• LOGIC💣@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    What they did in Venezuela was so reprehensible that this is really the only possible defense. You can’t murder a bunch of innocent people to capture a drug trafficker and think that you get the moral high ground. If they can arrest Maduro and bring him to the US, then Venezuela should be able to arrest Trump for murder and bring him to Venezuela.

    There is no moral high ground. There is no good outcome. This is just what happens when evil people gain control of the world’s most powerful military.

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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    3 days ago

    Stephen “PeeWee Himmler” Miller is behind most of the bad stuff in this administration, and behind ALL of the immigration stuff. Trump has already floated him as the guy to be in charge of running Venezuela. He will turn it into a slave colony, and force them to pump their oil for us. And worse.

    The Dems need to make him as much of the face of MAGA as Trump, and I mean that literally. He is one of the most repellent people on the planet, and just looking at his picture gives you an accurate first impression. Most of America has never even heard of this guy, yet he is Trump’s most trusted and influential advisor.

    The Dems need to make every voter aware of PeeWee Himmler, and make him a major issue in the upcoming Midterm Elections. Trump has some mysterious charisma that’s lost on me, but PeeWee Himmler has an anti-charisma like I’ve never seen before. To just see him is to dislike him, but as you get to know him, you realize that he’s actually pure evil, like Wormtongue whispering poison in the demented Trump’s ear.

    Make him a central figure in MAGA, second only to Trump, and run against him hard. Just like Trump, he has a notoriously thin skin, so besides making him known, it will have the effect of humiliating him.

    If we can’t get these traitors out of office, we can at least make sure that they don’t get to luxuriate in their evil power, make them guard their safety, and fight hard for everything they want that they thought would be easy to take. We have to harass them mercilessly, every minute of every day, and Stephen “PeeWee Himmler” Miller needs to be taking a LOT of that harassment.

  • N0body@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    3 days ago

    The fact that he’s allowed to be a public spokesperson for the administration speaks wonders. Wormtongue is supposed to be whispering in the shadows like he was in the first term. He’s now the public face of the mask off authoritarian message that keeps ramping up.

    • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      I was just saying tonight - the fact that we’re seeing more and more of racist Nosferatu means things are getting much worse. They are have dropped all pretense of giving a shit. They’re not even giving us lies anymore. It’s now just “fuck you that’s why”.

    • bstix@feddit.dk
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      3 days ago

      Hi’s role is to throw shit around. It has two purposes.

      It works as a distraction from what the actual administration is doing, but they’re also watching if any of the shit sticks.

      Vance is doing the same.

      A lie needs to be told 3 times for anyone to believe it, so they’re “priming the pump” for Trump to deliver the final lie and make his followers believe that it’s the right thing to do.

        • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          3 days ago

          .world is known for censoring topics precisely like you’re complaining about, as well as having a reputation for some of the most toxic mod behavior across the Lemmy instances*.

          Specific mods, plural, on .world are known to encounter comments they disagree with, and go back through user histories looking for unrelated, thin excuses for bans.

          I don’t care quite enough to go find sources, these are my accumulated observations. But they are fairly well known and uncontroversial, among those who watch such things, I believe.

          [*originally said Fediverse in place of Lemmy, bigger claim I realized I wasn’t meaning to make at all]

          • falseWhite@lemmy.worldBanned from community
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            3 days ago

            Not saying you’re wrong. But like I said, I never had any issues, and I have probably said worse things.

            • PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              3 days ago

              Thanks, I should probably clarify that I’m aware people have mixed experiences and it’s not the kind of extreme heavy handedness that I understand Reddit has largely incorporated.

        • azuth@sh.itjust.works
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          3 days ago

          And yet there was a whole saga where world admins claimed being pro Luigi, especially mentioning jury nullification, constituted advocating for violence and they had to remove such posts due to ‘EU law’ according to legal advice they totally received.

