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[–] 158 points 10 months ago (15 children)

I think this kind of mentality partially absolves the US of its own homegrown horrors and ignores the imperialist and fascist parts of our own society that have existed here since it's creation.

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  • [–] 42 points 10 months ago (11 children)

    Right. Like, yeah, they might be Russian agents but they're WILLING agents. If Russia is asking them to do things, they're things these traitors already wanted to do.

    Whether they're Russian agents isn't exactly irrelevant, but it also doesn't really change anything. Russia night have sped up the process, but we've been on this road literally since the inception of our country.

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  • [–] 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    It's wild to me how much of a boogeyman Russia has been made into in lib circles.

    There are probably a dozen or so countries who actively root for and foment political discontent in the US, but for some reason any American that falls into alignment with some loose formation of anti-democraric positions qualifies specifically as a Russian agent

    Libs do not realize just how xenophobic their own politics have become. Just because you think your fears are justified doesn't mean they arent irrational

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    Few countries had figures like Putin who played a long-game over decades to destabilize the US. The ones that do, we're so into with oil deals, we don't care if they did 9/11. I guess... now that I think about it, it is kind of weird.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    It’s wild to me how much of a boogeyman Russia has been made into in lib circles.

    It's a convenient thought terminating cliche. It stops them from introspecting. After you are so fucking delighted to support genocide that you would rather lose to trump than stop, you don't want to do any introspecting.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    They willingly cooperate with russia because russia helps them to take power via online botnets. Yeah, they are absolute scum, but you can find those in any society. The problem is foreign interference that gives them voice. Like the one USA now tries to apply to EU countries, boosting the far righters via social media algorithms.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    because russia helps them to take power via online botnets

    What makes you think the richest country in the world doesn't have the power to create such botnets in the first place and relies on Russia?

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    They have their own botnets but they also use russian ones. It's not mutually exclusive. The volume of bullshit matters.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Ok, now, do you have reliable numerical information comparing the volume of US vs Russian botnets? And by reliable, I mean taking into account that the US propaganda apparatus is much better funded and refined and less prone to being caught red handed. A good example of a good study would be to compare demonstrably pro-US-geopolitical-interest-netbots vs pro-Russian ones

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  • [–] -3 points 10 months ago

    What does pro-USA propaganda has to do with personal media power of MAGA election campaign? They weren't even at power to control the state propaganda before they won the elections.

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  • [+] -10 points 10 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago

    I don't know why I'm here

    all I care about is that we (as in US citizens) don't blame the other countries for the shit that we did and correcting the stupid ass people who think that they're the reason everything is so fucked up.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago*

    No.

    This is like my grandma wants to kill every groundhog in the world and is working on it one groundhog at a time, then she buys magic beans that the seller promises will make groundhogs easier and faster to kill after she plants them, but the seller is also a violent murderer and says that if she doesn't buy them and plant them then he'll stab her. So she buys and plants them, not because of the threat but because it's what she wants to, and then she goes on killing groundhogs but now it's faster and easier.

    You see, the words "willing" and "tricked" are antithetical in this case. The threat is incidental to the story and, on a narrative level serves no purpose but to characterized the seller as evil; he didn't threaten her because the threat was necessary to successfully extort her, he threatened her because it's in his nature to threaten people. The threat doesn't change the outcome in any way.

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago

    Does it matter? The average American does not understand imperialism, their understanding was not needed to create it and it's not required to unravel it

    Healthcare, housing, wages... These are the polar bears. They're the poster child, everyone is like "yeah, those are cute. I want to save them"

    You don't have to then explain why they should care, which requires them to understand a complex system of relationships

    We don't need informed support, we just need support to do good things, some of which should be done loudly and others we don't need to make a show over

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    [–] 44 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    It's a class stuggle.
    It's that simple.

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  • [+] [S] -10 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    I thought it was a political struggle.

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  • [–] 14 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    All political struggle is either bourgeois infighting (flip on the telly to see it), or class war (the ruling class doesn't want you to think about it). The former can be fun to watch at times, the latter is the one which has any chance of improving your material conditions.

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  • [+] [S] -7 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    The struggle of class against class is a what struggle?

    A what struggle?

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  • [–] 17 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Not sure what the gotcha is. Class struggle is a subset of political struggle, and it is the subset most relevant to you the worker, as outlined by my comment.

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  • [+] [S] -6 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Marx said that every class struggle is a political struggle. This means that, if the proletarians and capitalists are waging an economic struggle against each other today, they will be compelled to wage a political struggle tomorrow and thus protect their respective class interests in a struggle that bears two forms. The capitalists have their particular business interests. And it is to protect these interests that their economic organisations exist. But in addition to their particular business interests, they also have common class interests, namely, to strengthen capitalism. And it is to protect these common interests that they must wage a political struggle and need a political party.

