Don't Believe Everything You Read on the Internet

Hi I dont do this often but

https://gofund.me/fcf81432a

"I don't care if poor people abuse the system, (reasonable argument that any such harm is acceptable)"

Because there is simply no need to have a position on a thing that doesn't fucking happen. I neither care nor fail to care about "welfare fraud" because the sum of all research and inquiry into the issue is that it doesn't fucking exist, any more than the "voter fraud" the regime was so worried about when they lost, and there's no reason to concede it does.

Reagan's evil ass invented "Welfare Queens" out of whole cloth; please, for fuck's sake, think. I literally don't care about any peckerwood asshole whose mom "totally knows" somebody who bought a car with food stamps. Shut your fucking hole.

Also, while we're at it: the argumentation in support of the concept of an "Egg Prime Directive" is based in the same degree of irreality. There is no population of vulnerable, effeminate men who will be harmed by the concept they might be transfeminine. They're a fucking chimera just as self-serving and illusory as the invocation of "The Children", always in abstract, to defend every repression and murder of queers. There is no prime directive, you're not a more evolved society condescending to the fucking natives; every person responsible for spreading this idiocy is a conduit for misery and a servant thereof.

“The tests cover attachment, personality traits, cognitive abilities and psychopathology, and take about 15-20 hours. It is almost impossible to pass them, says Nellemann; even he and his colleagues have failed to do so. Questions can include “What is glass made of?” and “What is the name of the big staircase in Rome?” 

[Kiera] was nervous going to the doctor, because she says she had previously been given the ultimatum either to have an abortion or face the baby being taken away after the birth. She agreed to undergo another parenting competency test in an attempt to cooperate. But in the session, the psychologist brought up her previous abortions and asked her to show her parenting skills by playing, singing and talking with a doll, checking whether she made eye contact. “The problem is, I didn’t grow up with a doll,” she says, adding that her real baby, Zammi, was busy kicking in her stomach. “They made me draw and they were criticising it, that I didn’t draw a face. I drew a mum and baby.”

On Friday morning, I walk through Keira’s open front door as rain falls in torrents outside, to find her sitting in her living room under soft fairy lights and the silently flickering television, arranging flowers. Every week she takes a different arrangement to Zammi so that she will associate them with her mother’s visits. This ceremonial act of devotion is part of how Keira survives.

first by username rolled daal @rishi_veda reading: ice did today what that nice family member of yours who went to iraq/afghanistan did to countless civilians every day

second by username very surly @verysurly reading: Not sure most Americans will ever be ready for this discussion tbh.

Hi folks, if you're not sure how to have anti-war discussions with people around you I'd like you to take a minute to read this.

This anon is not asking this question in good faith, and this is the kind of redirection/defense that you'll see in a lot of people making pro-war arguments.

The goal of this is to put YOU on the defensive, it's to make you say "of course I don't support killing civilians" or to litigate the count of protesters killed by the Iranian government or to in some other way get you to stop talking about the subject.

The best way to respond to rhetorical attacks like this is to simply not get defensive. Here are some ways to redirect back to your point:

I don't pay taxes to Iran, I am talking about actions of the US military because I pay for the US military. Why are you trying to shift focus away from talking about the actions of the US military?

I said [that the US military shouldn't bomb civilian targets/it is wrong to attack a nation we are in negotiations with] and you are changing the subject. Why don't you agree that [the us military shouldn't bomb civilian targets/it is wrong to attack a nation we are in negotiations with]?

That's a very silly thing to say, and would be a ridiculous thing to believe; why are you making a childish argument instead of addressing the point that the US shouldn't bomb civilians?

I hold the US military to a higher standard than the IRGC, which is why I'm talking about the US military's actions. Don't you agree that the US shouldn't commit war crimes?

Often the person you're talking to will double down, and will say something like "Oh so you DO think it's okay to murder women for religious crimes" or "i can't believe you're defending the Iranian regime's massacre of protesters" and you just have to stick to your guns, point out that they're changing the subject, and redirect to the actual argument.

Remember that when people make rhetorical advances like this, they aren't doing it to have their minds changed or because it's what they actually believe, they are doing it to get you to stop making the argument that you were before. Online and in person debate is about the optics of your side; if you give in to an urge to be defensive you weaken your case or provide ammunition that can be used to undermine your other positions. If you stay on message the person who is coming at you in bad faith ends up demonstrating that they don't actually have a response to your point, which makes your position come off as more convincing to onlookers.

I was thinking about this. The George W. Bush regime tended to justify torture by saying, essentially, yes this is a drastic step, but in a high stakes world it may be, regrettably, necessary.

Trump is currently threatening to kill as many Iranian civilians as he can if the government that was mowing them down in the streets a few weeks back doesn't do what he says, and... how can I put this?

This is presented not as a regrettable but necessary trade-off, but as not a trade-off at all.

It is wrong for a US President to care what happens to Iranian children and the question of how many babies we kill should not even be put in the "Con" catsgory when we put together the Pros and Cons of the war.

"A lot of Iranian civilians will die if we do this" is not a con, it's just... off the board. It doesn't belong as part of our thought process. It's not a con which is balanced out by some other pro, it's an irrelevance, not to be weighed at all.

You can find clips of JD Vance and Elon Musk very openly saying that their project is to narrow down the moral concerns of the nation, that the biggest threat we face is giving too much moral weight to certain people.

But I was also thinking about Venezuela.

Now, we absolutely are not allowed to question whether it is moral for us to demand that Venezuela use their oil reserves how we want them to under threat of violence.

But honestly you're kind of not even supposed to ask, "What benefit do I, the American tax payer, get from this?"

Whatever future savings from increased oil supply is being cancelled out by the pile of expenses Trump is throwing on us, but also... like... I don't get paid by Chevron? Various oil barons get to sell me somebody else's oil.

But the only metric you're supposed to use is "Did they get away with it?"

They wanted to kidnap Maduro and intimidate the Venezuelan government and they didn't suffer many bad consequences, therefore the operation was successful.

Basically, people are using their key fobs to set off their car alarms when they see ICE.

This is effective for several reasons:

Obviously, it alerts everyone that something is wrong. Given ICE has been terrorizing Minnesota, people are likely to immediately know it is ICE. This gives people time to flee or barricade themselves in their homes.

ICE loses the element of surprise.