A vote for camacho is just a vote for trump

/s

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.

deleted by creator

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.

You are right. I think other countries should sanction US travelers for our governments bad actions, yes. It would wake people the eff up.

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 by us. 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 and not realistic to expend time and resources to take each individual russian’s personal measure and apply sanctions onesey twosey on the bad ones. If they dont like it they should take it up with their motherland and get it sorted. I think we should immediately shut down all visas of any kind with Russia. The fact that the US is still allowing them to vacation here is absurd.

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. Isnt history littered with the bodies of scientists and philosophers who werent allowed to inconvenience the church?

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). Christianity doesnt beleive in that, and refuses to honestly examine it. Dogma and whatever the oldest white guy in a funny hat says trumps rational discourse every time.

the only “god” we should be worshipping is ourselves as entities that are constituent of a human society that differentiates us from the other animals. In my opinion, everything else is someone trying to use you or get you to adopt their worldview. This forces us to be our own masters and own the outcomes we create in the world. And to treat each other better.

What do you think?

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.

Any fool know it has to be ‘thoughts and prayers’, not just ‘prayers’. Without the ‘thoughts’ you are just an idiot mumbling to yourself like a kid wishing for toys from Santa Claus

After the votes are counted, sure. Before the votes are counted, giving your support away for nothing is crazy. Refusing to lift a finger to pressure Harris to stop the weapons shipments is a missed opportunity that people should be ashamed of. This is our once every 4 year chance to lean on the DNC and be listened to and only a small number of dems are bothering to speak up and apply any pressure whatsoever. If no one pushes anything to “represent” to our representatives, then we’re a pretty sad example of a republic, and we’re complicit in whatever illegal. immoral fuckery our leaders say they are about to do. It used to be that Dems were too good to openly support illegal fuckery, but with centrists in charge, that era has passed.

That crowd is well aware that it can get worse, but political change sometimes means wading through some sewage in order to walk yourself out of it, rather than standing still in it and saying “it could be worse, like Trump worse, so maybe floating turds are not so bad.”

Whats to stop the next election from being exactly the same as this one, with hand picked AIPAC candidates on both sides?

I appreciate how you call the “any functioning adult who doesnt support war crimes” voter a “jill stein” voter. (/s)

Its a big step up from the usual: accusing any non-Biden voter of being a trump supporter.

I dont think you’ve been listening to them. One more time: They are effectively the same in supporting and enabling a far right wing israeli governments war crimes. They are not the same in most other things-- although Biden is fairly close to trump on immigration and abuse of the population by law enforcement.

That should have been a disqualifying action for Biden running for future roles in government, but somehow it wasnt There are many other Dems who could have and should have had a chance to run. Its also a flagrant breaking of the Leahy laws. The fact that neither of those things had any consequences whatsoever is indicative of the DNC and our entire government being bought out by bribes. If you dont think thats a problem, then wait and see what the far right fascists buy from us next. They couldnt care less about Americans or our future.

I imagine after the election we’ll have our military dying over there to support their land theft and be the bully for their grudges and aspirations of more land. Hope you like war crimes because thats the only thing on the menu, and you all have insisted we eat here, this election and in all the elections that follow until this place shakes itself apart or becomes isolated like North Korea. We should all just learn Hebrew now so we can take the Israelis orders more effectively.