    It’s also a bit.

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  • [–] 37 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 child)

    Nationalities are just a convenient scape goat for everyone to point fingers at.

    The real problems stem from a billionaire and multi millionaire class that absolutely does not want any kind of democratic government system to develop and to destroy any signs of it everywhere else.

    All those billionaire and multi millionaire class owners have absolutely no care if their passports say America, UK, Russia or China ... they couldn't give a shit which nation they align with as long as their wealth is always protected.

    Just look at all the wars that are being fought right now .... governments are more willing to sacrifice people and soldiers rather than in affecting the wealth of anyone on any side of the conflict.

    If they wanted to stop wars, they would shut down financial systems completely and starve one side of the conflict or the other until someone submitted. But they'd rather throw human bodies into the fray than in even considering touching the bottom line of a billionaire, regardless of which side of the war they are on.

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  • [–] 16 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    Why do Republicans have to be secretly in the thrall of the Russians to be evil? Can't the Republicans just be scum based on their own will?

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago*

    They're easily manipulated, the Republican party has made sure of that by keeping schools shit there for decades. You have entire generations of people that will do whatever they're told

    Can you really fault Putin for using such an easy target?

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  • [–] 67 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    You cant just blame "those pesky, conniving foreigners" when your country descends into fascism after 2 centuries of racism, genocide, and withering away of social safety nets.

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  • [+] -14 points 10 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    Agreed. Those damn Russians forced us to genocide the natives and do slavery too, and anyone who tries to deflect blame off of Russia and onto Americans is clearly trying to serve Russian interests, so their perspective can be dismissed without consideration.

    Those fucking Russians crapped my pants, too.

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  • [–] 25 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    It's a marvelous thing to watch American leaders just blaming others about the things they do wrong. Didn't you hear? Venezuela robbed their Venezuelan oil. They can't be the baddies, never ever, forever.

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  • [–] 12 points 10 months ago

    Even worse is when politicians blame the citizens. Working two jobs and still struggling? Your fault. Marriages falling apart? Blame gay marriage. Can't afford an $500,000 house? Tough luck. Can't afford heath care? You don't deserve it. Mental hospitals closed? Name a business that sucks and blame their customers. Only politicians get away with it

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  • [–] 49 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Stop calling them Conservatives. They're Russians

    Just absolutely peak liberal. You cannot accept that American conservatives are bad. You need them to be Evil Foreigners.

    This is how you end up side by side with Liz Cheney, pockets stuffed full of O&G money, telling your base voters to stfu about climate change if they want to win the next election.

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  • [+] [S] -8 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Just absolutely peak liberal.

    What if there’s more liberal than that? Ha! Hoisted by your own petard!

    You cannot accept that American conservatives are bad. You need them to be Evil Foreigners.

    I don’t know why you’re interpreting this so literally, but obviously US conservatives are not all russian citizens. And they are doing bad things.

    This is how you end up side by side with Liz Cheney, pockets stuffed full of O&G money, telling your base voters to stfu about climate change if they want to win the next election.

    Oh right, Democrats bad again. Hey, why the fuss? You won, didn’t ya? Not enough corpo-libtards voted just like you wanted and here we are waist-deep in insanity shit. Mission Accomplished!

    Oh wait you wanted the magical unicorn election where we all hold hands and chant instead of voting so that the outcome of the vote is guaranteed to be pure. Well since that’s literally never, ever going to happen I hope you can take some comfort in pretending it might if you just shit on the Democrats enough.

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  • [–] 29 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Holding the bedrock of a nations political power to just being an ethnic group is a pretty wild take, albeit unsurprising.

    Like a zoo of a take.

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  • [–] 28 points 10 months ago

    Anti-fascism has absolutely nothing to gain from dumb lib conspiracies.

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  • [–] 74 points 10 months ago* (35 children)

    Stop trying to blame Russia, blame capitalism. I hate putin as much as you (probably more because I can't live in my own house, or visit my parents, all because of him), but it is your ruling class at fault and not some russian influence. Whatever putin could do is inconsequential compared to the wealth and influence the 20 richest people of your empire.

    Your billionaires have decided that trump and fascism is the most beneficial choice for them at present, it is truly that simple. What you are witnessing right now is a natural outcome of a capitalist system, as intended by your racist proto-nazi founding fathers.

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  • [–] 27 points 10 months ago (9 children)

    Whatever putin could do is inconsequential compared to the wealth and influence the 20 richest people of your empire.

    Are you suggesting that $20k in Facebook ads didn't decide the result of a $4B election season?

