Everyone around him must hate him so much, to allow him to go out in public looking like that.

“The average American, I think has, I think it’s fewer than three friends. Three people that they consider friends.”

This is Zuckerberg, claiming it’s normal not just to have only 3 friends, but fewer than 3. This is telling on yourself even more than “Women’s orgasms aren’t real because no woman I’ve ever been with has had an orgasm.”

If he counts his wife in that list of “fewer than 3 friends”, how many friends does he actually have? I get that being ultra rich means that often you can’t be sure who’s actually your friend, and who’s just there for the money. But, still, he should at least be able to count a handful of friends. I’ve known my 2 best friends since before I was 5 years old. Surely if Zuck had a normal childhood, he should have people who were his friends long before he got rich, who he can be sure aren’t just there for his money. If he doesn’t, it strongly suggests he was either a pretty awful kid, or he led a really weird life growing up and was isolated from anybody who could have become a friend.

I still can’t get over that his policies are the result of what he watches on TV. I’m not talking about his watching the Sunday morning political shows. I’m talking fictional movies in prime time that result in new US policies.

At 9pm on Saturday WLRN aired “Escape from Alcatraz”. On Sunday another Trump policy was announced: he was re-opening Alcatraz prison.

This is at least the second time that people have figured out what Trump was watching on TV to cause him to issue a new crazy edict.

Except that that low rate of tax was so low that it made it cheaper for customers to buy legal tea than to buy smuggled tea. The smugglers, like founding father John Hancock, didn’t like that.

Under the British Empire, The British Crown, as a port city, where The British primarily ruled.

That description fits Boston perfectly. It was in the British empire, under the British crown, in a port city where the British ruled.

Not everything was Boston and established, flushed out colonies with paved streets and whatnot

Yes, just like there were rural areas in England, there were also rural areas in the colonies. There wasn’t much difference except the settlements in the Americas were newer.

It was still very much roughing it

Yes, Benjamin Franklin was really “roughing it” when he worked in various cities running a printing press. I’m sure he was out hunting and foraging all the time. There were people who lived in very rural areas in the colonies, but that’s also true of Great Britain.

British Militia were stationed there

Militias aren’t stationed places. Militias are called up as needed. I suspect you don’t know what a Militia is.

You do realize that this wasn’t some nice thing Britain was doing for the people wanting to leave Britain and had more to do with the British Empire trying to expand their reach over The World as they did in Africa and India? This is what The British did at the time, expansion and conquering through colonization.

Yes, and? That doesn’t change that the primary beneficiaries of their plan to expand were the colonists who lived nearby. They weren’t doing it as a favour for the colonists, they were doing it as a strategic investment in the empire, of which the colonists were a part.

This was a social change driven by that society’s desire to be rid of British Occupation

No it wasn’t. That’s the propaganda. The truth is that it was a revolution kicked off by the wealthy elite colonists who were greedy and didn’t want to have to share their wealth with the government. They wanted the benefits of the wars that Britain had fought to expand the empire’s reach in North America, without having to pay the bill or agree to the terms of the treaty that ended the war.

According to John Adams, only about a third of the colonists were “Patriots”, or revolutionaries. The other two thirds were Loyalists or undecided. You’d think that if anything he’d be overestimating the number of “Patriots” to make it seem like there was more support for the war on his side.

Otherwise, this “revolution” would have fizzled without ongoing support, much like the “sovereign citizen” movement has.

No, because the people backing the revolution were rich, and could afford to raise armies to fight for their side. Meanwhile, the British were still trying to pay off the debts from the previous war. The revolution succeeded because rich smugglers like John Hancock paid the bill, not because it had near universal support.

During this period, with the British waging war and needing supplies (along with colonies needing supplies), this was primarily handled by The East India Trading Company to handle shipments and imports

No… as you might be able to tell from the name, the British East India company operated in… India. They were a trading company, not a company that supplied the needs of colonists in the Americas.

Annexation in that after the American Revolution and the British Surrender, this allowed the newly formed society to be separated entirely from the British Empire and British Militia.

You might want to look up the definition of “annexation”, you’re not using the word correctly.

Now it just seems like you’re suggesting that Britain never released its control and influence over America

Britain never “released” control over the colonies in the Americas until the rebels won the war. Until then the colonies were an integrated part of the empire. Most colonists considered themselves as British. Some of them were Britons who had disagreements with how the government was run. But, that’s like Texans today who consider themselves American but think the government should be run differently.

removal of British Militia has apart in this.

Apart means separate. The words you mean to use are “a part”. Your grasp of history is as weak as your grasp of grammar.

How do you think all this happened?

How do you think it happened in Liverpool and Manchester? People moved there and built up a town.

These people had to explore, farm, forage, hunt, build shelter all in new land

Their grandparents did, sure. By the time they were born these were established colonies and it wasn’t too different from Europe.

John Handcock was born on Americans soil (not a British Separatist Import) and arguably had more right to the land and representation there of than the British Militia.

