Tell me, when did your democracy exist?

So… Trump has promised to carry out a coup if he doesn’t win. A good coup would be indistinguishable from him just winning… Yet, people keep saying “vote harder.” Like, yeah, this is all super important stuff and the more people vote the harder it will be for Trump to carry out the coup… But a lot of people have put in a lot of money to make this happen so he’s going to have another coup attempt. This time it won’t be a bunch of idiots, it will be Eric Prince and the Academi soliders who got deployed in Portland.

If you are in the US, you need to prepare to fight. If he wins, democracy is over. If he doesn’t win, democracy is probably over too since he’s already rigged the supreme court so he can steal the election and make it look legal. Police all over the country have already pledged allegiance to him. When you come out to protest they will run you over with SUVs and just open fire on you. They’ll shoot at reporters to make sure no one can see what’s happening, just like they did during the George Floyd rebellion. But this time they’ll just kill people and claim they were violent.

You all need to be ready for the absolute worst. You also need to vote to make it harder, but voting will absolutely not be enough. You need to prepare.

Exactly. His relationship with the US is just as cynical as it is with Russia, and as it is with any country or people (including his own). He will do or say anything that gets him more power. That means he’ll be a solid US ally as long as the US is completely stable and functional, and he will take advantage of any weakness (like he did with Trump letting him murder Kurds in Syria).

I think we’re in violent agreement about the overall with perhaps subtle difference in the details.

Erdogan has been close to Putin for a long time. He’s one of the most extreme authoritarians in the NATO alliance. The US has armed it’s enemies in the past, and I don’t think it’s short sightedness has changed.

I don’t believe that Erdogan will help Palestinians, but he very well may materially support Hamas as long as he doesn’t do it openly enough to cause problems. I mean, Netanyahu propped up Hamas for years in order to forward his interests. No one would care if Erdogan helped justify continuing the genocide by making Hamas more dangerous to Israelis, as long as he didn’t send any American weapons to them.

But perhaps I’m just extremely cynical.

It would have been more accurate for me to say that he’s not really aligned with anyone. He works with Israel and the US when it benefits him, he works with Russia and Hamas when it benefits him. He does whatever will get him more regional power.

Erdogan is a fascist who’s responsible for genocide in Northern Syria. He doesn’t give a fuck about Palestinians or the genocide Israel is carrying out against them. He is aligned with Hamas and terrorism because disrupts regional power and gives him opportunities. This is an opportunity for him, and nothing more. His government backed Isis before. This is the same.

It has nothing to do with the very real need to end the genocide of Palestinians or the legitimate desire of Palestinians to resist their oppression. He aligns himself with horrible people because he is himself horrible.

Capitalism is a pyramid scheme.

But this is really more a product of capitalism than anything else. Under capitalism you just have to keep moving even if you’re just making garbage and debt. There’s no reason to stop and think, because that is seen as a cost (even though it costs more to move without thinking).

Even the best companies that do factor in planning (at least in concept if not actually in practice most of the time) end up with the other problem of “resume driven development” where things that are totally fine and actually working get replaced with things that don’t work because someone needs a new project to get their promotion.

Capitalism produces garbage and puts the people who are least qualified in decision making roles. This still happens in natural systems, but much less. In (healthy) anticapitalist organizing, the people who know the most are generally asked to lead and when they don’t know what to do they stop and figure it out before moving forward.

Aimless wondering can still be a problem, but it’s not forced by the system to continue it’s just people who are learning.

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The political compass is literally a propaganda tool created by right wing “libertarians.” It’s complete bullshit.

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Not directly, but they have an indirect effect. The more one aligns with the state, especially in a fascist state like Israel, the less likely they are to experience violence. The less trauma they have. The more access they have to good and stable jobs.

So oppositional groups tend to be more fragmented (so more subcultures) and have less money. So, no, not directly but there’s definitely an indirect relationship.

Governments and their people rarely agree. Those that do agree are a vocal minority that’s always amplified. While I don’t believe Israel should exist, a county isn’t it’s government and its dominant group.

There are Israelis risking prison and possibly their lives trying to stop what their government is doing.

Employees aren’t afraid anymore so companies are trying to reinstate fear.

Don’t worry, he did it so you won’t get a chance to.

They aren’t two completely different problems, they’re in direct opposition. Making cars more tolerable increases demand for cars. Improving mass transit and bike infrastructure decreases demand. One is sustainable, the other is not.

If you are stuck in a place that actually requires a car then this makes sense. Between the two you’ll save a ton of money.

In the long term though vehicle to vehicle communication will be required for all cars on the road. You will have (probably property) computer in your car controlling it. Unless you go back to like the 80’s or something you’ll still have a proprietary computer in your car that will need to be replaced.

But even getting a bike for occasional trips prepares you for gas prices spiking or your car breaking down.

I wish you did too. The only way to get it is to fight like hell for it.

If people used bikes or ebikes in the overwhelming majority of cases where it’s possible, it would make it a lot easier to fix the small number of situations where it’s not.