Israel, and AIPAC is just an extension of the US government. The US supports Israel because it allows them to threaten the rest of the middle east and keep cheap resources and labor flowing out.
This is bad for the people who live in America (and the middle east), but it is good for the capitalist class the US represents.
I just have a fear I might mess up somehow and start a fire or something
It takes some effort to start a fire. Most oils flash points are >600 F, which you might get a pan to to sear a steak, but to heat a pan of oil for deepfrying or something to >600 F, which would be a dangerous situation, requires you to continue heating it after it started billowing smoke between ~350F and ~525.
In any case, if you manage to have an oil fire, say by spilling some on the burner, just let it burn out if it’s a small amount or turn off the heat and throw a towel over it if it’s like a cup’s worth.
Minor burns aren’t uncommon when you’re learning, but that’s just a very quick way to learn “wrap the handle of the cast iron you just took out of the oven with a towel so you don’t grab it like a moron” or “use tongs to place things on hot oil so it doesn’t splatter on your hand”
I think they’re suggesting that, if you think what you’re seeing now is “unlimited support,” you’ll have a pretty shocking 2025.
Every weapon congress allowed, the US sent to Israel, and the US used its standing military to prevent anyone else from stopping Israel. The Biden admin has done literally nothing to limit Israel’s genocide and has used the military and diplomatic power to ensure that it continues.
We had a shitty choice to make
We didn’t choose shit, the democrats made choices at every opportunity that lowered turnout. Genocide lowers turnout. Saying you’re going to appoint republicans to your cabinet lowers turnout. Pledging to shut down the border and build the wall lowers turnout. Means testing all of your campaign promises lowers turnout. Like anyone who’s been paying attention, I spent the last 4 years telling anyone who’d listen that if the democrats do this shit, Trump will win in 2024, and now somehow it’s everyone’s fault except the democrats.
Are you suggesting that if the dems won, they would have stopped the unlimited support for Israel’s genocide?
Unless there’s a coup in the DNC, we’re going to see a repeat of this week in 2026 and 2028.
If the democrats had learned anything at all, they would stop all arms shipments and sanction Israel right now so they can credibly say to voters they want the same things.
Remember when Biden’s admin said they’d cut off aid if Israel didn’t let aid into gaza and stop killing humanitarian workers, but set the deadline for just after the election?
This proves it was a cynical ploy and they never intended to limit their support of Israel’s genocide.
IQ only measures how good you are at taking IQ tests. They recalibrate score every year to maintain the same distribution of scores within a year. (they change what each question is worth so every year 50% of tests get above 100, 40% of tests are between 85 and 100, 40% of tests are between 100 and 115, etc.)
The impact is that they have to make the tests harder every year. If you applied modern standards to 1920, the average score would be ~70.
What makes more sense to you, that 8/10 people today would be considered near-geniuses 100 years ago, or we got much better at taking IQ tests?
Likewise, but I also think there is a reason why we are seeing Israeli politicians talking about potentially annexing North Gaza and the West Bank now, after the election, and not 6 months ago.
But they were openly talking about annexing North Gaza and the West Bank 6 months ago
Where do you see frequent trash cans and people regularly throwing trash out in the street?
Typically trash in the street means you don’t have enough trash cans, or a bunch of youth or homeless people whom society is failing.
From the things I saw about the US election, the Dems were the side with plans for the economy - minimum wage adjustments, unions, taxing the rich, etc
The dems are in power now, they didn’t do those things, so nobody believed they’d actually do it if they were elected again.
Additionally, parading around endorsements from Dick and Liz Cheney, and promising to build a border wall, tax breaks for small businesses, and other republican policies from 2016 didn’t help the perception that the dems weren’t going to help people.
Minsk II was never enforced, after Zelensky got elected on a peace platform, he told told Azov and co to disband. They threatened to kill him, and kept at it. They were shelling Eastern Ukraine until they very day of the invasion.
But in any case, my analysis is not based on trusting Putin, it’s based on what Russia is capable of and what the expected effects of such actions would be. They don’t have the manpower to fight an insurgency in Western Ukraine, let alone invade the rest of Europe at the same time.
Short of a revolution and dismantling the military industrial complex, we were always the bad guys for WWIII.
~20 million die of lack of clean water, preventable disease, etc each year due to dictators the US arms to prevent economic development and keep resources and labor cheap.
