Gorilladrums

Dude what are you even talking about? Al Sharaa is not worse than Al Assad. We literally found multiple mass graves that are estimated to have over 100k bodies that were created during his reign. Don't get me wrong the rebranded Al Nusra front isn't good, and they certainly have genocidal tendencies towards minorities, but so did Al Assad. After the civil war started he became completely unhinged and started going after EVERYONE. There's a reason why Syrian inside and outside Syria celebrated his fall from power.

Also, idk where you're getting this from but the US doesn't have anything to do with how the current situation in Syria unfolded. In 2011, the Arab spring revolution came to Syria and people protested his rule and demanded change. Instead of agreeing to make reforms or stepping down, he started massacring his own people, which led the nation to openly revolt against his regime. Because of this, a bunch of factions were created around this time to overthrow the Al Assad regime and rule the country themselves. Iran, Russia, Turkey, Israel, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the US all backed different factions for their own self interests.

In this case, the Al Nusra front was one of these factions, which was found by Al Sharaa in 2012. It was indeed an evil terrorist group and the Al Sharaa himself was the leader of all of it. It's also very much true that he had ties to both Al Qaeda and ISIS before splitting with both and starting waging wars against them. During all of this, the US and Al Sharaa hated each other. Al Sharaa joined Al Qaeda in Iraq in 2003 to fight the US invasion, and the US imprisoned him for 5 years (2006-2011) for trying plant explosives against US troops. When he formed the Al Nusra front, the US designated him and his groups as terrorists in 2013. In 2014, when the US was bombing ISIS, Al Sharaa came and made public declarations about how these bombings were an attack on islam (even though Al Nusra was at war with ISIS at the time) and that anyone who cooperates or receives support from the US are traitors and his enemies who he will fight. In 2017, the US put out a $10 million reward for anybody who can give Al Sharaa's location.

Do you know who was okay with him? Turkey. The Al Nusra front occupied Idlib and the surronding area... which just happens to be near the Turkish border. Turkey had their own direct proxies, however, they never opposed and even indirectly helped the Al Nusra front. Why? Because they acted as a buffer zone between Turkey and the rest of Syria, and the Turkish government supported its existence as it deterred Syrian refugees from flooding into the country. Turkey also supported them because they were against the US, and the US was supporting Kurdish groups in Syria, which Turkey doesn't like.

The Syrian civil war went into a stalemate after the intervention from Russia and Iran in 2015 on behalf of the Al Assad regime. This remained the case until the US left Afghanistan, Russia's bogged itself down in Ukraine, and Israel destroying Hezbollah. Basically the Al Assad regime lost it's two most important allies, and the US wasn't willing to intervene. With no foreign power obstacles, the Al Nusra had the opportunity able to launch an offensive and overthrow the Al Assad regime. In other words, Al Sharaa and the HTS weren't put there by the US or the West, they came to power in a different way.

At that point, Western governments had 2 choices. They could either reject the new Al Nusra government and give them the Taliban treatment or they could celebrate the fall of the Al Assad regime and hope for the best, which is what they ended up doing. The former could've reignited the civil war which nobody wanted, and the latter isn't great but at least whatever happens by this regime will be contained within Syria. It's not the best outcome of the civil war, but it is better than still having the civil war.

Take a moment and think about what the global conditions were like 300 years ago, and think about how things improved every 50 years since then.

Around 1725, most of the world was rural, poor, and ruled by monarchies, with low life expectancy and little technology. By 1775, Enlightenment ideas and early industrialization began shifting societies. In 1825, machines and railroads transformed economies. By 1875, electricity and vaccines improved life. In 1925, cars, radios, and modern medicine spread. By 1975, civil rights, global trade, and computers reshaped the world. And today? Well, you can probably tell how our modern lives are better today than they were in the 1970s.

