Objection

joined 9 months ago
[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago

Propaganda is the reason the word took on that meaning.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 33 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

There's no need to go around making actionable threats of violence that could be read out in a courtroom, that's called fedposting. Try this on for size:

If the right keeps pushing, eventually someone's probably going to feel like their back's against the wall with no other recourse. For example, if there was, say, a national abortion ban, I wouldn't be surprised if someone tried to kill the people responsible. Tragic, really, but that's just the world we live in. Look, I want to do things peacefully, but if I can't produce results that way, well, it's not about me, it's about what's going to happen if other people lose confidence in my methods.

A prediction isn't a threat. I'm allowed to speculate about other people doing stuff, aren't I? Some historical orgs spoke that way, and their predictions could be eerily accurate.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (2 children)

Of course not. It's not meddling when we do it, because we're the good guys.

Our support of an organic democratic movement to overthrow the old corrupt regime, their meddling support of proxies to undermine the legitimate government.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 8 points 4 days ago

Read the article. It's not Bitcoin, it's another cryptocurrency called Libra, which just did this:

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

It's funny to me how both sides say this about the other. There were two rebellions in Ukraine backed by foreign powers, and which one you think is legitimate and which one was created by foreign meddling doesn't seem to have anything to do with any facts on the ground, it's entirely about which global hegemon you support.

In reality, both the succession movement and Euromaidan involved a combination of foreign agitation and popular support, and it's nowhere near as black and white as either side pretends.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

So you are you in favour of Putin’s regime?

Not particularly, no, but I suppose it depends on what it means to "support" a foreign leader. No matter what I say I support or oppose, it's not going to change the material world unless I take actions with the aim of achieving specific results. And it seems to me that my primary mechanism for affecting foreign politics is through the actions of my own government. Do I want my government to undermine Putin's government? No. Do I see Putin's government as worthy of emulation? Also no.

My position as a leftist is to focus on class interests. Both Ukraine and Russia are capitalist governments that do very little for the people, and who controls what will make little material difference to lives of ordinary people. What does make a difference is the war, in which people are being drafted and thrown into a meat grinder to fight over rubble. What's the point in dying to maintain a shitty system? Even if there was a point, it was probably inevitable that Ukraine would be unable to reclaim all it's territory, so the choice was always, "Accept territorial concessions now, or accept territorial concessions after a bunch of people have died." Of course, I don't support Russia's involvement either, but my government isn't funding Russia.

Meanwhile, of course, the US is massively overextended. Decades long conflicts in the Middle East, supporting genocide in Palestine, sabre rattling with China, and now fighting a proxy war with China. Had we been more cautious and restrained in the past, perhaps we would have enough diplomatic leverage to diplomatically isolate Russia and enforce sanctions effectively. Or, perhaps if we gave up on Ukraine, the government could've more effectively isolated China. But by taking on both simultaneously, they've been pushed together, and the US has thrown away the key asset that allowed it to win the Cold War: the Sino-Soviet split.

Even if the war was completely justified and black-and-white, we would still need to consider the practical and realistic questions about whether maintaining the territorial integrity of a country on the other side of the world that most people can't find on a map is really worth it, or even achievable. But liberals seem to really, really hate this kind of analysis, as if the world was a Saturday morning cartoon where the good guy always wins. The US is not Superman. We are dealing with all sorts of domestic issues which have given rise to the far-right, and that poses a much greater existential threat than control over Donbass.

How on earth can you accuse me of not being a leftist and being similar to the far-right for saying that we should spend more money on schools and hospitals and less money on bombs? What do left and right even mean to you?

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago (3 children)

who are in favour of Putin’s regime, for unknown reasons

Have you tried asking? Or do you not believe the reasons they tell you?

You’re basically proving my point by admitting that you do have a very similar view to the far-right.