If the leftists were enough to sway the vote, don’t you think they should have listened to us?
Between 2014 and 2022, fighting never stopped.
By February, Ukraine is gone
So if Russia and Ukraine instead sign a peace deal with borders similar to where the Russian/Ukrainian speaking majorities are, and Russia doesn’t invade the rest of europe and Georgia, will you do any introspection?
WWIII start, you will be on the Axis side.
The evil empire that prevents the global south from developing economically to keep resources and labor cheap by providing weapons to dictators is the axis side for WWIII. Like no matter who we end up allied with, most of humanity recognizes us as the bad guys.
The only way we could survive this is by being a united, social-liberal democratic beacon of hope for the rest of the western world, but we’re fucked.
Yup, letting neoliberalism hollow out your states created the conditions for fascism. Same thing happened over here.
Ukraine
You’re not understanding, the arms and money we send Ukraine enables them to continue the war. Last year, Russia offered a peace deal, giving up a portion of the territory they occupied at the time. Ukraine declined and says they won’t settle for less than all their territory, including Crimea. Without the weapons, they’d be forced to agree to a deal. Given that Russia probably knows they can’t deal with the insurgency outside of Russian-speaking Ukraine, they’ll probably agree to borders similar to what exists now.
China would have wanted Taiwan regardless
I mean the Republic of China is a part of China, it’s eventual reunification is inevitable, but they obviously see that reunification by invasion would be very expensive, both in cost of the invasion, cost of the insurgency, and resulting sanctions from their third-biggest trading partner. The only case where they’d waste billions of dollars and hundreds of thousand of lives is if the US made that option better than the alternative.
The same calculation happened with Russia; after the maidan coup, the civil war on their border caused them to strategic infrastructure and terrorist attacks. They erroneously calculated the cost of having a hostile, NATO-backed state on the border would be greater than a quick invasion and replacing the US puppet with another Russian one.
You need to look closer to understand what pressures cause countries to do things, these places aren’t cartoons who just decide to self-destruct their economies and send an entire generation into a meat grinder because aUTHoriTariaNism.
We’ve already sent troops to help Israel in Palestine, remember that aid pier that Israel used to do warcrimes, and now there’s troops operating aircraft and a missile defense system to prevent anyone from interfering with Israel’s genocide.
help out Russia in Ukraine
Just not sending weapons and money should be enough to get Ukraine back to the peace table and stop the bloodshed.
help out China in Taiwan
Ironically if we didn’t try to use Taiwan for geopolitical goals, China would have no reason to invade, since a peaceful reintegration over time is far more advantageous than the destruction and insurgency that comes with a military option.
I guess it’s easier to avoid speculation as to why we all can’t win.
We literally cannot all win, we have mutually exclusive interests. When you appeal to racists, you lose anyone who is or cares for immigrants. When you appeal to the capitalist class, you throw out the workers.
After throwing out the entire base to go after “moderate republicans”, 5% of Democrat voters were registered republicans. That’s down from 6% in 2020.
Did you envision a worse outcome than the one we got?
That remains to be seen. Currently we’re at the part where dems call black people, latinos, and the left racist, homophobic misogynists for not having higher turnout, and ignore white men and women who voted Trump. The outcome I envision will be the dems internalizing that and doing the same thing again in 2026 and 2028, preventing any electoral solution to the rise of fascism.
too many leftists and progressives seemed comfortable with flirting with disaster
Leftists had no power to affect the outcome of the election. When they tell you that what the dems are doing is a losing strategy, they’re not saying they, personally, are going to cause the dems to lose, they’re observing that what the dems are doing will cause them to lose.
the USA is now going to join WW3 on the side of the bad guys
What do you mean “join”?
The evil empire that militarily supports dictators across the global south to prevent economic development and keep cheap labor and resources flowing out are the bad guys, this hasn’t and will not change short of a revolution or the empire’s control collapsing.
See you’re doing it again, every time you shift the blame away from the people who decide the things that determine whether or not people vote, you convince the dems they can do it again.
This is exclusively the fault of the democrats. You can’t change the reality that running on policy your base doesn’t like, and then telling them “fuck you gonna do, help trump win?” decreases turnout.
The only reason they pushed Biden out was that they saw they had zero chance at victory if they didn’t change.
Oh cool, anyone with foreign allegiances is going to oppose war, this is a good thing!
Oh it’s a nazi. God dammit.