Well sure, psychos with nukes are scary and there may be an element of the US losing control of their attack dog, but the idea that the Israelis are calling the shots is not really accurate. It cuts dangerously close to the antisemitic conspiracy theory that Israel through AIPAC controls the US government, which also conveniently lets the US off the hook for sponsoring them.

I just think it’s important to remember that for all their brutality, Israel is not charge, and they are not the military superpower that has dominated much of global politics for the past century. They are a vassal state and they would listen if anyone in power had the will to tell them no, they are far too dependent on US support.

It’s probably more like institutional inertia. It takes a long time to stop a ship that big.

Israel is of strategic importance to project US power in the middle east to secure oil.

That’s also the reason they were allowed to continue with their nuclear program.

It’s not fear, it’s power politics. Western powers actively support them. They are not uniquely evil, they are just what happens when fascism is sponsored and allowed to run unchecked.

This is Joe Biden making it perfectly clear: https://youtu.be/A-Ky3dPEnOE

Because issuing a prohibition is basically always a punishment of the people to distract from who is actually causing the problem.

From a political standpoint it very much is either/or, this is done to exhaust any momentum towards systemic change.

“Ban the children to protect them” is an extremely shortsighted way to approach any policy or social ill. Kids will find a way to access social media, and this ban means they’ll need to do it in secret. So now anybody preying on them through those means has their implicit cooperation in covering up the abuse. That includes the media platforms themselves.

Also, why would you need to ban children from social media if the addictive strategies were under control?

A ban like this is only going to cause harm.

See that would require them to not be nazis and the problem with that is that they’re fucking nazis.

“I hope you’re next”

Scratch a liberal.

I don’t know if they understand that their close association with Trump & Musk made the classification extremely easy, politically.

They are historically unpopular and they are dragging all their allies down with them.

I don’t think a comment stating that you don’t think a comment asking for a source is very interesting conversation is very interesting conversation, yet here we are.

Efficiency doesn’t matter if you’re shipping material for production halfway round the world and shipping those products halfway back just because rich people wanted to outsource to cheap labour, and overproduce cheap crap that falls apart way too fast so they can sell us the same cheap crap again a couple years later. It’s mostly waste. Some shipping is necessary, but I’d say a vast majority we could do without.

Like I don’t believe for a second that these tarrifs will actually fix this problem because they’re just a big tantrum with zero strategy involved, but in an ideal world we would make a lot more locally and spend a lot less energy sending things all over the planet to make a handful of shareholders slightly higher margins.

Entirely by design. Why do you think they have a “security council” with 5 permanent members, who are the most powerful nations on earth, who can each veto literally anything completely unilaterally?

They are keeping themselves secure against the UN ever doing anything against their interests, that’s the only way the word “security” makes any sense. It is intentionally set up to never get anything done. You would never create such an arrangement if you wanted an organisation to have actual teeth.

Turns out that allowing people to choose from a very limited pool of potential rulers every couple of years doesn’t actually give them any real power over their society, and maybe it’s just a way to delay revolution while the true ruling class gets all the benefits of the old monarchs with almost none of the blowback, because we’re all too divided over which potential ruler is less blatantly evil to address the real problems.

It’s a very effective method of social control, but it would be a really bad idea for one of the de facto ruling class to try to step into the de jure ruler’s office and try to run it for himself like a dictator. That would probably blow up in his face.

Also, I just want to add: they picked an easily manipulated, disposable kid, and told him to shoot near but not hit Trump? Is that the story you’re going with?

Or what, there was no bullet, the injured people in the crowd were actors, they killed that guy later, the photo of the bullet was manipulated, and they just made sure they got to the shooter first to replace the blanks with real rounds?

Your theory either relies on the hypercompetence of a disposable kid to not actually kill Trump, or you’re enlisting a lot of extra people who all have to be kept quiet now, forever, all for the sake of a single moment of manufactured drama.

Which one is it? Or is there a secret third option?

It bled, there are photos of it bleeding. We have all seen it.

A wound like that doesn’t need to leave a big scar. Sure, some doctor might have been lying about the “2cm wide wound” but that’s not surprising at all. We know they’re liars and there will be misinformation around the event, but that doesn’t mean the wound didn’t exist. Head wounds bleed a lot even if they’re very small.

You don’t have anything except a tendency to confirm your pre-existing beliefs.

I would explain the lack of ear injury by saying that there was an ear injury.

Cool story but nobody has to listen to you if you can’t be bothered to substantiate anything.

Conspiratorial thinking is evidence of and leads to very disordered thinking. You can carry on with it if you want, I’m not your cult leader and I don’t have any say in how deranged you get.

A centrist is just a conservative who knows that “conservative” is a bad word.

With evidence, please. “I reckon” is not good enough. There is no evidence that anyone coordinated this at all.

Like fuck Trump, but if they staged it why would the shooter be a disaffected conservative and not some antifa supersoldier or whatever? Like they’re playing out their fantasies and apparently they can construct whatever reality they feel like, why muddy the waters in any way?

I’m sorry, the reality in which the dude just sucked, the secret service kind of suck at their job, and the bullet grazed Trump’s ear rather than going into his brain from sheer dumb luck is a messy, shitty, scary place where nobody really calls the shots, but it turns out that’s probably the one we live in.

I think it can fall under the same umbrella if their health is failing - it certainly follows the same logic of getting rid of the useless eaters.

But strictly speaking it doesn’t affect the gene pool, so you’re right about that.

Nah, that’s some eugenics bullshit. People don’t lose value just because their health is failing. They’re still people.

What her health does change is the threat that she posed.

Explain why you as a trained officer need a taser to subdue a 95 year old frail woman who needs a walker.

Just literally take a step back, or grab her wrist. It’s not hard.

At a certain point I realised I was explaining the super obvious, and I wanted to point that out.

If it offended you, sit with that feeling. Maybe it’s trying to tell you something.