To put things in perspective, in the 1800s, only around the 10% of the world was literate, but today only around 10% are illiterate. Similarly, in the 1800s, more than 90% people were living in extreme poverty, but today that's around 10%. The same goes for many other stats. What does this tell us? It tells us that things do get better with time. Even though we went through plagues, wars, famines, droughts, and genocides we did come out the other side better than we did before.

So maybe, just maybe, we don't need a global government. Maybe vastly different people separated by culture, land, and history shouldn't be forced into a system with people they don't understand very well. Maybe it's better for us to respect the concept of sovereignty that has persisted throughout history, and focus on strengthening the trends that have brought us tremendous progress over time.... like improving the access and quality of education globally, developing and sharing new advancements in medicine, innovating new technologies to make our lives easier, pushing for and protecting civil rights and individual liberties, and generating wealth and prosperity through market economies.

The point is that maybe it's better that we focus on improving what we know works from historical trends instead trying to create a global government, which will certainly create a whole new set of issues. Perhaps what we need is more dialogue and cooperation through forums like the UN instead of consolidation through a world government.

Direct democracy sounds good on the surface, but it's an impractical system when you actually into it. For example, direct democracy can overwhelm voters with complex issues they may not fully understand, leading to uninformed or emotionally driven decisions. Participation tends to be inconsistent, with only a small, active minority shaping outcomes. The process itself is often slow and expensive, requiring frequent referendums that delay urgent action. There's the risk of majority tyranny, where the will of the majority can override minority rights, and it’s vulnerable to manipulation by well funded interest groups. Complex policies are also often reduced to oversimplified yes/no choices, bypassing the expertise and deliberation that's required.

We don't have direct democracy because it's only practical in small scales. Once you get outside of your immediate communities like neighborhoods, schools, families, the system just doesn't work. There's a reason why the evolution of political system led us to where we are. History has shown that the best form of governments are liberal representative democracies with strong checks and balances. We should strive for that.

I actually lived in Syria for 3 years under the Al Assad regime. Nobody, and I mean nobody, misses him in Syria. Al Assad and his regime were pure evil. He had to go, and the country is better off for it. That being said, most Syrians aren't thrilled about Al Sharaa and his new regime. A lot of Syrians are still optimistic about the future, but it's looking like Syria isn't exactly free, just under new management.

I don't know if you're intentionally being stupid or not, but Denmark isn't America. Denmark doesn't have massive untapped reserves of mega corporations or the giga billionaires that don't pay taxes and control a massive chunk of the country's wealth like the US. In fact, the opposite is true. Denmark has one of the lowest wealth and income inequality levels in the world. It's people already have one of the highest tax rates in the world, and the country is one of the most efficiently run. Denmark is at or near it's capacity, so where is this magical money going to come from?

Not to mention that there are way more issues with uncontrolled immigration than just economic. Large uncontrolled influxes of people lead to very real and serious social and political problems. Take a look at nearby Sweden and how they're having massive issues with skyrocketing crime rates fueled by second and third generation immigrants or nearby Germany whose immigrant populations aren't integrating very well which is leading to the AfD to dominate the polls.

Denmark figured out that listening to people like is a mistake. Reasonable immigration policy is not racist, and the country needs to properly address it's issues and reform it's immigration system to reflect the will of it's citizenry... like a functional democracy would. And you know what? They're better off for it. Denmark doesn't have radicalized immigrant communities, it doesn't have a homegrown far right movement, integration and assimilation aren't as big of issues as elsewhere in Western Europe, and they have kept their economic policies, progressive values, and social cohesion in tact.

This is the issue with people like you, you reject practical policies in favor of nonsensical ideological drivel. You have no idea what's going on and what you're proposing doesn't even reflect reality, but that won't stop from making confidently incorrect declarations.

