I mean, it sounds like they did ask how much it would cost, he just bulldozed through the question instead of seriously engaging with it and legacy media is too chickenshit to report it as “Trump apathetic about costs of deportation plan” or “Mass Deportation to Cost Billions Despite Trump’s Claims” because putting the things he says in context makes him sound like the madman he is and apparently truth is no longer sufficient defense from defamation.

Wait hang on you only read 2? I’m disappointed, I put a solid fifteen minutes into googling to find those 11 separate links.

I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but this makes a lot of sense. Especially in a 2-party system the election is inevitably going to be a vibe check on the status quo as much as it is a specific election focusing on specific candidates and policies. I’d like to look more closely at the margins to get a feel for whether the Republicans could have run a ham sandwich and still been successful as opposed to the specific appeal of Trumpism.

Not that that changes how rough the next 4 years are going to get for a lot of people.

What constitutes a terrorist organization is up to the electric officials and police organizations to define.

That’s kind of the point, mate. In the current political climate I half expect them to start describing any organization giving humanitarian aid to Palestinians as terrorists.

But to ask the real questions: is providing material support to terrorists not already a crime in Sweden? Does having a Swedish criminal record not complicate eg visa renewals and make it harder for someone to stay in or return to the country? Assuming that’s the case, why is this something that needs to be specially handled now? Is this actually a problem, or just a way to stoke racism and fear for political benefit?

Right.

Russia’s immense respect for Ukrainian culture has defined this war

So the difference is not whether they’re trying to be imperialists, but in their relative ability to do so. I’m sure there’s some fascinating and useful graduate level historical analysis to be done in understanding why Russification was relatively unsuccessful, but that doesn’t change the fact that Russia has time and again attempted to impose Russian culture, Russian language, and Russian law on parts of the Russian empire that were very happily doing their own thing.

lolwut

I would fucking love to throw that man in prison for one of his dozens of crimes, but I also recognize that I don’t have the power to do that. I do have some small amount of power over whether or not he goes into the fucking white house.

There’s a certain spirit of online debate about trivial or nonsensical things like this that can best be understood as happening purely for the sport of it.

I didn’t say anything about voting, I’m just trying to be realistic about who else is looking forward to the collapse of the current system. If you want to roll the dice on that then you should at least be honest about who else is sitting at the table.

So the neocons of the 2000s are the C’tan, providing neoliberals with unending life by running against fascists and also necrosteel bodies but at the cost of their souls. One day we will overthrow the gods and place their shards into our doomsday weapons.

Hey now, let’s be fair. It’s not just ashes, it’s also going to be blood. And between 2 and 3 of the 4 cats are literal Nazis.

This is goin’ in tha book.

Yeah, though in his (incredibly lukewarm) defense he seemed more interested in the batshit crazy aliens-control-the-government theories than the more pedestrian conservative stuff, although the line between the two has greatly narrowed over the years.

Right, because the alternative somehow isn’t “genocide, but also you lose even more of what little power you still have over this supposed democracy.”

Even if this election doesn’t let us end the genocide, one option is actively threatening to use military force against political dissidents, which tends to make it even harder to push for a change in foreign policy.

Damn, I can’t wait to hear about all the things you’re doing to try and actually end the abominable genocide against the people of Palestine. Meanwhile the rest of us are looking for ways to do that and also voting against the guy who promised to double-down and bring the violence home against immigrants.

Pretending Trump’s presidency wouldn’t be objectively worse for all the causes leftists care about, even the ones (like Palestine) Harris isn’t going to do shit about isn’t taking a principled stand. It’s hiding from what little power you have in the electoral system in order to keep whatever happens next off your conscience. And frankly, the Palestinians don’t care about your conscience any more than the Hispanic Americans or trans kids.

So when Ukrainians try to push for closer alignment with the EU it’s a Washington-backed color revolution and thus is no different than Russia rolling into the literal tanks.

Like, even if you’re not a Russian troll you’re still adopting a conspiracy theory that completely ignores any agency the Ukrainian people have.

But only the specific subset of anarchists that I read about first in my early 20s! All the others are just like those fascists in the Judean People’s Front!

Honestly I feel like trying to find the root of his bullshit and how specifically it’s so radically off-base is actually kind of an important part of the project Otherwise the follower crowd will just claim that he’s not being given a fair shake, when he was obviously talking about (insert a brief and misleading explanation of the circle thing that actually does try to make it make sense).

That’s what the whole narrative is built on, after al I’ll.

I mean, if you want to trace it back that far you’re talking about the bronze age Canaanites, and arguably through them the Phonecians and Carthaginians would be better successors than the Israelites. If that’s the case then the land should either be under Tunisian administration (for maximum cultural continuity after the fall of Carthage during the Punic wars) or either Turkey or Italy for political continuity through right of successive conquests. Or maybe we want to go with one of the theories about just how far afield the Phonecian diaspora went and consider the state of Utah their most direct modern descendent.

The ancient history of the levant is fascinating, but in the context of the current conflict over the nation of Israel it is relevant only in that it is a major part of Israeli nationalist mythmaking. If you want to actually trace who lived in the region thousands of years ago and where they ended up to determine who the “rightful” government should be you’re going to end up in some really goofy places unless you already know what answer you want to get and are seeking justification rather than illumination. Hell, nationalism as a concept only dates back a few hundred years, and before then you’re arguing about the competing claims of kings and empires through descent, conquest, oaths of fealty, and whatever else. Who ruled/owned/managed your land and who you were as a people were far less connected, and using that as a justification for modern government actions honestly sounds like they’re out of actual justifications. It’s just Putin ranting to Tucker Carlson about medieval maps for two hours while Russian troops shell Ukrainian cities.