"Wow, both the far-right and the far-left distrust the US government, therefore they must be exactly the same." This is such a childish analysis. I could just as easily say that both liberals and fascists dislike communism, therefore liberals and fascists are the same. Or fascists could say that both liberals and communists dislike fascism and are therefore the same. It's such a nonsense point that it's hardly worth a response.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Nearly everyone outside of the enlightened rational centrists has soured on this whole idea of "benevolent interventionism," with very good reason. We've seen how our leaders used lies and deception time and time again to get involved in pointless, destructive wars for their own interests. People look back at Iraq and Afghanistan, and Vietnam, etc, and say they were obviously unjustified, but at the time people supported them, and everyone was immersed in propaganda. Of course, in every war, those who push back for any reason are always accused of treason and supporting the other side, whether the specific term is pinko, terrorist sympathizer, or tankie.

It's really no mystery why a bunch of disparate political groups oppose a conflict halfway around the world under the same leadership and media that led us into Iraq and Afghanistan, the mystery is why liberals are so willing to trust them again.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

RFK Jr in the HHS be like

Yeah, this is preventable as fuck

Drop it

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 week ago

All I can do is joke about it because my feelings about it are too angry to express.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

One of the earliest things I can remember was encountering a thread on the forums of nuklearpower.com (home of the 8-Bit Theater webcomic) that simply asked, "Religious people, why do you believe in God?" and that was the first time I ever had ever encountered atheist perspectives or questioned what my parents taught me. At the time, there was very much this idea of, "Nobody ever changed their mind from an internet argument" but the internet exposed me to a lot of different views that I would never have encountered otherwise (see also: queer people).

Other than that, I used to gather around with friends to browse icanhazcheezeburger and failblog and stuff. I stayed up late grinding levels in RuneScape. Newgrounds and flash games were a big thing. Some of my friends were into 4chan in the early days when it was more about edgy shock humor than straight up Nazis. There was social media like MySpace and Facebook but I had no interest in them bc I was a nerd. There were a lot more random little websites that passed around by word of mouth.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago

Were people happy? Most of the people in my circles weren't, but maybe my friends are just cool.

 
 
 

How would you answer this, and how would you expect Chinese netizens on Xiaohongshu to answer?

I will link to the thread in the comments because I want you to take a moment and think about it first.

 

Just curious.

 

The first sentence on the Wikipedia page for it calls it "a disputed medical condition." Even the CIA itself has admitted that cases are not caused by "a sustained global campaign by a hostile power." The State Department similarly released a report that it was highly unlikely the symptoms were caused by any sort of directed energy weapon. In fact, seven different US intelligence agencies released a consensus statement saying, "available intelligence consistently points against the involvement of US adversaries in causing the reported incidents."

But the clowns on .world don't care about things like truth or evidence, or even direct statements from the people who's boots they have in their mouths. If it makes an enemy of the US look bad, then it is absolute truth, and anything short of complete faith and loyalty must be purged from conversation.

Rare video clip of a .world mod

:::spoiler Offending post

 
 

This one included.

16
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by Objection@lemmy.ml to c/shitposting@lemmygrad.ml
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19534199

Before I begin, I have a confession: until recently (until today, in fact), I was a tankie. But this morning I just woke up and realized everything I believed and everything I'd been saying was wrong, and my critics were right about everything. And so, I have decided to completely and totally adopt their way of thinking.

The above image is an example to illustrate how my thinking has changed. You may be familiar with "Russell's Teapot," a thought experiment from Bertrand Russell where he imagines that someone says that there is a tiny, invisible teapot, floating out in space. He argues that while such a claim cannot strictly be disproved, it can be dismissed without evidence because there is no evidence to support it. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. He goes on to explain that while he could not disprove the existence of God, he still considered himself an atheist, because he did not see sufficient evidence for the claim of God's existence to be credible.

In my previous (tankie) way of thinking, I would have agreed with this idea, that claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. But I now understand that this made me a Bad Person. Suppose that, as in the beautiful diagram I drew in MS Paint, the claim is not only that the teapot exists, but that inside of the teapot, there are a bunch of tiny invisible people who are geopolitical enemies of the United States and they are committing genocide against innocent people. Again, before, I would have said that that only makes the claim more implausible and would require extraordinary proof. Now, I realize how wrong I was, and I can only say that I deeply regret and apologize for my statements. The existence of the teapot can be proven incontrovertibly, by the following logic:

  1. If you claim that the teapot does not exist, you are denying that the genocide inside it is happening.

  2. If you deny the genocide is happening, you are a genocide denier and therefore a fascist.

  3. Fascism is wrong.

  4. Therefore, it is impossible to correctly deny the teapot's existence.

As a brief aside, I should mention that in addition to my political conversion, I have also experienced a drastic change in my religious beliefs, as it is now trivially easy to prove that God exists. According to the Torah, God flooded the world, wiping out virtually all of humanity, including countless ethnic groups. To deny the existence of God makes you a genocide denier and a fascist. However, it should be added that to worship God is genocide apologia, which is also fascist. The only non-fascist belief, which is necessarily correct, is that God exists and is evil. Moving on.

