Only pedophiles defend pedophiles.
And I fucking HATE pedophiles.
Woody Allen is still a pedophile who raped one of his own young step-daughters and married another.
People who defend that shit are SICK.
Yes. She was one of only four Republicans in the House to cross the aisle and vote for the Epstein Files Transparency Act: Thomas Massie, Nancy Mace, Lauren Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene. It’s also pretty clear that she is on the outs with Trump now specifically because of her support for that legislation and consistent demands to release all the files.
From the article you didn’t read:
This war isn’t about empires, it’s about national identity.
That’s where Trump — and Putin — go wrong. Zelensky is a figurehead. Even if you get rid of him, Ukraine will keep fighting. Even if Kyiv were to fall, and Russia magically occupied the entire country, Ukrainians would resist.
Russian imperialists have been trying to destroy the idea of Ukraine for generations. Joseph Stalin, one of the bloodiest dictators in human history, starved millions of Ukrainians to death; he purged, executed, and deported tens of thousands in part to eradicate their national identity. He couldn’t do it. The tsars before him couldn’t do it, either.
This isn’t some mysterious, unique human experience. The English could never stamp out Irish nationhood in hundreds of years of occupation; Imperial Japan couldn’t stamp out the Koreans; neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians will eradicate the other nation, despite all their efforts.
Resistance to Russia is central to the very idea of Ukrainian statehood. So long as Russia is intent on destroying Ukraine as a nation, the war will go on. Peace doesn’t require Zelensky’s acceptance of Russia’s territorial demands. It requires Putin’s acceptance of Ukraine as a nation.
Slava Ukraini!
That’s because until recently, there has been a core group of old guard Republican senators, including Mitt Romney, John Cornyn, Mitch McConnell, Thom Tillis, and Lindsey Graham among others, who were/are pro-Ukraine and would have blocked Trump from other things he wanted to do more if Trump had insisted on removing sanctions. Even at the time of his death Graham was trying to get more aid for Ukraine.
(Keep in mind this is Senate, not House, and a different set of powers and rules. But look at any major Ukraine legislation that has crossed the Senate floor in the last two years and you’ll see that same core group of pro-Ukraine senators supporting it.)
These days, it’s not the same. None of those guys I named are forces anymore – some retired, some primaried out, at least one dead and one we’re just not sure – so Trump is now dropping Russia sanctions without that same kind of Senate opposition.
He would have done it on day one of his second term if he’d been allowed to, but they said no and he needed their support on other things, like approving the One Big Beautiful Butffucked Bill last summer and trying desperately to get them to pass the SAVE America Act, which they have not yet done and I hope never will.
Well, Qatar gave him a plane, and word was a few months ago that Qatar is where the Venezuelan oil money is, in an account that only he controls. That’s just one link but there are dozens, including an inquiry from the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the matter.
One might almost conclude he doesn’t intend to stay in the US post-presidency.
So basically what I’m hearing you say is that I should ensure that my own bias of choice should be equitably represented in whatever I choose to consume so as to not miss anything, is that right?
For myself, I have come to the conclusion that the split-second a discussion of bias turns toward more-preferred vs. less-preferred, such as when you ask, “Feels like every shitty thing a right wing nut does gets posted here, but does every shitty thing a left leaning politician get seen here?” we are no longer discussing truth, or even a good-faith search for truth.
And that’s not what bias is. Again, I am not interested in insulating myself from anything merely biased. Why would I be?
However, I am deeply invested in avoiding propaganda.
Thus, it does not matter to me one bit what anyone else posts. There is no such thing as “enough of this” or “not enough of that” because if I want to see something I just go find it.
Frankly, if you personally don’t like what is posted, if it’s too-left or not-enough-right for your own taste as you suggest, then you should step up to meet your own needs by posting whatever it is you want to see, or finding a community that does.
But you haven’t addressed the elephant in the room – you know, the one in bold, propaganda – at all, and you seem to be far more concerned with ensuring that other people are not turned away from propaganda, trying to slide in “bias” as a weasel word that excludes what you’re really getting at.
The problem here is that you’re talking to someone who literally doesn’t care. For reasons I won’t go into here, I have been examining my own biases deeply for LITERAL decades: I don’t hide from them. I know what I believe, and I know exactly what has gone into my belief of it, and I have been having deep interactions with the mechanics of belief for the entirety of my adult life.
