, and IMHO we shouldn't be happy about those folks suffering because a majority of their neighbors are assholes. We should...you know...help those minorities? Not just paint them with a broad brush and bask in their suffering?

TLDR I can have contempt and empathy at the same time, and I'm not going to cheer for the suffering of decent folks who just happen to have been born into a shitty regime, or who've had one foisted on them.

This kind of emotional response is why there's an active genocide in Gaza right now. Hamas killed some folks, they technically represent the population, so...COLLECTIVE PUNISHMENT. People yearning for suffering because some portion of a heterogeneous population is terrible. Go back to the 1930s and say "kill all Nazis" and I'm on board. If you say kill all Germans, though...it's a lack of nuance that at the very least borders on genocidal.

Plenty of us in the USA have suffered and fought our entire lives. We are a nation with an actively oppressed underclass. Even for those with the chance to leave (as I have in the past), we have friends and family here who don't have the means to leave even if they would. Many people are also brainwashed. I know people who had almost no fucking chance growing up. Living in a dilapidated trailer, Fox News blaring on TV, no good education, etc. Yes, people can get out of that, but when your parents are terrible shitheels, and you're surrounded by terrible shitheels, there's a big discussion to be had about how much of a chance someone has to pull themselves up by their bootstraps...and I don't just mean that in terms of improving their economic conditions, but literally the way they think. We need to teach class consciousness worldwide, not consider a large percentage of a population just collateral damage. I don't think it's moral to just consider a quarter of a population to be thrown to the wolves, or even another quarter that's apathetic because of the systems they have no control over brainwashing them into compliance.

Doesn't matter which one was worse? What's a few more dead Palestinians, eh?

Yes, Harris and Biden were/are absolute shit. Without being able to see into an alternate universe, I'm pretty sure there's more people dead than would have been under what was the already terrible status quo. The current regime is making things worse than it already was, which is a hard bar to clear. It's suffering all around, in Gaza and in the US, and across the poverty stricken areas supported by USAID.

Fascinating! What other countries do you think would start taking over places without immigration laws?

What certain countries? And are you alleging there is a coordinated "take over"?

I get that it's legally wrong, but do you think it's ethically wrong?

What if someone thinks the laws and systems in place aren't morally perfect?

Fascinating, isn't it? Does he think the Democrats just "hate all things fossil" so much that there's some kind of integer overflow and it flips negative, and oil businesses do just fine entirely by accident?

It's truly astounding how well right wing propaganda gets folks to believe things that are so completely at odds with his own lived experience. None of us are immune to propaganda, I know, but that whole statement is just...fascinating

Oh that's her, I was just trying to be insulting haha

Oh I'm totally agreed! It's all capitalist, jingoist garbage, same as it ever was.

Yeah, I was just on a flight and saw a dude across the aisle that was mainlining all the worst people on twitter. Space laser lady, the racist cat, the nazi automaker...this dude was just liking everything and replying frantically. He was flipping through everything and replying so quickly that I felt pity as much a loathing. It was absolutely pathetic. Dude's brain is melted.

That was the NFL being political though, this is them being patriotic...is what my troglodyte relatives will say.