Raziel
9d ago
Why are you comparing top 1% on a platform with a blue-collar worker? Top 1% in almost every industry makes a lot of money.
No need to list examples of these Indian or Arab mayors in UK. It's just hypocritical to hear it from US and even current administration. If it came from Japan, sure.
As for feeling, possible, but not enough if you are critical. Mind you, haven't looked into data proper, but it wouldn't be damning to the change in free speech standards if the feeling coincides with clearly people communicating more in online spaces and issues that seemingly would have been censored anyway having become more prevalent.
I am personally skeptical myself about there being that many ardent defenders of free speech in principle. I identify myself as a principled one (at least now), but time and time just shows that people are just interested in their version of free speech. These days it's even exemplified by US President himself.
Raziel
9d ago
I am not the biggest fan of European attitude towards free speech, but it's amusing to see how it just displays the ignorance of Americans to think that something has fundamentally changed in Europe in relation to the treatment of free speech when it has always been like this in Europe. Nowadays the issue is just that speech is increasingly online. I think it's far to criticize Europe, but I think most of the dunking coming from US actors are in terribly bad faith and nonsensical. You have the most brazenly corrupt president in the history of US and country full of non-White immigrants (with VP's wife being Indian for god's sake), and we get lectured for seemingly failing to be democratic and preserving our cultural identities. As far as European weak military goes, this is has been fully devised by US policy. I think dunking on economy is fine, but even there when Musk makes snide remarks about how EU should be dismantled in favor of sovereign nations, you know he is full of shit. EU is the best thing that could've happened to a business wanting to export into EU with the exception if you favor Putin-style cronyist regimes where single people can be paid off. I am self-critical of Europe as an European, but most of the criticism I'd take as fair if it came from a country like Japan, not US.
Raziel
8mo ago
The record for stocks outside of US is less promising, it took Japan almost 30 years to reach the stock market level seen in late 80s.
The US stock market has not just boomed because US is somehow an exceptional economy, it has also boomed because of its role in the global economic order as the global financial hub. This is precisely what Trump is attempting to dismantle.
Raziel
8mo ago
People realizing that running semi-war economies can boost people's living standards (that are vastly below American one as well) in the short-term, news at eleven.
Raziel
8mo ago
That is the crux of the problem. At the end of the day, there's no problem for Elon (really) to run SpaceX or Tesla into bankruptcy. Sure, huge loss in net wealth, but at that level you are not motivated by equity in a company being your comfortable safety net for retirement. So there's no issue in also taking risky bets.
When it comes to government (that is not some banana tier republic), you can't really operate with that mindset.
Same problem actually with Trump and doing deals as if everything is just zero-sum one-period (no long-term co-operation) real estate deal.
Raziel
9mo ago
Could you elaborate with actual concrete examples how mainstream media did it? My memory is hazy, but if I recall correctly, even some of the more liberal magazines like NYT specifically mentioned that they couldn't corroborate certain allegations against Kavanaugh with other people they questioned.
Raziel
9mo ago
In what universe are NYT journalists higher on the totem pole than a chemical industry executive? And even if they were, they don't have some magically independent power to conjure life-screwing facts out of thin air.
Raziel
9mo ago
How do you think people could actually deal with them practically though? Most of the time these people are invited to podcasts by hosts who are completely out of their depth, either being actually ignorant or pretending to be ignorant. God forbid, I am not in favor of deplatforming someone, but I find it otherwise rather frustrating that most of the discourse co-opted largely by people on the right tend to just devolve into circle jerking each other off or some dumb podcast host going "huh? why don't they talk about this more?" to every inanity that is spewed.
Raziel
9mo ago
I don't know, I haven't seen the level of absolute lying and bullshit in other media sources. Might be the perspective if you only live in some Tucker-style right-wing echo chambers.
Many of the things he tweets out don't even require enormous amount of fact checking, simple heuristics about how the world works are enough to sense that something might be bullshit. There's no need to be charitable to someone who is one of the richest guys on the planet and blasts out nonsense to millions of gullible readers.
Raziel
9mo ago
This is what Trump and his people (Colby in particular) are worried about. While the liberals have been starting and losing stupid wars in the Middle East, China has been building industry. While the liberals were bitching about Russian spying or taking towns nobody's ever heard of in Donbass, China has been building ships, missiles and planes. They produce more manufactured goods than the next ten countries combined. Now they're getting ready to go in on places that matter (chip producers, high-tech economies, sea lanes that dominate world trade) and the liberals want to prioritize helping Ukraine keep the maximum number of towns nobody's ever heard of in Donbass? Over the fate of the entire world, the decisive final battle for dominance?
Those things are not mutually exclusive. Aid to Ukraine has been a drop in the bucket as far as US military spending and budget is concerned. There is nothing in that spending that has stopped US from preparing for your so called vision of a decisive final battle for dominance with China. The reason why you have a big hole in the budget is not because of military spending, it is because of Social Security and Medicare. However, to be frank, if US was actually interested in mobilizing the will for standing up to China, you would actually fix all of that by raising taxes.
Dislodging Russian and Chinese co-operation on current terms is frankly delusional. As a Russian or Chinese leader, you would have to be frankly stupid to allow US to create a wedge between the two only because seemingly US has now warmed up to Russia.
What current situation has created is that for Europeans it is indeed better to be much more autonomous (and I have always agreed with that as an European), but furthermore, it is now better to build pragmatic ties with China rather than just follow whatever US dictates. Don't see how that benefits US if US is actually interested in taking on China.
Raziel
9mo ago
What outlets in Western media mischaracterized what happened? What distortions did they make in particular?
Raziel
9mo ago
Marty Made is largely a clown (actually thinks chief villain of WW2 was Churchill), although I haven't bothered to do that much of a deep research to understand if it's from some earnest place or he just does it for the sake of grift.
There isn't anything overly hypocritical in US conduct post-WW2, unless you subscribe to some fantasy world where everyone can and is willing to fully commit to idealism. Imperial Japanese era political foundations were dismantled to form a liberal democratic order and country was demilitarized. Yes, you can argue that there was too much of a rehabilitation of certain figures and families who were involved with Imperial Japan, but that was a pragmatic choice to contain the Soviet & China axis. Even if one casts suspicion on the moral intentions of establishing liberal democracy in Japan, feeding Japan fully into the rule-based liberal democratic capitalist market order was beneficial to US. At the time it made perfect sense thus to ally Japan.
Also, dude seems to be critical about invading countries and overthrowing governments when it comes to making a shining example of a country that does not do it (China), but then seems to be awfully warm about Russia. I at least respect left-wingers of the Chomskian vein for trying to build carefully crafted cogent arguments against US-led NATO world order, but god damn these silly right-wing amateurs who peddle in dumbed down versions of it.
a) Firewalls so hard that one of the most actual effective anti-immigrant parties is leftists? Also if you actually familiarized yourself with actual policy as of latest for whole of EU, illegal immigration in and refugee entries in particular has decreased significantly due to measures taken by current EU governments. Getting in legally isn't too easy of a feat either. b) What is this historic break represented by the administration? Crackdown on illegal immigration and putting a pause on some 4th world countries? Won't move a real needle on legal immigration.
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