[-] PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee 61 points 7 months ago

Because it turns turns billions in public funds into billions in private profits.

The fact that those profits come at the expense of children's lives doesn't worry the oil and gas industries, so why would it worry weapons manufacturers?

[-] PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee 93 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Are we sure he was actually stabbed and didn't just have a pre-existing condition that caused a hole to open in his stomach, because of all the drugs he was on?

[-] PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee 84 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

They know they have to stay mask on, no matter what.

They tried the whole "haha, we were nazis all along!" thing with the tiki torches and Unite the Right rally. They lost their jobs, families and the platform they'd built out of plausible deniability.

You could catch them dressed as Hitler, with a hand written copy of Elders of Zion, in the middle of lynching a jew, and they'd still claim "the left just calls everyone who disagrees with them a Nazi".

[-] PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee 61 points 9 months ago

But if we start punishing rich people for crimes, what's next? Punishing other rich people for their crimes?

[-] PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee 57 points 9 months ago

That's only when they're on duty. Off duty, they gravitate more towards punching their wives.

[-] PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee 96 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Should it?

The overwhelming majority of mass shooters currently plaguing America are young, male and far-right. They didn't just wake up one morning as extremists.

The story always reads basically the same. Loneliness, frustration and/or disillusionment made them vulnerable, they stumbled upon the far-right claiming they had answers and were lead down the path of extremism by memes, algorithms and social media groups.

Given that, why should they be platformed at all? Why make the default "if you don't like it, just block it" rather than "if you want to read it, join their shithole servers"?

While we might not be "kindergarten" any more, there's definitely users who are in early highschool and users who are vulnerable to cults.

That said, I don't see hexbear being nearly as dangerous because unlike neo-nazis, state violence isn't the goal.

Take the murder and enslavement out of modern Nazism and there's nothing left, because murder and enslavement was the point. Take the murder out of communism and socialism and you've got a fairer, less exploitative society because a fairer, less exploitative society was the point.

[-] PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee 58 points 10 months ago

In a shocking plot twist, Gamers have no sympathy for an abused and/or manipulated woman.

[-] PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee 78 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Just because somebody stole food because they're an asshole doesn't mean that everybody who steals food is an asshole.

We don't actually know which is true here, but we do know that it's far more likely someone is stealing groceries because the wealth inequality horrorshow has grown even more perverse in the last year.

Nevertheless, rather than defending an unnamed person from potentially reprehensible police, you defended the police and an unnamed retail store from a potentially reprehensible person.

I hope you've got shares in a grocery chain because it would be deeply pitiful if you weren't even doing this out of self-interest.

[-] PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee 62 points 11 months ago

They say it's so teachers can protect themselves and their students (from the consequences of failed gun laws) but really, it's just because they have to say something -- and it can't be the truth.

At a civilian level, most of them simply don't care. They're confident it will never be their kids and they consider a stranger's children less important than their own easy access to firearms.

But they can't say that, so they make flowery comments about freedom, defending their family and how they're the ones keeping America out of the hands of tyrants, even though they staunchly support tyrants and wouldn't even wear a mask to protect other people, let alone fight and die for them.

On the corporate and political level, there's good money and easy votes in guns. It's no different to tobacco, asbestos and everything else they fought to profit from even as it killed people.

But they can't say that either. So instead, they coordinate what today's scapegoat is going to be. Computer games? Too many doors? Timid police? Whatever keeps the money flowing.

The important part for all of them is demanding other solutions are tried before gun control. They know they won't work, but it will buy them more time and the more time they waste, the better.

That's why their current solution is "free, universal healthcare for everybody in America, including 5 year olds and people who don't want treatment, done to a standard far beyond even the most cutting edge of medicine, completely and permanently curing people in less time than it takes to buy a gun".

Which they then block anyway, because it's important their conditions for supporting gun control are never met.

[-] PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee 56 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Gamergate was a lot of people's first experience with the far-right infiltrating a vulnerable group then engineering and escalating a culture war.

There was a lot of naivety back then. The alt-right pinkie promising they weren't neo-nazis was enough for thousands to give them the benefit of the doubt. People got swept up in it, believing it really was about "ethics in game journalism" and not just trying to bully feminists and anyone who defended them into suicide.

But that was hundreds of acts of domestic terrorism and melodramatic reactionary outcries ago. Most people shook off the mob mentality and saw it for what it was.

You're seeing the ones who decided to stick with being scumbags.

For most of them, it's probably because they're abusers without anyone in their life to abuse, trying to scratch that itch by hurling slurs at minorities.

Of what's left, they might be so dimwitted and gullible that they still haven't realised they've just been doing the dirty laundry of some of the worst people the modern world can offer.

It would be genuinely pitiful if it wasn't near-certain that one of them will do a mass shooting because someone made a movie that was more appealing to women than the idea of becoming a tradwife-pornstar-mommy-punching bag for a chud.

[-] PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee 69 points 11 months ago

I guess if you lash out at absolutely everybody, eventually one of them will do something to deserve it.

[-] PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee 87 points 11 months ago

That wealth imbalance also pushes companies to force dumb shit like this on thier customers.

If Google were to just come out with a $10 a month plan that removed all the sleazy ways they try and profit from you, the overwhemling response would be "Oh great yet another subscription", because these subscriptions have become a significant chunk of people's income each month.

But what if greedy neoliberals hadn't been pocketing our pay rises for $20 years and that subscription was functionally $1? Most people would be happy to blow $20 supporting 20 different content providers.

Unfortunately, their greed is insatiable. There's always a room of executives doing their grubby little sums. "If people have $1, they probably have $2. We could double our profits! Then double our salaries!".

Inflation just means "If rich people find out you've got more money, they'll fuck you out of that too".

The $1 will never be enough. They'll keep charging more and more until people have nothing left to hand over. Then they'll figure out more ways to squeeze a profit out of you. Manipulating you with ads, selling your private data, turning your body into expensive dogfood -- whatever makes them a few more cents.

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PoliticalAgitator

joined 11 months ago