Congrats on your soft, velvety pubes. Mine are coarse enough to use as a scrub brush.

The US killed Iran’s leadership and strengthened their resolve. Now a bunch of younger, more creative, and more passionate people have taken leadership positions. Iranian propaganda has proven more effective and internet savvy, and their military decision-making has likely improved due to destagnation. Trump literally threatening to wipe the entire civilization off the face of the earth likely pushes Iranians who are against the regime to reconsider (even if only temporarily while they deal with the bigger threat), and I couldn’t say I wouldn’t make the same judgment if I were in their position. What a colossal failure, but hey, at least the defense contractors are making money, right? I can’t wait for the blowback from this to inspire the next round of interventions, if we’re even still around by then.

If your choice is between murdering countless innocents or being executed I expect you to die, and we’re not even to the point yet that the consequences would be that severe. The “home of the brave” seems to be awfully tolerant of cowardice in its military as of late.

There are photos of the rescued pilot out there. They’re not real of course (AI generated), but they are being circulated by high-profile politicians presenting them as real.

I wouldn’t dare speculate lest I end up as crazy as Professor Jiang.

Currently in flux, but it has been neoliberalism. Trump’s second term has been shifting the orthodoxy towards neoconservative fascism. When I say that someone is non-ideological what I mean is that they do not have a personal commitment to any particular ideology, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have an alignment. People who don’t have ideological commitments often align with the state and have a loosely connected set of orthodox views, and if they don’t then they instead have a loosely connected set of heterodox views.

So where are the majority of Americans, ideologically? Is there a majority ideological consensus? If so, what is it?

The majority of Americans are non-ideological in that they either align with the ideology of the state or have an incoherent hodge-podge of heterodox ideas.

The lesson that the Democratic party should have learned is that “only a little bit of death and destruction” is not an effective counter-message to maximum death and destruction. Harm reduction is a good practice, but if that’s the only moral argument you can make in favor of your candidacy you’re going to lose and have only yourself to blame.

I used to think this way when I was miserable and disillusioned with society in general. When you approach life with the assumption that people are evil by default you tend to only notice things which affirm that belief. I’ve since made a lot of changes in my life and gained a new perspective, and I’ve found that I more frequently notice people doing small acts of kindness when they think no one’s looking. Most people want to do good, it’s just that they don’t often succeed.

Most people are good, it’s a wealthy few who exploit the planet and people for profit who are destroying the planet. The “humans are inherently selfish/evil” line only serves to protect those responsible from accountability by distributing the blame.

Maybe it’s friendly!

They’re not - or at least no one can reasonably claim ignorance now - and they have already voted for anti-genocide representatives in special elections and primaries thus far. It won’t be a wipeout across the board, but AIPAC will lose their stranglehold on US politics this primary season and they know it. They’ve been doing damage control rather than trying to get pro-Israel candidates elected recently.

Surely there’s an indie scene in Japan, no?

You wouldn’t need plausible deniability because the prosecution would have to prove that your intent was to make the bill unfit for circulation. Intent is already notoriously difficult to prove in a court of law, and it would be very difficult to prove someone wanted to take a bill out of circulation by writing a message on it that they hoped would be seen by people.

Even if the result is that the bill gets taken out of circulation, the court would have to prove that you knew that would happen and wanted it to.

A sustained general strike requires widespread strong unions with the ability to keep workers paid and fed for the whole duration of the strike. It’s not something you can just decide to do on a whim, it requires years of preparation by a disciplined labor movement that has already trained those muscles. This 1 day strike isn’t ground-shattering, but it’s a start.

When most of the AIPAC candidates were elected the electorate was largely ignorant of Israel-Palestine.

He fancies himself to be a Hitler-style orator, but he ALWAYS comes off as just a Screeching Weenie.

Hitler also comes off that way to people who aren’t fascist morons.

I guess it depends on whether they’re referring to elected officials or the electorate, because support for the genocide is only mainstream among elected officials and not the electorate.

But they could also be referring to border policy, which is a little less straightforward, as a lot of the Democratic electorate still has some reactionary views on the border and immigration as a result of candidates and elected officials refusing to offer a counter-narrative to the “border crisis.”

Which views would those be?

I’ll be defacing every one of these bills that passes my hands.