The truth is, I have no idea and I don’t think it’s all that productive in most cases to try to sort it out or talk about it. I didn’t actually say anything at all about what the person was; I simply highlighted flaws in their argument and linked to one of their other comments and let the reader draw their own conclusions. In this case I think they were so self explanatory that I didn’t really need to indicate any of what my conclusions were.

But… to deal explicitly with my conclusions, I’ll say that in almost every case where there’s some kind of weird nonsense-logic, and then poking through the person’s history instantly yields some “let’s not vote for Biden” advocacy, I do personally tend to draw the conclusion that they’re a political shill. If I saw a bunch of geopolitical stuff or extended arguments about Marxism then that would tilt the scales in favor of tankie (although like I say, this is only my private logic about it, not like anything I would present as conclusive, because it’s basically impossible to tell.) Going into mainstream political forums and getting real vocal about how people involved with mainstream US politics are supposed to engage with it doesn’t strike me as real common tankie behavior.

I looked back in my history as an exercise in self criticism, and I found many many recent instances of me arguing with people I’m pretty sure are shills without bringing that accusation into it in any capacity, because usually, it’s not relevant and I think just dealing with their arguments at face value is more productive. And then, I found a comment from a few days ago where I called the Biden administration “fuckin assholes” about their support for Israel.

I won’t say that back further ago than that, you won’t be able to find me accusing someone of being a shill, because you will. I will say something about it in cases like this where it’s (a) hilariously obvious and (b) relevant to the conversation on a level that makes bringing it up productive, in addition to dealing factually with what they’re saying. But I actually don’t say it nearly as often as I think it. I won’t speak for how anyone else likes to do their internet arguments, but just as far as my conduct is concerned I’m pretty sure you’re just making up a convenient reality that doesn’t exist. Both of your main accusations here have nothing to do with the actual reality that exists in the real world.

I’m not sure why you’re committed to saying something “rebuttal-like” here, instead of just “yeah that guy’s full of shit” without any “but” attached afterwards, athough I have a theory.

(Also, this conversational pattern – where one person who is pretty clearly a shill expresses a statement, and someone does a rebuttal, and then the first person disappears completely and someone different instantly jumps in and starts conducting the conversation or attacking the rebutter – happens often enough and is slightly-unusual enough that I think that pattern is worth pointing out, also.)

So I thought to myself, well that’s a weird comment. It’s nonsensical in a couple of different ways.

1. Creating a program that does something good that wasn’t there before doesn’t somehow become a bad thing if there are ways in which it doesn’t do enough. Almost every real action which takes place in the real world represents some kind of imperfect step towards an ideal future, not like a “we got it perfect the first time and every single nook and cranny of the objective is satisfied by this, the first attempt we made to improve things.”
2. People who draw mostly W2 income actually aren’t “destitute” necessarily. I don’t even know where the connection came from. Most people who are struggling in life have simple taxes. Most people who are doing well have complicated taxes this doesn’t apply to. Your complaint, even taking the rest of it at face value and using some un-addressed population as a reason not to address things for the 140,000 people in the pilot program or however many millions will be addressed by this second phase, is backwards.

So I sort of wondered to myself: Why would someone be so aggressively negative in this specific way about something that almost any normal human being would look at and say “hey that’s good,” and for such weird and counterlogical reasons?

And so I looked three comments back in your history and said oooooohhhhhhhh okay I get it it all makes sense now.

And as always, you decide that I’ve said something I haven’t.

You talked about “the party” that was supposed to be fighting fascism. It honestly hadn’t even occurred to me to designate some other group of people who were “supposed to” accomplish it on my behalf. My point was, we should be fighting fascism. You and me. I think it’s silly to pick out someone else who’s “supposed to” be doing it, although, yes, it is true that anyone else should also be “supposed to” be doing it too. But more, I was viewing it as a personal task and responsibility, and I thought it was silly and passive to turn that whole thing into a reason to whine about the Democrats (although there is one specific sense in which it’s completely justified which I address in my second paragraph).

Now that I’ve explained a little more fully does that sound more ok? I was exaggerating a little to lampoon what sounded like your central message because it’s boring if I just lay out what my specific disagreement is with what you said. I mean it’s definitely boring on my side for me to lay out for the 200th time why I disagree with some conversation that all of a sudden for no organic reason at all turned into “and that’s why the Democrats are bad!” out of nowhere.

They didn’t stop in 2016.

Student loan forgiveness 40% emissions reduction NLRB corporate tax increases

We might have some disagreement because you could describe that all as “incrementalism” and say that Biden’s no good unless he’s willing to overthrow capitalism or use his magic wand to get congress go agree to the massive things that would have needed to happen to overcome 40+ years of neoliberal betrayal. I think the fact that he was able to accomplish it at all with Washington the way it is is a feckin miracle.

To me, the issue with the Democrats, that laid the groundwork for Trump, wasn’t “incrementalism” or too slow progress in the right direction. It was shittiness and active movement in the wrong direction. Biden’s not guilty of that, so I didn’t accuse him of it. If the Democrats since 1992 had been doing incrementalism, we might have some kind of country that is even in the neighborhood as good as it was in 1992, and it wasn’t real great in 1992.

So did I, until I tried to use it a few times.

