Well, there are counterexamples. Oswald Mosley just kind of rotted in jail until everyone forgot about him, IIRC.

Martyrdom is massively overrated in Western discourse - usually a crackdown just works. Probably exactly because it’s a great excuse not to do scary but necessary things, which is something we’ve grown unused to.

Hoo boy is this the wrong moment to inject a complaint about Zionism.

I honestly can’t tell if this is mistimed “save Palestine” or a dog whistle. Probably the former, given the mention of fascism and the fact this is Lemmy, but you never know on the internet.

Hmm, would Musk be considered a diplomat? That might actually apply here.

True, but I did imagine OP as American. OP’s grandpa presumably wasn’t German, anyway. Or they were/are, and are extra cool, I guess.

Yeah, I didn’t bother going to a Remembrance day ceremony this year. It felt redundant when that shit was so front of mind already.

Yup. Rising Nazism doesn’t need to be the exact same guys again. That’s just lazy.

It’s the Telegraph; Egyptian TV host Tamer Amin is safe.

Eh, it’s the Telegraph.

That’s true. At least there’d be a wave of people forced to discover better ways. It’d suck for things like YouTube videos that have too much overhead to be free, though.

Since I posted this, it also occurred to me that predatory lending could make it’s way in. That’s how a lot of other underclass-serving businesses work.

Reliability has been one big problem I’ve heard about, which is pretty bad when you’re product is basically a big battery with few moving parts. TBF in the latest numbers Rivian is basically doing the same thing.

I’d be looking at the established car companies, because they’re basically worked out a lot of kinks already.

but polling proves that most Americans (hilariously, even most Republicans) don’t want cutthroat neoliberal everyone-for-themselves economic policies.

Yes, but what if you repackage austerity as “patriotic manly tax cuts”?

Look, sales so isn’t my department, but I’ve been far enough down this path to know bullshit dominates politics because bullshit works. And yeah, it’s fueled by apathy much more than actual stupidity, but comatose isn’t far off of what the average door knock feels like.

I think that Trump would love to install himself as a dictator, and maybe he will, but even dictators keep controlled elections going for the appearance of legitimacy. He’s already 78, and no other Republicans have managed to replicate his popularity among GOP voters. One way or another (unless the US government literally dissolves, which is my preference tbh) we’ll be dealing with a post-Trump US government sooner or later.

Yes, post-Trump will be “interesting” for sure. I’d be mildly surprised if everything went back to normal, though, because it was just so broken before, and there’s so many alternative trajectories available.

The stock market is not the economy. The economy on the ground has not been bullish. The US stock market doing well benefits the wealth-holders, not workers.

So what are you referring to, then? Inflation-adjusted wage growth? That was shit in the 90’s too. The tipping point was the 70’s or early 80’s based on what I’ve seen.

Voters see that they’re not actually moving Leftwards on economic policies that would help their own lives.

You’re ascribing way too much rationality to the average voter here. The politicians themselves don’t - if you’re inside a campaign one day, a rational defense of policies is not how the strategy ever works.

I am worried we’re in for several Presidential election losses before they all die out or get the message.

Bold of you to assume there’s more to come, in light of recent events.

I actually don’t know nearly enough about this situation to comment like that. Incremental progress is good, and sometimes lasts, but is that what’s happening here? This is an autocracy. We actually had very radical progress the wrong way in the last few years. The idea of rolling it back a bit is probably part of palace intrigue of some kind, and probably related to foreign pressure from people like the UAE, but how exactly?

(Also, radical progress has always gone funny to date, but even when it fails it has a way of planting seeds. In a lot of ways the French Revolution is still going and basically why we have democracy, so there’s nuance)

Anyway, I’d just take issue with the wording of “hero”. I still agree that treating Afghan women somewhat like humans would be better.

That’s kind of my feeling too, although it’s dangerously close to “better back in my day” given my age.

The period after they shut down browser popups, but before they invented those virtual DOM-hacking popups was great, and that’s a measurable change.

It’s always a bit ironic when people post this on the internet.

It’s not wrong, per se, but much more specific instructions on how not to waste your life would be nice. There’s old people that have spent their whole life on the metaphorical grass and are still dumb as shit.

Rights are soooo gen X.

There’s a few things there. Young people have always had low turnout, it’s not anything the politicians are doing. We’ve actually had a bull market for a decade or so, with a pretty momentary pause for COVID. Apathy happens in other countries like mine too, so it’s not just the Democrats.

As per usual, people primarily care about their own life, and just aren’t motivated by big abstract concepts. Here people’s toys got broken, so they’re mad, simple as. All the discussion about climate change and gun violence or whatever is just a smokescreen for that. If it wasn’t they could have fixed those problems all along. That goes for the geezers too, BTW - they just found out in '83 or whatever that voting is easy and doesn’t require knowing what you’re voting for.

Same. Historically they’re not even good EVs.

It sounds like there’s even alternatives to Starlink if you can deal with low bandwidth.

So does he have supporters, or did he just feel like getting purged today?