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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • It’s kinda hard to call that a threat. It’s more accurate to say it’s an accusation that the guy is a terrorist.

    I think arguments about who has a claim aren’t the real question here. Recency vs historic rights to a region aren’t enough and really never have been. The whole argument comes down to who has the power to hold the region and any arguments to the contrary are naive. Israel has the power, Palestinian’s didn’t want to play ball, so Israel took the ball home. A large part of Israel being able to hold the region has come down to geopolitics and capitalism. A lot of companies have headquarters and branches in Israel which makes a lot of money. Hamas, like the Taliban, are not expected to be good for big business. On top of that, Israel is friendly and cooperative with western allies and is one of the few such in the region. The west is not going to trade a friendly but harshly conservative Israel for an unfriendly and even more conservative Hamas.

    You can talk all day about who deserves what, who has rights to what, and what the moral thing to do is. At the end of the day the world is going to follow the Golden Rule, “He who has the gold makes the rules.”



  • I once went to a public swimming pool in Austria, half the pool was for nudists and the other half was for clothed persons. The restroom for clothed people was very long, but the restroom for nudists was busy but short. I ended up going to the nudist restroom and a 50+ year old naked guy walked up and started talking to me while using a pissoir. Basically he was asking why I was dressed at the nudist portion of the pool, I told him the line was shorter, he laughed, and went about his pissing.


  • I don’t know about encouraged, but it’s definitely not uncommon in some places. Small talk doesn’t have to be a lot of communication either, it can be as little as basic platitudes. It’s things like sitting at the bar in a pub and the guy beside you points out an amazing play on the television or it could be the person on the bus pointing out something crazy they see out the window.




  • Knightfox@lemmy.onetoPolitical Memes@lemmy.worldDemocrats Vote
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    24 days ago

    I don’t have a novel idea, I’m not trying to change the two party system that exists. The fact that the current two party system has been in existence since 1932 and the overall structure has existed since 1854 is what gives it weight and value. It’s continued existence is what proves the model. The burden of proof is on those who wish to change the system, not on those participating in the current one.

    People have wanted to end the two party system basically from it’s inception, yet despite that there has never been significant enough traction to make that happen. At best detractors have replaced one of the two parties, but the overall number of parties and their operation has remained the same.


  • Knightfox@lemmy.onetoPolitical Memes@lemmy.worldDemocrats Vote
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    24 days ago

    My view has as much weight as yours

    This is literally what conspiracy theorists and nut jobs say as well. You are entitled to have your own opinion and to say what you want, but that doesn’t make it equal. What is different between the current system and your view is that the current system has actually been in place and working for more than a hundred years. Until you can come up with a way to get from the inception of your idea to a completed system then your view has no weight. You want to wail against the system, but you want other people to figure out how to make your view work. As I said in my initial comment to you, that’s just idealism.


  • Well I disagree that my view isnt possible.

    Your disagreement has about as much weight and value as a flat earther disagreeing that the world is round.

    Other than that we would have to convince politicians to give away power, which is very unlikely.

    Which is why your disagreement doesn’t matter.

    And I already voted for Kamala but she wasnt the best choice for me by much, and I’m not saying trump was second. But that has more to do with the state I’m in than anything. If I was a county over I would have voted for a third party.

    Hey that’s totally fair, I’m not saying she should be everyone’s preferred choice, but people are going around in circles saying that they won’t vote for Kamala like they don’t understand the ramifications of that. We have a two party system, those parties aren’t vague ideas but private corporate entities with tax benefits and assets. After Bernie lost in 2016 there was a lawsuit that alleged that the DNC had committed fraud by making certain efforts to ensure Hillary won the primary. The result of the case was that they found the proof and the DNC chair persons admitted it in court. The result was that the case was dismissed, nothing illegal was done, donating to the party or voting in the primaries makes no promise that a candidate you pick will win the primary. The judge basically said that the parties private entities that are allowed to conduct their party business the way they want.

    The system that exists is built to keep it two parties and benefits those two parties.

    If you’re in a county or state where your vote won’t matter than do what you want. My state lets you vote in either primary so I voted in the Republican Primary because we will go Republican and I at least wanted to have a say on who would be getting state positions.


  • Amen, I was so freaking mad in 2016 because I was a big Bernie supporter and I remember reading an article where some college kids had been polled. The kid in question said he wasn’t really fond of Hillary and was thinking of not voting for her. The interviewer asked who he liked to which he said he really preferred Bernie Sanders and was upset he didn’t win the primary. The interviewer then asked if he had voted in the primary and the kid said he had forgotten to go vote.




  • Very very well said and your point about consistency is absolutely true. Someone posted an article a few months back in which young people were threatening not to vote for Biden because of the support for Israel and the first thing to go through my head was, “So basically no change.”

    You seem very aware of this, but I wanted to add some numbers in case you or someone else wanted the comparison. The highest 18-29 year old turn out was 2018 at 28% (almost like buyers remorse for not showing out in 2016). In 2014 the turn out was 14% while in 2022 it was 23%.

    In 2020 there were 158 million people who turned out to vote and there are an estimated 52 million people in the age group (lets assume they are all eligible to vote). Lets say this group of unhappy progressives accounts for 10% of the turnout and instead of having 28% we instead will get 18%. The difference is 5.2 million votes (28% equals 14.5 million and 18% equals 9.3 million) which equates to about 3% of the total voters if we look at 2020’s general election.


  • Are you actually advocating that people shouldn’t have to show up to the political system to get the system to go their way? Like, this is exactly what the primaries are for. Obama wasn’t the preferred party candidate in 2008, it was Hilary, but there was so much primary support from Obama that he won over her. The same could have happened in 2016 or 2020, but young voters predominantly didn’t come out to vote in the primaries.

    If you think you should be able to just fill out a poll and turn out in November you fundamentally don’t understand how the system works.



  • Knightfox@lemmy.onetoPolitical Memes@lemmy.worldDemocrats Vote
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    24 days ago

    What you’re talking about is idealism. In a perfect world you would be correct. In a perfect world the US could have affordable and efficient mass transit within a few years. In a perfect world we could end climate change in just a few years. When your argument is based on a state of the world that doesn’t exist the point of the argument is immediately useless.

    This is the problem with the anti-work movement, the anti-car movement, and people who are anti-single family homes. The arguments they make are theoretically possible, but getting enough people to move in tandem to that is just never going to happen so belaboring the point over and over is just not helpful.

    We live in a world where the US has 2 political parties, if one wins we get a beige moderate government, if the other wins we get Project 2025. If your idealism makes it so hard for you to determine which outcome you want then literally nothing can be done for you. If you have the idea that letting the republicans win so that then a true progressive party can exist then you need to look at history because right wing dictators historically kill the idealistic liberals and progressives right behind the Jews, POC, and homosexuals.


  • Knightfox@lemmy.onetoPolitical Memes@lemmy.worldDemocrats Vote
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    24 days ago

    It’s not really a strawman argument, it’s closer to an ad hominem. In fact, the argument you are making is closer to a strawman.

    “A straw man fallacy is the informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction.” -Wikipedia

    Saying that “if you can’t tell the difference between the two parties is a you problem” is attacking the person not the issue. Saying that the difference between the two parties isn’t the problem (when that’s what is being argued) and instead it’s the system is by definition a strawman. Using the strawman to make the discussion about the futility of voting in a flawed system just goes to show how much of a strawman it is.