• 3 Posts
  • 65 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: June 14th, 2023
  • neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zonetopolitics @lemmy.world•Musk Targets Transgender Issues in Key Midterm Senate RacesEnglish
    14·
    6 days ago

    And that’s why Democrats who want to win will lean in on differentiating issues like this and do the fucking work to make cis people care about it.

    Pulling out my evergreen A R Moxon quote…

    The way out of our present age of political violence is not scolding “we have to live here with one another,” at those who are not threatening anyone’s life, at those whose very existence supremacists refuse to accept. Rather the way out is standing between supremacists and their targets and telling them “no, you have to live with them, just like we live with you, and if you can’t do that, then you have a problem with us, too.” It’s turning to those who just aren’t comfortable with trans people and saying "we don’t negotiate about people’s rights over here, and if you want to see how hard we’ll fight for you against the billionaires and bosses who are robbing you blind, watch how hard we fight for them. If hating trans people is so important to you that you’re willing to get robbed to death to secure it, we aren’t the party for you.

    You know what? I think that message might just build a coalition.

    https://www.the-reframe.com/eventually-youre-going-to-have-to-stand-for-something-2/

    PS: The New York Times never misses an opportunity to demonize transgender people, and this instance of FUD-mongering is no exception. They can go to hell, and I wish people would stop spreading their trash editorial bias like this.

  • neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zonetopolitics @lemmy.world•Massachusetts AG struggles to explain why she won’t sue hospitals abandoning trans kids in heated exchangeEnglish
    22·
    1 month ago

    The headline is a bit misleading here. I watched the video of this interaction (see below) and the only struggle the AG had was talking over the shouting protestor.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52JSMv6CiN0&t=1766s

    But I get the protestor’s anger. Her defense amounts to platitudes that don’t impact trans folks ability to get care. It’s hunky dory if it’s legal for patients to receive that care locally, but what happens when every hospital and doctor stops providing that care? The patients who need the care are fucked. The commonwealth is expected to take those hospitals and doctors to court to compel them to provide care under MA’s shield law… but they’re not.

    Also, “give me list of names of people who aren’t getting care” is a violation of HIPAA laws (considering AG coms from the public become matters of public record), not to mention the worst kind of message to send to a persecuted population.

    “Make a list of yourselves and give it to me.”

    It’s not like that sort of thing has ever gone wrong.

  • neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zonetopolitics @lemmy.world•Trump alleges vast conspiracy to commit and cover up election fraudEnglish
    3·
    2 months ago

    This is part of the current Republican modus operandi.

    Start by accusing your opponents of false crimes. This excites their base and fills the media landscape with “that didn’t happen” language.

    Next, you explicitly commit the crimes that you falsely accused your opponents of. Claim it’s not happening, but if it were, it would be justified because the other side did it already (which they didn’t), then re-use the same “that didn’t happen” language your opponents originally crafted. Now an ignorant public isn’t sure who to believe.

    And it’s working.

    Make no mistake: this is the biggest sign of any that Republicans are going to attempt a wide variety of election tampering, voter suppression and voter fraud tactics to tip the balance of the November (2026) election.

    And it doesn’t have to be wide scale: they just need to disrupt a few urban districts in highly contested states. Any crimes they commit won’t be addressed until after the elections are over. See Musk’s million-dollar voter bribes recently maybe being considered illegal: big deal, the fascists already won and have deployed goons into the streets to deport and murder people.

    Get your cameras ready.

  • neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zonetopolitics @lemmy.world•'One of The Scariest Things I Have Seen': Alarms Sound Over 'Technofascist' Palantir ManifestoEnglish
    61·
    5 months ago

    The “manifesto” is an excerpt from the CEO’s book, posted as a twitter thread, reposted below for anyone curious about the flavor palate of boots.

    Because we get asked a lot.

    The Technological Republic, in brief.

    1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation.

    2. We must rebel against the tyranny of the apps. Is the iPhone our greatest creative if not crowning achievement as a civilization? The object has changed our lives, but it may also now be limiting and constraining our sense of the possible.

    3. Free email is not enough. The decadence of a culture or civilization, and indeed its ruling class, will be forgiven only if that culture is capable of delivering economic growth and security for the public.

    4. The limits of soft power, of soaring rhetoric alone, have been exposed. The ability of free and democratic societies to prevail requires something more than moral appeal. It requires hard power, and hard power in this century will be built on software.

    5. The question is not whether A.I. weapons will be built; it is who will build them and for what purpose. Our adversaries will not pause to indulge in theatrical debates about the merits of developing technologies with critical military and national security applications. They will proceed.

    6. National service should be a universal duty. We should, as a society, seriously consider moving away from an all-volunteer force and only fight the next war if everyone shares in the risk and the cost.

    7. If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it; and the same goes for software. We should as a country be capable of continuing a debate about the appropriateness of military action abroad while remaining unflinching in our commitment to those we have asked to step into harm’s way.

    8. Public servants need not be our priests. Any business that compensated its employees in the way that the federal government compensates public servants would struggle to survive.

    9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.

    10. The psychologization of modern politics is leading us astray. Those who look to the political arena to nourish their soul and sense of self, who rely too heavily on their internal life finding expression in people they may never meet, will be left disappointed.

    11. Our society has grown too eager to hasten, and is often gleeful at, the demise of its enemies. The vanquishing of an opponent is a moment to pause, not rejoice.

    12. The atomic age is ending. One age of deterrence, the atomic age, is ending, and a new era of deterrence built on A.I. is set to begin.

    13. No other country in the history of the world has advanced progressive values more than this one. The United States is far from perfect. But it is easy to forget how much more opportunity exists in this country for those who are not hereditary elites than in any other nation on the planet.

    14. American power has made possible an extraordinarily long peace. Too many have forgotten or perhaps take for granted that nearly a century of some version of peace has prevailed in the world without a great power military conflict. At least three generations — billions of people and their children and now grandchildren — have never known a world war.

    15. The postwar neutering of Germany and Japan must be undone. The defanging of Germany was an overcorrection for which Europe is now paying a heavy price. A similar and highly theatrical commitment to Japanese pacifism will, if maintained, also threaten to shift the balance of power in Asia.

    16. We should applaud those who attempt to build where the market has failed to act. The culture almost snickers at Musk’s interest in grand narrative, as if billionaires ought to simply stay in their lane of enriching themselves . . . . Any curiosity or genuine interest in the value of what he has created is essentially dismissed, or perhaps lurks from beneath a thinly veiled scorn.

    17. Silicon Valley must play a role in addressing violent crime. Many politicians across the United States have essentially shrugged when it comes to violent crime, abandoning any serious efforts to address the problem or take on any risk with their constituencies or donors in coming up with solutions and experiments in what should be a desperate bid to save lives.

    18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.

    19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.

    20. The pervasive intolerance of religious belief in certain circles must be resisted. The elite’s intolerance of religious belief is perhaps one of the most telling signs that its political project constitutes a less open intellectual movement than many within it would claim.

    21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.

    22. We must resist the shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism. We, in America and more broadly the West, have for the past half century resisted defining national cultures in the name of inclusivity. But inclusion into what?

    Excerpts from the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West, by Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska