Fair enough. And you’re good, I appreciate the discussion on it in fact, I’m just challenging the general mindset in play that I see. Mean nothing personal by it. Part of my train of thought here is, if liberals actually do have a legitimate point, they need to back it up with a how - not just vague waving at intent. Especially considering that stated intent stands for just about nothing with US politicians; their donors, along with the existing levers of imperialism, seem to be the defining factor there, rather than what they say.

If it actually is the worst case scenario Dems are scaring about then Americans need to learn to fight.

This is a great point and one I don’t think gets enough attention in general. One way in which it comes up for me is: what exactly are dems planning to do if Kamala wins on paper, but Trump challenges the results and rabble rouses people against them? Are they actually willing to send cops and military, if necessary, to put him behind bars, knowing that could enrage his fanatical base further? Why haven’t they put him behind bars long before now, for denying the results once before, or for any number of offenses?

We are supposed to believe a guy like that is simultaneously a huge threat to “democracy” and will be… stopped via voting. With what institutions, I don’t know. They could have invented any number of reasons to throw the book at him years ago. They could have cracked down on the kind of people they claim are such a threat. Instead, they’re sitting on their hands as if authority is derived only from a ballot box. They want us to believe “democracy is at stake,” but are unwilling to act like it is and will even rush to condemn any attempt on the guy’s life.

It makes no sense if Trump is a real, existential threat to the current system. On the other hand, it makes a kind of sense if the power brokers don’t view him as one and only view him as a different flavor of it, who can be controlled like any other president.

I guess I’m not sure I understand how exactly he is the accelerationist candidate in the first place. On a vibes level, I get why people think that. But logistically, what can he do that is substantially different from what the dems are already doing. Rabble rousing up racists is about all I can think of off the top of my head, but he’s already doing that while not being in office, isn’t he? Anything on a legislative level, he’ll have advocacy groups fighting him and presumably the dems will at least put in some effort to fight him on stuff, to sell the continued cycle that they need to get him out, rah rah rah, like they did the last time he was in office (unless I am wrong and they didn’t even try to fight him for real the last time?).

I suppose he could have an administration that deregulates more stuff or something? But then people are going to blame him nonstop any time a piece of infrastructure fails or a “natural” disaster (hypercharged by climate change) happens.

Maybe I’m underestimating how much the prez can do alone, idk. Just seems like a lot of what gets talked about w/ regards to him “being worse” is based on the perception that he wants to be worse and not based on what he can logistically do while in office.

“But within the context of our broken electoral college system, we know that voting a third party is ultimately inadvertently supporting Trump,” she said.

It’s such twisted reasoning to say that voting your conscience is actually a vote for someone terrible. I understand the reasoning they’re aiming for, but twisting people’s attempts to have morality against them is sick shit that has consequences. It’s how you get people excusing depraved stuff under the guise of “strategy” and sleeping well at night about it. Tactics must have a clear moral core of direction behind them. Without that, there is no inherent value in them. Which brings me to…

Zeidan says she believes Trump will “exacerbate” the genocide, annex the occupied West Bank and punish pro-Palestinian protesters in the US.

Student protesters have already suffered under Biden. What resources is Trump going to use to “exacerbate” the genocide? To “annex” the West Bank? I’m sure it would really make his popularity go up for him to send US troops over there to get 🔻 . Biden is already funding israel freely without any real condemnation or constraint.

Do these people have claims grounded in analysis of real existing logistics for how any of this is supposed to occur or just vibes?

Isn’t it not even true, on top of how ridiculous it sounds coming from them? Like I got the impression from stuff I read in passing that Iran targeted military infrastructure (which makes far more sense tactically anyway, if you aren’t genocidal monsters who want to kill as many civilians as possible).

Meanwhile how israel actually feels about Lebanon: https://x.com/BTnewsroom/status/1839771677519163565 (tweets by BreakThrough News, using quotes from top israel figures)

Israeli officials have repeatedly threatened to destroy all of Lebanon since October.

Here are just a few examples:

“There is no difference between Hezbollah and Lebanon. Lebanon will be annihilated. It will cease to exist.”

— Yoav Kisch, Israel’s Minister of Education

“Beirut must burn. I’m not saying this because I am a war monger”

— Yoaz Hendel, Former minister, media person, Lt. Col. (Res.)

“For the deaths of little children, [Hezbollah chief Hassan] Nasrallah should pay with his head,” Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich tweeted,” asserting that it was “time for action” and that “Lebanon as a whole has to pay the price.”

