Objection

joined 1 year ago
[–] Objection@lemmy.ml -2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Historically, you're completely wrong.

  1. Hitler came to power with the support of capitalists (here meaning "people who own substantial capital" rather than "ideological supporters of capitalism"). They saw him as a way to maintain order against socialism and to break the power of unions. A similar story happened in Italy, and in other fascist countries.

  2. Many capitalists did in fact benefit from fascism. There's some confusion about fascist economic policies, but you should know that the term "privatization" was first coined to describe the economic policy of Nazi Germany. When they nationalized companies, it was because they were minority owned, and often they were redistributed upwards to the capitalists.

  3. Labor rights suffered tremendously under fascism, with labor organizations exterminated, allowing capitalists to impose much worse conditions, lower pay, and longer hours on the workers, as well as using prisoners for slave labor. Any attempt to challenge these conditions would be considered treasonous, undermining the war effort.

  4. Even when their countries were defeated militarily, many capitalists got off scot-free. For example, the pharmaceutical company Bayer (which merged with Monsanto in 2016) was once a part of IG Farben, which manufactured Zyklon B for the gas chambers. After the war, Bayer rehired Nazis to high level positions, including for example Fritz ter Meer, who had been on IG Farben's board of directors and became chairman of Bayer, despite being a convicted Nazi war criminal.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 days ago

Classic XCOM is really fun imo, but it does suffer from some quality of life issues. It's possible to fix some of that with mods though and imo it still holds up. I've definitely put more time into the reboot of the series, but the original has a grittier feel, a bit more "open world," where you're gonna miss UFOs and you're gonna have to cut and run sometimes, and there's also a lot of exploits and tricks you have to figure out on your own (intended or otherwise).

Xenonauts is a more direct remake and it's good, more balanced and polished, but when I play it sometimes I just say, "I'd rather be playing old school XCOM." Hard to put my finger on it, and it might just be that I already know the tricks for the original, or that the jankyness makes it fun. Xenonauts does hold up on it's own but it's hard not to compare the two.

Generally games have gotten better but I'd say there's a handful that have withstood the test of time (especially with basic UI improvements).

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 3 points 6 days ago

No "only" but primarily. Domestic billionaires are the primary enemy, they're the ones who directly benefit from making things like rent and healthcare more expensive, they're the ones who benefit from keeping unions weak and disorganized, they're the ones who benefit from mass surveillance and the police state. Foreign billionaires might benefit from doing those things in their own countries, but for the most part we have more to fear from our own rich people than from other countries' rich people.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 week ago
[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's always foreigners, isn't it? What about the domestic private money flooding US politics? What, because they're American billionaires, it's fine?

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The problem I've always had with the term is that you can't really define a term by pointing to a comic and going like, "It's like when someone does this sort of thing." Like there's a bunch of things the sea lion is doing, one is:

pursuing people with relentless requests for evidence

Like if you get a grudge against a user and constantly hound them in every thread about a topic they don't want to discuss, that's pretty rude (and if you do this offline like in the comic, it's straight-up harassment). That's bad regardless of what form it takes. On the other hand, if it's just a regular conversation and not following from thread to thread, you have every right to expect people to provide evidence for their claims. Another is:

maintaining a pretense of civility and sincerity (“I’m just trying to have a debate”), and feigning ignorance of the subject matter

"Feigning ignorance of the subject matter," is also part of the Socratic Method, isn't it? I don't think it's inherently bad to be like, "What specifically does this term mean, and why do you think this specific case meets the criteria?" If you believe something, you ought to be able to state things in clear terms, and that's an important part of a healthy debate, it helps the other side to identify the point of disagreement where they break with your line of reasoning. Otherwise, how do you even go about having a productive conversation with someone you disagree with at all?

In my opinion, these sorts of internet neologisms are dangerous even if they are addressing a legitimate thing, because once it's out there, you can't control who's going to use it. For example, "mansplaining" was intended to refer to a specific type of thing where a man assumes he's an expert on a subject and explains in a paternalistic way, while often being ignorant of the subject matter, like random guys on Twitter trying to lecture a female astronaut about how space works. But there are also people who use it/interpret it to mean, "Whenever a man explains something" - even if he is actually qualified to speak on the subject, which provokes a backlash (and obviously the problem is made worse by people trying to exacerbate the backlash, including through sockpuppets).

The ambiguity of the term "sealioning" allows it to be used to shut down good faith questions and discussion, while leaving the accused without a lot of options to defend themself. "What do you mean by 'sealioning?' What specifically did I do or say that meets that definition, and why should that be grounds to dismiss what I'm saying, or to conclude I'm acting in bad faith?" is generally going to be met with, "That's more sealioning." If critically examining the concept of sealioining is sealioning, then I'm just inclined to dismiss the term entirely.

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

Trumps not wrong for once.

He's definitely wrong morally, constitutionally, and strategically just not legally, per how the courts have (mis)interpreted the constitution.

Sanctions haven’t been working

Well, in order to work, they'd have to have a coherent objective.

They did work at bringing Iran to the negotiating table, which led to Obama's Iran deal. The only problem being that Obama made it, so Trump had to hate it. The only thing the US actually wants from Iran is for it to be an enemy the president can bomb to look tough.

it should be effective at stopping their program.

The program that we have no evidence actually existed, that is. Certainly, if they weren't actively persuing one before, they'd be mad not to now. How else could they stop the frequent, random unprovoked aggression from the US?

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 18 points 1 week ago

It's sad because for most people school is about the only time anybody cares enough about your thoughts to actually read an essay and respond to it intelligently.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Exactly.

See also: Military Operations Other Than War, Low Intensity Conflicts, Police Action (e.g. Vietnam).

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

What are the democrats gonna do to them? They've got nothing to be afraid of, look what happened to Bush.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 37 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Well, the War Powers Act is unconstitutional - but in the other direction. Deploying military force requires a declaration of war, which requires congressional approval, but the War Powers Act circumvents that by pretending that using euphemisms to describe military actions instead of calling it war makes it different, somehow.

[–] Objection@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago

I specifically disabled my watch history to get this. If I want to watch something, I'll go to my subscriptions. Why would I want to interact with YouTube's algorithm?

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