IninewCrow

To me the cause is simple to understand … a society that allows any individual to attain unlimited and unrestrained wealth and power.

In a society where anyone is capable of attaining unlimited wealth and power, eventually you will end up with a small group of people or even just one or two individuals with all the power and control. That was the lesson that the creators of the game ‘Monopoly’ tried to teach. If you build a game where only one person can win by gaining so much wealth that they can buy everything, then everyone must lose in order for one to win.

It’s the same scenario and cause that corrupted the Roman Empire, the Greeks, the Byzantines, the Ottomans, the Persians, the Mughals, the Islamic Caliphates, the British … they all rose with great wealth that eventually became concentrated to ever smaller groups of people until there was so much wealth at the top and none at the bottom that the system failed and it was reset again and again and again. We are just living through another cycle of wealth being concentrated to smaller groups of people again.

The problem is not that we keep looking for a system or a government that can control people … it’s that every one of us believes that we can be capable of winning the entire game by making everyone else lose.

Place a wealth cap on society and then we might able to see more people around the world wanting to cooperate on a few things. And when I say wealth cap, I don’t mean a few thousand or even a million dollars … I mean a wealth cap of $10 million dollars … anyone who has control to more than that is either taxed fully or not allowed to participate in business. No billionaires, no muti level millionaires. It would automatically spread wealth to so many people everywhere. It wouldn’t cause a utopia either, we’ll probably still have the same problems as before but there would be many more people with the resources, ability and finances to be able to do something about everything.

No empire is that powerful … as soon as you think you can control a group of people with violence and fear, you’ve taken the first step to losing control.

It might work at first and it may even go on for a while but it won’t last.

It’s not a Hollywood fantasy either … every empire in history started with great power and ended in destruction. It won’t be pretty and it won’t work out as some epic drama but it will end because people everywhere will never stand for it.

The slippery slope is like a gradual descent or gentle move to a lower place and it takes a while … the further you go, the faster you go down … eventually at one point, you’re traveling so fast down the slope that there is no more turning back and you have no choice but to fall off the edge.

“From barbarism to civilization requires a century; from civilization to barbarism needs but a day.”

Will Durant

The thing that is upsetting about American fascism is not that it exists.

It’s the fact that everyone is debating it like an argument about what kind of chairs you want at a wedding.

It’s the same scenario that played out in 1930s Germany and the rise of Nazism … everyone kept arguing that it wouldn’t happen, it’s not like that, it isn’t that bad, they have good points, we can control it, we won’t let them go too far, everyone obeys the rule of law, we have morals …

… then we all had to literally break the entire world in order to fix the problem.

Any change no matter if is too late or too inconvenient would be a better change for the DNC than to allow Biden at the top position. Seriously, any other DNC politician would be better than Biden even if they changed right now or in the next few months. All you need is some politician who is about 50 years old to fight Trump every day until the election and the orange menace would suffer a heart attack trying to keep up.

This is insane … it’s almost as if the powers that be want Trump to win and the only way they can ensure that is to put him up against an 80 year old competitor because it is the only candidate he could possibly beat.

I’m Indigenous Ojibway/Cree from northern Northern Ontario and I speak my language. The word we use to describe white people or Europeans is ‘Mistikoshoo’.

It’s a two part word … Mishtik is the word for ‘wood’ … or ‘stick’

adding the ending ‘ooshoo’ to the word changes it refer to or describe a person.

So in all … the word just translates to ‘man with a stick’

When we made first contact with Europeans, they were all so preoccupied with their religion that they just looked like people wandering around with a stick in their hands and around their necks which was very, very important to them.

Then they taught us this strange religion and all its rules and regulations that everyone glorified but no one seemed to follow. When you look at the Middle Eastern religious traditions and what they preach and teach and what kind of culture they have evolved into, you begin to realize that religion is just another tool to control and manipulate people.

I always enjoyed reading about the history of European colonization … especially by the Spanish

Before he was burned, a priest asked Hatuey if he would accept Jesus and go to heaven. Las Casas recalled the reaction of the chief:
[Hatuey], thinking a little, asked the religious man if Spaniards went to heaven. The religious man answered yes… The chief then said without further thought that he did not want to go there but to hell so as not to be where they were and where he would not see such cruel people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatuey

Reminds me of The Office

I’ve been involved in a number of cults both as a leader and a follower. You have more fun as a follower but you make more money as a leader.

Creed Bratton

… and I love the fact that with Creed Bratton quotes … they could be made up fiction or based on actual real life experience.

The only difference between religion and a cult … is time

They’ve been doing that for six thousand years

The nightmare isn’t Trump … the nightmare are the Americans who support and enable this crap.

Once they’re done with the Cheeto Mussolini the same culture of people will move on to the next wannabe fascist.

Isn’t that what those supporters are there for? … to be scammed

I’ve been on Linux for about 15 years now … I’m no pro and I’ve never really advanced in anything with the terminal

I tried doing stuff years ago but then I came at a crossroad … either spend my life learning the dark arts of the terminal and all the details of how every major system works … reinstall every time I have a new problem that I caused … or just leave everything alone and never tweak or adjust anything.

For the past few years, I just install the latest stable version of anything I use and never bother touching or tweaking anything … never had a problem since.

*Windows won’t take screenshots of everything you do after all (that the company will admit to without you knowing)— unless you opt in

Great idea because the merch acts as an advertisement to support the project and create awareness. It’s the main reason why corporations like Adobe are so successful - they have a pervasive marketing campaign. We should do the same and wearing a hat, t-shirt or bag would help do that.

Now you got me thinking about what to buy from the projects I like to support. Thanks

Thank God … I’ve been on Gimp and Scribus for the past 15 years, mainly because I could never afford Adobe products for the little bit of work I needed them for.

I was open source a long time ago because I just couldn’t afford paying for stuff for the little time I needed software. Now I’m happy to be fully open source and even contribute with donations to the projects I like the most. I donate annually now to projects like Wikipedia, Libreoffice, Scribus and Fediverse developers and projects.

This is one criticism I’ll always have with open source supporters … if you want open source alternatives, contribute with donations to them. Give anything you can afford … $1, $2, $10 … because they need money to survive and stay engaged and committed to their project.

If we all just stand aside and take advantage of free open software and not give anything, then we are no better than the corporations we were trying to avoid. Instead of corporations taking advantage of us, we are taking advantage of developers.

So if you want these open projects to live and survive, contribute to them with whatever you got. If we all just gave a dollar each to these projects, no matter what they are, the developers would have more than enough to maintain their work.

And whatever you contribute, it will be far less than the hundreds of dollars annually you would have given to a big corporation that would have just counted your money as profit and not directly contribute or support the actual developers.

Throws old man cane to the side and starts dancing

Hooray I’m young again!!!

… breaks hip because he is actually still old

Throws old man cane to the side and starts dancing

Hooray I’m young again!!!

At one point even putting the government up for sale