If anything, the New Deal and wealth accrued through rapid industrialization by becoming the world’s number one weapons manufacturer while taking little to no infrastructural damage during WW2 seem like anomalies.

He’s his sequel. When has a sequel ever been better?

Carney mouthed the word never five times with a smile on his face in response to that on the Canadian broadcast.

Insane that GoFundMe didn’t shut down the raciats fund.

Practically, how do you prosecute someone for not voluntarily consuming a good or service?

How to hack your GDP while ordinary people suffer

1. Private weapons manufacturers make more weapons than should ever be needed.

Why? Your country gained its wealth by becoming the world’s largest weapons manufacturer, making it the greatest financial beneficiary of WW2. That manufacturing infrastructure didn’t just disappear overnight.

2. Large government subsidies to countries like Israel which aren’t actually cash, rather they are purchases of these privately manufactured weapons using taxpayer dollars. These are given to Israel and other countries / entities in the world which perpetuate military conflict in order to keep feeding the machine.

There you have it. Production and consumption which keeps your GDP and GDP per capita growing without providing a meaningful benefit to humanity.

I agree that America’s origin story is filled with blood lust and greed. You don’t come up with a concept like manifest destiny without a fuck you, everything is mine attitude.

The reality is they’re never going to see that set of circumstances ever again. You don’t get to be the world’s preeminent super power and sit at the sidelines of a world war.

One can wonder if that unique set of circumstances (some of it based on pure luck) will ever happen again. That is, the new deal + rapid industrializing to become the world’s leading weapons manufacturer + geographical isolation from a world war without being a primary target. If it does happen, it would be for another country.

The US profited immensely off of their allies by selling weapons and that doesnt even account for the massive brain drain of intellectuals / scientists moving to the US for safety during the war.

This is important and one part of many reasons why America became the superpower it is today.

America horded 80% of global gold reserves by selling weapons to allies while not engaging in WW2, benefiting from their geographic isolation from Europe and Asia.

Of course, establishing independence from colonial powers was an important first step and there is some credit to be given there (even if driven by greed).

But many Americans are told that their nation is rich because they are somehow better on a deeper, fundamental level. When the reality is, like many things in life, they were able to take advantage of an oppurtunity by being in the right place at the right time (and one can argue they should have engaged in WW2 sooner, instead of sitting on the sidelines).

This is part of the reason I find Jon Stewart to be quite knowledgeable but also at times nauseating. I have nothing against patriotism but he peddles American exceptionalism as a reason why the country should be better when it’s perfectly reasonable to expect more from your country without a falsely representing its ascent.

I see where you’re coming from but I think that line can be drawn by people with a moral compass, which I understand America is failing at right now.

I truly believe most people can distinguish between threatening to bomb children and any of the examples you’ve listed but perhaps I’m giving people too much of a benefit of the doubt.

Bomb threats to local schools were also being sent via Proton.

If they aren’t going to help deal with that then I can understand why turning them off and figuring out is the next best step.

Other services likely engage with local authorities when illegal activity is pursued in their platform.

Temporary blocking doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. Perhaps even a longer term one if Swiss federal authorities are going to meddle.

South park becomes extremely vapid once you’re over 28 years old.

You can’t just always pick the middle of two sides of an argument and assume you’re always right.

The US has a global trade surplus if you account for tech, financial and healthcare services.

There is an argument to be made that being able to produce certain things domestically is important from a national security standpoint (semiconductors for example).

Whether tariffs could actually produce that, no one actually knows.

How did they find two dudes that look exactly the same?

You would need to target Jude Wanniski (conservative economist). Reagan wasn’t the one who came up with supply side economics though he was an effective face of the message, reviving the Republican Party from its loss of credibility due to Nixon.

Part of it is just unbridled American level greed though. America has a good thing going post WW2, having horded 80% of the worlds gold supply by selling weapons to allies and staying out of the war until instigated by Japan in '41.

Also had a good thing going with the New Deal which helped pull the economy out of the great depression and bolstered / introduced many of the public services that are still in use today.

But no, dangle some marginal tax cuts in front of common folk who have the best standard of living in the world and apparently they’ll vote for acceleration toward end stage capitalism.

Because habeas corpus applies only to those with sufficient privilege.

“Accidentally”

Russia/Ukraine is a state vs state territorial conflict involving genocide with most of the Western world in support of Ukraine.

Israel/Gaza is an occupation with six times the civilian death toll, involving widespread systemic destruction of infrastructure, forced displacement, inaccessibility to healthcare and starvation.

While both are genocides, the imbalance is particularly horrific in the latter. The Russians seem to have a preference for abducting children and placing them in “Russification” camps to erase their heritage while Israel simple kills Gazan children in cold blood.

This is not an apples to apples comparison and I think many would consider the US looks worse, in this particular comparison, than China.

Found it, for anyone reading don’t bother. It is still images with an AI voiceover. I was hoping for half baked AI generated video.

Anyone have a link to the video? Looking for a good laugh.