Surviving in a "hard situation" resembles suffering much more closely than it does strength.

That flower is not surviving pinned under rubble for the sake of inspiring the flowers that are not, nor for the sake of "becoming stronger" - it is surviving because until someone bothers to remove the boulders that are crushing it, its options are to survive or to die. And plenty of flowers in that same situation would die, and its actually not out of the question that this flower's eventual death will be due to these conditions that it is forced to endure.

Knowing that, would you still compliment the flower on its strength, on the fact that it has not yet been killed, before considering that maybe, just maybe, you and the other flowers might want to find a way to do something about those boulders that would have already killed any weaker flower?

One should not prioritize complimenting the systematically abused for surviving their undue suffering above working to prevent that undue suffering from continuing. Their suffering and tragedy should not be repurposed as inspiration porn.

Well for one, Jews and specifically Israelis don't have to go anywhere for Palestine and Palestinians to be free?

Like the slogan just does not at all necessarily imply what you're imagining (or what the US congress claims) it does. That slogan's been around longer than Hamas.

Well, people did stop this in Ohio, specifically. Local organizers recently successfully petitioned to put abortion rights (which Republican representatives had been threatening) on the ballot statewide - voters got it passed, alongside marijuana legalization, all while facing (and continuing to face) significant antagonism and legal backlash from "elected" Republicans in the 2nd most gerrymandered state in the union.

Both parties suck, I'd go so far as to say both parties frequently do outright evil shit, but they are not the fucking same, and even if they were, that has yet stop people from coming together to get involved and improve their communities themselves. Observing politics near exclusively at the federal level tends to obscure that reality. I accept that this sort of doomerism can come from a place of ignorance, so I offer you suggestion: if you want things to get better, go help. Go find out what groups are actively working to induce local- or state-level government reform, or who are working to directly improve the lives of marginalized people in your community, and go help them. You can't exactly stop fed-level Dems from being useless hypocrites, but you can get involved with groups in your community to help with the work of bringing about positive change - and while that is harder than stewing about the state of things, it actually gets results.

Pretty sure there's an ocean of difference between Jesus Christ rebuking the literal devil and a politician traveling across state borders to illegally deface a statue as a publicity stunt to fundraise and get an interview on Fox about how he totally "decapitated Satan." Even if his conviction was somehow driven by religion and not pure vanity (it wasn't), any form of religious supremacy has no place in society at large, let alone a government building. The law recognizes this, "freedom of religion" is the backbone of this in the US, and I'd hope people understand why it might be a worthwhile and important protection to have and uphold.

Additionally, I have a suspicion that anyone who favorably compares a person who postures as a Christian supremacist to Christ is less the sort of person with an understanding of their religion and more the sort of person who knows how to search for the word "Satan" in their YouVersion Bible app.

A bit of a tangential question, but one I know a little about. Mostly correct, but I'd phrase it differently: up until the civil war, the Republicans were generally left-leaning and Democrats were generally right-leaning.

In terms of what lead to the switch, after the civil war, there weren't a whole lot of politicians in the south from either party who supported abolition. A solid number of those politicians likely saw a need to work together if they wanted white supremacy to succeed in a nation that just rejected their racist bs so hard that they fought and won a war with them over it.

Initially, the Democratic party was to remain the bastion of right wing regressivism, but the lines weren't firmly established until democrats started voicing their support for civil rights. Most majorly, Truman voicing his support for civil rights began the redrawing of the lines, and LBJ passing the civil rights act cemented the switch. All remaining Democrats who opposed civil rights switched to the Republican party, where they would cultivate and appeal to voters who shared their opinion on civil rights by developing and implementing the southern strategy.

This is the foundation of the modern Republican party - they were the party formed to oppose and undermine civil rights, a role they've maintained to this day.

Wish I could find a clip to post, but there's a Garfield special ("Babes and Bullets") themed as a black and white detective movie, and the line "Being a private dick isn't easy with a name like Sam Spayed" is forever burned into my memory.

Found an article that pinned an update - she was suspended for 45 minutes. Weird.

https://meduza.io/...

I think the claims I've heard irl are something along the lines of "can't trust Google search results, they're censoring 'em!" I figure the things they're mad Google "censors" are probably literal or borderline fascist content - and I also tend to assume they're probably misusing the word censor. I think the tenuous connection here is just that yeah Google is probably doing some shady stuff with their search results.

I don't understand the replies here - this bill was drafted in response to multiple events where ethno-nationalists burned the Qur'an in front of audiences with the implicit intent to incite violence against Denmark's Muslim minority population. If you read the article, the bill bans the only the public burning of any religious book, not just the Qur'an. This bill would not "limit freedom of speech," it would limit a form of hate speech and arguably stochastic terrorism being employed by the far right in Denmark. I do not see a problem with this bill.