        • Seth Taylor@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          I was banned from a group called Late Stage Capitalism, where one of the rules is you’re not allowed to support the Democrats and another is you’re not allowed to call anyone a “bot” or “tankie” or “paid by Putin”

          They banned me for “NBo anticommunist bullshit”

          I don’t even know what “NBo” means but I’m gonna assume a community that has a rule against calling people “paid by Putin” is not exactly a good bunch of people

  • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    And MAGA worshippers are watching with glee.

    As a non-Merican I hope the Union falls apart before Trump can crown himself King of America.

    • JoeBigelow@lemmy.ca
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      3 days ago

      As an American, I hope for the same. The New England Federation will probably be pretty chill. Probably high taxes even for the poors though

  • The_Lurker@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Wannabe Henry Kissenger without the charisma, intellect, ability to disguise evil as perfectly logical foreign policy.

  • EchoCT@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    Rapist logic. I did what I did because I was strong enough to take what I want.

    Absolutely disgusting.

    • Fair Fairy@thelemmy.club
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      2 days ago

      It’s always been like this. This is how America acted for decades, but just denying it.
      Tbh it’s great they are just calling it openly, no need to convince people that they want to enslave latin America.

      They likely really screwed though - cuz if u announce this moral foundation they won’t get any support from locals, they basically killed it themselves.

    • Zink@programming.dev
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      2 days ago

      That’s the thing that binds together the youngest techbro and the oldest oil baron.

      Antisocial “might makes right and I’m going to win” mentalities.

        • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
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          2 days ago

          Would you ascribe that to some sudden evolutionary species-wide shift in the human genome?

          We’re the same hungry short-sighted horrific apes as four generations ago. And now that the good cheap energy is starting to run out, we will start hacking each other to death for crumbs.

          It ain’t the Care Bears out there.

          https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rRVgSyZ6Gtg

  • bufalo1973@piefed.social
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    3 days ago

    So, by that same logic, any other country can, if it has the resources, kill him because reasons, right? If international rules are over…

    • TheFogan@programming.dev
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      3 days ago

      I mean effectively that’s basically what they are calling for… Hell I think that’s half what they are hoping for… either another country makes an attempt to attack and we get to test out our detection and defenses before launching a sharp counter and claiming whatever country attacks as our own. Or everyone’s too afraid to, and then we leverage our position as the unstable psychopath bully that everyone just gives whatever it asks for in the hopes that they can avoid being the next bullying target.

  • notgivingmynametoamachine@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    How has most of America not heard about this virulent pus bag? He’s on the news constantly, foaming at the mouth, shouting shit that would have gotten him dragged to the gallows by an angry mob any time before 1920 (and even then only because he absolutely would have funded the Pinkertons).

    • IronBird@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      the majority of america is either so disillusioned with the system or so inherently selfish that they simply don’t care at all unless something “political” directly effects them

      • umbrellacloud@leminal.space
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        2 days ago

        I don’t agree with calling people “selfish” in this sense.

        Imagine that you have ZERO connection to anyone other than your blood relatives in any material way. If you were literally dying on the street, anyone who wasn’t a direct blood relative would literally step over you while you were dying. Everyone who isn’t your literal best friend or your mom is rude or apathetic towards you.

        In this circumstance, what material motivation do you have to show solidarity to anyone other than yourself and your first degree blood relatives? Please don’t give me an emotional argument, I want a material one. “It’s the right thing” or “because humanity” or “because Heaven” isn’t going to cut it here.

  • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
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    3 days ago

    This is getting dark but at this point US is clearly on a path to start using their powerful military to invade and occupy other countries. They are becoming the Nazi Germany of the XXI century but since they have nuclear weapons no one will be able to stop them. This will basically mean new cold war between US and China (and maybe EU if they manage to unite and develop a common position). So yeah, a lot of suffering ahead of us with a chance of nuclear war.

    • wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      Except that, if China went full cold war with the US, all they’d have to do is stop selling to the US and the entire US economy would collapse. Not to mention that economic sanctions against the US would cripple the country completely, because Trump would just immediately default on the country’s debt (as he loves to do) and, oh yeah, the entire NYSE would crater to 0 in about 5 minutes flat.