If there’s one thing Milton Mayer keeps coming back to, it’s how it was all the fault of the establishment German political parties of the early 1930s for not being more motivating of people to vote for them, and no one on an individual level needs to do anything until they do first. He keeps harping on that central point: If a dangerous political movement arises in your country, it’s okay to hang out and wait and not resist it until the alternative is sufficiently awesome for your tastes. It’s pretty much the central theme of his whole book.

(I mean, honestly, I don’t disagree with you that the general crappiness of most of the Democrats from about 1992 up to and including 2016 laid some abundant groundwork for the rise of Trump. That doesn’t mean it is safe for anyone in the world to let Trump come to power again this year.)

And we have a hell of a lot better system for fighting back than the Germans did. And a lot better precedent to shed light on why to resist it. And, the Nazis were famously sort of clownish and incompetent especially in the early days but compared with Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell they were fuckin Seal Team 6.

If the MAGA folks bring fascism for real to the US, it will be the Americans’ fault that they let it happen.

Power Glove

Dude FUCK HIM UP

I can’t even imagine being outside the school for over an hour with the cops actively preventing me from going in and getting my spouse or child out, getting pepper sprayed and handcuffed, and then at the end of it finding out they were inside slowly dying of a gunshot wound the entire time. I am legitimately confused about how none of the cops involved in that have not been vigilante’d.

If every single one of them get felonies with long prison sentences, they should count themselves lucky as hell that their community is for whatever reason being so forgiving about it.

Generally speaking, any person can take anyone to court for any reason, and any prosecutor can charge anyone for any reason.

Once it gets to court is where the “but your honor the Supreme Court said X Y Z” comes into it. And in a lot of cases that’ll get you off, and in a lot of cases that will mean the prosecutor won’t even try because the law is so clear that it would just be a waste of everyone’s time to make the attempt. But, the circumstances of the case and a compelling counter argument can make that not the only outcome, and the judge and jury have a lot of leeway up to and including “hey you know what I think the Supreme Court got it wrong as hell in this case, guilty guilty guilty.”

When it’s fairly applied (which is, certainly, not even close to all the time) it’s actually a very good system.

It looks like me like they just mean that their source for region by region how many people had died, and what the support was for fascism in the elections, was pulling the data from this one specific newspaper at the time.

You’re not wrong. At the same time, if Trump wins, the idea that the Sacklers might get away with effectively homicide on a multi billion dollar heroin dealing scale, won’t be even in the top 100 problems. “How can we punish the guilty” will have to take a back seat to “how can I prevent the guilty from directly threatening my safety or maybe putting me in prison” for a little while.

Fun fact! They think that because of some kind of electromagnetic issue, Kessler syndrome or its precursors could maybe destroy the ozone layer too.

“No does more for Israel than I do”

“What about that time you killed a democratically elected Israeli leader who was doing good things for Israel”

“That’s what I said. He was doing more than me for Israel, and we can’t have that. No one does more for Israel than I do.”

After deliberating more than six months, the justices in a 5-4 vote blocked an agreement hammered out with state and local governments and victims. The Sacklers would have contributed up to $6 billion and given up ownership of the company but retained billions more. The agreement provided that the company would emerge from bankruptcy as a different entity, with its profits used for treatment and prevention.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the majority, said “nothing in present law authorizes the Sackler discharge.”

Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Ketanji Brown Jackson, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

Can you please just tell me if it is a good thing or a bad thing please, the more I read the more I am simply confused.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee, an arm of the Justice Department, argued that the bankruptcy law does not permit protecting the Sackler family from being sued. During the Trump administration, the government supported the settlement.

The Biden administration had argued to the court that negotiations could resume, and perhaps lead to a better deal, if the court were to stop the current agreement.

Okay got it

Just because the phrase “human shields” came into it:

Somewhere there is a UN report where they looked in some detail into the theory that Hamas was rounding up random people and having them just stand around perfectly still right next to Hamas during fighting, so that the poor IDF would be tricked into shooting them which they hated doing but they had no choice. At least in the case they were looking into, they found that no, of course they are not doing anything like that, Israel is just telling outlandish lies about where all these dead civilians came from.

I won’t say it never happens in any form. But to me it comes across like those comedy action movies where the bad guy grabs a hostage and the good guy grabs his own hostage from some random passerby. Like, ha ha! If you shoot at me, you’ll also kill this random Palestinian! And we know that’s like kryptonite to the IDF!

*ICC

They are different; ICJ is practically a fact finding body. The ICC, on the other hand, can issue warrants which obligate any signatory to seize the person into custody if they ever travel to that country. They have enough teeth in practice that even geopolitically important people like Putin will curtail their travel to avoid signatory countries, which is humiliating for the jet setting war criminal who is trying to pretend they are above the law and anyway they didn’t even do anything in the first place.

What about that didn’t happen? Enlighten me.

She looks like interacting with her is a straight up nightmare

“Let’s just divide up Poland and keep the peace. We can focus our whole energy on the western front, you can save yourselves bloodshed by the tanker load, and in a few short years we can share dominion over a subjugated world.”

“You so right, that sounds like a great plan”

“Hey guess what I just decided”

The whole world would have been different. It was still a pretty close thing with help from the Soviets and with Germany fighting a ludicrous two-front war for literally no military or geopolitical reason at all.