kava

Because you are just as guilty and complicit in maintaining the system as the Republican voter

This is false

I disagree. Pick a random Republican voter from this country and you're very likely to grab someone from a red state. Let's say Alabama. Their vote is as insignificant as a blue voter in California. So regardless of who you or who they voted for, their impact is nil.

But when we talk about complicity we're not simply talking about voting. We're talking about participation in the system. For example, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that in the last few months you have drank a Coca Cola beverage. I don't mean just their cola, but any of the myriad of drinks they provide. Whether it's Sprite or Dasani or what have you.

You have contributed to the bottom line of a company that hires death squads to kill labor leaders (this is has been proven in court).

That's just one infinitesimally small example out of an infinite number of actions you and everyone else have taken that perpetuates the system of exploitation we live. We are the chosen people that get to live in relative opulence while billions around the world struggle to survive.

So I'll say it again. You are just as complicit. There is just as much blood on your hands as that Republican voter and yet you choose not to see it because it's easier to maintain the delusion of moral superiority. Why? Again- reducing cognitive dissonance.

The ultra wealthy that keep us in this hellscape are republicans. They have much of the blame.

Here you get closer to the truth. It's the ultra wealthy that ultimately decide what happens in this country. I'd go so far as to say they have all of the blame. Why? Because they are the only ones that actually have any autonomy. The research has been done before- American public opinion has zero impact on policy.

No matter who you vote for; over the long term the same policies will be enacted regardless.

If you have ideas on how to instill class consciousness in the kind of people who vote against their interests, let’s hear it.

The first step is to get rid of this atmosphere of hostility. You blame someone for the country collapsing, they get defensive and blame you for the country collapsing. We're in the post-truth era so it doesn't matter what is true or what is false. People believe what they do based on vibes. This isn't an accident but intentional.

It is not the same as the imaginary harms “the jews” do. People would make up stories about nefarious evils of jews, but meanwhile the republicans are right there on TV doing evil. There was a nazi salute. There was an insurrection. These are things that happened.

I think we need to make a distinction here.

What we are seeing in the last few months of this administration is not the traditional Republican party. Trump has hijacked the Republican party much like Hitler hijacked the Nazi party. There is no more Republican party- it's the Trump party.

The question instead that we need to ask is how was this allowed to happen?

The answer is that wealthy people thought it was in their interests. Simple as that. It's why for example when you had the Trump inauguration the top tech CEOs all came to bend the knee and sat in the front row. The capitalist system has decided that having Trump at the helm is the most profitable outcome.

Trump worked hard to get to this point- he had to defeat the Republican establishment party. The Mitt Romneys and the George Bushes and the Mitch McConnels. Wealthy powerful people who wanted the status quo to continue indefinitely.

I think one key thing you are missing here is that the Democrats are just as guilty as the Republicans in creating Trump. Bill Clinton for example amplified Reagan's economic policies that accelerated our descent into brutal neoliberal capitalism. As we descend further down, people become increasingly insecure.

People who are scared for the financial future vote for dictators. This has happened before and it will happen again. I believe fascism is like a herpes outbreak. It'll never go away, but your immune system keeps in check most of the time. The issue is that our immune system is weakened and now it has a breakout.

Have you ever considered that this hostile attitude you show towards individuals is exactly what the system wants out of you?

What feels like resistance is actually just maintenance of the status quo. The elites have replaced class consciousness with culture war. Instead of hostility towards individuals who have been led to believe falsehoods through information warfare and weaponized insecurity, why not aim that hostility towards the systems in place that intentionally makes people afraid and angry?

If we wanted to get a little more psychoanalytical about it- this hatred of the individual who has been duped is pathological. It's sort of like the Nazi and the Jew. The Nazi needs the idea of the Jew to maintain the Nazi world view. Certain excesses are only justified if you have an omnipresent internal enemy. By placing the Republican voter as the villain, you put yourself in the position of moral superiority.

By placing him down, you put yourself up. But really, I believe this may be subconscious projection. Because you are just as guilty and complicit in maintaining the system as the Republican voter. It's hard to fix the cognitive dissonance of that position. All of us work, pay rent, pay taxes, buy products, post online, etc- we are tiny cogs that moves the machine forward.

So the elites have created an easy safety valve for that cognitive dissonance. Blame the others. Your life sucks? It's illegal immigrants. Your life sucks? It's Republicans. Your life sucks? It's the gays. Your life sucks? It's the Miami Cubans. And so on and so on.

Until the working class unites and redirects the hostility towards the pillars of power that keep us in line, there will never be any meaningful change in this country. This hostility you and other users show towards Republican voters is ironically supporting the very thing you claim to hate. We're doomed to endlessly loop around a Möbius strip.

Systems that have voting mechanisms result in hive minds. It's an inevitable result.

1st someone is much more likely to vote something up or down depending on how positive / negative it is. So it snowballs sort of like compounding interest

2nd the simplest most common denominator takes bubble to the top. Precisely because more people can understand and therefore vote.

It's why you'll always see some screenshot of Twitter much higher than a long in depth article. Even though the article has infinitely more value.