      • SailorFuzz@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        the scenario in which China just stops selling to the US would probably collapse China’s economy too. Think about it. Why is the national debt so high? How is it that high and yet “most prosperous nation in the world”? International investment. There’s a lot of money invested from China and other countries. Their investments are only good so long as the American economy is good. International investors can leverage American debt to them as sort of capital asset to thereby invest in other things…

        It’s a giant domino effect. When China pulls out, the American economy will likely collapse… but, then all the money people had invested and had leveraged also collapse… and so then those international investors can’t pay their debts because they have nothing to leverage it with and thus also collapse… and so on and so forth… the ripple is wide.

        • wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
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          3 days ago

          But while america has been investing in making itself dependent on foreign resources, China has been investing in making other countries dependent on theirs. I think that, if it were about the math of overall risk, China has less risk from the us. There are wartime measures that can boost an economy, but they require that economy to actually have the resources necessary to function.

        • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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          2 days ago

          the scenario in which China just stops selling to the US would probably collapse China’s economy too

          While the US may be one of their biggest single customer (representing about 16% of China’s exports), they’re far from China’s only customer.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_China

          The EU is almost the same size of market as the US, and the southeast Asian countries as a group are a larger customer than either of those.

          Cutting off the US won’t cripple China. Plus the Chinese government is very willing to play the long game if they can foresee an eventual positive outcome for themselves.

      • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
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        3 days ago

        Which would suck for American citizens but dictators usually don’t really care about those. I don’t think this administration sees US public as an obstacle anymore. They survived ICE raids and Epstein backlash. Everyone just stands their ground, there were 0 resignations. They built up their gestapo real fast, National Guard fell in line and the military has no problems fallowing illegal orders. They still take it easy because they don’t really have to go full fascist dictator right now but they know nothing will stop them when they have to do it.

          • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
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            3 days ago

            I’m talking about his core team. Even Hegseth and Waltz are still there. Press secretaries usually don’t last long but Leavitt is still there. Kennedy is still there. I might be missing somebody but nobody from his core team resigned. During his previous term he had 4 press secretaries and 4 Chiefs of Staff. This time no one moves despite massive fuckups and controversies.

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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        3 days ago

        If China stopped selling to the US, it would devastate their economy as much as ours. It’s Mutually Assured Economic Destruction.

    • FishFace@piefed.social
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      3 days ago

      Trouble is, China and Russia are quite happy to have spheres of influence that don’t overlap with the US’. The only issues are places like Taiwan, where the US still has some kind of residual genetic memory that letting China take it over would be bad - though as the US regime manifests its destiny ever harder I expect they’ll realise that makes no sense in their own worldview.

      It really doesn’t leave many big players interested in a rules-based international order. My understanding is that African nations by and large don’t give a shit about Ukraine.

      The problem for anyone still interested in it is that they’re torn between trying to keep whatever scrap of interest the US has in upholding national sovereignty in Ukraine and making any meaningful progress on what happens when Trump finally abandons it for good, or annexes Greenland.

      Trying to keep Trump onside makes short-term sense, but in the long term European citizens need to be prepared for worse standards of living as the cost of defence and goods increases because we need to become independent of the US. If you fail to articulate the necessity of that independence, there’ll be more backlash against the sacrifice. Far-right parties will be the beneficiaries of that backlash, who will happily put their respective countries under the boot of whichever fascist autocrat they prefer.

      • ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net
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        3 days ago

        100% agree. EU is totally failing on messaging ever since Trump won his first term. They still pretend everything will be fine and they can maintain the status quo indefinitely. I see two options here:

        1. EU wakes the fuck up and realized they can only survive together, stands up to Trump and unites around a common cause (both politicians and citizens). Trade war will hit us hard but we can save our freedom

        2. EU continues to fall apart while every country only cares about their own short term interest, each country falls under the influence of USA, China or Russia and becomes a puppet state

        Right now we’re heading straight for option 2.

  • webp@mander.xyz
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    3 days ago

    Amazing words from a country whos citizens have absolutely no reason to pay it taxes.

    • tamal3@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      That’s true, but not having a personal reason is not the same thing as not being compelled to pay taxes… Tax season is coming up and we are poorly organized at best.