DreamerOfImprobableDreams

Because if everyone involved is quitting their jobs, they’ll have no money with which to buy food. Which means they’ll have to farm it themselves. And farming, even with top-of-the-line modern tech, is backbreaking fucking work. Also unpredictable as hell: bad harvests aren’t uncommon, especially for novice farmers with no formal training like these guys would be.

In other words, one bad harvest, and everyone in the system you’re proposing fucking dies. Yeah, there’s a reason in the 1800s people were abandoning their family farms for the horrorshow of Victorian era-factories en masse: because even that hell was still preferable to farming.

A lot of those 17 are dictatorships, where the elites are unsurprisingly big fans of Russia / Wagner helping them prop up their regimes. Actual normal people in those countries tend to be significantly more anti-Russia.

Yes, because in 2015 gay marriage was legalized.

I guarantee these people were absolutely as shitty about LGBTQ+ issues before 2015, they just talked about them less frequenly around you since they didn’t have to think about gay people too often. But I guarantee they were just as horrible towards gay people back then-- if not moreso, since they thought they could get away with the toxicity since no one cared-- as they are today.

Source: was woman with a ton of LGBTQ+ friends before 2014. Bigotry hasn’t gotten any worse since then, just louder. (And the good news is the reason the bigots have gotten louder is because more normies are becoming tolerant or accepting of LGBTQ+ people, causing the remaining bigots to realize they’re losing control of society and flip the hell out!)

Agreed completely. How is it possible people still don’t realize that with fascists, the cruelty is the point? Torturing minorities isn’t a “distraction”, it’s the goal. They will happily destroy their own economic standing for the chance to oppress The Other.

Fair enough. I just get pissed when people like OP suggest bigotry only exists because Economically Anxious^TM people are being manipulated by The Elites^TM. Anyone who’s interacted with well-off people for longer than a few minutes knows being economically secure doesn’t magically make you not a bigot anymore.

And I hate the implication bigotry is somehow “less important” an issue than economic inequality. Especially since the two are so intimately intertwined, especially in the US, it’s impossible to make progress tackling one without tackling the other.

Or maybe fascists are just transphobic bigots who want to torture and kill trans people because, well, they’re fascists, it’s what they do?

You need to understand the far right doesn’t give a damn about economic issues. Not one crap. (Because most far-right supporters are middle-class or higher, for the record!) They want power for one reason, and one reason only: to lord it over the minorities they consider their inferiors, if not outright killing them.

This isn’t a “distraction”, it’s the fucking goal.

As if Putin didn’t already give us enough reasons to hate him.

He really is determined to follow in all of Hitler’s footsteps, huh. Well, hopefully he’ll follow Hitler right to the same ending.

I’m saying it’s among the biggest issues! A fascist regime going after one of the most vulnerable classes of citizens, how is that anything other than a colossal issue?

There is no “more important issue” than protecting fundamental human rights, including fundamental human rights of LGBTQ+ people.

This is completely false, going after trans people was literally one of the first thing the Nazis did.

LGBTQ+ people aren’t a “distraction” from “more important issues”, they are real human beings with real lives who fascists love to fuck with for no other reason than they’re bullies.

What the hell is going on in Europe that’s causing this recent surge in the far right? Seriously, fist Italy, then Spain, now Germany of all places.

Yes. I said so explicitly in my previous comment.

This is the truth right there. Gas prices went up two measly dollars compared to normal in 2022, and everyone flipped the fuck out. People were prepared to elect Republicans-- fucking Republicans- to office, they were so furious about it.

And don’t @ me about “100 corporations are responsible for like 90% of emissions”. Who’s buying those corporations’ goods? Who’s refusing to vote for politicians that’ll meaningfully regulate these corporations? Who’s spending all day fantasizing about Da Revolushun^TM that’ll never fucking come (and would kill tens of millions of civilians and likely result in fascists winning and seizing control of your country, if not the whole thing splintering into a bunch of warring fiefdoms controlled by ruthless oligarchs) instead of getting to actual work trying to effect real change in the real world? And I don’t mean “direct action” (read: looking edgy and getting photos for the 'gram), I mean actually fucking getting policy passed that’ll have a real impact on people’s real lives.

Putin did it because he’s an abusive dickwad who thinks it’s his god-given right to control Ukraine. That’s it. That’s the entire explanation.

People keep trying to rationalize his actions, come up with some more respectable reason, because there’s no way this much death and suffering could be happening because one guy is an entitled, controlling piece of shit, right?

But in reality, that’s how fascism always works. It’s always been how it works. Why’d the Nazis invade Europe? Because they were entitled, controlling pieces of shit. Why’d the Soviet Union refuse to let the countries they liberated after WWII go? Because they were entitled, controlling pieces of shit. Why does China want to annex Taiwan? Because Xi’s an entitled, controlling piece of shit.

Can you provide sources for this?

The source is that Russia murders its own oligarchs the second they fall out of Putin’s favor, and anyone who holds up a blank sign in protest of the regime gets shipped off to the front lines. No way that man would survive a second if he ever went against the party line. Which means he hasn’t done so.

It might make sense for him to self-censor to avoid angering one of the few places that are allowing him to stay but even that’s not a given: if he felt something needed to be said badly enough, he’s shown to be the type of person who would rather something be said and take the repercussions on the nose than to leave something unsaid.

And yet he’s happily kept his mouth shut about Russia actively committing genocide.

If I were him, I’d get on the next plane to the US and happily spend the rest of my life in Leavenworth rather than allow myself to become a propaganda tool for a bunch of genocidal fascists. The fact that he hasn’t done that speaks volumes about his character. None of it’s good.

Snowden doesn’t make any public statements any more without express permission from the Russian government. You can’t trust anything he’s said in the past few years, especially not since the war began.

Also, Chat GPT at least still writes at the level of a somewhat talented ninth grader. Its prose is stilted, and the way it structures essays and stories is super formulaic.

It’s absolutely not at the level it can replace a talented human writer yet. (I have no doubt that day is coming, probably sooner than we think, but it’s not here yet.)

So publishers making the switch will see the quality of their content drop, and with it the number of clicks / revenue they get. Enough to offset the salaries of all the writers they fired? Probably depends on the publication. For clickbait farms, probably not, but the higher quality the readers are used to the more the publishers stand to lose.

Also, most people bringing up “but the Ukrainian Nazis!!!” are arguing in bad faith (and a lot are fascists themselves, lol). So rather than wasting your time giving a nuanced overview of the far right in Ukraine, Russia, and the West to someone who’s just going to ignore it and reply in bad faith anyways, it’s way easier to just say “Zelensky’s Jewish, lol” and move on with your life.

(To be 100% clear: I DO NOT THINK THE PERSON YOU REPLIED TO IS ARGUING IN BAD FAITH. This comment is more a blanket generalization, not about this specific interaction.)

Also, given the lack of a clear successor, Putin’s death would likely lead to a power vacuum and infighting-- which means they’ll be too busy fighting each other to focus on attacking us.