Before, I believed that it was ridiculous for the US to spend as much on the military as the next 9 countries combined. I wanted to slash the military budget to fund domestic spending, schools, hospitals, making sure bridges don't collapse, helping the poor, etc. I see now how wrong I was. The Genocide Teapot exists, somewhere out there in space, in fact, there could be countless numbers of them out there. Therefore, the real progressive thing to do is to further cut domestic spending and have everyone tighten our belts so that we can produce as many missiles as possible, to be fired out into space indiscriminately, in hopes of hitting a Genocide Teapot.

However, we must also consider the possibility that these teapots could be located here on Earth too. Teapots are a form of china, which is a very suspicious connection. Clearly, the US must be permitted to inspect every square inch of China in search of these invisible teapots, and refusal to comply should be considered an admission of guilt. But we should not, of course, limit ourselves to China. Perhaps there are Genocide Teapots in Russia, or Brazil, or Germany, or Canada, who knows? I do, because to deny that Genocide Teapots exist in all of those places is genocide denial, which is fascist and wrong.

In conclusion, we should bomb every country in the world simultaneously, including ourselves, and anyone who disagrees with me is a war-loving fascist.

Thank you.

33
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by Objection@lemmy.ml to c/memes@hexbear.net
 

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/19534199

Before I begin, I have a confession: until recently (until today, in fact), I was a tankie. But this morning I just woke up and realized everything I believed and everything I'd been saying was wrong, and my critics were right about everything. And so, I have decided to completely and totally adopt their way of thinking.

The above image is an example to illustrate how my thinking has changed. You may be familiar with "Russell's Teapot," a thought experiment from Bertrand Russell where he imagines that someone says that there is a tiny, invisible teapot, floating out in space. He argues that while such a claim cannot strictly be disproved, it can be dismissed without evidence because there is no evidence to support it. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. He goes on to explain that while he could not disprove the existence of God, he still considered himself an atheist, because he did not see sufficient evidence for the claim of God's existence to be credible.

In my previous (tankie) way of thinking, I would have agreed with this idea, that claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. But I now understand that this made me a Bad Person. Suppose that, as in the beautiful diagram I drew in MS Paint, the claim is not only that the teapot exists, but that inside of the teapot, there are a bunch of tiny invisible people who are geopolitical enemies of the United States and they are committing genocide against innocent people. Again, before, I would have said that that only makes the claim more implausible and would require extraordinary proof. Now, I realize how wrong I was, and I can only say that I deeply regret and apologize for my statements. The existence of the teapot can be proven incontrovertibly, by the following logic:

  1. If you claim that the teapot does not exist, you are denying that the genocide inside it is happening.

  2. If you deny the genocide is happening, you are a genocide denier and therefore a fascist.

  3. Fascism is wrong.

  4. Therefore, it is impossible to correctly deny the teapot's existence.

As a brief aside, I should mention that in addition to my political conversion, I have also experienced a drastic change in my religious beliefs, as it is now trivially easy to prove that God exists. According to the Torah, God flooded the world, wiping out virtually all of humanity, including countless ethnic groups. To deny the existence of God makes you a genocide denier and a fascist. However, it should be added that to worship God is genocide apologia, which is also fascist. The only non-fascist belief, which is necessarily correct, is that God exists and is evil. Moving on.

Before, I believed that it was ridiculous for the US to spend as much on the military as the next 9 countries combined. I wanted to slash the military budget to fund domestic spending, schools, hospitals, making sure bridges don't collapse, helping the poor, etc. I see now how wrong I was. The Genocide Teapot exists, somewhere out there in space, in fact, there could be countless numbers of them out there. Therefore, the real progressive thing to do is to further cut domestic spending and have everyone tighten our belts so that we can produce as many missiles as possible, to be fired out into space indiscriminately, in hopes of hitting a Genocide Teapot.