Though not as high risk as being a logger, a fishing worker, a pilot, a roofer, a general construction worker, any job driving a car or semi, any agricultural laborer, and certain types of maintenance work, among a few others.*

Not directed exclusively at me, but I had a math teacher throw a temper tantrum directed at a classroom of 4th graders about how much of a personal injustice it was to her that our parents kept sending her complaints, and that has got to be the worst thing she did.

To give you a picture as to why she might've been getting so many, when my Mom sent in one of these "complaints," she received a response in the form of a metaphor about how coal must be put under immense pressure in order to become a diamond... I think my Mom responded that something like a flower might serve as a better metaphor for a fucking 9 year old, though I doubt it did much to change that jerk's mind.

Anyway, having her as an instructor set me back at least a year in math, and I've had other people who were in that class say that that's where their issues with anxiety started.

Laws like this one (as well as far right fear mongering in general) misrepresent that situation even more than you'd think. Only 800 minors in the country (out of ~80 million depending on how you count, so ~0.001% of all US minors) got any transition related surgeries over the course of 2 years. On top of that, there aren't a lot of surgeons who do these surgeries, and some of them won't operate on minors. So because of the limited number of surgeons, trans people often have to travel across at least state lines to get these surgeries, which is why none of this very small population of minors even got their surgeries in Ohio.

These laws are made all the more sinister when you realize half of their content outlaws things that aren't even happening entirely for the sake of feeding into bigoted fear mongering and dehumanization - "they're coming for your kids."

I mean if her rallying for Biden means campaigning for him, I honestly think that she particularly has every good reason not to do that. Tlaib is a Palestinian American, and Biden has openly contributed billions directly to Israel's ethnic cleansing of Gaza, going so far as to bypass congress to do so, all while he and nearly every other Dem continue to refuse to acknowledge that Israel's actions constitute anything "messed up," much less full-on genocide.

I cannot stress enough that if, in the face of Biden's continuing contributions to the genocide of her family's country of origin, it is an ethical impossibility for her to publically endorse him for a second term, that is completely on him, not on her.

That in no way exonerates or justifies those who are killing patients in an active hospital.

YouTube is also that way. It's just that it gets buried down by the shitload of people who use it.

Eh to degree, but the reason neonazis and bigots seem to flock to/make up a majority of these sites is often because they're getting banned on YouTube - and these video platforms opt to survive by leaning into that instead of properly moderating their platform.

I feel like I might've gotten a little off topic with this, but I just see this sentiment of "both parties are the same (so let's completely abandon electoralism)" so often online right now and I find it so exhausting and unconstructive.

Well yeah no ones going to watch a video you don't even link?

Israel ≠ Jews. What is happening in Gaza is the fault of the fascist government of Israel, not "the Jews" - that is an actual neonazi talking point.

Might've taken this in good faith had I not checked your comment history to see you insisting all drag queens are a danger to children, so let's just dress you down and block you real quick, mkay?

The point has been made in another reply to the initial comment that rehabilitation would still yield better results than incarceration for keeping the "people on the street" safe, as the only way incarceration is able to lower the number of "dangerous convicts" is by putting them in a cell for life. When rehabilitation is successful, the number of "dangerous criminals" can actually go down in a way that does not deprive those individuals from seeing trees for the rest of their lives.

Additionally, convicts absolutely can and do hurt people in prison, the people hurt just happen to be other convicts, not to mention the violence they often face from the people who run the place, who have a tendency to enter the field of incarceration with authoritarian personality types and the intent of mistreating or exploiting prisoners. All this disregarded, despite the fact that you acknowledge the possibility that some of those who end up in these facilities are innocents - the only category of person you are supposedly interested in protecting is not protected in these institutions as they currently exist.

There's much more I could say about prisons to make this point, but what I'm saying is that prisons do not provide a neutral experience, they are not just people sitting in empty rooms experiencing nothing - they are places that generally leave people more damaged than when they came in, and often inflict that damage for years, in some cases for something as victimless as a marijuana charge. Thus, while rehabilitation has the potential to concretely improve society and the lives of people (y'know, the thing convicts are), incarceration as it currently exists can only hurt people and send them back out into society worse off than they were before. The only argument for it is to insist it is justified for doing so, by inventing a dynamic where "they," strangers placed into prison, ALL present a danger to "us," the "people on the street," that they either cannot be fixed or we should not bother, and that whatever they get, they deserve. Maybe you can convince someone that's true for a convicted rapist, but I think you'd have a harder time when it comes to victims of addiction, poverty, and/or an imperfect justice system.

If that's you're reasoning, why even bother locking them up? Why not argue to execute all criminals, if your only desire is too keep all those dangerous convicts out of society for as long as possible?