Conservatives wanted to stop immigration long before 2008...
Charapaso
joined 8 months ago
Not Lemmy specific. There was US legislation related to the word being deemed offensive fifteen years ago (given the slow nature of Congress, it wasn't a new sentiment then, either): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa%27s_Law
Fair enough that plenty of insulting words could be cast as abelist: but my guess is that a word like "idiot" is old enough that most folks called that in a medical context aren't around any more. Maybe I'm wrong though: plenty of folks do push against saying things like "crazy" in an insulting manner.
Exactly. 15 people in Gitmo is still a moral stain on the nation, but at least some semblance of progress was made. Not fast enough, still terrible, etc.
Trump is vowing to make that - just numerically - 2,000 times worse than the current numbers. And that's just looking at raw numbers, not even getting into the ethics of the people themselves (do we really think they'll be even half as rigorous as the shit level of rigor for former/current prisoners if they're trying to capture thirty thousand people?).
Unfortunately they've backed down already: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/26/world/americas/colombia-us-deportation-flights.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sU4.SJeu.KLeSKsinK61Z
But... I'm not okay with giving up one group, nor excusing genocide. We must be having two different discussions, because I got the impression you were advocating for simply rolling over and giving up.
What I was getting at is that participating in an immoral system, only inasmuch as wasting a little time to vote for a lesser evil, can help us achieve our aims when taking action outside the ballot box. It's easier to fight genocide against one group than genocide against many groups, right?
It's only "demonic" if voting is the only action you take to flight fascism. The reason to vote for the lesser evil, IMHO, is that the less evil option tends to be easier to fight.
Are you suggesting we should just go for a speedrun through the list, then?
There's no hard line, sure: I lived in the Amazon for years, so I know how to live off poverty wages. Poverty where I grew up in the USA seems almost plush by comparison, because a shitty trailer is far more comfortable than a thatch roofed house with electricity only 4 hours a day. My lifestyle now is middle class, and I feel like I'm living like a king. It's a grey smear of a continuum of wealth and privilege and morality that I feel like I understand viscerally.
However: my lifestyle and wealth is far closer to my friends in the Amazon than that of billionaires.
So there's a line, but it's far closer to the top 0.1% than the rest of us. I can help a few friends get motors for fishing canoes, and still make ends meet if I'm careful. A billionaire could get electricity and running water for the whole town and not notice.
Maybe it's just my own bias, but I assumed the advice comes from people who have been or are lonely, and are talking about what helped them.
The worst depths of loneliness I've had were when I lived in a country where I didn't speak the language well, and was in a tiny, tiny town. The way I got out of it was threefold. One was being kinder to myself. I indulged myself in just being alone. Watching movies on my laptop and trying my hand at creative writing, which I had always wanted to do, but hadn't done. The second was getting into better physical shape. Even half assing it made me feel better: I'm a biologist so I can attest to the fact that one's mental health improves with a little healthier physical body, if it's possible. Finally...I just had to be comfortable being awkward. I was the bizarre foreigner who didn't understand customs or the language, and even when I had assholes being kind of a jerk... Whatever! I just did my thing, went to social events as regularly as I could stomach (once a week ish), and was surprised at how after a month or so, things really did turn around. I found asking questions to be a way to get to know people and places. Other people love to talk and answer questions, even when you didn't ask a question: as we've all seen in this thread.
None of that is to say it will work for everyone, or even anyone else.... But I understand the pain of loneliness. So if sharing my experience can help anyone, please grant me some leniency if I'm being a tone deaf jerk, because that's not my intent!
Is there a succinct way of articulating why we can't do both? (e.g. vote for the lesser evil while also doing all the mutual aid and whatnot that we can?) Does it boil down to the argument that voting makes people less likely to build said alternative power structures?
I'll watch the video when I have time, but communicating an actionable strategy I think is essential to folks in crisis.
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You don't even really have to headcanon it! The Voyager episode 11:59 touched on this, with Janeway's ancestor being very different in reality than what spotty records had led her family to believe for generations.