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[–] [S] 168 points 7 months ago (80 children)

He later said: “So, we need, I, I would really, I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory because it is their territory, it’s the place from which they get their energy and they should come and they should help us protect it.”

Then came the line that quickly sparked reaction online:

“You could make the case that maybe we shouldn’t even be there at all because we don’t need it.”

It's Iran's terrority, and Iran is defending it after being attacked...

But I really think he's getting pressure from Christian extremists to abandon Israel. Their endgame was always Israel getting wiped out by its neighbors to start Armageddon and rapture Christians.

If no one joins against Iran, trump will likely try to slink away and Bibi holding the bag.

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  • [–] 68 points 7 months ago (52 children)

    And he threatened NATO, who by all his accounts "stood back from the front lines" When Article 5 was called during the bullshit second Gulf War. And now he DEMANDS they help. Sure buddy.

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  • [–] [S] 81 points 7 months ago (50 children)

    I just love the quote:

    So, we need, I, I would really, I’m demanding...

    He starts with needing help, starts to say he just really wants it, then pivota to demanding it.

    The fact that he went thru those steps shows how much pressure he's facing.

    His two biggest wings of influence has been Israel and American christo-fascists, if they start pulling him in opposite ways, he can't hold onto both.

    He's fucked, but so are the rest of us by extension. Hopefully just till midterms at least.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago

    I feel like it is more basic than that.

    I think his quote transitioning from asking for help to demanding others “step up” just reveals something he was taught early on—“never show weakness”.

    Along with “never admit wrong doing” and “deny ‘til you die”, if you just set a simpleton up with a few basic, immoral, rules and hundreds of millions of dollars, you get Trump.

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  • [–] 44 points 7 months ago (18 children)

    The thing is, as a foreigner, and speaking bluntly, this is on the entire American population, voting him in once was one thing, but not dealing with Jan 6 harshly under Bidens administration did nothing more than encourage them and their billionaire backers. IF there's no false flag operation to cancel the midterms and IF presidential elections are held and the democrats get into power, you lot are going to have to overhaul your entire system to ensure another Trump doesn't happen. And honestly speaking I can't realistically see that happening.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 7 months ago* (13 children)

    The thing is, as a foreigner, and speaking bluntly, this is on the entire American population

    No problem.

    To put it bluntly I don't expect Americans to understand our political system, so I'm not surprised when foreigners clearly don't. Shits complicated and nonsensical

    I just wish more would ask questions instead of sharing uninformed opinions as facts, but maga thinking isn't reserved for Americans...

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (12 children)

    In the age of misinformation and people using influencers and podcasters as "news and information" it's become the norm unfortunately. I tend to try and get as broad a view as possible and filter out the bullshit. And admittedly I don't understand the PAC system or the electoral college, and I can't condone lobbying as we've seen it's detrimental effect on general rights to Americans as well as pushing policy. Again, these don't affect us as foreigners, but they tend to push certain policies that end up with wider reaching effects.

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  • [–] [S] 13 points 7 months ago (8 children)

    or the electoral college

    That's the part that's relevant...

    Whether a state goes 51% of 100%, counts the same.

    This leads to depressed turnout and obviously no elections being on "all Americans". Most of our votes for president don't matter because most states go one way or the other.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] [S] 8 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    That's not even the worst...

    Our House of representatives is supposed to make up for it, but each rep represents over 20x the people they did when the country was founded.

    The reason we lost so much representation, is the room they occasionally meet in would be too cramped if they kept adding chairs to it.

    But just in general, it's almost always best to blame political leaders for a government's actions and not just blame every person living there.

    Good and bad.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    the cap on House seats was a deliberate move to restrict the power of cities/progressive forces of the time, it wasnt some accident/short-sightedness

    make it more expensive to campaign (because you have to reach so many more people) and you effectively force out independent canidates

    even if House seats were increased to something sane like 150-200k pop/seat (currently at 800k+, iirc), the senate effectively gives 2/3rds of national political power to 1/3rd of the country. there is no means for the House to completely bypass the Senate

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    Whether a state goes 51% of 100%, counts the same.