I don’t know who “Handcock” was, but Hancock was a Briton born in the colonies, sure. But, who do you think the British Militia consisted of? Militia members were locals. Even British army officers were locals in many cases. Before he became President, George Washington was a (terrible) Colonel in the British army.

The propaganda is framing local trade is “smuggling” when in reality, the locals who grew up in The Americas, building the city, not fighting The British Empires war,

You do realize that the colonists were fighting in the wars, and many of the wars were fought on behalf of the colonists, to protect them from the hostile French and “Indian” forces to their west, right?

got fed up having to deal with trading through The British

Yeah, just like the idiotic sovereign citizens today who don’t want to acknowledge that they’re part of a society and that they have to live by the rules of that society like everyone else. They didn’t like the government’s rules so they smuggled.

and the upcharges from The East India Trading Corporation - who were relatively loyal to The British Militia.

WTF are you talking about?

The annexation of the British Empire

What do you mean by “the annexation of the British Empire”? The British Empire was never annexed.

A century and a half (over 150 years) is a long time for a society to grow apart from The British Empire across The Atlantic Ocean.

And yet, it didn’t happen, probably because there was constant contact and trade back and forth between British ports in the Americas, British ports in Asia, British ports in Europe, etc.

Yep, I agree with all of that. You can’t really even blame the US for most of it. Not joining the first and second world wars sooner? Makes sense. It’s a war on an entirely different continent. Why not stay out as long as possible. Scientists, engineers and artists fleeing to the US for safety? Makes perfect sense. It’s great that (for the most part) the US welcomed them in. Selling arms to allies? That’s perfectly reasonable, I’m sure the allies appreciated it. In fact, with the Lend Lease act, a lot of the equipment was effectively donated.

What you can blame the US for is not acknowledging this as a huge stroke of luck, and having some humility about it. If the US taught kids in schools that the US was extremely lucky in both world wars, joining near the end of the first and a long way after the start of the second, that would be reasonable. Instead most people who go through the US education system come out of it thinking that WWII started in late 1941. Teaching that the US won WWII? No, the USSR won WWII, the rest of the allies did their part, but the most brutal fighting was on the eastern front, and it was the Russians who plowed their way to Berlin. The US economy after WWII was great because of ingenuity and capitalism? Sure, those were factors, but don’tcha think the whole “we’re the only major country to get out of WWII undamaged” is a bigger factor?

The way you’ve presented things assumes that everyone there was British

Everyone was British, including the rebels and smugglers.

That’s over a 100 years of people forming a new society, on new land, literally fighting the environments day in and day out to survive.

That’s what the propaganda sells, but it’s not true. Boston was as big a town as Liverpool in the 1700s. New York was roughly the same size as Manchester. Nobody was “literally fighting the environment to survive”. People had city-type jobs. Benjamin Franklin was printing newspapers. John Hancock was a smuggler. Sure, there were a lot of farmers working hard on their farms, but that was true everywhere.

I think it was an inevitable thing to happen as it’s happened throughout history to The British Empire.

Leaving the British empire has happened a lot. Fighting a war to leave definitely hasn’t. Which other countries have fought wars to leave the British Empire?

The Post-WWII period is also responsible for a lot of the chaos today.

The US emerged from WWII with most of the worker protections from the New Deal in place. The income tax rates topped out at 90%. Unions were strong. Add to that that the US was the only major economy to come out of WWII unscathed and there was an obvious economic boom that, thanks to those New Deal policies, wasn’t hoarded by the already wealthy.

That was the environment in which a (white, male) factory worker was able to own a house and support a large family with a stay-at-home wife. This is the world MAGA wants to return to. But, even if they got the labour protections that were a key element of that world (which of course the people they’re electing are dead-set against) that worker’s paradise isn’t coming back without another disastrous world war in which the US gets to sit on the sidelines then reap the benefits when the war is over. Basically, their idea of that era is a fantasy, and it’s never coming back, even if they actually voted for the side that wants to make incremental steps in that direction, rather than the one that wants to hoard even more wealth for the rich.

As someone who grew up in Canada, I’m also not going to give them any kudos for independence from the colonial powers. They did it out of greed and it gave them an opportunity to renege on deals made with the French colonists and Native American groups. I’m not going to claim that the English or French governments were good to, or fair with the natives. But, they did form alliances with them and sign treaties. Some of the treaties were even honoured, at least for a while. Rather than an outright genocide to kill them off, or march them across the continent, the approach taken by the British in what’s now Canada was to try to forcibly “civilize” them. Thanks to racism, they thought that the natives were savages, and needed to be civilized, and they did all kinds of paternalistic things to destroy “savage” cultures and make the natives into fine, upstanding people who wore civilized clothing, spoke English, worshipped the correct god, had jobs, etc.

The American process was more “kill them off and take their land”. If the British had remained in charge, there probably would have been no Trail of Tears etc. Basically, they split off from the colonial power because the colonial power wasn’t brutal or racist enough for their tastes.

When Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, he tried to condemn the slave trade

I just love how they made a distinction between slavery and the slave trade. Jefferson might have condemned the slave trade but he had over 600 slaves throughout his life.

