Can someone who is good with politics explain to me why Dems are not fighting back against the slide into fascism?
They are.
Why are these states still receiving federal funding and welfare subsidies?
Because they’ve complied with the legal requirements to receive that funding, and so it would be illegal for them to be denied that funding due to an unrelated matter.
Why is the compromised and illegitimate Supreme Court still in power?
Because impeaching a member of the Supreme Court requires a charge be brought by the US House of Representatives, and the Senate needs to vote to convict (2/3 majority, I believe). Y’know, because of the US constitution.
Why are blue states not sanctioning fascist states?
Because they don’t have the legal authority to do so.
Let me just point out that losing 5% of the workforce like that will make inflation skyrocket, because we’ll have to increase wages on a lot of jobs done for shit pay by undocumented migrants. (Should those jobs pay well now? Of course. But they don’t.) You think houses are expensive now? Just wait until construction grinds to a standstill because there’s no laborers available. Groceries cost too much? Guess who is working in those fields?
Again: we should be paying those people fair wages now. But without significantly raising those wages, which will also raise the cost of the goods they currently produce, you aren’t going to get many citizens to do the jobs.
EDIT: one of the larger inputs for produce is labor. If we had to pay labor for picking, cleaning, and sorting produce $20/hr (which is the floor that I’d consider semi-acceptable for that kind of work), you would end up seeing a lot of prices rise sharply in the grocery store, particularly because we simply can’t automate most of that. And believe me, companies are trying, because they won’t want to pay the slave wages that they do now. If you had to pay all construction workers at least $20/hr–which is below the acceptable rate, IMO–housing costs would have to rise to accommodate the cost of the labor. Lots of restaurants still use undocumented labor; they’d have to increase menu prices. And so on, and so forth. We, all of in the US, benefit from the poor treatment of undocumented migrants, and it’s largely invisible to us.
For that to really work, you need a labor surplus, i.e., more workers than jobs. As long as there are more jobs than workers, workers are incentivized to hop jobs to get better pay, perks, and working conditions. It’s in the best interest of the capital-owning class to keep a certain level of the population unemployed so that there are always more workers than jobs; that allows them to pocket more of the value that the workers are adding, because the workers have less leverage to negotiate better wages.
But when you suddenly lost 5% of your workforce, and they’re jobs that are physically demanding (and in the case of construction, are a genuinely skilled trade), then capital-owning class doesn’t have the leverage over workers. That’s especially true when the capitalist can’t easily move operations to an area with cheap labor; if you’re a contractor, you’re going to operate where there’s demand for construction, not where there’s cheap labor. An e.g. contractor can’t just not build; they lose money by sitting on land, or on equipment that isn’t being capitalized.
If one were to take Russia at face-value, they might lighten up a bit with less NATO.
If one were to take Russia at face-value, then one would be an idiot that would be shocked once Russia started invading countries like Georgia, Belarus, Hungary, Poland, Finland…
The police officers in Uvalde had no legal responsibility to protect the children in the school. They were not required to charge in and stop–shoot–the person that murdered so many children. And yet, we quite rightly condemn their unwillingness to act, even though acting would placed them at risk of harm or death at the hands of the shooter. They had the ability to prevent mass murder, and they did not.
The person that refuses to act, when it puts them at no risk, and costs no more than the minor inconvenience of standing in line for a few minutes, is certainly no better than the police officers in Uvalde.
engage with the opposite side in a constructive manner.
Russia is currently explicitly dedicated to being an enemy of the West.
That’s entirely due to Vladimir Putin. Neither Gorbachev nor Yeltsin were ‘enemies’ of the west. (OTOH, the dismantling of the USSR really could have benefited from some help from the west; the oligarchs and political elites sacked the wealth of the country, which paved the way for Putin.) Capitulating to Putin would not soften his stance; he would still believe that all of the formerly Warsaw-pact countries ‘belong’ to the United Soviet Socialist Republics. He still believes that sections of Finland that Russia lost in the Continuation War belong to Russia. He still believes that all the Baltic countries belong to the USSR, despite the USSR not having existed for 30-odd years.