Denmark's immigration policies aren't some secret, they're actually very transparent and straightforward. You and everybody else can read them on the official Danish websites or get a summary of them on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Denmark#Features_of_the_present_Danish_asylum_system_(2023)

As you can see, nothing here is racist or far right. This is just bullshit fearmongering on your part. If anything, I would argue that these policies are actually reasonable. Calling the Danish left wing parties far right demonstrates that you're too out of touch for this conversation. Going completely brain dead and blindingly screaming racism at any sort of immigration policy isn't left wing politics, that's just being childish.

"Why is the far right surging in the polls"

This mentality is your answer

Equating reasonable immigration policy with racism is false and wrong. This is the mentality that the far right exploits to boost their popularity. If the left refuses to be practical and flexible on immigration policy, then their inability to adapt will be their downfall. Europe has to follow the Danish model or these far right parties will continue to grow in popularity and win elections... That's not a future I want to see

Reasonable immigration policy is not racism, you're a part of the problem that's fueling the far right.

People greatly overestimate how much we, as a species, care about atrocities. The reality is that once they're over, we move on. Actually even when they're going on, the overwhelming majority of people don't and won't care because it doesn't affect them. This will never change, that's just the way we are.

Think about it, how many of you still care about how ISIS genocided the Yazidis or that Azerbaijan ethnic cleansed Armenians out of Artsakh? The answer is probably none. Even if you cared at the time, now you don't care. Maybe that's too far away, have you ever thought about how the land you live on right now was built on bloodshed? Probably not, but even if you did, you think of the violence as something in the distant past. The violence becomes an interesting historical fact rather than a persisting injustice.

This will be the case here too. After what is happening in Gaza right now comes to end, people will move on, and with time people will quickly accept the new reality and treat what happened as just another chapter in history. The kid in this comic strip will grow up to think that it's cool that he went on a vacation with his family to a place that had such a wild historical event take place.

I keep saying it again and again, but this is the future of European politics. The "progressive" brand of politics that was very pro-immigration in the 2000s and 2010s is dead. The establishment parties that are choosing to cling to it are going to get burned by this gamble.

The reality is that Western Europe handled immigration horribly and there are real issues and people are facing real consequences. The reasonable course of action to address these issues and try to resolve them. However, establishment parties simply refuse to do anything. They either pretend these issues don't exist or that they're not that bad, and then blame any criticism of these issues or policies as racists. It is a stupid and elitist approach that is leading people to seek out alternatives.

What's the alternative? It's these far right parties, they're the only ones who address the issues of immigration and want to do something about them. The polls regularly show that these far right parties are entirely fueled by anti-immigration sentiment. That is why people flock to them and why they're relevant. Their prominence in European politics sends a loud statement as to the failures of the establishment parties. They're so incompetent and out of touch, that they're being bested by foreign funded grifter parties that offer worse policies and more extreme rhetoric.

But it doesn't have to be this way. These far right parties are only inevitable if the establishment parties double down on their mistakes. But what if they don't do that? What if they wise up and adapt to the current political climate, what would happen? Well there is a country who's establishment parties did this, and that's Denmark. It is the only Western European country where it's establishment left wing parties figured out the secret formula. They kept the popular economic and social policies, but also adopted a reasonable anti-immigration platform to match the will of the people, and guess what? It worked, Denmark doesn't have a far right party surging in the polls. They kept what worked, and fixed what didn't, thus leading them to neutralize the far right. This is the model that the rest of Europe is going to find itself adopting sooner or later.

I sometimes forget just how many tyrants use this platform.

The very purpose of the fediverse is to make censorship impossible as it's decentralized, open source, and easily accessible to all. Meaning that anyone, anywhere can utilize these tools to launch their own platform on their own terms without fear of being censored. This applies to everyone, not just some.

The very existence of this instance, which is clearly just a parody, is enough to send a good chunk of the freedom lovers here to quickly take the mask off and turn into Mao where they want to take down the instance, infiltrate it, and censor it. The fact they can't is proof that fediverse is working as intended. I, for one, welcome people from all over to use the fediverse. Having a social media that's controlled by the people instead of corporations is a big plus for me.