    While the Electoral college has it's own major issues. Awarding of the votes is done because 48 State Legislatures believe all the votes should go to the winner. Maine and Nebraska award their vote on a semi-proportional system. A true proportional system would go a long way of addressing some of the major issues such as a someone's Presidential vote being utterly meaningless. A Republican in California or Democrat in Idaho. (https://electoralvotemap.com/which-states-split-their-electoral-votes/)

    This is the problem when people say "Vote Blue". Sure voting Democrat/Republican for US House or lower elections does matter, Senate and Presidential elections? If you live in a Red State, a vote for the Senate or President is completely meaningless in having a say of who gets elected.

    Sure, states flip from red to blue and vice versa. However, that only happens if Parties really invest in that state to change it. Parties don't have unlimited funds, they pay attention to swing states which would have a better return on investment.

    It's the inherent flaw of first past the post/winner take all style of voting.

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  • [–] 6 points 7 months ago

    considering the state of mainstream american news, pretty sure those listening to "influencers" are better informed. especially as far as iran/isreal/american imperialism in general is concerned

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago (29 children)

    you still think voting will get you out of the fascism you invited in?

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  • [–] 16 points 7 months ago (17 children)

    Of course not. If the first move on a chess board was to simply take your opponent’s king, that would always be the first move in every game.

    Having the midterm vote suppressed is just one sacrificial pawn in the direction of what needs to be done to eradicate fascism.

    Knowing what to do isn’t that valuable if you don’t time it correctly. It’s not just one person or party. It is systemic and requires a critical mass of history to be successful.

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago (9 children)

    There’s plenty of local calls for a general strike, but the media (social, mainstream, all of them) are actively squashing it because they’re owned by the billionaires who are the true benefactors of fascism.

    Plus the fact that close to 60% of us would just be flat broke if we miss a paycheck, it’s not an easy hill to get over.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    The news did a very effective job of nullifying the No Kings protests. Hard to get a unified movement in a country larger than Europe going when it doesn't even get on the nightly news.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    "Do it when people are working, not when they are able to attend."

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago* (2 children)

    Obligatory reminder that the US is geographically monstrous and organizing a nationwide strike of enough people would be extremely difficult to pull off. We're also extremely tied to our employment for little luxuries like healthcare, and we have very weak worker protection laws, and right now seems like an especially bad time to lose your job protesting for the sake of the half of the country that absolutely loves what Trump is doing, whether they admit it openly or not.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    A lot of us are organizing and are going out pretty much every weekend to protests. I tell people as often as I can, especially my trans and bipoc friends; now is the time. Get a couple guns (a long one and a short one) and learn how to use them. Learn some basic first aid, you really just need to know how to stabilize someone. Start networking with like-minded people in your communities. The police will not protect us, they’ve proven they’ll happily club senior citizens to the ground and shoot any protesters in the face with rubber bullets while escorting a rightwing murderer to safety. Iran was a secular, liberal state until almost 1980 when they (mostly legitimately) elected an Islamist theocracy; it could happen here.

    Our current situation really is the culmination of almost 70 years of rightwing efforts. It’s a long listen but worth checking out How Conservatism Won by Robert Evans. He lays out in a clear concise way “how a consortium of rich failsons got together to fund a network of right wing think tanks and shift American culture in a fun new direction. (note: it was not actually fun at all).” They’ve been very successful and those think tanks are now pipelines used to funnel ideological purists into powerful positions like our current Supreme Court.

    The shadowy cabals the rightwing says are behind everything is classic projection again, they're controlled by shadowy cabals of rich people. One of the primary ghouls/traitors responsible for the attempted overthrow of our government on J6 was Roger Stone, the same traitorous ratfucker who began his career working for Nixon and has a fucking Nixon tattoo on his back. It's really impossible to overstate how bad these people are and they're winning.

    The coup was successful, they're in power and if they don't want to give it up they won't.

    Get to know people in your community. Take an interest in growing food, learn how to fix things. Establish secondary lines of communication and start preparing.

    https://generalstrikeus.com/

    https://www.dsausa.org/

    https://pslweb.org/

    https://mutualaiddisasterrelief.org/

    https://socialistra.org/

    https://www.socialistalternative.org/

    https://afsc.org/news/how-create-mutual-aid-network

    https://www.immigrantdefenseproject.org/raids/

    https://mutualaidhub.org/

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Maybe if people actually showed the fuck up it might. But there's so many "voting doesn't do shit" people that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

    The way I see it, there are 3 choices.