So I’ll clue you in: Your entire existence is your own perception, as is my own, as is common to humanity. Of course bias becomes reality, because it is your belief, and your belief both shapes and fills your own perception of life. Bias is simply the amount by which a fact is skewed to purpose, whether benign or malign. I hate to break it to you, but we are ALL, each of us, an incredibly messy basket of biases and half-truths along with whatever grasp of tangible reality we each pretend to lay claim to. There is no cure. It is the nature of humanity, something propagandists dishonestly manipulate to the gain of those billionaires and oligarchs who can pay for that kind of unsubtle steering of the masses.
You want to ensure your bias doesn’t become your reality? That’s simple. Get to know yourself and your beliefs in more than a superficial way, and you won’t have to be frightened of anything that anyone says. You can relieve yourself of the responsibility for the biases of others and gladly know your own truth. In that light, lies don’t stand for long.
So me, I don’t care what you consume. I literally have ZERO fear of missing out, lol. Read what you want. I know I do.
Stay off the algorithms, folks.
Link to Wired article for anyone who doesn’t want to deal with Redact
I’m pretty sure it’s paywalled but adblock takes care of it for me. If anyone needs an archive link let me know.
Lol, no. The election is happening right now, and not a soldier in sight.
Sure, so is humanity itself. Show me anyone that is free of bias, and I’ll show you a magical unicorn.
But things move slowly enough here that I can listen, take my time, consider carefully, and fact check. There’s also not nearly as much of a bot problem here: chances are excellent I am speaking with a human being as flawed as I am.
The point is not to isolate oneself from differing viewpoints, even biased ones; the point is to isolate oneself from propaganda: the presentation of faux “information” that is either truth-lite or truth free, and always served with a dose of something viscerally triggering.
One recalls a certain Canadian “Freedom” truck convoy a few years back.
Don’t fool yourself. You’ve got plenty of magats.
Is your palate so refined that you avoid it entirely?
Anything with an algorithm, yeah. Lemmy is all that I am on.
And it’s not so much “refinement of palate” as it is simply making room in my head for my own thoughts, and ensuring nothing gets into my head without me having had the opportunity to think about it and fact check if need be.
And yeah, I do a LOT of fact checking. Staying off social media keeps it at a manageable level for me.
*Russia
Or to put it another way, the orange chancre wants Canada to submit to his authority, but he’s not paying for the propaganda, nor will he. He’s too cheap and doesn’t care that much about Canada. He cares SOLELY about himself, his image, and how to enrich his family: that is all.
The one who cares most about destroying Western cohesion and the rule of law – and uses widespread, even global manipulation of social media to divide communities and countries to do it – is now, and has always been, Vladimir Putin.
Also, I recognize Josh Hawley’s name from 2021; pretty sure he was one of the first few congresspeople to excuse trump’s incitement of the insurrection.
It was more than that; he was there inciting the crowd:
Not by name, no.
The video is in the linked article. Abdul asked Tommy around the 30 second mark if Tommy disavows the Muslim Brotherhood as a reflexive response to Tommy’s own question, and at 4:20 he asked Tommy if, as a Christian, Tommy disavows “any attempt to read Christian doctrine into the laws of our country?” and of course Tommy declines.
But Abdul never asks Tommy if he disavows White Christian Nationalism.
I wanna know who that other guy who left with him is. The one he walked out with.
Not that you or anyone here would know, it’s just that no one participates in a walk of shame unless they have to, and it’s pretty clear they were there together.
This guy almost certainly came in from out of state, too: worked for Josh Hawley of Missouri, works for a PAC belonging to ex-governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, hard to believe he actually lives in Michigan, much less in Caro, which appears to be a rural mid-state town.
One remembers all those accusations from the right-wing that people showing up at protests are bused in, not local, etc.
Yet here’s this Missouri/Louisiana linked chud showing up out of nowhere at a Caro, Michigan town hall, run by a candidate for Senate that is not even of his own party. Hmmm.
The article does not specify the timeframe involved, but does give the totals:
The audit identified 983 search entries involving 97 identifiable license plates from Georgia, New Jersey, Maryland, Florida, South Carolina and North Carolina.
South Carolina plates represented most of the activity. Forty-eight South Carolina plates accounted for 788 search entries, according to the records. Department documents also noted that most registered vehicle owners identified in the audit were Hispanic.
