is it conspiratorial to say that the claim “class warfare is impossible in america as there is no class awareness or class identity” is wrong because the richest part of population is in fact very self-aware?
after all, warfare isn’t like the tango: just one active participant is required.
the obama administration decided to have Biden be the one that deliver the policy of keeping Mubarak as dictator of Egypt, with the fantastic salt in the wound of saying “he’s not a dictator”. sure, he alone wields power and has for over 30 years, after rigging elections to make sure the opposition didn’t win a single race for congress, but he follows the US orders so he’s not a dictator.
remember the whole “they hate us” meme? the stated reasons were specifically US support for israel and for middle east dictators in tunisia, egypt, yemen, and jordan. this is sort of neat, we are witnessing for real the US taking an active stance against democracy, and creating a new line of terrorists who hate us.
the only positive thing coming out of this is that we get a front for seat in seeing what happens to a modern nation’s business infrastructure when the entire internet is turned off. clear skies on your cloud computing day.
i get that “win the future” is slogan rhetoric and meaningless in the greater sense, but it twinges the nerd in me. you can’t win without setting out a goal beforehand and define the conditions for losing.
the way the phrase was presented in the state of the union it came across as a subtle endorsement of the notion of american exceptionalism, a stupid and counterproductive belief, with the goals the president presented sounding like facets of that greater idea of american superiority, and not as de facto ends in their own right.
america should stop comparing itself to everyone else and set it’s targets using objective measures: balanced budget, a growing renewable economy, a shrinking GINI index, and heavy investment in education. defining yourself as “more influential than china” is stupid.
was working on mixes and watching angelica play ME2, and reading about net neutrality in the background. after about 2 hours of reading, i am of the conclusion that anyone who says they understand net neutrality is either (A) lying, or (B) lying to make money off of it one way or the other
i’d comment on it more, but frankly i’m not qualified to. instead, here’s some thoughts about Mass Effect 2:
1, the game, being a sequel, doesn’t do the “you lose all your items and powers, start over” crap. instead you start a world famous hero who saved the world, and have access to vast resources and near top of the line weaponry and armor. ditto your team. who also are heroes who saved the world and have achieved their own positions of power and greatness.
2, at no point does the game plot fall into the rut of “you need to find the 7 parts of the seal that ancient warriors used to block out the demon” type crap. even the most mundane side quests (aka, the loyalty missions) have better individual plots than most sci-fi books i read. it actually feels like watching hour long episodes of a good sci-fi tv series: each has it’s own complete plot
and yeah, the shooty parts can feel more like an on-rails headshot emulator than an FPS, but eh, it’s not supposed to be a shooter
picture unrelated
the principal difference between the american right wing and fascists is that the right wing are not statists in a true sense, and do not work towards centralized production control.
the principal difference between the american left wing and fascists is that the left wing are not nationalists in a true sense, and do not work towards a culturally conservative homogeneity
look, politics isn’t a sliding scale with one end being Bad and co-labeled Fascist, while the other end has your personal viewpoint. it’s possible for something to be bad and not be fascist.
the current republican response to any progressive issue along the lines of health care, gay marriage, or gay adoption is always “leave it up to the states”. what a wonderful non-answer. it really means “we can’t attack minorities successfully on a federal level, but the more limited scope we know we can defeat them on state levels, so i suggest fighting the fight there”.
it’s an example of codeword politics in the US. it’s not ok to be openly racist/homophobic, so instead you use words that are perfectly legit and defendible to the majority, but your fringe racist/homophobic base understands differently. the idea is to hopefully create a “good america” where straight, white, religious people are enshrined, and a second america where everyone else lives.
and no, that’s not ok. it’s why the US had to destroy the south in the civil war: it was a war over state rights, but “states’ rights” is a codeword for “i want to my white privilege to be explicit and legally mandated”. and, again, that’s not ok. deal with it.
some people seem to be surprised by al franken’s actions as freshman senator. he’s been very sharp during questioning, aggressive in pointing out ridiculous political stances (like the pro-rape block), and overall just sharp and active
i think a part of it is just how insanely lethargic by comparison the political culture is. it’s understood that things won’t change and you’ll know (and work with) these same people another 30 or so years, so it’s no time to make enemies. you come into this culture in your teens as a volunteer and live your whole life in it, and franken missed all of it.
the other reason is that people confuse characters played by an actor with the actor. franken plays confused, meek, and soft characters, when in reality the man is a stand up comic with decades of experience. if you’re a stand up comic, you must know how to control hecklers, and it’s usually by tearing them down. you take those same skills, the ability to quickly take what someone says and turn it against them in a way that shatters their ego, and put them into a committee member, and suddenly when someone makes an indefensible claim there’s now a senator calling them on it.
not that democrats will somehow manage to not fuck it up anyways. cause of franken there’s now a list of 30 republican senators who quite literally voted to facilitate the rape of US service members, but i’d be surprised if any campaign ads will run that will mention this. afterall, that might ruffle the feathers of those senators.
in any case, a short clip of franken questioning an anti-health care activist during a session on medical bankruptcies. it might not seem like much to people used to normal conversations where dumb statements are pointed out as such, but this is the land of no one ever being called on anything