"Every person in Lebanon can take the map, the aerial photograph of Gaza, place it on an aerial photograph of Beirut, and ask themselves if this is what they want to happen there.”

— Yoav Gallant, Israeli Defense Minister

“The time has come for the price to be paid in military targets and Lebanese infrastructure, of which Hezbollah is a part.”

— Benny Gantz, Retired MK Lt. General & Minister without portfolio

“Lebanon is a dysfunctional state incapable of enforcing UN resolution 1701 which forbids presence of Hezbollah in South Lebanon… So Israel has no option but to evacuate villages in South Lebanon and establish a buffer zone there.”

—Amichai Chikli, Israel Minister of Diaspora

Where have we heard this talking point before? Oh right, every single time israel mass murders civilians, they claim it was a military target and that the military target is terrorists. Before it was Hamas, Hamas, Hamas, now it’s Hezbollah, Hezbollah, Hezbollah.

it eats at me when I have to see the results of the “unjust peace” (not that what’s going on in the world or even within the cores can be remotely described as “peace”) and live in it, particularly with the Sinophobic sword of Damocles hanging over my head (ethnic Chinese myself), or with literal industrial genocide going on and the west goosestepping towards WW3 and open fascism.

I can’t pretend to understand the part about being ethnically Chinese in the imperial core, as I definitely qualify as “white” myself, but the part about “unjust peace” resonates with me in some way. I don’t know if my mind is going to quite the same places, but there’s something about the normalcy of things in the US that def eats at me. One expression of this where I notice it is, of all places, dating apps. I don’t know what it is about it, but seeing profile after profile that has all this individualistic language about a personal lifestyle, while perhaps the most documented-in-real-time and widely publicized genocide in history is being funded and enabled by the US, is such a disorienting feeling. There’s the odd profile here and there that mentions it, maybe some of it’s my locale, but it’s like overall, this juxtaposition of liberal individualism against the realities of what is happening in the world. Like the implied assumption is that the current system works and will keep working and everybody will sort of get to do their own thing if they try hard enough for it, and it’s like, are many of these people putting on a face but don’t believe the system is going to last, or are they sleepwalking through it in a political education sense of things.

And I’ll be honest, I don’t think I’m doing the best I could be doing in my own case, with regards to these things. I might be doing the best I can manage right now, but I can probably work to do better going forward. And I think that’s part of the disorienting feeling for me too. Like having one feet in and one foot out. But I can never unsee everything I’ve seen and I can’t ever feel normal going back what it felt like before I was more aware of what’s going on in the world beyond the imperialist bubble of propaganda. And the fact that I can’t means it’s all the harder to relate to a lot of people. So I can put on a face and do the individualist lifestyle dance to a point, but sometimes it feels like putting on a brave face for a kid. I know that would probably sound demeaning to people and places it applies to, but it’s the best analogy I can think of at the moment. It’s like this thing of pretending things are normal when they aren’t because it’s too upsetting to others if you don’t at least try to, to a degree. That doesn’t mean I never bring up the issues I care about, but it’s like, trying to find the right balance of being able to meet people where they are at in order to have any chance of moving the needle and taking a principled stand. That is hard, when the default position for so many in the US is confident spew that contains various levels of barely-contained vile; and I’m not even talking about people who are openly fascist or whatever. More just the stomach-turning nature of liberalism.

You aren’t a liberal for being human. It is something to remember that some of us are not the best “people person” types and either need to work on that more, or need to find others who can better do those roles. Using myself as an example, I’m good at being diplomatic, but chatting up strangers has never been one of my strengths; it’s possible I could make it one with enough time and motivation, but right now, it’s not. Not having that strength will cut off capabilities for me that people who can do that, have. I also have an easier time getting into meta, deep concepts than some, but it does little if I can’t present it to others in a way that communicates its value effectively and contributes to the advancement of liberation and the advancement of more compassionate and stable conditions for people.

We have different strengths, in other words, and no matter what an individual works on, they will still lack in some areas. That’s one of the reasons organizing together and complementing each other, in both strengths and struggles, is so important.

I have definitely been plagued by the “hobby must be productive” mentality. For example, in the context of a video game, framing it around what I’m “accomplishing” within the game, since the game itself is not producing anything. Or in the context of language learning, viewing it as something that needs to show results for it to be worth doing.