983 searches, most centered in a different, neighboring state. For the record, Savannah is near the GA/SC state line, but still a couple hours from the nearest city in southeast South Carolina, a lot of land that is mostly rural; about the same distance to the nearest big city in Florida, also rural land; and five or six hours from bumfuck eastern North Carolina, where there are no big cities east of Raleigh. Lots of little towns, a few bigger towns, but mostly rural throughout.
What that means is that NOBODY in Savannah PD was overseeing Flock usage until people started making a stink about its misuse, because that’s a lot of very visibly out-of-state searches.
It’s not like you live in New Jersey and half the plates you see are New York or Pennsylvania, a situation where this kind of search spread would make sense for someone working local cases: for them, that tri-state area is a local spread. Rather, it’s that this officer lives in a mid-sized city in the middle of a large rural area, working local cases involving local people, but has an absolute fuckton of searches for license plates from everywhere else.
She said she rarely used Flock herself and generally accessed it to help investigate missing-person cases involving behavioral health patients.
I’d also put money on the ICE husband not just doing it for himself and his own cases, but telling his ICE buds, “Hey, I’ll run your plate for you,” meaning that he handed it out as favors and that the searches were not just for his own cases, but those of other ICE agents, all with varying degrees of actual legal cause or right to do so.
Didn’t want to edit so I will just add here: I had not read the article yet when I wrote the above, so I was unaware that the guy had joined another denomination when he left the church, and does not wish to return. Technically, that refusal to return to Catholicism and “submit to the pope” is solid ground for excommunication from the Catholic church.
But having known myself at least two or three dozen openly lapsed Catholics over the years that I met in other churches, it’s pretty clear they don’t commonly excommunicate for this alone, so I stand by what I said: the real crime was not leaving, but leaving publicly, and in open protest of the assaults on his child, and in such a way that the official doing the excommunication used it not to bring him back, but to punish him and his entire family for not suffering in silence.
Excellent comment, thank you for taking the time to write it. I wrote a more superficial “why” of it elsewhere, but you actually brought canon. Well said.
Catholicism. Even when you’re not particularly religious, it can be a huge part of your ethnic and generational identity. You are also generally encouraged to endure whatever you encounter, and if the wrong you endure is both in the church and unbearable, you are to seek another part of the church that does not have this problem. You are, in every circumstance – even when your kid is getting raped by a priest – to remain in the church.
I doubt very much that they ever communicate this in so many words (though I have known people that got something very close) but it is hammered in from your earliest hour in every possible way, especially if your schooling was Catholic.
That is why this loving father was punished, and so severely, even if they did not admit it directly: he put his son over the church, and the Catholic church unironically considers itself to be on par with God, to the point that the pope, when speaking ex cathedra, is considered to be the infallible voice of God on earth.
So for Catholics, the full expectation would be that the wife and kids would remain Catholic, even though the marriage is intact and the husband is now excommunicated: loyalty to the church precedes the marriage in importance, and historically always has. Even for as much as a woman is supposed to submit to her husband, the earliest female saints were often women who refused a marriage with someone not of the faith, often by suicide or by choosing death over the marriage to the unfaithful, and these saints are still celebrated.
Also, a mother finding herself strapped to a suddenly non-Catholic husband would also be expected to take it upon herself to ensure that her Catholic children are also brought up in the church, even if it means doing so without their father, even if it means she gets the stink eye whenever she goes, even if going is a living hell for her and her family, which it arguably has been.
All of this is not so much dogma, though the basis of it certainly is, as it is simply written into every fiber of Catholic living.
And the piece of shit pedophile defender that excommunicated this guy – doing it in such a way that it harmed the entire family – knew all this when he did it, even more completely and personally than I or anyone else could possibly describe it, and was glad.
NOTE: I am an atheist and do not personally believe or defend any of it, so don’t come at me: this is simply an explanation, NOT a defense.
Why did I have to open an archive.ph link to access a Daily Beast article?
I mean, props for the archive link and being mindful of those who cannot bypass paywalls, etc. Thank you for the basic posting courtesy, and I mean that. But honestly the archive link belongs in the body, so that people like me who pay attention to sources can see before they click what they’re giving clicks to.
Keep in mind that anything coming out of the archive.today set of archive links is not just an archive, but is also behind what amounts to a link shortener.
Here’s the non-archive link for anyone who uses source as a criterion for choosing whether to read an article:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-80-is-psychotic-and-its-getting-worse-says-cognitive-doctor