However, we must also consider the possibility that these teapots could be located here on Earth too. Teapots are a form of china, which is a very suspicious connection. Clearly, the US must be permitted to inspect every square inch of China in search of these invisible teapots, and refusal to comply should be considered an admission of guilt. But we should not, of course, limit ourselves to China. Perhaps there are Genocide Teapots in Russia, or Brazil, or Germany, or Canada, who knows? I do, because to deny that Genocide Teapots exist in all of those places is genocide denial, which is fascist and wrong.

In conclusion, we should bomb every country in the world simultaneously, including ourselves, and anyone who disagrees with me is a war-loving fascist.

Thank you.

-3
submitted 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) by Objection@lemmy.ml to c/usa@lemmy.ml
 

Before I begin, I have a confession: until recently (until today, in fact), I was a tankie. But this morning I just woke up and realized everything I believed and everything I'd been saying was wrong, and my critics were right about everything. And so, I have decided to completely and totally adopt their way of thinking.

The above image is an example to illustrate how my thinking has changed. You may be familiar with "Russell's Teapot," a thought experiment from Bertrand Russell where he imagines that someone says that there is a tiny, invisible teapot, floating out in space. He argues that while such a claim cannot strictly be disproved, it can be dismissed without evidence because there is no evidence to support it. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. He goes on to explain that while he could not disprove the existence of God, he still considered himself an atheist, because he did not see sufficient evidence for the claim of God's existence to be credible.

In my previous (tankie) way of thinking, I would have agreed with this idea, that claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. But I now understand that this made me a Bad Person. Suppose that, as in the beautiful diagram I drew in MS Paint, the claim is not only that the teapot exists, but that inside of the teapot, there are a bunch of tiny invisible people who are geopolitical enemies of the United States and they are committing genocide against innocent people. Again, before, I would have said that that only makes the claim more implausible and would require extraordinary proof. Now, I realize how wrong I was, and I can only say that I deeply regret and apologize for my statements. The existence of the teapot can be proven incontrovertibly, by the following logic:

  1. If you claim that the teapot does not exist, you are denying that the genocide inside it is happening.

  2. If you deny the genocide is happening, you are a genocide denier and therefore a fascist.

  3. Fascism is wrong.

  4. Therefore, it is impossible to correctly deny the teapot's existence.

As a brief aside, I should mention that in addition to my political conversion, I have also experienced a drastic change in my religious beliefs, as it is now trivially easy to prove that God exists. According to the Torah, God flooded the world, wiping out virtually all of humanity, including countless ethnic groups. To deny the existence of God makes you a genocide denier and a fascist. However, it should be added that to worship God is genocide apologia, which is also fascist. The only non-fascist belief, which is necessarily correct, is that God exists and is evil. Moving on.

Before, I believed that it was ridiculous for the US to spend as much on the military as the next 9 countries combined. I wanted to slash the military budget to fund domestic spending, schools, hospitals, making sure bridges don't collapse, helping the poor, etc. I see now how wrong I was. The Genocide Teapot exists, somewhere out there in space, in fact, there could be countless numbers of them out there. Therefore, the real progressive thing to do is to further cut domestic spending and have everyone tighten our belts so that we can produce as many missiles as possible, to be fired out into space indiscriminately, in hopes of hitting a Genocide Teapot.

However, we must also consider the possibility that these teapots could be located here on Earth too. Teapots are a form of china, which is a very suspicious connection. Clearly, the US must be permitted to inspect every square inch of China in search of these invisible teapots, and refusal to comply should be considered an admission of guilt. But we should not, of course, limit ourselves to China. Perhaps there are Genocide Teapots in Russia, or Brazil, or Germany, or Canada, who knows? I do, because to deny that Genocide Teapots exist in all of those places is genocide denial, which is fascist and wrong.

In conclusion, we should bomb every country in the world simultaneously, including ourselves, and anyone who disagrees with me is a war-loving fascist.

Thank you.

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