shawn1122

joined 1 year ago
[–] shawn1122@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Don't know if that's widespread knowledge outside of the US but it would be interesting if that was widely known within the US.

[–] shawn1122@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

[–] shawn1122@lemm.ee 7 points 7 months ago

Prison stocks about to blow up.

[–] shawn1122@lemm.ee 4 points 7 months ago

One can only wonder how many white nationalists gravitate towards those jobs, especially ICE agents.

[–] shawn1122@lemm.ee 17 points 7 months ago (6 children)

I think many of us are shocked that the US has an army of ICE and CBP agents that were this ready to go full Gestapo. That suggests some alarming underlying issues.

[–] shawn1122@lemm.ee 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

This is the real story of American 'exceptionalism' Its how the US was able to accrue so much wealth during WW2.

Its easy to sit on the sidelines when you're geographically isolated and not #1 though. The world order has changed (in fact they're the ones who reshaped it) and now they are desperately trying to force their way back to the 1950s because they had unbelievable leverage and a incrediblely disproportionate share of global wealth following the war.

In fact, I believe that's in part why we're seeing a backslide in human decency. A lot of less educated folk see that their parents and grandparents were more prosperous when they were racist, misogynist and transphobic and are acting as if going backwards in that regard will bring back the 'good times'.

[–] shawn1122@lemm.ee 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

The reality is you don't. Looking back at human history this is the natural order. This is how civilizations begin their descent. They forget what made them great and begin to assume their greatness is innate. Resting on their laurels, so to speak.

It would be remarkable if you could drive them back. But the US and the West has lived with incredibly disproportionate prosperity for a long time now, at the expense of the rest of the world, and it would be incredibly naive to assume it would last forever.

The past 75 years have marked global collaboration and growth in a way humanity has never seen before. But it was only a matter of time for us to reach a point where we could no longer satiate the greed of the wealthiest among us.

They know that this period of mutual prosperity could never be indefinite so they want to ensure we are as divided as possible when the gauntlet drops.

If you want to put the cat back in the bag, so to speak, you would need to convince the average person that social media without guardrails is rotting their brains but they're too busy doomscrolling and consuming, while being fed a steady diet of hatred, to maintain division.

[–] shawn1122@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago

Thank you for sharing your experience. I acknowledge that I have privileges I'm not fully aware of that protect me from this kind of manipulation and influence and that is something I'll have to reflect on more closely.

[–] shawn1122@lemm.ee 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

I generally dislike approaching such problems with centrism but I think there are two perspectives here that have some truth to them.

  1. The dude is undoubtedly a misogynist scam artist that manipulates women and is by no means a decent person. I don't really care how he manipulated these women, he's simply a piece of shit for doing it.

  2. I can't remove accountability from these women for making the choice to marry guys like this in a relatively short time frame. It is, in a way, misogynistic and infantalizing to paint women as helpless victims without agency in this type of situation.

Ultimately, though we hope to live in a world where we can trust others, there are many circumstances where we cannot. Personal relationships and monetary transactions are situations where the threshold for alarm bells to go off have to be lower.

[–] shawn1122@lemm.ee 12 points 7 months ago (4 children)

There is a touch of desperation in marrying someone within a few weeks in my opinion, whether you are a man or woman. Takes way more time than that to really know if you're compatible.

Not to say that there's a specific time everyone should wait but three weeks is almost certainly too fast if you take marriage at all seriously.

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