    Sounds like Russian propaganda to me

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 10 months ago (8 children)

    It can be two things. Read this or anything else about Cambridge Analytica to get a sense of the difference between what they were doing and the same hack political radio ad hour after hour.

    Trump's ties to russia are many and varied, going back forty-plus years. It’s all been documented in Proof of Conspiracy, Mueller found collusion; these are not hypotheticals. It’s a known part of the current befuckdedness.

    Is it the ONLY part? No. But it starts there and it stays there.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago

    Cambridge Analytica

    UK group and Facebook profit maximization is not Russia. Blaming the pure establishment corruption of democracy on Russia is just partisan whining for more establishment warmongering.

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  • [–] 11 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Trump’s ties to russia are many and varied

    Trump's ties to the Italian Mafia are stronger. He's a second generation fence and money launderer who made a fortune helping to move money out of Eastern Europe back in the 90s.

    But he's an American creation who worked on behalf of American institutions. That's why he's tied up with Guliani, Bloomberg, Clinton, and Epstein.

    The tunnel vision liberals have with Russia ignores a rich vein of corruption for one of its more salacious and partisan tributaries.

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    Trump's ties to the Italian Mafia are stronger.

    We're probably splitting hairs, but - what? I haven't heard that before but I've heard a LOT about the russian angle. (we seem to converge on Eastern Europe though)

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    what? I haven’t heard that before

    It was bigger news back in 2016

    The picture shows that Trump’s career has benefited from a decades-long and largely successful effort to limit and deflect law enforcement investigations into his dealings with top mobsters, organized crime associates, labor fixers, corrupt union leaders, con artists and even a one-time drug trafficker whom Trump retained as the head of his personal helicopter service.

    The Russia connection was minor by comparison, and largely a result of Trump's status as a lynchpin in NY crime.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I think that DCJ piece is good, and clearly ‘mob’ connections are rife, but outside of that early-80’s wash of Roy Cohn and the ready-mix concrete guys, there’s not a lot more specific to Italian mafia.

    I read that Giuliani’s ‘cleanup’ of Italian mobsters allowed in the russians which was duly appreciated. Early 80s is the same time the Kremlin started to keep tabs on Trump, giving him a tour and business opportunities then.

    Felix Sater, Michael Cohen, Rybolovlev and others who consistently and repeatedly appear in any honest accounting of his blatantly illegal dealings.

    Unger’s account of infiltration also exposes how Trump’s financial entanglements laid the groundwork for this betrayal. In the 1980s, as Trump struggled with debt from failing casinos and overextended real estate ventures, Soviet-linked financiers appeared, flush with cash.

    Deals involving Trump Tower properties drew in shadowy buyers connected to Russian organized crime and intelligence fronts. Even when Western banks deemed him too risky, new Russian-linked money never seemed to dry up. Each transaction pulled him closer into Moscow’s orbit.

    By the time the Soviet Union collapsed, Russian oligarchs kept the pipeline open, ensuring that Trump’s business empire would survive—and remain beholden to foreign backers whose first loyalty was to the Kremlin. (via)

    So while there certainly were ties to Italian mafia, his later business and almost all of his political life is awash in russian mob ties. Given that russia is run by mafias-within-mafias that’s not so surprising, is it.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago

    outside of that early-80’s wash of Roy Cohn and the ready-mix concrete guys

    The article goes significantly farther than ready-mix concrete. Trump was in tight with the Gambino family, among other mob affiliates and organizations.

    I read that Giuliani’s ‘cleanup’ of Italian mobsters allowed in the russians which was duly appreciated. Early 80s is the same time the Kremlin started to keep tabs on Trump, giving him a tour and business opportunities then.

    It ties out with a shift in policy from Cold Era Italy being a major bridge between NATO agencies in the West and their informants/operators in the East. Post-collapse, Sicily was old news since you could march your goons directly into St. Petersburg and Moscow to commence the looting.

    But Trump's roll as a money launderer and fixer remains consistent during the transition.

    So while there certainly were ties to Italian mafia, his later business and almost all of his political life is awash in russian mob ties.

    His primary ties were to US and German lenders, with black market business interests using his properties to clean their ill-gotten gains. The flood of money and refugees coming out of Eastern Europe following the post-Soviet crash changed the composition of his criminal clients. His roll in legitimizing the looting through financialization did not.

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  • [–] 0 points 10 months ago* (1 child)

    Cambridge Analytica is a good place to start. Previously:

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    You are describing an oligarchy, or maybe plutocracy.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    Yes, that is correct. And it is also an accurate description of that shithole between Canada and Mexico.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Sorry to say, but the whole world is pretty much fascist. Even the most progressive countries have ever widening income inequality along with the majority of their policies written by corporations.

