A real picture of colonialism, when the seven largest English-speaking populations after the United States are drowning in US debt and surrounded by US military bases.

从今天开始，仅限中国模因

Step 1: Go to an Ivy League school

Step 2: Make friends with a failson/daughter of a prevailing plutocrat

Step 3: Put the Matrix-code screensaver on your laptop (apparently, this worked on Elon Musk in the early Twitter takeover days)

Step 4: ???

Step 5: Get a $10M Series A and a $100M Series B thanks to the family of your rich friends buying into your hair-brained Theranos knock-off.

Americans: “Tragedy of the Commons proves that people are incapable of working together for mutual benefit, because personal greed will always lead to the devastation of the collective common good.”

Chinese: “Why do you not simply arrest and punish the bad actors in your society when they overstep and impede on the general welfare?”

Americans: “Because that’s fascism. Also, we’re arresting and deporting you for asking.”

I gotta say, given the state of Tennessee at the moment, I would not want my statue anywhere near the other icons they’re raising.

BBEG: Rogue Paladin Player’s Little Brother’s Character

Paladin Player:

Reaganism was definitely a new kind of politics, in the sense that he was the bellweather of the next generation of the GOP (and Dems tailing after).

But if we’re just looking for an excuse to yell at people for how they voted, I can’t think of maybe half a dozen Presidents undeserving of that response.

I mean, we can go back farther than that. Carter reappointing Paul Volcker and deregulating the airlines + oil/gas anti-gouging laws really fucked us.

while it does stop a lot, missles and rockets still get through to Israel.

It stops some rockets initially. But the math of missile defense has always been needing two or more countermeasures for every incoming projectile. Consequently, its only useful against small or infrequent salvos. As soon as you get into a war with a modern industrial war-time economy (say, for instance, Iran) you can’t keep up with the number of inbound projectiles.

Once Israeli missile defenses run dry, there’s nothing left standing between them and the next strike.

I’m sure US citizens will also be glad to know that they have donated $2,600,000,000 of their tax dollars specifically towards just the Iron Dome project in Israel between 2011 and 2022.

It would be antisemitic not to be glad.

More or less risky and inefficient than the Iron Dome?

Asking for an Israeli guy currently hiding in a bunker.

Checks inside the toolbox

“This… isn’t a screwdriver.”

click

vibrating sounds

Spainish Socialists! Be nicer to Francisco Franco and maybe he won’t coup you in a couple of years!

African Americans! Try not to upset any of your White Neighbors so they don’t lynch you. It’s the best way to guarantee your civil rights.

Chinese Catholics! Greet the Japanese with open arms!

I couldn’t name anyone I knew who actually went through the shit of Vietnam and wore one of those hats proudly.

They were exclusively for the ranks of the Texas Air National Guard, the straight up draft dodgers who wanted to look cool with their chud friends, and the handful of sociopaths who thought burning down people’s homes was cool.

It would be nice if the focus was on personal comfort over some ideological crusade.

Bras, head scarves, makeup, skirts versus pants, hair dye, hair length, heaven help you if you’ve got a position on cosmetic surgery… Everything’s a fucking binary. Like, I get complaining about advertisement saturation and the endless suffocating waves of online influencing and even the social/family pressures to look or dress a certain way. But at some point its got to be about what each person feels comfortable with.

Not everything has to be a political position. It is enough to say you are self-determined.

Quite literally since birth.

You watch neighbors grow up and mature thinking we’ll all reach some kind of educated, experienced consensus. But I’ve got people I’ve known since middle school who are so sheep dipped in propaganda they can’t tell up from down. And I know more than a few others who have put up with Eric Adams and Andrew Cuomo and that assortment of liberal sleeze so long they can’t tell the difference between parties.

Having no sympathy or empathy for the actual innocent victims would make you a shit person.

Generally speaking, Americans do not need extra reasons to avoid feeling empathy.

“Fuck you! You got what you deserved” should be worked into our national anthem by now.

I got extremely yelled at for saying this about the last five presidents.

On Lemmy, idk. Some definitely exist.

Anywhere else, a lot more

More seriously, I think erasure is only part of it. Lots of LGBTQ folks deliberately remain in the closet for the sake of family relationships, careers, and local politics.

If you’re bi, it’s just easier.

But that heterosexual camouflage does get confusing to process when you “come out”. Especially with the reactionary attitude that heterosexuality is a choice.