WoodScientist @ WoodScientist @sh.itjust.works

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6 mo. ago

Well apparently they can, because that's what the whole article is about.

I never suggested Trump winning would be a good thing, or payback for anyone. And in my hypothetical, I was suggesting progressives might have a better time winning in a Republican primary than a Democratic one.

What you're saying is that you're so myopically blinded by partisanship, that if someone like Bernie somehow won the Republican nomination, you would still vote for the Democrat out of team loyalty. Again, this is all just sports to you. You don't believe in anything except the blue team winning.

You are living in a dream world.

So you've failed my simple request. Biden is such a Zionist he can't even be bothered to denounce outright ethnic cleansing.

Hint. The reason he can't is that his adminstration made their own attempt to arrange the explusion of the Gaza population. The Biden admin was fully onboard with ethnic cleansing. Trump is just more crass about it. You're distracted by shiny over substance.

Cringe liberal cyber-stalker.

All you're doing is telling on yourself. You're obsessed with teams. You hold no real values. You don't believe in anything. Politics is just a sports game to you. And yes, I care about actually making meaningful improvement in people's lives. If the DNC has the Democratic party locked down on permanent regressive mode, then progressives should seek all other options. If that means running third party, so be it. If that means trying to coopt and take over the Republican party, so be it. I care about outcomes. You care about sports teams.

"Legislation IS the force."

BWAHAHA.

God. Where do you get this stuff? It's hilarious.

Typical liberal obsessed with gotchas. It comes from a place where you assume no one has any consistent beliefs or values. That probably says a lot more about you than it does about anyone else.

Yes, of course that was me. And that statement is as true then as now. Trump and Biden's Israel policies are indistinguishable from one another. Trump is just a lot more of a crass asshole about it. You're distracted by messaging rather than actual on-the-ground policy. Trump is a lot ruder, so you assume that his policies are worse on Palestine than Biden's were.

The truth is you can't have higher support than 100%.

Can you name a single Trump policy on Israel/Palestine that Biden or Harris have come out to publicly oppose? Can you name a single one? It's a lot easier for them to do so now as they're not in office. They have far more free reign now than they ever did while in the oval office. If they're not willing to denounce any of Trump's Israel policies today, then it would be brain-dead moronic to assume they would have different policies if they were in office.

Frankly, I'm at the point where we should be openly conspiring to strip the civil rights of Evangelical Christians and conservatives in general. I don't give a shit about the optics; the right wing fever swamps will say what they'll say regardless.

We need to find ways to strip the civil rights of Christian Nationalists. Part of living in a democratic society is that we need to accept that all people deserve rights. I agree to let you live your life the way you please, and you agree to let me live my life the way I please. It's meant to be a peace treaty. I may not agree with you on every choice you make, but we both agree to leave each other alone.

But Evangelical Christians have given up that value. They have abandoned this central peace treaty at the heart of a free democracy. They're hellbent on taking the rights away from everyone else, but no one is trying to take their rights away. They're allowed to go on endless offense, but they never have to play defense. They know they can take rights away from everyone else, and everyone else will be far too polite to give them a taste of their own medicine.

Fuck that. It's time these fuckers actually started feeling the same fear the rest of the population has to because of their actions. Let them go to bed at night worrying that their rights will be taken from them one by one. Let them show up to voting locations only to find their name has mysteriously disappeared from the ballot. Lets start calling their media obscene and trying to legislate against it. Let's pass laws declaring being pro-Israel as "Islamaphobic" and start cracking down on pro-Israeli as terrorist organizations. Let them feel a fraction of the fire that they so casually burn everyone else with.

We have a serious problem in the US's body politic. We have one group of people, Christian Nationalists, who are able to actively conspire to take the rights from everyone else.

The only way to restore equilibrium is to start threatening the rights of conservative Christians. That's literally the only way to get them to stop this madness. They need to realize that this is a fight that they can actually lose. They need to realize that when you start taking rights away, others in turn can start taking your rights away.

We need to get a hell of a lot more creative. We need to show the same evil creativity that Evangelical Christians show when they're trying to destroy minority groups. It's only when the fear of God has been put into the Christian nationalists that we can have any kind of peace.

We've gotten to this moment through decades of unilateral disarmament. One group of people is working tirelessly to strip the rights of everyone else, and the rest are too polite to start giving them a taste of their own medicine. They broke the peace treaty and are actively dropping bombs, while everyone else is pretending the peace treaty is still in effect.

Because in New York City, a global megalopolis with one of the largest and most well-funded police departments in the country...can't be arsed to provide police protection to its highest ranking elected officials.

Imagine if the NYPD tried to arrest Trump. Do you think the Secret Service would just let that happen? Yet state and local Democratic officials aren't willing to actually use their legal power to protect themselves from unlawful arrest. These leaders should be under constant state or local police protection. But they're so addicted to normalcy that they simply cannot bring themselves to take reasonable but unusual steps like this. They just can't mentally handle it, so they let themselves go unprotected.

It should not be possible to arrest the Comptroller of the largest city in the country without first having to go through a whole bunch of local police officers.

But Democrats are cowards, so they let themselves be lead to the showers.

This won't end until ICE agents start being disappeared by people dressed up as ICE agents.