I think it ties into a sort of perfectionism for me. But anyway, I agree with you that a hobby does not need to “qualify” as a hobby, for lack of a better word. It can just be a thing that you do. Now as for applying that to my own mind in practice, that’s a whole other question. 😅

Fair point to make.

I started noticing it more via twitter after the October 7th thing happened and all the zionists coming out of the woodwork there, who would use the same general talking points, be accounts who were inorganic in their origins, posting history, username, etc.

And I agree, it seems heavily a part of reddit as well; it’s just harder to spot at a glance on reddit because the accounts are more anonymized, as is the voting. But the tonality of it (for lack of a better word) is distinctly there. Although it’s certainly believable, like you say, that there are fanatics out there, the numbers don’t make sense. Many regular people are plain busy and do not have the time to be posting foaming at the mouth imperialism on the internet, even if they wanted to; and if they did, they would articulate it in varied ways based on their levels of ignorance regarding imperialism and conflict and so on, not this stuff where suddenly everybody has more or less the same talking point.

I’m sorry you got long covid. :( I can relate on the getting infected most likely due to others. The family members I was living with was good about it for a while and we’d avoided infection afaik and then another came in who wasn’t so good about it and it was late in, post-vaccine too, so all the harder to argue the importance of it and we all got infected at one point. Don’t think any of us got long covid, but it’s that thing where all it takes sometimes is one person to be selfish about it. It’s very frustrating.

and as a visible minority (Asian) that adds to it.

Can def understand the risk more so in drawing attention under those circumstances.

Will take a look at it in more depth at some point, good to have on hand.

There’s essentially no reason not to in my opinion. It would obviously be much safer if everyone was still masking, but at least in my experience, diligent masking has been very effective at preventing illness in my household despite the lack of precaution from the public.

This makes sense to me and I think is generally the sort of reasoning I’ve gone by in the past. Like a percentages thing. Even if you’re living in a household where not everybody is doing it, as I am, reducing the odds of bringing something home is still better than nothing.

Fair point on it. I don’t know that I can budge the immediate people in my life on it, but I will probably continue to do it myself. I think the part that makes it difficult is the normalization of it. This thing of people viewing it like “well it’s just sort of part of the makeup of infections that can happen now, like the flu and I got a vaccine, so now the pandemic is over.” And I don’t know how to counter that to people because what am I supposed to say, ya know, “just keep wearing a mask for the rest of your life”? People want to believe there’s a cutoff point, I’m sure, myself included. But it’s been handled so poorly in some places, it seems almost like the poor handling of it itself is part of what’s making it difficult to have a cut off point for precaution.

It’s sort of a “nobody says anything but almost nobody else is doing it” thing here. I don’t seem to be in an area where people will actively pushback about it, but there’s few still doing it. If you’re actually getting tirades about it, I can understand not wanting to risk drawing the attention.

I understand and empathize with this for sure. I’m one of the few who I still see wearing one in my area, so it can def feel like “what’s the point” and “I’m just calling attention to myself.” Luckily, I don’t get anything more than the occasional odd look for it, which could just be odd looks for other reasons, or I’m reading into them too much. So I can keep doing it without concern for people giving me trouble about it, but it does feel weird being so alone in it.

Bookmarking that to read more on later, thanks. And yeah, I’ve wondered about the difference there - like would people in those places in Asia where it’s normal even face any reaction at all for wearing a mask long past public mandates or would they just be viewed as socially responsible people. Part of why I’m curious about that, is because if I only go by what the US is doing as a general thing, it could lead to some very irresponsible decision-making. There’s a lot of science ignorance and the like here. And of course the individualism in the US that goes something like: “if the odds are low that it will inconvenience me, then why should I care if it might kill someone else?” Not that I think people are reasoning it out that consciously, but that’s sort of the implication of the lackadaisical attitude toward it.

This is state-conducted terrorism; and the media and the sycophants for the zionist regime are praising each other and making jokes about the 3000 civilians maimed (more than were killed in 9/11) and refusing to call this what this is: a war crime and an instance of terrorism.

The terrorism aspect of it is so very real and literal. This single act calls into question so much about supply chains and general trust in them, as well as being able to trust products as a whole, considering this was something so hidden from view until triggered. It sets off my imagination into where else stuff like this could already be in place, or have plans in progress for more like it, or be mistakenly placed somewhere it wasn’t meant to go. So yeah, congrats to the empire for putting a hole in the trust of their own system of global capital and product movement, just so they can murder more civilians.