I used to love this comic! Is still going?

Mind sharing what you mean, “or whatever?” Are you arguing using facts that came to you in a dream?

I guess it was just no term limits? Still, he’s got control of all the levers of power and without term limits he can continue to consolidate power over time, gathering favors, loyalty, etc. There’s a reason people like term limits and Mexico fought a couple wars over the idea.

In what way?

Power goes from father to son. They have elections but the person in power always wins like 100% of us vote, and I don’t even think they have alternative candidates. Someone else above had a link that showed they have a person and you just vote “yes or no” for that person, which isn’t very democratic if you don’t know the alternative.

Do you have evidence that there were not popularly elected bodies making all of the decisions, and that leaders of AES states were never contested successfully?

I don’t, but if you have proof that those things have happened before, I’d be curious to see them.

What about Stalin who purged rivals and sent out hit men with ice picks to take out his critics? Or Xi Jinping who’s been made President for life or whatever recently? Or Fidel Castro who basically led the country from the revolution until he was too old to run it? The DPRK which looks like a monarchy in all but name? No one says dictators run whole countries literally by themselves but they do dictatorial things to make sure people only loyal to them can have power, their word is law without going through other checks or balances by the people, like some popularly elected body or something.

I will admit though that after Stalin, the USSR changed out rulers pretty regularly so that doesn’t seem like a dictatorship to me. Same with Cuba now after Castro. Now people just say it because those countries allow only one party I guess.

The downside of the fediverse =(

Wasn’t that the German or instance? I wonder why they went down. They seemed so big and established.

That’s true lol

History is exactly why I’m skeptical.

The USA is the world’s sole superpower and this is in their area of influence. It’s always about them when they get involved (as they have in 2002, 2013, 2017, and 2019, etc.).

It’s not really democracies vs dictators, it’s countries in the US’s sphere vs countries not in the US’s sphere. It becomes more obvious and easy to see then. The OAS has been a puppet of US interests since the beginning (there’s a reason they didn’t let Cuba in). It literally started by a pledge to fight communism in the western hemisphere. Basically, it’s the US empire and it’s puppets and allies vs a rising new order of old colonized and sanctioned countries, which admittedly looks scary, but hopefully will one day lead to a multipolar world where people can deal with their own local issues without worry of western interference (which has almost always been net bad for the people of those countries in the global south Asia, Africa, and South America).

Plenty of Democratic administrations have done coups and wars all over the world. It’s just a US empire policy, no matter who is President, mostly because of capitalism. Sure, conservatives are usually worse about it, but Democrats do it, too. Biden is supporting a genocide in Israel. McKinley fought the Philippines, Teddy Roosevelt in the Spanish American, JFK invaded Cuba and tried to coup it, Truman led the war in Korea and established a US puppet dictatorship in n the south for, JFK and LBJ were also involved in Vietnam, etc.

Not in the same period of time for the same level of development. And when it did, they accomplished it mostly through colonies and 1800’s imperialism.

I know someone in the US who is adamant Biden cheated, too. That’s not really evidence.

And even if you’re don’t get banned, just like Reddit, you may get down voted a lot if you go against the discourse of the current thread. But not sure if that’s fixable anywhere with big groups of people.

It’s tough because I don’t actually want all the redditors here because of the low effort pun comment chains, constant bot comments, pervasive echo chambers and pop culture drivel. But on the other hand, I do miss the discussion in some of the more niche subreddits here.

The dichotomy of man.

Shout out to !homevideo@feddit.uk

I’d like to get more tabletop rpg content back on ttrpg.network if possible. So in that spirit, just want to remind people that

!dndnext@ttrpg.network !rpg@ttrpg.network

Both exist

Thanks, I dislike that, too. The difference between this genocide and others, is that the US is directly involved in this one. Palestinian children are being killed by our bombs, dropped by equipment based on our technology, from deals we’ve given them, and ordered by politicians we are supporting. If the US wasn’t involved, I wouldn’t care as much. But they are. Blinken runs interference for them, defending Israel at every opportunity. We block resolutions against them in the UN. The press uses loaded language with Hamas and the passive voice with Israel caused tragedies and massacres. We promise retribution against the ICC if they prosecute Netanyahu (if you ever need proof we’re the baddies, look at that. Threatening vengeance against international court when they are trying to punish a genocide). Biden has gone around Congress to give stuff to Israel multiple times. They avoid applying any pressure to Israel to let in aid, instead using the vastly inefficient and more expensive failure of a pier. He keeps saying it’s not a genocide despite a bunch of other countries saying it is. They block news of bad things Israel does and actively lie about it. People in his administration have left over these things. I agree with you that the US should be less involved and not be the World Police. But you seem to think this means I want us to go in. If we were not involved, that would be a VAST improvement over the status of quo, of being involved in purely bad ways. At least if we weren’t involved, I wouldn’t feel responsible as an American in a democracy to use my vote to affect change in some way, to do good, agonizing over whether to vote for a “Hitler” because his holocaust is abroad and he’s got better domestic policies. I hate the DNC for putting those of us with a conscience in this position.

Now, this doesn’t mean I think people should vote for Trump. Maybe I should’ve emphasized that more. He’s obviously worse. But he’s not causing this right now, Biden is. So he’s a bad President. I can acknowledge he’s better than Trump on this and all other issues, and still criticize him for that.

I agree some explanation would be nice at least.

Any President who encourages a genocide is by definition a bad President I’m sorry to say. The ethnic cleansing campaign is already almost complete, all on his watch with his defending Israel and giving them weapons and cover in the UN and in public. Hell, he even lied about the reason on the debate (the one thing he lied about and Trump told the truth about lol). People should still feel free to vote for him, especially if you live in a swing state, but we shouldn’t minimize that millions of Gazans are currently refugees. I hope he fucking shapes up on this issue by November. I don’t want him to take all these votes for him as an endorsement of his pro genocide policies.

Ohio used to be a swing state, too, right? Not sure of it still is or if it isn’t, how that turned around. But maybe they should be in the list?

Thanks!