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  • [+] [S] -7 points 10 months ago (12 children)

    Stop trying to blame Russia

    No.

    blame capitalism.

    We can do both, but one of them has a more defined paper trail.

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  • [–] 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

    The notion that your "Trump and the GOP are Russian assets" conspiracy theory has a "more defined paper trail" than the countless volumes of work done by thousands of historians, philosophers, economists, and scientists, going back hundreds of years regarding the depravity of American capitalism is just downright laughable.

    What are you even trying to say here? Are you seriously saying the Russia/Trump connection is more well understood than the pitfalls of American Capitalism?

    If Trump is a Russian asset, why didnt the US pull out of NATO months ago? Why was Trump shipping Jevlins by the truckload to Ukraine at the beginning of the war? Why is Trump's entire schtick that NATO (Russia's primary adversary) needs to increase spending (which it has, in record amounts)?

    If Russia is blamed for Trump’s election, we avoid the unpleasant reality of our failed democratic institutions and decaying empire. We avoid facing the inevitable rise of a Christianised fascism borne out of widespread impoverishment, rage, despair and abandonment. We avoid acknowledging the complicity of the Democratic Party in the orchestration of the largest social inequality in our nation’s history, the evisceration of our basic civil liberties, endless wars and an electoral system bankrolled by the billionaire class, which is legalised bribery. The myth allows us to believe that Democratic politicians, like the establishment Republicans who have joined them, are the guarantors of a democracy they destroyed.

    All the investigations into Trump’s ties with Russia are unequivocal. There was no collusion. The Steele dossier, financed at first by Republican opponents of Trump and later by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and compiled by former MI6 British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, was a fake. The charges in the dossier — which included reports of Trump receiving a ‘golden shower’ from prostituted women in a Moscow hotel room and claims that Trump and the Kremlin had ties going back five years — were discredited by the FBI. Sources, including the one that claimed Trump had long-held ties to the Kremlin, turned out to be fabricated. Special Counsel Robert S Mueller concluded that his investigation ‘did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.’ Mueller did not indict or accuse anyone of criminally conspiring with Russia.

    • Chris Hedges
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  • [–] 16 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (10 children)

    We can do both, but one of them has a more defined paper trail.

    Capitalism's trail of blood in your country goes back to its founding. It is incredibly well-defined and has been studied a lot (except they won't tell you about it in school or many universities).

    And if you want a more concrete link between capitalism and trump, look at inauguration footage again, or look at campaign contributions.

    Russia's entire state budget was less than revenue of just Apple in 2024. If your ruling class didn't want trump, he wouldn't be a president right now.

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  • [–] [S] -5 points 10 months ago (7 children)
  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    Exhibit A: USian prompted to interrogate their internalized racism

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    So, y’all just say whatever comes to mind and pretend it’s a real thing, huh? Cool.

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  • [–] 11 points 10 months ago* (2 children)

    At this point, I can't see any other reason you'd stick to blaming "the russians" for the state of your country. Even if putin has kompromat on trump, putin is not the reason republicans hold all three branches of your government.

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Again, it's not just "the russians" but so many of you are jumping out of your seats about it.

    So many of you from .ml that is.

    Curious.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago

    Ah, I see, this is a "just post" community, and you carefully follow the rules by just posting and not actually reading the content you post at any point. Hats off to you.

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  • [+] -6 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    I was with you until last half of the last sentence.

    Racist, sure. “proto-nazi”? Who and why? One example would be great, I don’t understand the connection.

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Without having to click links it's basically this; Hitler had a Hardon for American Exceptionalism and shit, Nazis are based on American ideas just taken to the extreme.

    So hence proto as in precursor to the Nazis.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    Thanks for the description! When I think ‘founding fathers’ I’m thinking of the literal dudes who wrote and signed the US constitution and the Bill of Rights.

    I didn’t see any connections for the term to that time period in American history.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago*

    You mean the guys that literally genocided native peoples? That wrote into the constitution that black people were worth less? That only rich land-owning people should be allowed representation?..

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  • [–] 23 points 10 months ago

    This is dumb as shit, completely pointless.

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  • [–] 29 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    The purity of our blessed country and it's founding fathers must never be impungned. All corruption originates with those filthy foreigners, who are ontologically evil, and to suggest otherwise is proof of heresy, of being corrupted by the foreigner.

    Washington protects.

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Labeling everyone as ‘traitors’ might feel satisfying, but it kills any chance of persuasion. Better to stick to specific actions/evidence and hold those accountable.

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago

    we need a revolution to stop trump - the hardest part is convincing most republicans about the truth about trump. seriously!

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