Capturing, buying and selling people into slavery? Bad.

Owning slaves, and having the children of those slaves be born into slavery? Fine.

I hope that some people come out of this realizing that the US wasn’t founded on deep idealistic principles, but mostly on greed.

What led to the Tea Party:

1. British colonists in the Americas drank a lot of tea.
2. Britain’s government needed money to pay war debts, and decided one way to do that was to impose taxes on items in the Americas including tea.
3. Some British people saw those taxes and decided it would be a good opportunity to make some money smuggling (think Al Capone during prohibition).
4. The British government eliminated all the taxes except on tea, and stopped the East India Company having to pay duties, making EIC tea cheaper than the smuggled tea.
5. The smugglers, upset at being undercut, dumped East India Company tea into Boston’s Harbour.

The whole “no taxation without representation” bit was a less important concern than the government messing with their profits. In fact, I read somewhere (can’t find the reference now) that the government tried to negotiate with the smuggler rebels, but the rebels weren’t willing to meet because the “no taxation without representation” was more of a pretext than an actual reason.

The other important bit here is the reason the government needed to raise money. It had just been involved in a major war, which it had won. This is the 7-years war, a.k.a. the French and Indian wars. In those wars, they beat France, and as a result, took over most of France’s territory in North America.

Look at the pink in this colonial map of the Americas. That’s all territory gained by the British in that war.

As a result of that war, the British settlement in the Americas was going to be able to expand from 13 colonies hugging the coast to an entire new area including the entire great lakes region, what’s now Florida, the Gulf coast, the Saint Lawrence river, etc. All that was required was that Britain follow the terms of the Treaty of Paris / Royal Proclamation of 1763. In part, that war was fought on behalf of the colonists to remove the threat from the French and expand the territory of the colonies, so it makes sense that the beneficiaries of that war (the colonists) would help pay for it. But, some of the British colonists didn’t want to pay for it. So, they rebelled and took the territory for themselves, ignoring the terms of the Treaty of Paris which gave some rights to the French and Indians who were in that newly acquired territory.

TL;DR: British colonists in the Americas who rebelled were greedy, not idealistic.

East India Company.

Whether or not Hitler wrote his own speeches, at least he delivered them in a charismatic and competent way.

Trump just ad-libs nonsense.

That’s what’s so disappointing about the current fascist regime. I never doubted that fascism in America would be possible. I looked at Germany and Italy in the 1930s and thought:

“Yeah, I suppose if there’s a powerful public speaker who is able to project strength, that could work. Even though by now everything Nazi is associated with evil, I can still appreciate how they were really good at “set design” to show the appearance of competence and power.”

What I didn’t expect is that all the appearance of intelligence, competence and organization was all optional. Trump is clearly stupid, his lies are beyond obvious, his people are clearly not competent. His rallies don’t project strength. Instead of brownshirts in uniforms lined up in an orderly way, Trump has a chaotic gaggle of fat and/or old people wearing mismatched random American-flag based gear in a puddle near him. How is it that this is what Americans are falling for?

You forgot: makes accordion motions with his hands.

whose

I agree. When the heroes are vigilantes, they’re only acting as vigilantes because either the police are corrupt, or the police are overwhelmed.

I am not a Batman fan, and love to joke that if he and the other Gotham billionaires paid a reasonable tax, Gotham wouldn’t be such a hellscape. But, the Batman theme is that the police are frequently corrupt and always overwhelmed, so a civilian needs to step up and protect the people.

Spiderman’s whole deal is “with great power comes great responsibility.” He puts his life on the line to protect people, and mostly from small-scale disasters like a run-away train.

What this comic gets absolutely wrong is that comic book heroes never try to stop someone from changing the status quo if they’re doing it peacefully. The only ones they try to stop are the ones trying to do it by force. And mostly the change they’re trying to make is to bring literal Nazis back to power. I think most sane people would have preferred status quo to Nazi takeover, though obviously the USA is getting there on its own without supervillains today.

Also, often, the status quo they’re trying to preserve is “Earth is not being invaded by aliens”, or “this supervillain is not currently on a rampage”.

As for movies about changing the status quo, that’s really what the whole X-Men comic has been about since it came out in the 1960s. The whole theme there is “mutants aren’t accepted by society, but they want to be, so they put their lives on the line to try to prove mutants are good”. Over the years mutants have stood in for jews, racial minorities, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, etc.

Sometimes the X-Men are fighting off supervillains or aliens. But, often they’re fighting off an oppressive government that is trying to wipe them out. So, the status quo they’re trying to change is “the people hate mutants and the government wants to wipe them out”.

Yeah. You’d think that terrorism would at least require… terror? The supervillains in superhero movies do make people feel scared (though apparently not scared enough to actually move out of NYC despite it being destroyed on a regular basis). But, the heroes don’t make them scared at all. The superheroes make them feel safer.

I bet their paramilitary uniforms were better looking than the flag-pants and facepaint the MAGA groups prefer.