I applaud your pushback. Until Americans are denied travel visas we wont examine our own actions, and our slow and steady creep toward open fascism will continue.

With our too big ocean borders and large military, America cant be confronted militarily, it has to be dipllomatically. Money is the only thing capitalism values. I also think a new UN should be started without veto authority by the ‘great powers’. China and Russia are no better and also need containment.

If that were true he wouldnt have lost his mind about a single protestor. Crowds are rowdy, thats just life.

Too bad, I liked radiohead. Well, onto my personal BDS list it goes.

whatever dimwit, and you enjoy losing to a real republican!

Americans want police reform, guns out of schools, a public option, judicial term limits, weapons to Israel to stop. Biden/Harris have been against all of these things and each of tnem cost her votes and voter enthusiasm. She could have won easily by embracing all of those. Tacking to the center has gotten very few republicans onboard, which is evidenced by the way she has been losing ground to trump steadily all month.

Are you equating something monumental like a genocide with some thing trivial like school vouchers? Maybe you should consider that some issues are more impactful and important than others.

I was always confused by the polcie criminalizing antifa. So fascism good, anti fascism bad these days? Genocide is the same. If you are anti genocide you’ll be brutalized.

every post about this topic we have one person saying its the trolley problem, and starting a digression based on that, and one person saying its all first past the post voting, and starting a digression on that. The uniformity of the pattern of distraction setting is pretty suspicious.

The reason is that Israel has been a steadfast ally in advancing and defending us interests for half a century

what a load of crap. Israel almost always has right wing leadership and those leaders run far more billboards celebrating their relationship with Putin that with the US. We have no operational bases there. They havent participated in any of our military conflicts. They are not an extension of US power. If they were, we have operations happening out of there.

theres about 7.5 jewish voters split between republicans and dems. Theres about 3.7 arab american voters which are part of the 4.45 million muslim voters. Jews arent a voting block of a size to be overly concerned about. And the dems probably lose more votes supporting israel than they gain. So this is about money, not votes.

I feel bad for the average Joe in Ukraine, and I dont feel any need to pity Russia or Russians at all.

But it begs the question, why do we care what a minority of people think in Russia? No one here owes any Russian anything. Not Nvidia drivers, not… anything. I say we firewall the whole Russian state off from the internet and call it a day. Tired of their cheating in every sporting event, killing citizens of other countries, blowing up pipelines, and generally behaving like shitty little gangster hooligans. Is there a small number of good people there? Sure. But thats not any of our problem-- thats their problem.

I feel that many Russians are against Putler’s regime

Well thats not what any polls anywhere say. Where did you get that from? Reminds me of this saying: “Wish into one hand and shit into the other and see which one gets full first.”

Russia has said they are going to do asymetrical warfare with the west. So why should we not prepare for what they claim they will do? Russians arent owed anything. Not a seat at the table, not a chance to contribute to open source software, not to be listened to. Not rights beyond their borders. It doesnt matter if they are nice. Its not our job to take their measure and apply sanctions onesey twosey. If they dont like it they should take it up with their motherland and get it sorted.

You have a very interestingly nuanced position in all this.

I’d be happy if some sort of god entity announced its existence and was interested in us and not malevolent. Why not. I’ve been wrong enough times in life that I wouldnt be surprised to be wrong again. Like you, I think its extraorinarily unlikely, especially with the reinforcement of the arc of history. In life you have to act according to the odds. If theres a .0001 chance of fish being in a pond, its not worth spending the time to fish there. I consider religion in a similar light. The odds of a god being there seem miniscule to me, and yet their followers are here all the time, and take an oversized stage for having such a miniscule chance of being correct, and they push their ideas on the rest of us, but seldom will entertain challenges to why they do these things. Like championing more reproduction but being against feeding the poor from their church kitchens (for some, not all of them).

My experiences in this regard are not average, I hope, so feel free to take what I say with whatever amojnt of salt you judge appropriate. I come from an intensely catholic upbringing. Even after my aunt was raped by a monk, who went unpunished. My parents’ generation of two large families stayed catholic even in light of that. The kids, universally, could not stay with the church upon hearing this. I think the perception of religion has gone through a generational change starting at genX, and churches broadly have not kept pace, as you alluded to. I am convinced, like you, that this is progress for humanity. I am willing to give religious people the respect for their ideas they hold dear commensurate with the liklihood of them being correct or even useful, although I deem them to be .00000000000000000001% useless compared to the chance of there being no deities involved with our affairs, and that we should own our world ourselves.

cheers, good chat.

OK fair enough on the ad homs, you are right on that and I apologize. I would challenge you on the idea that religion been examined as rigorously and freely as every other philosphical ideas. Faith is belief without question, is it not? And the christian bible is a bit of a joke-- most if not all “holy” books are. But they are held up as a standin for morality and we are demanded to respect them, and not ask too many questions about them, usualyl at threat of violence or other coercions.

It amazed me that when you find religious strife, atheists are often singled out for the worst punishments.
I think its summarized pretty well with this quote of Bakker’s: “Theres nothing the ignorant prize more than the ignorance of others.”

I think if people should generally mind their own business unless something directly impinges on their individual freedom to live. That includes not making rules about how women should use their bodies. Let women decide that themselevs, or you’re being a tyrant. (I am an old white guy). Your religion doesnt beleive in that, and wont examine it.

the only “god” you should be worshipping is yourself as an entity thats a constituent of a human society that differentiates us from the other animals. Everything else is someone trying to use you or get you to adopt their worldview.

a disproof of religion

You’ve got the burden of proof turned around. Its not on us to diprove the existence of your mythical skyfairy. Its not our job to respect it in any way either. Feel free to start a religion that worships toe-jam if you want to. No one cares. What if I told you that lower intelligence correlates to higher religious fervor?

is rather disrespectful of the Christian position.

Why is the christian position worthy of any respect al all? Labeling any idea thats “religion” as automatically worthy of reverence is simply privelage speaking, at best. At worst its deep stupidity protecting itself from analysis. You’re in a cult buddy. One that has inconsistent medieval ideas and a pedophilia problem. The fact that we even need to remind you of those absolute facts doesnt speak well of you.

Smarter than you? yes. Absolutely. You like to hunker down and talk to yourself with a very stern look on your face. You call it praying. You also like to let some old pedo effers dressed up in costumes waving a barely relevant internally inconsistent book of outdated medeival tribal ideas tell you what to do. You think accepting it without question at all, no matter how crazy it is-- faith-- is somehow a virtue. You’re a slave in a cult.

May your all powerful sky fairy strike me down if I’m telling any untruths here.

What if the kid breaks his arms and the mom ends up stuck under the bed or inside a clothes dryer. Does everyone in the house just die then?