    1. Vote (effectively). If you still have a glimmer of hope that things can be changed for the better, you need to be doing this. Job one is to keep republicans out of power, vote for whomever is going to beat them. Job 2 is to push Democrats further left in the primaries. Mamdani showed us that this can happen, reluctantly at first, but the party will respond to its voters. Key word there is "voters" if you don't vote, they don't know about you, and won't give a fuck about you.

    2. Disruption. I can't in good faith call for violence, but if you genuinely believe it is impossible to fix the system by voting, you need to be in the streets disrupting day to day operation of the system that oppresses you. Protest, strike, squat, whatever you gotta do, but you can't do it halfway. If you aren't literally ready to fight for your life then, this option isn't for you.

    3. Do nothing. You can just sit around and bitch about things. Whatever happens is (almost) equally your fault as it is the people who voted for it. You'll end up against the wall just like the other two groups, but it will take the nazis you left the door open for, a little bit longer to get around to you. I've got no respect for the people in this group, no one should TBH.

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  • [–] 45 points 7 months ago (10 children)

    Man I am so fucking ready for the Nationalist Christians to become huge fucking pariahs as a direct result of all of the idiocy that they’ve been pushing

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  • [–] 16 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    by then the world may be literally cooked.

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  • [–] 12 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    Oh boy do I have terrible news about runaway climate change

    It was 80 degrees here yesterday and its snowing right now as I type this.

    And this is the best our climate will be for the rest of our lives 🙃

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    we had roughly the same (only with a non-oppressive temperature scale). Last night I had to toss snow onto my driveway so i wouldn't have a sheet of glare ice where things had previously melted.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Christian Nationalism (fascism) is on the rise globally.

    Because less than a dozen humans with more money than god control the global media.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)

    Alright High and Mighty my point with putting fascism in parentheses was mostly to say that what we are dealing with globally is Fascism. Just that where I am it has presented itsself as Christian Nationalism.

    Wrapped in the flag carrying a bible and all that.

    Its why they are so terrified of James Talarico. Because he is everything they are pretending to be and stands a real chance of breaking the masses illusion that American Christian Nationalists are either Christian or Nationalist.

    They are neither. They are fascists only loyal to their leader. Not to their God. Certainly not to their country.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (7 children)

    Waitasec, I'm no expert, but I thought the whole Rapture thing required all the Jewish people to be gathered into one place first. So, they literally require every Jewish person in America to be deported to Israel for their whole process to even begin.

    Did I misunderstand something?

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  • [–] 15 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Did I misunderstand something?

    Yeah, the fact that the Rapture is 19th-century snake-juggler fanfic which has no biblical basis besides insane free association based on a few ambiguous phrases here and there. Also, the guy who wrote Revelation was definitely mentally ill and obsessed with revenge.

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  • [–] 11 points 7 months ago (3 children)

    Sure. But it's legitimacy is irrelevant so long as they believe it, which they do.

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  • [–] 4 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    I'd say the provenance of those beliefs is relevant, since it tells you what kind of rubes we're talking about. A 2000-year-old religion is one thing, even if its foundational beliefs are mythical. Some half-assed bullshit cobbbled together by a gaggle of late-19th-century and early-20th-century hucksters doesn't even have the excuse that at least they built a few cathedrals, wrote some good music and did some good paintings, along with all the life-denying superstition and oppression.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    I think the point is if what they believe in is a string of randomly connected bits of fiction, it’s not too much of a leap to think that they would omit or include a new bit of fiction to fit whatever the situation currently is.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago*

    Not sure why you took that in a hostile manner when no hostility was intended.

    It wasn’t really directed at you and I only took a part of the statement (which I’ve heard a lot from different sources) to make that observation.

    Edit: A shame that text doesn’t adequately convey tone. No ill will my friend.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    He later said: “So, we need, I, I would really, I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory because it is their territory, it’s the place from which they get their energy and they should come and they should help us protect it.”

    Sure, you fucked up everything, but other countries have to resolve the situation that you created.

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  • It’s Iran’s terrority, and Iran is defending it after being attacked…

    Reminds me of an old cartoon. Teacher is separating two boys who were fighting and says "Billy, who started the fight?" Billy answers "Tommy started it! He hit me back!"

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