Maybe you guys should redefine who is your allies and enemies. Since the last one year or so even your allies feel like they are your enemies anyway. Tell me, who do you not have a beef with atm?
The ones who are like "man, fight alone and we'll mock you for military spending" - are not. The ones who are like "yo we kinda support you in a fight, but we'll also pump money into your enemy" - are not either.
But I sorta agree to your point, current administration screw up their allies really hard, although I see it more like very bitter pill that hurts before healing.
I don’t see the USA fighting together with Turkey in any area tbh. Turkey handled the Syria situation single handedly while getting blocked on F35 deals. From this side of the ocean, it looks like the bad brother has been the USA, not the other way around. Saying that, I hate our administration, too…
It was blocked from F35's because of their deal with Russia on S400's. WTF really, why would NATO country run their military on equipment of their main adversary?
For the same reason why you choose "Made in China" over something that's made in your country. Often times it's the best (or even the only) tech for the best price.
It's functionally identical to the software registration requirement of previous Affinity software releases, except that instead of verifying a registration number, it's now verifying a (currently) free Canva account credential.
The folks who support January 6th are also incredibly quick to support ignoring courts, suspending habeus, concentration camps (sorry, extrajudicial domestic detention explicitly based on probable cause that begins and ends with race, followed by attempted exfiltration from protection from the law), and, like, straight up admitting to revering Nazis [1][2].
Democracy works with left- and right-wing elements because there is a lot of heterogeneity in those sets. That makes compromise possible. Far left and far right groups across history are remarkably similar in their policies, messaging and even colour schemes for reasons I don’t get. (There is autocorrelation due to the heavy lifting homage does in their branding, of course, but why do the far right and left always embrace tariffs and trade wars? Like, going back to the Roman Republic.) This uniformity and quasi-religious zeal basically makes them poisons to democracy.
The moment someone is arguing why their far right position is actually quite different from being Nazi (or far left from its worst elements), you’ve already lost.
Based on your wording, everything that's right to your position, that you label as "balanced and center" of course, is "far right". I'm probably far right to you, because I have some right-wing views.
It had some meaning maybe 10 years ago but now it's washed out terminology. Keep thinking that you're surrounded by nazis, if it keeps you warm though.
> everything that's right to your position, that you label as "balanced and center" of course, is "far right"
Nope. I have plenty of conservative and right-wing friends. We disagree on a number of social issues, and occasionally, economic ones too.
They don’t support violently overthrowing the U.S. government, or using the military to secure what they can’t at the ballot box, however, and so aren’t far right.
> Keep thinking that you're surrounded by nazis, if it keeps you warm though
Straw man. I don’t personally know anyone who is far right. Out of the folks in the administration, I can only really finger Miller and the DOGE bros as bona fide racists and far right agitators.
Anarcho-tyranny. In places like Brazil or California, thief is armed at will with ease, person defending themselves instead have to pass licensing and background check which is difficult for poor people or those convicted of BS crimes like possessing a pot plant 20 years ago when they lived in Texas.
Thief only faces lukewarm prospects at prosecution, and moves around from address to address, and stranger-on-stranger homicide conviction rate in places like Chicago well below 50%. Honest citizen has mortgage, child in school ,and a day job, very easy for police to fuck with them if they dare fight back, which makes criminals even more violent and bold as they rely on many of them overwhelming the tiny minority that will fight back.
All of civilization exists due to the threat of violence. There's no need to negotiate peacefully when you can just take what you want. It's the violence that makes it happen. Negotiate, because if you don't there's no telling who's gonna be left standing.
If people are breaking locks and stealing property in plain sight right in front of other people, it's because they think society has become so soft they won't do anything about it.
And frankly, the average person won't. They'll probably just stand there shocked at the event unfolding before them. Or they'll try to "stand up" to the criminal, only to end up insulting his masculinity or something, thereby getting themselves killed for the insult. Yes, criminals kill people who disrespect them.
If you're gonna do this, you have to be prepared to use lethal force against another human being. The vast majority of people are not. They're better off calling the cops, whose entire purpose is to be that person.
> If you're gonna do this, you have to be prepared to use lethal force against another human being.
Many people, me included, would gladly do that, if they were allowed to. The problem is that when dust settle, the criminal will remain a criminal with one more record in his file, but the whole legal system will steamroll me if I don't precisely calculate force in split second and apply 3N more than absolute necessary minimum.
Here in Canada there were cases when people defended themselves and ended up in legal kafkaesque hell, imposed by country. Even after acquitted of all charges, they would spend lifetime savings, lose jobs and actually have to rebuilt their lives from almost zero.
We voted for all of this and I don't understand how it happened. Aliens dispersed something so we all became that stupid?
> Many people, me included, would gladly do that, if they were allowed to.
Doubt. Many people certainly think they would. In a real situation, they'd hesitate.
I don't even mean that in a disrespectful way. Taking lives traumatizes professional soldiers. It has enormous psychological costs. If you do it, you will live with it until the end of your days.
I'm not speaking out against guns and self-defense either. Better to be traumatized than dead. Weapons are a requirement for basic human dignity. Just pointing out the fact that it's not that simple.
> Here in Canada there were cases when people defended themselves and ended up in legal kafkaesque hell, imposed by country.
My country is the same. The absurdities produced by the "justice" system are maddening.
I remember one case where a person had his house burglarized dozens of times. The "justice" system didn't do shit about it. He got so fed up he booby trapped his own home and killed the criminal when he tried to victimize him again. Suddenly police, prosecutors and judges found the will to act and vigorously condemned him for cold blooded murder. It's the kind of thing that makes me wish a meteor would strike this country and reset it back to the stone age.
As for why it happens... I've thought about it for way too long and I don't have a definitive answer for you. I think it's because people want to prevent the abyss from gazing into them as they combat the darkness. My conclusion is that we should have some very dark people of our own, pointed right at the abyss, perpetually staring it down into submission.
I fought in the Syrian Civil War (with the YPG) and the effects on the ISIS enemy has not bothered me a single day of my life. This is over a decade ago and I've never lost a single second of sleep over it. In fact I often dream about going back and fucking them over even more, as it was one of the happiest moments of my life, even though like 10%+ of the people I was with ended up dead.
The tracer rounds flying at the enemy at night, absolutely exquisite, brings a joy like the 4th of July.
Your characterization of Brazil leads me to believe that "people like me" would be better off just living in the favela and joining a gang, as at least then you could have some chance to defend yourself and the government would not be able to enforce their anarcho-tyranny. Which sucks, but leaves me wondering if they're even acting irrationally.
I suspect, somewhere in brazil, there is a group of people that have adopted the practices of the drug traffickers of soft secession, but actually do it for a righteous cause, and are getting away with it, as long as they are not too noisy about it. They have learned the tactics work, and rather than trying a seemingly futile effort to steer the government in their favor they ultimately likely came to the same conclusions as the drug traffickers as to how to gain control of their community and perhaps even their own lives.
Sad part is... You probably would be better off joining a gang. We'd all probably be better off. They just keep winning. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't tempted to just give up and become a criminal myself instead of insisting on this upstanding-citizen-in-corrupt-shithole life. My father didn't raise me to be a criminal and sometimes I curse that fact.
Rio de Janeiro is in a state akin to civil war literally right now. Apparently the drug gangs have discovered drones. They're using drones to drop grenades on top of each other and on top of police. Nearly a hundred dead as of right now.
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