Little disingenuous to call secular atheists satanists, but I guess they sort of asked for it when they picked the very troll-ey name for their organization.

I don’t think volunteer and charity work is very satanic, at any rate.

A surprisingly even-handed article. Figures that the BBC seems the most capable of fairly reporting American domestic news.

For the record, Hitler initially won power through elections, he did not begin the whole totalitarian thing until he was already the Chancellor.

People on the overarching “western liberalism” side of the spectrum are usually fairly accustomed to putting aside their differences to cooperate on important things when the shit really hits the fan. The shit just has to hit the fan, first.

Priorities and all.

To quote Maya Angelou, “Surviving is important. Thriving is elegant.” When you can afford to, it’s good to fight for your particular vision. When your actual survival is threatened, however, that takes a backseat by necessity.

We’re naturally good at this, because the principles of liberty and equality themselves require a certain willingness to cooperate and compromise with people with diverging views. As opposed to authoritarianism, where manipulation of and contesting for power is the ultimate method for sorting out how differing ideas get dealt with.

Hopefully Macron remembers this, and remains willing to compromise with his left flank. I think he likely will.

Eh. Probably the science memes community, I think it’s on mander. They have some pretty good ones sometimes.

I think people tend to underestimate human resilience. To use the bronze age collapses as an example, sure, it brought down existing polities, the names drawn on maps changed.

But most of the cities were still there. People still lived in them. Does changing the rulers while keeping a similar paradigm ultimately matter that much? I’m reminded of accounts of the experiences of some Afghanis during the American intervention there. First they paid their taxes to the Taliban, then the govt we set up, then the Taliban again. shrug.

While supply chains could be disrupted, any time that happens it opens the door for another profitable enterprise to rise in its place. People suffer, some die, but life goes on. If the knowledge of how to build those supply chains is still around, it will be done, and swiftly.

There are exceptions to that, anything fairly novel will drive a spike in interest, and answer-seeking behavior. I’m really on the fence with this one.

I’m not sure I agree, I think 4 months is enough time. It would hinge on her though, and how effectively she can be genuine and communicate.

I suppose I wish that destroying western goodwill was a viable way to halt a genocide.

Most people just don’t know that much about Kamala, she’s fairly new to politics and hasn’t been in the limelight very often.

Usually just a small handful of speeches and interviews, maybe. She’s largely an unknown though. A Presidential race would change that quickly, though its hard to predict exactly how.

Notably, the right has used her largely unknown status to smear her for years now, not too different from how they got an early start smearing Hilary.

The results are exactly what I’m concerned with. As I said, I think the result for the Palestinian people is going to be a worsening of the situation for Palestinians. Not a bettering. More dead and less rights. Not more rights and freedoms.

That said, I do not have any ideas for how to actually accomplish a two state solution.

I also don’t see how engaging in good faith negotiations automatically makes them working for a good cause. Anyone can engage in negotiations any time it benefits them to do so.

Yeah, it’ll be important to check the work.

I think there are other possible conclusions that are less about anything good and more about destroying perceived enemies.

When I say we, I’m speaking as an American, and more generally talking about the broader world. We stepped in in Kosovo, we stepped in with the Yazidis. Far more often, though, the world does not police genocide attempts. It protests them, tries to apply the international justice system to the perpetrators, but does not take strong measures to halt the killing.

Here’s a list for the past 24 years:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history_(21st_century)

Generally speaking, we do not police the world, and instead leave local affairs in the hands of whatever country they are happening in, for the vast, vast majority of countries. This makes any strategy to try to halt a genocide by appealing to the world unlikely to succeed. Netanyahu knows this, and is probably counting on it. While I support a Two State Solution, I don’t think this is good strategy for accomplishing it, and is far more likely to accelerate the destruction of the Palestinian people.

I don’t see hamas as freedom fighters at all. I see them as misguided jihadists with an effective propaganda wing and a savvy sense for politics.

I appreciate the sentiment, but somebody should’ve pointed out to them how many genocides we’ve stopped vs how many we’ve allowed to happen over the past half century.

I don’t think Oct 7th was about Palestinian freedom, at any rate. I don’t think hamas leaders living in the UAE give a rats ass about the survival of Gazan citizens. They’re just another tool to be taken advantage of. If hamas was really interested in Palestinian freedom, they would have granted elections in the region they controlled.

These kinds of projects are good for crowd sourcing. Nobody has read all 900 pages, and watched all the speeches and read all the articles, etc etc. But the community taken together, can. Or at least come much closer anyway.

They were proud of it up until not long ago, trusting to the ignorance of the “average American” about policy details. Then the Supreme Court ruling came.

Whoever added the citations to this is doing extremely important work. It needs to be finished though.

Pretty tame stuff really. Video would also show he spoke pretty softly and soothingly during that debate if memory serves. I watched it live.

Biden ran on a return to sensibility, bipartisan dialogue and functional government. That’s the opposite of “taking the fight” to anyone. He didn’t start acting aggressive in the slightest until the last State of the Union.

He even went out of his way to sound calm most of the time.