Posts by johnzajac@dice.camp
(DIR) Post #AxFbR9EdJzmuh3LPA8 by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-15T14:02:40Z
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- ban rich people- regulate corpos- eliminate waste- promote electrification- strengthen social services- build free public trans"Keep your SUV! Eat your beef! But let us stop these rich fuckfaces and faceless corpos from destroying the earth" is actually a pretty powerful argument.(LATER you get rid of the SUV and curtail the beef production, natch, AFTER you eat all the rich people and make life good)
(DIR) Post #AxItQLaeHVLVN6I0S8 by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-18T19:20:56Z
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@richpuchalsky @futurebird I don't even think it's transparent that trans people or immigrants would have it better under a Harris administration. After all, the Democrats voted mostly en masse for Laken Riley, which as a law is pretty much a nuke dropped on due process and oversight of law enforcement, and their attitude toward trans people has been indistinguishable from their attitude toward queer people in the 90s: ew, but I guess I'll let you vote for me.
(DIR) Post #AxItcbtjTWBpQN3yiG by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-18T19:24:42Z
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@futurebird @richpuchalsky I guess at this point when I encounter "lesser evil" advocates, I'm torn between sharing what Hannah Arendt thought of lesser evil, and showing that the "lesser" is so minuscule that it's hard to find, if it exists at all. In modern US politics, we confuse aesthetics with substance so frequently that it's no wonder there are still people who think "lesser evil/harm reduction voting" is an effective or even necessary way to run anything
(DIR) Post #AxIuubEmlka6Xi3JVg by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-18T19:39:08Z
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@futurebird AFAIC, this image of him gledfully destroying a houseless person's property is literally all you need to know about Gavin Newsom to render him a disqualified from political office.He could threaten a tax revolt, slick his hair back, and have someone pound his face in cake makeup 1,000 times and I'd still think he was disqualified.
(DIR) Post #AxJ6FXcQW99ateIa3c by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-18T19:26:16Z
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@futurebird @richpuchalsky Biden, for example, killed 3x more people than Trump re: the pandemic. But people are like "he said the right stuff! he got the scientists to say stuff! wheeee" and the numbers just don't register in their heads.Biden started the logging of protected lands. Biden started leasing protected land to oil companies. Biden deported and denied asylum to more people than any previous President. Biden committed crimes to send weapons to Israel.
(DIR) Post #AxJ6FYos3MhacX825o by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-18T19:29:02Z
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@futurebird @richpuchalsky He broke strikes, ignored environmental disasters, and let his FDA run off the handle. His "signature legislation" was classic tax policy BS that passes for "regulation" under DemocratsNow, was he nominally "better" than Trump? Sure. Why not. At a certain point though, does it matter if you only sniped the toddler in the head, not the head and heart? One is less than the other, but you'd have to be a little deranged to think they're different
(DIR) Post #AxJ6FZXBOc9CpxrQA4 by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-18T19:31:00Z
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@futurebird @richpuchalsky At some point, folks like me who voted lesser evil despite knowing better had to reckon with the fact that despite voting for lesser evil - or maybe *because of it* - greater evil won. And when you had that moment of reckoning probably determines whether or not you voted for Harris.Now it's other "lesser evil" folks turn: you've gotta realize that your actions are 100% not effective at preventing harm, because Trump *is still free*.
(DIR) Post #AxJ6FaDMrltKwnb6um by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-18T19:31:38Z
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@futurebird @richpuchalsky Set aside moral considerations.Is voting for lesser evil *effective*, is the question you should be asking yourself.If you've been paying attention, the answer is obvious.Just in case (sigh) it's NO.
(DIR) Post #AxJ6FiMAavgaCPmFkG by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-18T19:50:05Z
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@futurebird @richpuchalsky One last thing:"Lesser evil" also seems to accept that the government should be unaccountable, and that the powers of the State should be easily turned against its people, and predicates its utility on the idea that *THEY* won't do that (much).Like, just holding that opinion seems pretty disqualifying to me, but maybe I'm just distrustful of all-powerful States with no controls, no matter how "less evil" the people controlling it are.