My point is that there are no "good guys" and "bad guys". There are only differing levels of power. The US has been doing a lot worse for a lot longer. It's just that past administrations were diplomatic about their use of power. This administration, being a reality TV star, is just choosing to be loud about it.

America under Biden supplied 80% of the bombs that Israel dropped on Gazan civilians. Obama led the illegal attack on Libya and killed Gaddafi and doomed Libya to anarchy and chaos. Bush destroyed Iraq and doomed them to anarchy and chaos- creating ISIS. I could go on and on.

Most American citizens (just like the citizens of virtually every country in the world) are not really concerned with geopolitics. They have to pay their rent, they're gonna be late for work, their kid is failing a class, their girlfriend is pissed because they don't go out enough, they're tired from work, they're working hard for that promotion, they're worried about rent increases, etc.

So to answer your question. No, Americans don't really care. And even if they care, they're forced to worry about more pressing individual matters. Basically the same thing that happened in your home country in the 1930s.

A superpower by definition cannot really be a rogue state. A "rogue state" is a political label applied by dominant powers to states that defy the international order. For example Iran or North Korea are considered rogue states because they defy the international order. What is "the international order"?

Well, it's the combination post-WW2 institutions created by none other than the US. The UN, IMF, NATO, etc. They set the norms of "legitimate" behavior. When the US participates in military interventions, economic sanctions, and other aggressive actions it's framed as upholding "rules-based order" whereas identical actions by weaker states get them condemned with the label as "rogue states".

To call the US a rogue state is to misunderstand power. Hegemony is the ability to define reality, not just defy it. In this way, the US has always been a rogue state in the sense that it does whatever it wants regardless of the international norms. I mean, just look at the mid 1900s and its actions in Latin America. It was involved in about a dozen states toppling governments and supporting military dictatorships- including sponsoring the genocide of natives in Guatemala.

You may or may not be correct in hating me but do not let my comments bring down the good name of kava

As for "doubling down so hard" I'd flip the message and ask you why you are simping for mega corps? simping for mega corps is about as fascist as you can get- a populist ideology idolizing elites

An AI is not doing anything a human wouldn't do. You look at a bunch of content. You learn from it and incorporate it in new synthesis.

It's not fundamentally different. So unless you can make a meaningful statement (beyond mild personal attacks) that illustrates the difference between the two, you will convince no-one

Most Americans have absolutely no clue how involved the immigration process actually is. Unless you have specific skills, have immediate family in the country you're going, or are loaded... 95 times out of 100 you're not going anywhere.

Although where there's a will there's a way. You get a tourist visa, overstay, marry a local.

I'm glad I'm a dual citizen with money stashed away in both the US and the country I was born. If shit gets too bad in the US, I can lay low elsewhere while things calm down.

first let's get something out of the way

the actual way that copyright works is that a few giant megacorps buy up everything and they end up owning copyrights to the vast majority of recognizable content.

so for example in 2019 over half of the movies released in theaters was owned by Disney. The same company that unilaterally has the ability to change US federal law when convenient for them.

studio ghibli is no different- they're a subsidiary of Nippon Television which has a $2B+ annual revenue

so keep in mind when you advocate here for stronger copyright protections, you are essentially saying that the biggest companies in the world deserve more money.

2nd- the "style" is not copyrightable. anybody can mimic the style. and guess what? if I make a cartoon and I make it look like studio ghibli style.. people are still gonna recognize it as "studio ghibli" style. they are basically getting free marketing. they are not losing out here.

They're trying to make some type of argument that a private studio should have exclusive rights to a specific style of art and that by openai allowing users to generate art in that style, we are slipping into anti-democratic authoritarianism.

My opinion is that you can't own "styles" of art and that there's nothing wrong here. Legally speaking I can copy any art style I want.

but_what_about_.jpg

whataboutism isn't some magical phrase that you can utter every time someone brings up hypocrisy

if we're going to support sanctioning civilians based on their countries breaking international law, then we should not have double standards. otherwise it's very clear to anyone paying attention that this is a geopolitical issue and not a moral one.

and that's what this is actually about. the US sanctions on Russia are a geopolitical tool meant to make the Russian re-subjugation of Ukraine more expensive. that's it. US doesn't actually care about Ukraine- neither this administration or the last.

to me, that doesn't justify banning individuals from participating in OSS projects. anybody that wants to contribute should be able to.

Attacks against civilian targets are war crimes. When you do it through sanctions its OK.

I'm just asking that we are more honest about it. For example instead of putting sanctions on Venezuela we could have just done what Israel is doing to Gaza and gotten similar death toll.

Research has shown it has historically had very little to no impact on policy. What it does do is harm the lowest rungs of society.

For example a 2019 report on Trump's Venezeuala sanctions estimate up to 40,000 people died. Mostly poor people who went without healthcare and medicine because the US froze all of the government's funds and access to credit.

In my opinion, I'd prefer if we just bombed civilians in the countries we sanction. It's more honest. It really is a form of low level warfare. Something akin to a medieval raiding party