Poe Dameron is my hero… while everyone else was debating how the bad thing happened, he’s the guy that’s just figuring out how to fight against it.

Peeople just didn’t appreciate the genius of JJ Abrams… pretty much every reason why people fall to fascism are in the two Star Wars movies he made. Palpatine obviously represents fascism, yet people whine about Palpatine returning not being explained.

Now I need instructions on how to change my oven from F to C

“Let’s just not have political parties anymore, that’ll solve everything!” - Mature person on the internet

US Government wants to kill a guy for politcal reasons.

Who would’ve thought that when you massacre villages it would result in a war?

Yeah, China’s not in even though it’s the second largest economy in the world. In the 90s it almost became G-8 to include Russia, but then Putin screwed that up.

It’s not all that different of a situation from Russia being kicked out because of Putin’s shenanigans, really.

Should try to get Brazil to leave BRICS and join the G-7 club. The US could go be in BRICS bullshit (or maybe then it’d be called the USRICS?) with the other authoritarian assholes of the world.

It’s a problem with polls, they don’t give enough options and many times and the few options they give mean different to different people. If the US were an enemy I’d be too busy trying to figure out how to blow shit up in the US to have this conversation. That’s what I consider the word enemy to mean. We’re not there yet.

I’d classify the US as an adversary though. A country I’m opposing by non-violent means.

Were you kicking at them when it was Trump vs. Hilary, Trump vs. Joe, and Trump vs. Kamala?

You’re just rationalizing why you’re constantly attacking anyone that opposes fascist Trump. A lot of wards against the opposition to Trump and zero words against Trump. You’re just Trump’s proxy minion.

And yet again, you’re obsessed with meaningless categorization that has no basis in reality. You’ve been conditioned into doing this as a way to show loyalty to your particular tribe. It’s just a vain effort to prove you’re tribe is smarter and therefore superior to the other tribes.

The real smart thing to do is to recognize the threat to everyone else one particular tribe has become. And work with everyone else to oppose it. But your caveman brain has become to accustomed towards throwing rocks at a particular tribe you’ll just go on doing it when after they’ve been beaten down to the ground while the real threat gets ready to take you down.

This obsessive need to categorize politics to know who is in your tribe so you know whether to agree with them isn’t actually all that smart.

It ain’t the left that’s in power, it’s the right. You’re not on the side of freedom fighters, you’re on the side of oppressors.

There are air defenses that could potentially shoot down a missile before it hits its target. So one means there’s merely a probability of destroying Moscow. A psychopath like Putin may be willing to take that risk, and even if Moscow got nuked, Russia would still exist (though obviously it would be significantly diminished), and he’d have justification for using nukes on Ukraine.

For MAD to apply you need enough nukes to be an existential threat to another country when you’re dealing with psychopaths that would be fine with potentially millions of people dying if it means they come out on top in a war.

The funny thing is he whines about the trade deficit being $200B (which is a lie, because that’s all he ever does) he may actually cause the trade deficit to actually be $200B.

Bin Laden would say anything to get recruits. Fact is, Al Qaeda had a lot of operations going on against Saddam Hussein.

But okay, believe everything a mass murderer says. That makes you a very enlightened person LOL

Right now there’s only fascists and those that oppose them. Kicking those opposed to fascism just after they were kicked to the ground by the electorate puts you on which side of things?

Apathy is the big reason for this. About 1/3 of the eligible voters didn’t bother to vote. And Trump gained support among black and hispanic voters. Ignorance and apathy were the big drivers of this. And ignorance stems from people too apathetic to learn anything.

And no, democracy is never guaranteed. Some pretty words written by slave owners over a hundred years ago was never going to guarantee democracy. It’s just paper. What makes democracy survive is people making an effort to keep it going generation after generation. American exceptionalism created a false belief that the US couldn’t be anything other than a democracy. But despite all the chest thumping about freedom and democracy from Americans, it turns out not enough people were willing to make an effort to learn who they were voting for or in many cases even to bother voting at all. That was all that was needed, but it was too much for Americans to bother doing.

There are things Americans can be doing right now, but this Canadian thinks the USA has become a nation that’s centered greed and apathy rather than a country of freedom and democracy. I’d be happy if Americans could prove me wrong by fighting back in any way they could, but it looks to me the US lacks the will to save itself.

Yeah there’s some of the rationalization I’m talking about. There’s not a lot of daylight between the politics of the US and China right now. Both have authoritarian leaders that push a narrative about the need for a strongman to run the economy and protect their respective countries from the evil foreigners. Both want to expand their territory. Putin is the same, of course.

Fascism is just a scam to make people accept having an authoritarian leadership. There’s common tropes they use in their propaganda to emotionally manipulate people into supporting it. Glorious past, evil foreigners took things from us, we need a strong man (and it has to be a man because misogyny is a big part of it) to make things right. It’s all bullshit no matter where you put it on your precious spectrum. But it’s bullshit that works. And when it does work all that matters is what you do to oppose it. How you categorize it means jack shit.

When someone is throwing a spear at you how much time do you devote to trying to categorize what ideology they’re in?

When fascism enters the picture there’s only three groups of people. Those that support it, those that oppose it, and those that do nothing. Which of these three groups are you in?

In a democracy you should strive for having strong people and weak politicians that do as the people want.

If you’re striving for having strongmen so you don’t have to do anything yourself, then you are being weak. And that’s why the US has gotten to be what it’s become: weak and lazy people looking for someone else to solve all of your problems. This is why Trump’s message of “vote fore me and you won’t need to vote ever again” resonates. You want someone to rule over you and figure out everything for you. This made the US ripe for a fascist takeover.

Even now you’re whining about someone else not solving your problems for you. Didn’t vote? That’s the democrats fault. To cowardly to discuss politics with your family? That’s the democrats fault.

In the end, you’re aligned with the fascists in your hatred of the opposition. It’s easier for you to sit back and complain about the opposition than to grow a spine and support the opposition regardless of what your family, peer group, or anyone else will think about for doing so.

It’s not about blocking, it’s about sending a message.

How are you sure that you haven’t bee brain washed?

The left-right spectrum is a construct. It doesn’t line up at all with reality. In reality, tribalism is 90% of politics. Most people vote the way their parents do. Some rebellious types don’t, and instead just conform to whatever their peer group thinks on political matters. Ideology is a post-facto rationalization for all of this.

Currently the “leftist” tribe is becoming more and more into alignment with the fascist tribe. You both show a common disdain for those in the opposition “liberal” tribe after all. And that’s what really matters in all of this mess. Leftists have joined fascist movements in the past, they just come up with rationalizations (which they have a lot of practice with) for why that’s the ideologically correct thing to do.