Unfortunately that won't do anything. Democrats are not prepared to actually use the power they have as state officials to resist illegal federal actions. So you outlaw law enforcement from wearing masks. They keep doing it anyway. Then what?

I see zero indication that Democrats have any intention of using force to stop ICE from violating the law. These ICE agents are already flagrantly violating the law. This arrest is flagrantly illegal. Yet are they using any of their states' out of control police budgets to provide armed police protection to state lawmakers? No. They're just letting duly elected representatives be illegally arrested.

This is why the law you're talking about is purely performative. It's meant to generate headlines, but it won't actually move the needle.

States need to actually start using force against federal agents that are violating the law. Will this risk escalation and civil war? Yes. But if you're not willing to risk civil war to protect the most fundamental rights of the citizens of your state, then you have no right to be a leader in a democratic country. You're too much of a coward, and you're simply not willing to fight to defend your freedoms.

A democratic candidate just got put in handcuffs because ICE is going all fascist and you’re somehow making it the Democrats’ fault.

Yes, because it's all pointlessly performative. It's like that stupid taco truck or those signs at the state of the union. Pointless performative crap.

Democrats have forgotten how to actually use and exercise POWER. Republicans still remember how to use it. And this is why Democrats are losing.

It's time to start refusing service to Republicans. If you're an ER doc and a MAGA-type comes in, let them die on the table. Do unto them as they would do unto others.

You'll twist yourself into knots to forgive any behavior as long as it's your team doing it.

States need to pass ballot initiatives that make it completely legal to shoot any police officer with a rubber bullet whenever you feel like it. It should also be legal to pump tear gas into a police station whenever you want. Police are using these things against entirely peaceful protests. The only violent people are the police. Yet they're allowed to just use these weapons against people with no consequence whatsoever. I say what's good for the goose is good for the gander. If these weapons are that harmless that cops can just use them whenever, then we should be able to use them against cops whenever we feel like it as well. It should be entirely legal to shoot cops with rubber bullets. They should have to go everywhere in full body armor and face coverings. See a cop on the street? Shoot them with a rubber bullet. Officer pulls you over? Shoot them with a rubber bullet. Cop standing in line at a donut shop? Feel free to come up behind them and shoot them point blank in the back of the head with a rubber bullet.

If cops can use these weapon with such casual indifference, then they must be completely harmless. As such, there is no harm in allowing citizens to use rubber bullets and tear gas against officers at any time they choose. Anything that cops can do to random citizens random citizens should also be able to do to cops.

Don't forget the cowardice of Democrats in general. Why are these lawmakers just going around undefended? They should be being escorted by a contingent of state police fully willing to use lethal force to protect their state's lawmakers against unlawful and illegal arrest.

If the governor of NY announced that he was sending NY state troopers to arrest Donald Trump for violating the law, do you think the Secret Service would just sit back and let that happen? States and the federal government are both sovereign. The states have just as much authority to unilaterally arrest Trump as Trump does to unilaterally arrest state leaders. Yet the state leaders are just spinelessly sitting back and letting themselves be arrested. States have out of control police budgets, but the cowards aren't even willing to use some of those immense resources to prevent duly elected representatives from being illegally arrested.

Here's a hint. If the feds come to try and arrest your governor illegally, you shoot them. You put them in the ground. I don't care if it risks a civil war. This is the kind of thing that is worth risking a civil war over.

But unfortunately these spineless Democrats are not capable of thinking like this. They're utterly unsuited for the challenge of the moment.

Eliza could break people. Something doesn't need agency to be psychologically manipulative and damaging.

While there are a few that work better in an office, the overwhelming majority work better at home. Why should we force everyone to suffer for the handful of folks who can't self-motivate at home? We don't bend over backwards to cater to people who say, have auditory issues that make working in a crowded open-plan office debilitating. We tell those folks to go die in a fire if they can't handle an office environment. Plenty of people can't work in an office, but that was never been seen as an argument to get rid of offices.

Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds.

Israel doesn’t seem to be using its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent for invasion.

So it's just a coincidence that no neighboring country has threatened them with outright military invasion since they got nukes?

And when has Iran ever threatened to use a bomb against Israel? They deny they're even trying to get a bomb. Do their politicians like to say, "death to Israel?" Sure, but that's just part of their discourse. The Iranians use "death to" as a synonym for "down with." They say the same thing during political campaigns against opposing political candidates.

An Iranian bomb would stabilize the situation because the same pattern has occurred in numerous other conflicts. Yes, nukes don't prevent conventional wars, but they do prevent total war between nuclear powers. Russia would have never attempted its invasion of Ukraine if Ukraine still had their nukes. India and Pakistan's arsenals are what kept the recent conflict between them from spiraling further than it did.

You can speculate that nukes wouldn't prevent further expansion of Israel, but that's ahistorical analysis. Having an opponent that is just as well armed as you are makes you act more carefully. The Soviets didn't just keep expanding across Europe, precisely because the US had the bomb to hold them in check. Israel has been able to act with such impunity because ultimately none of its neighbors can stand up to it. It's only when some of Israel's neighbors actually have nukes, and they have to address their neighbors as equals, that peace is actually possible. As long as one side holds complete military dominance, real peace isn't possible.