ReallyActuallyFrankenstein @ ReallyActuallyFrankenstein @lemmynsfw.com

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Joined

2 yr. ago

"Pie fights"

Sorry, I thought the joke was implicit in your question, but the analog to "Lemmites" is "Piefites" which I think is just fine because say it out loud.

The problem quickly becomes the state's monopoly on violence, which is the core defining feature of a nation.

People can band together and form their own voluntary systems of governance, but the moment they need to enforce anything, which is inevitable even to settle good faith disagreements, it will break down.

The inevitable result of a parallel system of governance is civil war.

Billionaire oligarchs do flex their muscle, but when that happens, we usually hear about it because (a) reporters do predominantly have a "journalistic code" that they try to live by, and (b) there're too many people involved for it not to leak when suppression actively happens.

I think instead, reporters are chilled by pressure in general and become overcautious while rationalizing it as their code. E.g., Trump is a litigious psychopath, an aspiring and now active authoritarian, and reporters probably generally know that. And they wouldn't "cowe" to threats of retribution. But the anxiety of those threats makes them hyper-aware when they write an article, and then overcompensate by removing "bias" when it is merely bias towards reality. Consciously, they are still independent. But effectively, they are pulling punches.

That's how manipulative sociopaths use threats of retribution - it isn't just "I'll make your life hell if you oppose me" and a direct obedience. No, the victim rebels, feels anger, resentment, plans revenge. But over time, they also change their behavior, even if they feel it's tactical and temporary ("pick your battles").

I say this not to be pedantic. I think it's really important to understand what's happening here. "Oligarchs control media" is true in some cases, and I agree it's an enormous problem - that itself is part of the chilling anxiety reporters feel to "triple check" their material, and centralized power is always its own problem - but we have to identify the disease properly if we want to find a cure.

To be honest, the poster is "SPU," so this is probably 90% to promote the site. (Not that I really care that much in this case, I like South Park and think episodes that have Muhammad in them should still be available despite religious extremists being upset.)

The US media doesn't know how to reconcile legitimate institutions being used for objectively illegitimate ends.

Rightly, the media should report solely on the facts, but there is no mandate that reporters cannot use basic powers of reasoning and cannot draw inherent conclusions from undeniable premises. They can and should note the foundational point that these actions are incompatible with the DOJ mandate to seek public redress for criminal action based on factual investigation and evidence, and therefore are not legitimate. These moves are political choices first and legal justification backfill second.

Instead, when we have a nihilistic force wielding the DOJ for corrupt ends, reporters feels they can only describe what is happening, like a passive camera lens, unless relegated to "opinion" articles. And that is where this is all falling apart.

What do you mean? An African or European moose?

Well, I just nouned your verb right back to the way it was, checkmate.

I know Walz/Harris was impossible given the Biden lead-up and Harris running the show after, but if Walz was the ticket leader I think Trump would have lost.

Trump is a dark triad personality wearing a working-man's death mask, and his base sees it and marvels at how "real" he is. But Walz knows how to actually be real, actually communicate like a regular guy, and is just good in the way middle America likes to imagine itself.

His Harris campaign bounce following "weird" would likely have held the swing state firewall, until Harris decided she wanted to bring in Liz Cheney and put a muzzle on Walz to not offend (or inspire) anyone. Given our poor Democrat name recognition options (Harris, Newsom...Jefferies?), maybe Walz is our best hope, if we somehow make it to a fair election in 2028.

A convicted felon's personal attorney interviewed another convicted felon, and they all agreed that neither convicted felon did anything wrong.

News at 11.

Where did you move to?

If anyone has seen Tetris of late, that film paints Maxwell and his cronies in an appropriate light.

Oh my god, I didn't realize this was the same Maxwell. Depicted with cartoonish levels of nefariousness maybe just one step under Baron Harkonnen.

Pretty much Putin's dream, Russia's biggest adversary voluntarily and arbitrarily committing suicide.

(Or about as voluntary as most convenient suicides benefiting Putin.)

This is a great idea, Elon. Please put all your money into this, be brave, bet everything.

I think it's more complex than that. I think it's accurate that the majority of mainstream reporting writers are actually liberal (or left, but definitions get pretty sticky).

This left bias coincides with a bias towards reality. The problem is that they are trained to remove bias from their reporting, and in removing their left bias when reporting on the left, their also remove their reality bias.

To recap:

• The DOJ is pushed by alleged humans Donald Trump and Stephen Miller who are transparently irrationally racist and xenophobic to prosecute randos without due process or probable cause.
• Throne-sniffer Marco Rubio has a great idea to make prosecutions more cruel and simpler by ignoring the Constitution by the pretext of "Well, it's fine if we kidnap and traffic them to El Salvador first."
• They obviously make mistakes and deport people to El Salvador.
• Pam Bondi, Trump's personal attorney who controls the DOJ, fires the attorney who has the temerity to admit the truth about one of these deportations in court, which by the way just fulfills the most basic ethical duty of being an attorney.
• She doubles down and claims hyperbolic criminal conduct with non-credible manufactured evidence to save face.
• The DOJ loses a Supreme Court ruling and again refuses to return him, hoping the public forgets.
• The public annoyingly doesn't forget. Eventually, they decide its better optics to return him and prosecute him for their made-up crime.
• He returns, and is kept in jail by his own lawyers' recommendation because the DOJ intends to immediately arrest and deport him to a country with even less transparency and respect for human rights.
• This is made public and apparently the DOJ backs off enough to allow him to return home, but then threatens permanent extraterritorial imprisonment in an even worse, more lawless way, to coerce a guilty plea so that they can say they were right all along.

This explains fascism in a nutshell. A handful of people arbitrarily wield the powers of the entire country to terrorize individuals because they are too developmentally stunted to even admit the possibility of their own fallibility, or self-reflect in any meaningful way, and the entire nation is bent to their unconscious id, causing abuse, death, and traumatic distress to countless people, all to avoid the chosen few having to experience even the barest psychological discomfort.

Some days I just don't know how we'll get through this.

Did the African American ladies have tears in their eyes when they begged, Trump?

That's option 1 above. That train left the station long ago, unfortunately.

This is so stupid. Here's the other quote from the article you need to keep in mind:

Maxwell insisted she was unaware of any sexual contact between Epstein and minors or any other type of “non-consensual” sexual activity. But she said she now recognizes some of those things may have happened outside her presence.

“I’m not saying that Mr. Epstein did not do those things,” she said. “I don’t feel comfortable saying that today, given what I now know to be true. So I am not here to defend him. But what I can say is that I did not participate in that activity.”

Maxwell also acknowledged Epstein’s interest in women changed over time, moving toward younger women and even teenagers.

“I never understood that change to encompass children. I did see from when I met him, he was involved … however you want to characterize it, with women who were in their 20s. And then the slide to, you know, 18 or younger looking women. But I never considered that this would encompass criminal behavior,” she said.

So good news! Epstein is innocent too. He never did anything criminal! Completely credible testimony from a completely credible witness.