vvilld

@vvilld@lemmy.dbzer0.com

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How Will We Know If The Trump Tariffs Were A Good Idea?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Your degree of credulity should be criminal.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Instead of Orange Man doing Tariffs would it not have been better for him to talk about shopping locally and so forth. And giving more tax breaks to companies that stay and sell in the US?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  You seem to be operating under the misplaced assumption that Trump’s goal with the tariffs was to actually bring manufacturing back to the US or improve the US economy in any way. It’s understandable if you haven’t paid very close attention to Trump over the past 9 years. But whenever thinking about him or his policies, you have to keep one thing top of mind: Trump is a habitual liar who only cares about his own personal wealth and power.

  He’s not trying to bring manufacturing back to the US or improve the US economy. He’s doing market manipulation to increase his wealth and that of those who helped get him into power. He doesn’t give a shit about you or me or any of the rest of us. He couldn’t care less if the US crumbled into dust tomorrow, so long as he’s still on top.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why am I seeing political ads for Donald Trump in April of the year of his second inauguration?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Trump has stated many times he’ll serve a third term. Told people they’d “never need to vote again.” He fully plans on being President untill he dies.

  Hell, his official website is selling Trump 2028 merch.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As a child of the 90s we grew up with PC Political Correctness. Is that WOKE but just in a different form?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re right, but in the way Republicans/the right uses them, they are identical.

  Every few years they change up the terminology. After PC it became SJW. Then it became CRT. Then woke. Now it’s transitioning to DEI. In a few years they’ll change to a new term.

  But, to them it all means the same thing “anything supporting non-white people, lgbtq people, and/or women.”

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨As a child of the 90s we grew up with PC Political Correctness. Is that WOKE but just in a different form?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, they’re the same thing.

  As others have noted, the original definitions and origins were different. However, both terms came to be appropriated by right wing politics to mean (generously) “too liberal” or (more realistically) “associated with non-white people and/or women”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why am I seeing political ads for Donald Trump in April of the year of his second inauguration?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  This has ALWAYS been a key feature of fascist regimes throughout history: operating as if you’re always running for election. Mussolini and Hitler both continued to hold big rallies even after they’d officially suspended voting. It’s a big part of how they keep their base engaged.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is the NFL draft day so "special"?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  More like Prime Day or Black Friday.

  While Valentine’s Day is heavily marketed and focused on consumer materialism now, it was actually celebrated as a religious holiday for well over a thousand years. It’s more an example of an existing celebration that got turned into something commercialized by capitalism.

  Where as the NFL Draft, Prime Day, and Black Friday are “celebrations” wholly invented for the purpose of commercialized consumerism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why is the NFL draft day so "special"?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  The NFL preseason to Super Bowl lasts about 6 months. That means they were going about 6 months after the Super Bowl with no significant events or anything else to draw revenue. So the people who run the NFL wanted to do something that could drive revenue during that half-year when they aren’t playing games.

  So they marketed the hell out of the draft. They turned it into a big media event so they could sell sponsorships and put it on TV so they can sell ads.

  It’s entirely a manufactured event to drive revenue.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the next stop on the authoritarianism express?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I think you have a much higher opinion of French political culture than is warranted.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the point in getting married?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m generally curious why people get married beyond the “because I love them” when it costs so much money.

  Getting married doesn’t have to cost virtually anything. Really just the application fee to get a marriage license. The specific price will vary by state, and even by county (within the US, not sure how it works outside). Where I live, you can go to a courthouse and get married for $35.

  If you plan to have kids, there are a lot of legal reasons why it’s just a lot simpler to have kids. The same applies without them, to a lesser degree, but with kids it’s just so much more of a hassle to not be married.

  You’re right that you can achieve most (maybe even all?) legal benefits of marriage through trusts, wills, etc. But that’s a hell of a lot more work, and the lawyer fees, filing fees, and application fees are almost certainly going to cost you more than a cheap courthouse marriage. Not to mention the added work for yourself.

