I’m about as old as he is!

Alright, I’m putting this as my numerous reasons for splitting the Union.

by “this is stupid” I mean “the idea of chemtrails being used by the government is stupid”.

I hate the government, but this is stupid, especially considering that the government was supposedly behind this the whole time. The people who think these are chemtrails have no ideological integrity. When they find something evil done by the United States, instead of standing against the United States, they believe that it was someone else’s fault who is nonetheless powerful. To them, it could be George Soros’ fault, it could be the Democrats’ fault, it could be the Deep State’s fault, but never America’s fault. I believe many of the real problems today: people being left houseless and starving, masked ICE agents tormenting people, war in the Middle East between Israel and Iran, and so on are the fault of the United States–not Jews or Communists or Russo-Chinese interference–and it’s not happening to America.

“bUt iT’s oNLy tHe dAnGeRoUs oNeS!”

I loathe law-and-order rhetoric in any nation, but most certainly in America. Tough On Crime policies have led to the dumbest fucking things that have ever existed in the United States. People are voting for a serial liar and conman who will probably ship them off to Dijbouti or El Salvador just to stay away from someone who broke the law once, or who is likely to break the law. The lesson we should all learn is to stop going nuts over “crime waves”. If the news claims that crime is “going through the roof” or that there is an “epidemic of crime”, make sure to remember:

1. There are way, way bigger threats to public safety than a few gangbangers, for example tech companies, evangelicals, and Nazis.
2. Criminals are people too. They have hopes and dreams, motives, economic conditions, and opinions. Consider why someone is committing a murder or robbery, rather than assuming it’s because of greed.
3. There are for-profit security forces and prisons that all benefit from fear of crime. The news will often blow crime out of proportion to satisfy their sponsors, and downplay authoritarianism likewise.
4. Police officers are often just as dangerous as criminals. It’s better to think of crime as a situation that can be escalated and de-escalated (cops are notoriously bad at this) than as the result of Bad People who need Good People to stop them.
5. There are a lot of good resources for reading about crime in a productive way. Although I am not quite Anarchist, the Anarchist Library has a lot of thought-provoking material on what makes law just and unjust. There’s a big difference between “murder is wrong because the Law says so” and “murder is wrong because killing people is wrong”.
6. Some people are so evil that they need to be killed, i.e. Real Estate CEOs.

How about guillotining them?

If you could just go outside and talk to some friends, that’d massively improve your situation. Just give small talk to somebody. Somebody real. They’ll cheer you up. You could also find a homeless shelter to volunteer at.

I mean, I understand things are awful, with global warming and forced deportations, but this lachrymose screed isn’t what life is like. There are countless people all over the world who are creative, kind, and full of hope, and we are merely beset by great problems.

I mean, Lemmy itself was created by Communists if I’m correct

then lobby your government

First of all, only 5% of people live in the United States. Saying “your government” as if it’s the only one is bad practice. There are countless other governments out there. Secondly, I don’t know if the U.S. Gov’t can easily be lobbied by grassroots movements as opposed to local bundle-state governments. An example is Oregon, which is a very left-leaning state that has provided welfare to its citizens, even if the federal government can’t.

microsoft is a corp, they’re only beholden to profit. even if they could give a shit about the poors they wouldn’t unless it could make pretty lines go up.

This is why you should find ways to oppose this:

1. Vote and campaign in your bundle-state. Getting the entire federal government to do something is hard, but getting Pennsylvania, the holder of Three-Mile Island, to intervene and declare it illegal to build nuclear power plants there is easier, not just because you need less votes, but because most people who live in PA probably remember what happened there.
2. Do sabotage. This will not just be the government going against Microsoft, but the people as well. You can block trucks from coming in, you can vandalize the property, break stuff, and steal things. People of all political positions have done this successfully.
3. Boycott Microsoft, or do economic action against them. You know about something Microsoft doesn’t like? Make it bigger. Get people on a Linux distro. Have people keep the computers they bought, and buy used computers so you don’t give money to Microsoft. In xUbuntu there is a host of applications that effectively replace the Microsoft Office Suite, if you ever needed that.

i don’t mean to be a dick but this is poor rhetoric. “their nuclear power plant is selfish and bad bc i said so >:(“ really only serves to give libs canon fodder for the “personal responsibility^tm” gun.

All you need to do is show them how bad AI is and they’ll understand why its a bad thing, and then show them the solutions. The rhetoric isn’t just “they’re hogging our energy”, it’s “AI is a really bad thing that clogs up the internet, and it could be used to fake evidence and make CSM, and the resources for its operation could be used for better ends.” A big problem is that people think AI is unstoppable. It has nothing to do with the rhetoric of personal responsibility, and everything with AI looking like an unyielding miracle weapon. Showing how much AI takes to run strips it of its terror, and emboldens people to take action against it, since they know the devil is not as terrible as he is painted.

ik it seems like pedantry but this is a serious issue with leftist messaging in the modern world.

The real issue is that Leftists need to become more populist and aligned with the blue-collar working class of miners, farmers, and factory workers rather than the white-collar working class of filmmakers, game designers, and programmers. Many people assumed that blue-collar work would become obsolete, and I guess that due to the internet, more leftist ideas spread there than in the real world. The academization of Leftism is long and complicated, and has a lot to do with the growth of communication technology and the fall of the Berlin Wall, but I’d still argue that such academization is what made Leftism as impotent as it is. What needs to be done for Leftism is a “touching grass” of sorts, and a focus away from schools and universities and towards fields and factories. Leftism post-Biden should be modeled after the successes of Vladimir Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao Zedong, rather than the failures of Ralph Nader, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama.

That sounds like something Heinlein would write during his earlier days. I completely agree with both the argument and reasoning, even tho he turned anti-Communist and insane before he wrote that.

I was always scared of becoming homeless when I was a kid. It motivates people to work hard: the beatings will continue until morale improves.

There’s no logical objection for it, but it goes against the interests of landlords, real estate managers, and other people who see housing as a financial investment rather than a human right. If we want to give people homes to live in that they will not be deprived of, we first have to bring out the guillotine.

Yeah, I fucked up a bit. I didn’t know what this was talking about. I thought it was about defending Raymond’s right to free speech. In actuality, it’s about looking at someone on a far more surface level.

I think it’s fine to bitch about technology.

The worst kind of person isn’t someone who will defend free speech, it’s someone who does so at first, and then stops defending it when they’re in power.

I think hate speech should have repercussions, but there are lots of thoughts that are hard to explain. A big problem is the upsurge in these types of comics. I think they are not only unhelpful, but detrimental to the cause at hand when pro-Palestine protesters are being labeled “Nazis” and then detained. The problem right now clearly is the state, not the people living under the state, and someone saying a few offensive things, while evil, isn’t as bad as the government being turned into a police state before our eyes, who will gladly shut us up for protesting against them. Stop worrying about the Nazis in universities and start worrying about Nazis about to run the U.S. military.

I haven’t found a Raymond in Cascadia

It was word salad a bit, but I was concerned about people either wanting to die or trying to make clever quips about it.

The term Capitalist Realism I took from Mark Fisher’s book, Capitalist Realism, in which he describes people believing (at the time the book was written) that Capitalism is “human nature”, applies to everything, and that all attempts to the contrary are fruitless. And when someone is buried in debt, and believes in Capitalist Realism, they’d probably commit suicide out of hopelessness. This is why it’s so important to understand how socialism works, and work for its establishment.

TL;DR I understand that the problems are caused by Capitalism. They are fixable, there is still hope, and I worry about so many people considering and glorifying suicide.