(DIR) Post #AxJ8pwHiUGjTjK5xzM by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-18T22:15:09Z
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@futurebird @richpuchalsky Was the political progress sui generis, or was it driven by the outside efforts? We live during a time when the value of a vote is near to nothing, if only because politicians don't actually care what the people want; they have their own constituents, and they are not *us*.No politician will change substantively unless they believe their power is on the line. Default voting in a duopoly is just us giving our power away.
(DIR) Post #AxJCuRAa01x0Uc9op6 by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-18T23:00:48Z
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@futurebird I guess the eternal modern USian argument in politics is: if you vote for Democrats, do you get a seat at the table?In my experience, the answer is 'no', at least for leftists, queer people, poor people, and trans people, most of the time.I still vote because it takes minimal effort and I no longer value it as a measure of anyone's affirmative intent.
(DIR) Post #AxJiCwutngh0kK87sG by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-19T04:51:28Z
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@futurebird No, it's about a captured political system and how we free it from the two parties responsible for the state of play.If everyone voted for who they actually wanted in office, Democrats would have maybe 50% of their currently electeds.Trump isn't how I wanted it to happen, but he's absolutely bringing all of this to a head. I do not doubt that the US political scene will be unrecognizable in 20 years because of Donald J Trump, maybe sooner.
(DIR) Post #AxP2LEL1shnPy5NV2m by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-21T17:58:23Z
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It's wild that people still follow or respond to the fascists' social posts. Like, I couldn't even tell you what they are or how to access them.To me, the fash are a voiceless, faceless, meaningless and amoral horde of beasts. There is nothing they can say that is worth my ears perceiving it. The watts necessary to process their nonsense are energy I could better use shitting in their eyes.
(DIR) Post #AxP2kIosMB1v6fIHJY by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-21T18:35:12Z
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@futurebird It must be lonely to belong to the most reviled political ideology of the century, I guess?
(DIR) Post #AxQl6BU4ttg5rslnyi by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-22T14:26:53Z
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@futurebird I will never forget as long as I live reading in the WSJ in June 2020 that *the block of PDX I was standing on with my dog* had been "ruined and set on fire" by "rioters".I've never trusted any mainstream media source again, and my skepticism has served me really well.
(DIR) Post #AxRGTANWH7Izg68oCm by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-22T20:18:22Z
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@futurebird Quid. Pro. Quo.A smart Democratic party would say she's lying for favors and Trump has to release the list or resign. Every time any non-MAGA shows up on TV, they should say "Where are the Epstein files? Why is Trump hiding them?"Why Dems can't do this - after being given a clearly written playbook by Trump himself on how to do this - is inexplicable.
(DIR) Post #AxT0LWKdYhPWUy2qRs by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-23T16:27:07Z
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@futurebird It's as transparently a quid pro quo as Epstein's death was a murder. Both the ruling class and the media have decided that the people are so gullible that they can be presented with implausible denials without consequence.Of course they're looking for the outer bounds of that impunity; genocide apparently is mostly okay, so what about raping thousands of children? What can we get away with? they wonder.
(DIR) Post #AxXvNE5ooVzKWuuJlI by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-25T22:51:43Z
15 likes, 1 repeats
Something I will hand to the modern right wing (I know you don't have to hand it to them, but hear me out) is that they are, without a doubt, more committed to openly doing evil shit than any group of people I can think of. Like, maybe the Nazis, but even Hitler was like "we've gotta do a Reichstag Fire before we can declare an emergency, idiots!"These numbnuts really just don't give a fuck if everyone sees them as truly fucking evil. Like "Event Horizon bizarro dimension"-level evil.
(DIR) Post #AxXvNFXrPk0t2B2E6q by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-25T22:56:23Z
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Trump was just like "hey everyone, it's an...emergency?" then everyone around him, including Justice Roberts, snickered knowingly before he started just rattling off dictats.Even then, our media and courts and political class are so addicted to the taste of boot that nobody will actually, really stand up.Nobody is standing in Congress screaming "J'accuse!" Nobody is telling off the Republicans in the Senate, attacking them personally for their personal moral and ethical failures.
(DIR) Post #AxXvNNCsvbzKnRHaWe by johnzajac@dice.camp
2025-08-25T23:00:21Z
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I know, I know. I've been here long enough that I know: we can't rely on the fucking political class that got us here to get us out of here.But like, still gobsmacked that out of all the fuckers in the Federal government, not a single fucking one actually has the guts to tell Trump to fuck himself.