The problem is that if you get it wrong even once --and we know for a fact, through things like The Innocence Project, that many innocent people have been executed-- then it's the state committing murder in our name.
Morally I'm not OK with that. Are you?
I'd rather err on the side of caution.
Again, we only have to get it wrong once, which we know we have done, and it's basically the state murdering an innocent citizen.
How many innocent citizens are you OK with murdering?
While you are correct in one sense, you've also managed to completely miss the point in a way that to me seems deeply stupid, small-minded and idiotic.
I would ask you what part about my comment you didn't understand, but I can tell that the answer is "nothing," that you understood nothing, that you are utterly incapable of accurately rephrasing my argument, and that as such, you are a disappointing example of your sorry generation.
Here's the thing; we are trying to treat a figurative heart attack while you are bitching about a figurative cancer.
In medicine we have the concept of triage, wherein we treat the most immediately life-threatening issue first, and then, once the patient is stabilized, we move on to the next treatment.
What you are arguing in favor of is basically treating the cancer while ignoring the full pulmonary arrest that is happening right before your eyes.
What part about this do you not understand?
I don't get it. I truly don't.
Nothing about what you ultimately want will happen if you and I do not stand up together right fucking now.
The plane is about to crash into the fucking mountain and you want to bitch about your little fucking objections?
It's an interesting and terrifying thought experiment. Hopefully we're not actually going to run it IRL.
For whatever it's worth, I don't think it would fly in a country as massive and habitually fractious as the US, but I've been wrong about a lot of things in the past --never imagined that an unlettered buffoonish corndog conman like Trump could even come within sniffing distance of the presidency for example-- so who the fuck knows?
I don't have a lot of faith in my fellow Americans. I probably never should have, but hindsight is always 20-20 or whatever.
He hasn't. With a handful of obvious exceptions, the entire Republican leadership has spent the last four years running a clinic in cowardice, pathetic boot-licking and groveling.
Bullshit. They're simply saying that now probably isn't the best time for infighting. As Levitsky and Ziblatt show in their book, "How Democracies Die," a disunited and squabbling opposition is how authoritarian dictatorships come to power.
You can agree or not, but don't misrepresent the argument.
This is correct. The left is utterly incapable of unity on anything for the very good reason that unlike the right, it's a very loosely bound coalition in which each constituent interest group feels very little loyalty to the others. The result is that when we should be coming together to stop the fucking plane from crashing into the fucking mountain, we instead feel it necessary to trot out old internal grievances, back-stab, and in general form a circular firing-squad.
It's why the conservative minority in this country is about to turn us into a right-wing extremist autocratic shit hole even though we vastly outnumber them.
Democracies die when opposition fails to unite in the face of populist autocratic movements.
Well it's not like Vietnam was a walk in the park either. It sure as fuck didn't do my old man any good. I blame the war for his early death due to complications from chronic alcoholism. He came home from the war, but the war never really left him. There are hundreds of thousands of others like him.
I guess you can be an honorary Xer, but I was 14 when you were born, so it's just a fact that a lot of what I and my fellow Xers have in common time-wise is going to be significantly different. Consider; you were 7-years-old when I was 21.
It's based on a misreading of the 2nd amendment on the one hand, and on cornball cos-play fantasy on the other. The 2nd was intended so that state government could muster militias to put down insurrections such as Shay's Rebellion, which it was written in specific reaction to.
As for the cos-play bit, there is no universe in which a private militia, no matter how well-armed, is going to have any chance at all of resisting the military power of contemporary US law enforcement. It's a fucking joke.
There's a bit of a learning curve, but just be cautious at first and you'll figure it out. It's not rocket science. Also don't use dull blades as that's an easy way to cut yourself. Fortunately they're dirt cheap.
Also, throw massive temper tantrum about "crisis at the border," but refuse to do anything about it. If anyone is wondering, the answer is no, the Republicans do not want to make a deal with Biden on border policy; it's way too politically convenient for them to have it both ways.
They want to use it as a campaign talking point and as a political cudgel, while also refusing to do anything about it. Also they can't give Biden anything that might look like a win, no matter how much the American people want it.
Unfortunately they have right wing media on their side so their constituents will never understand the two-faced game they're playing.
The mistake here is in assuming that it's either all or nothing; that self checkouts are either great, or some kind of disaster.
The reality is that they're great for some applications, but suck ass for others.
Here's the deal; if it's just me with a few items, yeah, the self-checkout is awesome, but if it's me and my wife and we have a shitload of groceries for the entire family, guess what? Self-checkout sucks ass and it's way easier to go through a regular checkout stand where there won't be a hundred little different ways for the system to get jammed up and require an employee intervention.
What part about this do people not understand?
I have to think that a lot of the hostility to regular checkout stands comes from relatively young Lemmy users who don't actually have to shop for families of their own.
The problem is that if you get it wrong even once --and we know for a fact, through things like The Innocence Project, that many innocent people have been executed-- then it's the state committing murder in our name.
Morally I'm not OK with that. Are you?
I'd rather err on the side of caution.
Again, we only have to get it wrong once, which we know we have done, and it's basically the state murdering an innocent citizen.
How many innocent citizens are you OK with murdering?