NATO is strictly a defensive organization. The NATO agreement is that IF Russia invades any member country, that all NATO signatories will come to the defense of that country. If a signatory invades Russia, then they’re on their own. The only think that NATO directly opposes is Russian aggression; all Russia has to do to avoid war with NATO is… Not invade a NATO country.
Imagine being such a persecuted group in America that you get to blast spam mail to everyone in your community in the name of religion with no repercussions.
Even if that’s true–and I don’t know if it is or not, because I’m not a true biblical scholar–the fact is that 1 Timothy is recognized as canon throughout the Christian world. Even if it’s a forgery, it’s been accepted as gospel for the last 1800 years or so.
…And that’s completely ignoring the fact that most people that get really deep into scholarly historical bible studies very quickly end up as agnostics and atheists, because you can’t square the historical record with any religion currently practiced.
I’m white, cis-, het, middle aged, have a lot of guns, and I am far more versed (ha!) in the bible than almost any evangelical. I can pass if I have to. I have a lot of friends that can’t, and they’re going to be truly fucked if Trump wins.
Ah, yes, it’s the US’ foreign policy that’s responsible for Iranian morality police killing brown LGBTQ+ people. It’s US foreign policy that’s responsible for Russia’s hard right turn that’s made being gay punishable by prison. It’s US foreign policy that’s responsible for passing laws that make being gay punishable by death sentences in parts of Africa (okay, that one is directly linked to support from evangelicals in the US, but they’re not acting as representatives for the US, and the US in general has been appalled by those laws).
People in Gaza are going to be murdered regardless of which person is elected in the US. OTOH, LGBTQ+ people in the US will continue to have legal protections if Biden gets re-elected, and definitely won’t if Trump gets elected.
But really my dude (and I mean that in a gender-neutral way), if you’re so sure that it won’t matter in the slightest, if you are absolutely convinced by your own righteous cause, go right ahead and vote for Trump, and then tell allllllllll your LGBTQ+ friends that you voted for Trump because Both Sides, and see what happens. Go ahead, do it. Explain to them that they’re all chumps and suckers, see just how far that goes with them.
Democrats are worthless when it comes to protecting trans people,
Uh huh. And yet Biden expanded protections for trans people under Title IX, and the governors that are all trying to criminalize simply being LGBTQ+ are all Republican.
Again: vote for Trump, and tell all you IRL LGBTQ+ friends that you voted for Trump because Both Sides Are the Same, and see what happens. I don’t think you have the guts to do that. Prove me wrong. Shit, post it publicly on Facebook and Instagram before the election. Go ahead. Tell your friends that you don’t care enough about their safety right here in the US to do the absolute bare minimum, to step over a bar that’s so low that it’s on the ground, to help protect them. Don’t be a coward; say it directly to their faces instead of hiding behind a semi-anonymous account online.
SCOTUS blocked Biden’s attempts to cancel student loan debt. But he kept working at it, and he’s managed to get some of it to go through. I expect that, even if red states and SCOTUS block specific policies that are intended to protect that rights of LGBTQ+ people that Biden will keep working to find a way around them that still follows the law. And, if we can manage to flip the House and retain the Senate, then maybe we can actually get laws passed, rather than only executive actions.
That’s basically just a Z87.1-2020 lens. Any lens made to the standard should protect against impacts. It’s technically bullet-resistant, in that it’s a polycarbonate lens, but stopping birdshot ain’t that remarkable.
The reason you might wear them while shooting is to prevent a stray piece of brass from going into your eye, or spall from hitting a steel target. (E.g., the copper jacket peels off the bullet and comes back towards the shooter as shrapnel. The risk of spall is very low past about 10y with pistol targets.)
If I were in trades, I would love working on things like this, because you couldn’t just work on autopilot. You’d have to think about everything you were doing. That’s much more engaging than, say, cutting a hundred 2x4s to all be exactly the same length.
A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that across all political and social groups in the United States, there is a strong preference against living near AR-15 rifle owners and neighbors who store guns outside of locked safes. This surprising consensus suggests that when it comes...
