Donald Trump’s new security directive labels anti-capitalist beliefs as a predictor of political violence. The irony: left-wing structural analysis actually pushes people away from lone-wolf attacks and toward mass organizing for change.

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[–] 85 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I hereby characterize MAGA as early dementia.

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  • [–] 178 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    This makes me think of the of the right wingers calling themselves deplorable or terrorists in response to being labeled as such.

    Let's not own up to their labels, let's reject everything they have to say rather than amplify their messaging.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    You make a decent point.

    However, when I made this, my thought process was that they are arresting people for using their first amendment rights while peacefully protesting. Now, the regime is planning to arrest people for "pre-crime". People will absolutely be arrested and charged as a domestic terrorist on the basis that they don't like fascism (Antifa). It's a lot like how they labeled people dangerous subversive communists during the second red scare.

    But also, I think it's preferable to litterally do crime against a fascist state then to comply.

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  • [–] 108 points 1 year ago (8 children)

    Since when is there even such a thing as a "political crime", let alone any kind of "pre-crime"?

    You can't criminalize someone's political beliefs, unless you're talking about making "thought crimes" a thing. And last time I checked "pre-crime" implies you haven't actually committed any crimes yet...which makes you not actually guilty of anything.

    This whole fucking premise is based on stupidity.

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  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago

    This whole fucking premise is based on stupidity control and power.

    FTFY

    See, if it were based on stupidity, that would imply these measures are based on good faith efforts to solve a real problem.

    What we have here is fabricated issues being "solved" with measures that don't need to make sense. They just need it to give them more power, more control. It doesn't matter if they look "stupid". They aren't acting in good faith to begin with.

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  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago

    This is the entire goal of Palantir, presictive policing using mass surveillance data on citizens. Tie in digital ID and you have an even worse version of the CCP's Social Credit system.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Just wait until the dream police come, get jailed for dream crimes.

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  • [–] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    You joke, but my wife gets mad at me for stuff I did in HER dreams, sometimes. The injustice is real.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Omg for real. To be fair, I'm a huge prick in her dreams.

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  • My partner has face blindness, mine is one of a handful of faces that she recognizes on their own because I have a facial feature that's distinctive enough that she recognizes it. So I am a frequent character in her dreams. Luckily she's not the type to get mad at me for something I did in her dreams.

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    [–] 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    "classifies" as a crime?

    What does that even mean?

    He isn't a lawmaker.

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  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Lol, okay, to enforce that, they'd need to spend hundreds of billions on new prisons and police--oh.

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  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago* (8 children)

    Okay, now it's Nineteen Eighty-Four. With hints of Minority Report, Fahrenheit 451, Brazil, and our old friend Idiocracy, of course.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I used to scoff at the comparison to Idiocracy but at this point I'd actually prefer that timeline.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    President Camacho cared about his people, recognized problems, and deferred to the knowledge of people he openly admitted were smarter than him to fix them.

    I would much prefer a Camacho over a Trump right about now.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Every day I hope he gets Julius Caesar'd. Every day... disappointment.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago

    Thought crime is here.

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  • [–] 14 points 1 year ago
    [–] 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    anti-Christianity

    Alrighty, but you realize this applies to all your supporters, your cabinet members, all your sycophantic gun waiving morons right? RIGHT!?!

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    This guy realises fuck all. His brain is mush, and his body is so fucked that he's glad when he only shits himself 7 times in a day.

    The disgusting orange turd is only alive through the power of his hatred for everyone and everything. He's going down fast and he's destroying as much of it as he can while he can.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    what a great article! a breath of fresh air and I suspect that in writing it, the author just added themselves to a list....

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    New eyewitness photos, surreptitiously captured from inside The White House:

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  • [–] 58 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    That's funny because Trump isn't a capitalist. In an open market, his businesses fail. He needs government interferencey China style.

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  • [–] 28 points 1 year ago (5 children)
  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I remember running around twenty years ago asking people (generally educated successful people) how they define capitalism.

    Most people are not 100% sure, so they usually guess some form of market and blend it with consumerism.

    My guess is that most of this came from Mikhail Gorbachev advertising for Pizza Hut.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    There's a fundamental contradiction in the definition of a free market. To some, it means a competitive market. To some, it means an unregulated market. But there can be no competitive market without regulation: without regulation, it almost immediately degenerates into oligopoly and anticompetitive market-rigging among the players. Businesses hate nothing more than they hate competition.

    That great cheerleader of capitalism Adam Smith (the original guy, not the twat using his name now) knew that.

    "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."

    That's from his classic work, The Wealth of Nations.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Exactly, if the demand isn't/can't be flexible (eg healthcare, housing) then no matter the amount of competition on the supply side will balance things out in an unregulated market in the long term.

    Everyone with the freedom of choice is on the supply side, and everyone on that side benefits from higher prices.
    And there is no other metric of success other than profit.
    (Nobody has the incentive to undercut the competition unless for later monopoly reasons. But the same manoeuvre can be achieved cheaper via mergers without the loss of revenue due to lower margins.)

    That's why healthcare was a problem (with a constantly giant inflation) in the USA even before all the consolidations.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago

    That's a very narrow definition of capitalism. If free markets hinder the main function of the capitalist system (accumulating capital at the top), it will be eroded and abolished. Monopolies for example are much more profitable than competetive situations. Getting rid of or circumventing open market competition is always good business.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago

    Just wait till he learns Ben Franklin socialized Fire Departments

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  • [–] 26 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Are we starting to use the word "capitalist" the way the Nazis or Soviets used the word "socialist?" As a meaningless label for "the dictator's side?"

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    He may be dependent himself on public funding as much as Elon and the others, but, to be fair, so have all capitalists in history at some point in time or at some level.

    Pure capitalism is just a wild fantasy that would require complete disregard of human rights and/or huge advancements and investments in technology with the energy expenditure that entices.

    So yeah, capitalist has always been a swear word to me, but I see it used appropriately in this context and in general.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago*

    These are (neutrally) powerful words that could get people ideas in their heads if used and understood properly/literally.
    Same even with capitalism and communism, these words (unfortunately but intentionally) mean much more than an economic system basis.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago*

    What irony?

    Lone-wolf attacks are a status quo and politically easy to manage/misdirect.

    Organised change in the benefit of all people? What are you, a dirty communist? /s

    The real irony is that you can tell what ideas are actually good and progressive by looking at the ones Trump&co does not like. It’s almost like there is no such thing as bad press.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago

    I really hope we can reach a point where we don't give this guy headlines.

    "Trump declares that anybody that's EVER made fun of him is currently being targeted by every international police force which he has command over, and also that the sky is purple" is a statement totally disconnected from reality. We DO NOT NEED an "Um, actually!" to disprove him.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Anti-his-capital-ism.

    But let's just be anti-capitalism to be on the safe side.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    Sovcit Hussein spouting off more shit like the throbbing asshole that he is.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 child)

    "support for the overthrow of the United States Government," is also one pre-crime per that report. That's reflection right there.

    So Marx and Trotsky seemed to be against individual murdering of factory owners et alia. Does that imply that they would've been against the atrocities of Communist states that were perpetrated in their name, or would that have been fine because it was done by the masses in some sense?

    Neither saw it happen in great numbers: Marx died before any of his ideas manifested properly, and Trotsky of course was murdered by Stalin in 1940. Holodomor and Soviet Union purges had happened already at that point, but perhaps Trotsky might've thought that those were just the evil of Stalin instead of being a more general mistake of his whole ideology. People tend to think that their political philosophy cannot do bad things.

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