  Beyond all that, though, the single biggest reason I wanted to get married and have a wedding with lots of friends and family was to stand up in front of everyone and profess my love for my (now) wife, let her do the same for me, then have big party with all our friends and family to celebrate it. There’s nothing wrong with spending money to throw a party for something you want to celebrate.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Did the western world just suddenly go back to pretending wrestling is "real" for some reason?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I mean, you see the same kind of thing with scripted television where there’s no kayfabe at all. We recently got the season finale of Daredevil Born Again, and there were all kinds of posts/comments/etc talking about how satisfying/bad ass it was to see Daredevil and Punisher beat down a bunch of cops. We all know it’s scripted fiction, but it’s still fun to watch.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why hasn't congress passed a law saying that you can only deport people *back to their own country*?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Because both Houses of Congress are controlled by Republicans who are 100% in support of everything the regime is doing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨34% of the US population doesn't vote. Why do polticalitcians cling to the idea that these voters can't be reached?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Why do polticalitcians cling to the idea that these voters can’t be reached?

  They don’t. At least not the politicians who tend to do well. Reaching people who had never voted in any previous election was the central strategy to both Obama’s and Trump’s campaigns, and those were the two most successful electoral politicians in national American politics of the past 2 decades.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If spez manipulated reddit in the right way could he ignite a revolution?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  No

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I get that america is failing if it's duty to suppress the rise of fascist but did the rest of the world just put all its eggs in the america basket?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Bretton Woods wasn’t about military protection. It was about stabilizing the global economy and monetary system. It absolutely gave the US a ton of economic influence, but it didn’t have anything to do with military protection. The Soviet Union even took part in the negotiations that turned into the Bretton Woods Agreement, although they chose not to sign the treaty.

  The US’ military hegemony came out of NATO, the Cold War, and the Marshall Plan.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I get that america is failing if it's duty to suppress the rise of fascist but did the rest of the world just put all its eggs in the america basket?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, it all built out of WW2. After WW2 pretty much all of Europe was in shambles. Most major cities had been bombed at least once, many far more than that. Infrastructure all across the continent was destroyed. The industrial capacity was destroyed. Armies had marched, pillaged, and destroyed first out of Germany across Europe, then back across Europe into Germany. The US was uniquely positioned as the only world power that didn’t suffer massive economic devastation from the war. In fact, due to stuff like the lend-lease act and massive industrial mobilization for the war effort, the US was experiencing a massive economic boom while Europe and east Asia were in a depression.

  But in the aftermath of the war the Cold War set in. The USSR and Allied powers (led by the US) drew lines in the sand and established their areas of influence. The US instituted the Marshall Plan in Europe which essentially just shotgunned money at western Europe to rebuild as much as possible as quickly as possible. This had a massive positive economic impact on western Europe, but it also ensured that so much of Europe would be dependent on American products and companies. If your rebuilt power grid was made with American parts, then anything new would have to be compatible with that, ensuring your country is a long-term customer of American products. At the same time, the US and western Europe created NATO as a military pact against the Soviet Union, which further strengthened the western alliance. Again, with the US as the only major western power with a larger and more powerful army after the war than before, the US took the leading role in NATO.

  Another major factor that most people tend to overlook was the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944. This was an effort to stabilize the global economy and monetary system after WW2. It said that the US would readopt the gold standard (we had abandoned it during the war, and would later permanently abandon it in the early 70s), then every other western-aligned country would use the US dollar as the basis for their currency. Think of it like a gold-standard, but instead of gold, they used US dollars. This gave the US enormous economic influence because everybody needed US dollars to maintain their economies, and the only way to get them was to do business with the US.

  This created the conditions that the US expanded and exploited over the second half of the 20th century to cement ourselves as the dominant western world power. Through colonialism and Cold War dynamics, the US and USSR forced most of the global south to pick a side, and often forced regime change when they didn’t like the choice countries made.

  Then the Soviet Union fell and the US was the only global superpower left remaining. Over the 90s and early 00s a lot of formerly Soviet-aligned countries hitched their wagons to the US since it was the only game left in town.