I think you’re right about the perceptions of economic freedoms, yeah. Which is kinda wild, given that most countries in the EU fare much better overall in cost-of-living versus salaries. So it’s like playing roulette; they’re betting that they can win big, instead of being just another chump that loses money to the house.
And, TBH, I think that if the US had the same kind of criminal justice reform and social safety networks that you see in most of the EU (and I’m not including Great Britain in this; they really suck in a lot of ways, which is intentional on the part of UK conservatives), I think that you’d see a lot less violent crime in general, and a definitely lower murder rate.
And I’d much rather live in a country where people don’t have access to guns than in a country where left and right are pointing muzzles at each other
I don’t know where you live. But you gotta understand a couple of things about the US. First, the US is big. All of Europe–including Russia–is 3.9M square miles. The continental US (not including Hawai’i and Alaska) is 3.1M square miles. All of Europe has a population of 745M people, and all of the US has a population of about 335M. So the US is a very large country, and statistically it’s very sparsely populated. I live in a semi-rural area; if shit happens, it’s going to take emergency services–cops, fire department, ambulance, whatever–a minimum of 20 minutes to show up. But in the US, the cops have no legal obligation to protect you in any way; there is no criminal or civil liability if any police officer or agency refuses to do their job. On top of that, cops are far, far more likely than not to be on the political right.
So what does this mean?
You need to be able and willing to protect yourself, and take care of yourself, because the government here can’t, and won’t. Especially if you aren’t white and christian.
You can say, “I don’t want to live in a society that’s armed”, but that’s a very privileged stance to take, given that most of the people in the US have to be ready to fend for themselves, and hope that the veneer of civility doesn’t fail.
Misinformation campaigns increasingly target the cavity-fighting mineral, prompting communities to reverse mandates. Dentists are enraged. Parents are caught in the middle....
“Worse” is a value judgement rather than anything objective. People that like tinfoil headwear accessories would say that putting fluoride in the drinking water makes their lives “worse”. So where does that leave you?
Goodness. You don’t really know a lot about Satanism, do you?
I don’t oppose religion, as long as religion stays in it’s own lane. As long as religion is personal, and not forced on other people, I simply don’t care; it’s literally not my problem, nor is it my job to ‘convert’ other people. If you’re happy being e.g. Catholic, that’s fine.
…Until you try to force me to obey the dictates of your religion because you can’t tell the difference between civil society and your religion.
So, to recap, you know nothing about my religion other than the name, and make assumptions about what I believe due to your prejudices, but you don’t believe that you have prejudices based on skin color. Is that correct?
But but... If gun owners are tracked, we can be targeted! 😭😭😭 (lemmy.world)
The incomprehensible, unattainable scale of Trump’s deportation plan | The former president has said he will send nearly 5 percent of U.S. residents out of the country if he is reelected. (wapo.st)
Nice Guy (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
source
Received this in the mail a couple weeks ago (lemmy.world)
Imagine being such a persecuted group in America that you get to blast spam mail to everyone in your community in the name of religion with no repercussions.
Don't worry, I'm sure you'll be privileged and safe (lemmy.world)
What a free-thinker! (lemmy.world)
they hurt you, didn't they (lemmy.world)
Mods are drunk, post/comment your off-genre recommendations! (youtu.be)
Bonerama - Mr. Go (USA-LA, 2007)
Study reveals "widespread, bipartisan aversion" to neighbors owning AR-15 rifles (www.psypost.org)
A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that across all political and social groups in the United States, there is a strong preference against living near AR-15 rifle owners and neighbors who store guns outside of locked safes. This surprising consensus suggests that when it comes...
Medical freedom vs. public health: Should fluoride be in our drinking water? (www.nbcnews.com)
Misinformation campaigns increasingly target the cavity-fighting mineral, prompting communities to reverse mandates. Dentists are enraged. Parents are caught in the middle....
Boy Scouts of America changing name to more inclusive Scouting America after years of woes (apnews.com)
cross-posted from: lemmy.ca/post/20749204...