The history of the protest-turned-riot-turned-massacre is genuinely incredible. I wish more Americans learned enough about Chinese history to understand the significance of the event. It wasn’t just one guy in front of a line of tanks. And the movement didn’t end in Tienamen, either.

Dengism into the 21st century was defined by that movement and the backlash and it’s reverberations. Modern Chinese domestic policy exists as a combination carrot and stick to discourage this kind of insurrection from happening again.

Would that the US people had the kind of courage and social cohesion necessary for a Tienamen in the modern day.

Now Is The Time of Monsters

I guess I’m curious what “enlightenment” you felt you got out of it.

I met people from a variety of backgrounds, including people who’d grown up overseas. I had roommates for the first time, which gave me a taste of living with others who didn’t share my same habits or hygiene. I started dating seriously for the first time. Experimented with alcohol and a few other substances. A bunch of friends came out of the closet. I spent every summer doing a different low wage job - grocery store, teacher, assembly line worker, entry level paid worker on a political campaign. Put more miles behind the wheel in my freshman year than my entire life previously. Got to watch a particle accelerator fire and buy a homeless guy a drink at a local bar.

Idk how to really nail it down in simple terms, but I had such a broader exposure to the rest of the world in those university years.

Agreed but I get annoyed at people who have this idea of if we just educate everyone -> utopia and that conservatism is a function of undereducation

Oh, I agree. Some of the worst reactionaries are college educated. I don’t think college makes you liberal.

What’s the old saying? “A Conservative is just a Liberal that’s been mugged by reality”?

I had more than a few diehard Republicans in my friend group in college. Like, I got to meet the kind of people you just see shit talking on CrossFire IRL. People who unironically thought we should do genocide in Iraq because these were subhumans who had forfeited their right to life. People who were in Engineering because they wanted to build the bombs we were dropping in Afghanistan. People who used the hard-r at the end of the n-word just to prove they could.

Also incredibly enlightening.

american claim their country is worse than iran

The worst country in the world is the one that is oppressing me, personally.

nobody cared

Trump Threatens Iran Intervention. History Shows When Foreign Support Works

Somebody clearly cares

People who talk about how college makes you “Enlightened”, “Well Rounded”, etc. always baffle me.

Being a young twenty year old living apart from your parents among your peers with lots of free time to study and develop your talents enlightens you and rounds you out.

Universities are great because they facilitate that kind of social and intellectual development.

These elite prestigious institutions graduate some of the most evil and diabolical human beings driven purely by greed and prestige.

Evil people congregate in everywhere. I wouldn’t put this on universities specifically

Eye witness account plus video

Pretty famously, he climbed directly up on the tank and chewed out the driver, then got back down and continued to block the tank. Others in the crowd pulled him away back down the street. The tank didn’t try to run him over, he was never reported captured, and as far as we’re aware he’s alive to this day.

Imagine an American climbing onto the hood of an ICE van or stubbornly maneuvering in front of a vehicle.

Historically speaking, a safe bet

U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Oregon, posted on X, urging people to keep any protests of the Trump administration peaceful.

“Trump wants to generate riots. Don’t take the bait,” he wrote.

Queue for your execution in an orderly fashion. Otherwise, the Nazis will make you look bad on TV

The point is if there is a god the dude has bigger concerns.

The clock-maker is not concerned exclusively with the largest gears.

We’re on our own, there’s no sign that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

“God doesn’t care about small things” is the antithesis of Biblical teaching. Both the Old and the New Testaments go through great pains to convey how the most humble individuals in the most basic circumstances still receive Divine Attention.

If you’re arguing with a Christian on these terms, you’re queuing yourself up for an ass kicking. They’ve got much better poetry than a grainy photo of a galaxy that isn’t even the Milky Way, btw.

• Evaporated Milk

• Condensed Milk

• Whole Milk

• A Secret Fourth Thing

A lot of the early stigmas and taboos about diet, clothing, and hygiene emerged from ritualized practices intended to prevent disease and promote human health. The lack of understanding meant the ritual divorced itself from the real best practices over time. But prohibitions on eating shellfish and chopping off the foreskin of your dick and keeping menstruating women out of the house were ultimately primitive efforts at avoiding food poisoning, curbing the spread of STIs, and managing the bloody mess of periodic period flow.

There’s entire branches of theology undermining every major world religion that dedicate themselves to rationalizing the Divine Bureaucracy. “God doesn’t care, because he is big and I am small” is as true as “The American President doesn’t care what I’m up to in Venezuela, because he’s very far away and I’m not that important in the grand scheme of geopolitics”.

What zealots are inclined to believe in is the Angelic Delta Force and its capacity to inflict sudden, horrifying, and indiscriminate violence on the wrong kind of person. If you study the history of Cargo Cults you’ll discover people who experience traumatizing, inexplainable phenomena can often build up superstitious rituals in an effort to control things that are fundamentally beyond their grasp.

It isn’t that “space is fake” nearly so much as “There are things beyond my grasp that bother me, so I’m changing my personal behavior in the vain hope it will protect me from these anxiety-inducing events”.

Setting aside the ins and outs of religious-based sexual morality, the galaxy being very big does not negate the consequences of your behaviors on your immediate neighbors, your peers, or your descendants.

Epstein was still a bad dude, despite the vastness of the universe.

But, we literally colonised the states and started half this shit.

Brits were fucking around in India, blowing dissidents apart with cannons this time last century. They were financing and profiteering off South African apartheid fifty years ago. They helped us invade Iraq under Bush. They’re participating in the Gaza Genocide right now.

This isn’t new.

Found another flat earther

Why did the Romans fail?

I remember learning that the Romans fell because they were too gay and debauched and woke, so they lost their manly vigors.

Nevermind, history doesn’t like copypasta

I suppose its worth noting that the Roman Empire lasted centuries (millennia, if you see the Byzantine/Ottoman Empire as a continuation of Roman history). The UK is more comparable than the US, which flourished after WW1 and made it barely a century before fumbling.

But also, the book is hardly closed on the US as an empire. China, India, Persia, Rome, France… they all had their ups and downs.

The US writes the history books, runs the universities, and manages the international media networks.

Like tankie never really meant anything before

I mean, its historically described Soviet policy in Eastern Europe and Chinese domestic policing (Khrushchev putting down the Hungarian fascist revolt with armored infantry and Deng sending tanks into Tienanmen Square).

Now it just means whatever the opposite of neoconservative policy is, updated daily.

Being against tanks makes you a tankie at this point.

Everyone knows that if you’re against US tanks, you must be in favor of non-US tanks. You’re either with US or you’re with the Tankie-rists

They are so understaffed these days that they are no longer fast anymore.

The food itself is pre-prepared and re-heated on the spot. Go when there’s not a rush on and you can get your food in minutes. Go during rush hour and you’ll still be in and out much faster than at a sit-down establishment (that’s also inevitably understaffed).

They’ve got people addicted to 7,000 times the amount of recommended daily sugar, fat, and salt content.

I’ve heard this line and I think there’s an element of truth to it. Food really does taste differently if you’ve been eating the high salt/sugar junk for an extended period.

But you can get junk food anywhere. You don’t need McD’s to make it for you. Gas stations have soda fountains. Grocery stores have microwaved meals full of preservatives and sweeteners. You can just make yourself a hamburger at home, it doesn’t have to come from a store.

It just takes time, a certain degree of skill, and a kitchen with functional appliances that you’re going to need to clean up after you’re done. McD’s just goes in the trash afterwards. Far faster to buy a burger than cook one.