Zink

running the oldest dinosaur they have because it’s “their turn”

Nothing says "in touch with the needs of the American People" like making sure to enforce the written rules and unwritten customs of the line of noble succession everybody is waiting in. But they're lined up to take turns on a ride that burned down long ago.

I agree with your statement but I mean that I want AOC instead of another unelectable female candidate.

"You hope that a year from now, the turmoil we're seeing in the aftermath of his murder won't be leveraged to bring hate speech laws to this country,” Carlson said Wednesday

Yeah it would really be a shame if free speech were to be trampled at some nebulous point in the future. Imagine if it were to happen now!

“And trust me, if it is, if that does happen, there is never a more justified moment for civil disobedience than that, ever. And there never will be,” the pundit added.

The most justified possible cause for civil disobedience in all of human history has been and will only ever be... hate speech laws. Jeez. I'm a white guy and even that level of privilege and arrogance is a little crazy.

“Because if they can tell you what to say, they're telling you what to think...There is nothing they can't do to you because they don't consider you human.”

He seems so close to getting it. So damn close. But considering the right's propensity for projection, it's probably just an illusion.

Yeah, and the instinct to accumulate resources isn't even remotely just a human thing. It's often an essential element of survival.

And for sure a lack of money can cause plenty of problems that legitimately affect your well being. So there are problems for which money is the solution.

But when you constantly focus on the lack of money, whether it's due to actual poverty or because grifters tell you for decades that all your problems are due to single black mom welfare queens getting your tax money, people start to reason that having the money or driving that Lexus SUV is going to be the cure for whatever their underlying non-financial personal issues are.

And since the real world is messy, the financial and personal issues can interact and amplify one another.

And here we are, in the US anyway, about to take this mess and make income inequality even worse while also making access to healthcare worse!

In my very limited knowledge of the household appliance market, Samsung has been a no-go for a long time. Like, the most expensive but also the most disposable.

And that's before we even get to the enshittification and ad invasion.

It's incredible to think about trying to explain the problem to my younger self 30 years ago...

"Yeah, computer hardware continued to scale pretty well so now even this refrigerator here has a computer inside it, a high resolution flat panel monitor, and even multiple ways to connect to the internet for remote control and feature updates."

"wow, that's amazing!"

"Yeah but nobody uses it. At least, nobody who understands tech and reads the news. You don't even connect it to the internet in the first place. "

"What!? That seems totally backwards. What's the problem for educated users? Are there hackers everywhere just waiting to connect to this iffy computer embedded in your home?"

"Oh no, it is much worse. The company that made the fridge could connect to it like they designed it to do!!! And to make it even more frightening, they usually have the infrastructure to be able to connect to EVERYBODY'S fridge at the same time!"

(begins playing spooky halloween music)

That's basically current day fascist America's answer for every inconvenient group of subhumans.

Homeless? Shoot 'em. Problem gone!

War in Gaza has bad optics? Level it and then you ended the war. Problem gone!

LGBTs? Mexicans??? You're not gonna believe this...

I fear one big problem with them flinching so quickly is that it gives the Trump cult plausible deniability to not blame the dictatorship for doing the things that they are doing.

I mean, the government did not censor Kimmel, it was a business decision made by a private entity. Right? RIGHT??

That would keep things consistent with the apparent rule that conservatives must act opposite of what the bible says.

First it discourages molesting kids. RNC buzzkill.

Then while they're using abortion as a successful wedge issue and mechanism of control, the Bible is over here giving instructions on how to give abortions to unfaithful women.

Then there are so many groups to hate...

And SO many desperate poor people to ignore or actively push out of view...

I probably don't need to go on.

Intent, mindfulness, and informed decision making?

I mean, knowing that something is technically propaganda does not make it wrong or make it taboo to repeat. The word has a negative connotation because it's typically used to describe the "other" guys, sure, but its meaning is very broad.

If I were to say the phrase "fuck Nestle" or even just the term "DeGoogle" one could correctly label those as anti-corporate propaganda with an agenda to harm the interests of an untold number of shareholders. Heck, thanks to broadly diversified 401k investment fund options, I am probably one of them and future me could lose entire dollars.

Is anybody on Lemmy going to shake their finger at me for repeating those two pieces of targeted, agenda-driven propaganda though? I certainly don't feel icky for saying it. I bet I could even say something negative about the president of the united states without feeling embarrassed. :]

Were there enough progressives in the right positions of power to make that happen, though?

One advantage that centrist / establishment types have is that they are everywhere and people are used to them. And they sometimes actually coordinate when the status quo gets threatened.

This seems backwards. Let's just assume we're always going to be willingly beholden to tech giants, and so we're going to pass a law to make our masters treat us well.

Maybe instead campaign for a law that says all publicly funded computer resources must be reliably usable for 15 years. So you either go FOSS and save money too, or you get guarantees in writing before you hand over your hand over money to the people who won't even let you see what their code is doing on your hardware.

hate to say it, but there are a number of better places to spend your life than the U.S. as it is now and will probably be for years and years to come

If only most americans knew this, it might actually self-correct!

But in a world with incredible, downright magical access to global communication and human knowledge, millions continue to choose folk wisdom and confirmation bias.