  So, yes, much of the rest of the world put their eggs in the America basket, but it wasn’t recently, it didn’t happen all at once, and, at the time at least, there were other factors that went into those decisions.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I feel like if asbestos was banned today there'd be a huge pro-asbestos movement⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There’d be motherfuckers on TikTok snorting lines of asbestos

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I make Lemmy feel less dead?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Maybe it’s because I’m not in IT and don’t write code, since an overwhelming number of posts seem to be directed at coders/IT professionals, but most posts on all just aren’t interesting to me.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I make Lemmy feel less dead?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  With hall that filtered, how does anything even show up? I feels like there’s 10 new posts a day, and 7 of them are about American politics. (Obvious exaggeration)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This is a big part of how it’s become so pervasive lately, although the racists have been complaining about the same thing for a very long time. The internet and influencer culture has allowed them to monetize the outrage in ways that weren’t possible before.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  You’re not crazy, and it’s not new. The current buzz word is “DEI”, but they’ve been doing the same thing since before any of us were alive. Before DEI it was Woke. Before that it was Critical Race Theory (CRT). Before that it was Social Justice Warriors (SJW). Before that it was Politically Correct (PC). Before that they used terms which are less polite.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who would win in a fight, a Gorilla or a Bear of equal weight?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In a magical hypothetical world where we could make this happen without it being absurdly cruel to the animals, I’d love to see it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who would win in a fight, a Gorilla or a Bear of equal weight?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s not a species of animal. That’s the living embodiment of a fundamental force of nature. No mortal, man nor beast, can defeat one.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Who would win in a fight, a Gorilla or a Bear of equal weight?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think a grizzly bear or a polar bear would take it. Any other bear it’s going to the gorilla.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Is this picture idea immature?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Yes, it’s 100% immature, which is exactly why you should do it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From a purely political perspective, if you oppose the US tariffs as a US resident, should you buy or avoid buying products subject to tariffs?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My bad. Thanks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From a purely political perspective, if you oppose the US tariffs as a US resident, should you buy or avoid buying products subject to tariffs?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Again, you got that kind of money? I live outside DC, so not close to an international border. In fact, most Americans don’t live somewhere they can travel across the border easily. And with the way the government is denying entry to people with the wrong level of melatonin, I don’t think it’s particularly safe advice to tell people to start crossing the border regularly.

  And most people in the US do not fly for vacations. It’s very expensive to fly, and most of us have cars we can take. I’m planning a family vacation later this year to visit my grandparents ~700 miles away. We priced it out and discovered it’s actually cheaper for us to rent an RV and drive than to fly. Flying, especially internationally for a shopping trip, is an extreme luxury for most of us.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From a purely political perspective, if you oppose the US tariffs as a US resident, should you buy or avoid buying products subject to tariffs?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Because that’s realistic advice. You have money for be to buy a plane ticket every time I need groceries? Who’s going to fund everyone moving to another country? You got that kind of money? Because I don’t.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should visitors to a country (tourist / visa-holders / people staying temporarily) have the right to criticize the government? When should an immigrant have the right to criticize the government?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Since it’s clear we’re talking about the US here, the 1st Amendment clearly states (emphasis added):

  Congress shall make no law respecting … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

  It says nothing about citizens, tourists, foreign nationals, etc. In fact, the amendment only limits what Congress can do (and the Supremacy clause extends this to the states). It doesn’t say “Citizens have the right to free speech.” It says “Congress shall pass no laws abridging the freedom of speech.”

  It’s pretty clear that anyone and everyone has the right to free speech and assembly. The right wingers you’re talking about are trying to rewrite the first amendment to justify their fascism.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨From a purely political perspective, if you oppose the US tariffs as a US resident, should you buy or avoid buying products subject to tariffs?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly, as an individual there really isn’t much you can do with your purchasing power about it.

  Next national day of protest in April 19. Find the largest one you are able to attend and join in.