Sanity will be in non-compliance.

Don’t comply with anything. Involve yourself in governance locally if you can. Work with your district or state. Disobey anything going against your principles.

If you cannot get involved, see what you can do as a private citizen. Who could you hide in your anttic, figuratively speaking (hopefully).

The US is not such a strong federal state. You make it real by believing in it.

Stop believing in it. It is dead.

One of the few new Ameircan Fords you’ll sometimes see on the roads in Europe is the electric Mustang. It’s kinda hilariously out of place - next to smaller European cars it looks more like they attempted to design a monster truck than a sports car.

Based on experience from American car manufacturing since the 1980s, even worse things will happen if we do buy their cars.

They’re not stupid, but they’re not particularly clever either. They’re just mediocre people pumped up by our adveseries to believe they can be something important and special.

Of course, Geert Wilders believes he’s brilliant. Just like Trump. They are never going to accept to themselves that their reason for being there is that their grandiose thoughts about themselves are only matched by their mediocracy, which is the exact set of traits that makes them so easy to take advantage of.

I agree it’s dangerous to dismiss them as stupid, but it would be a mistake to assume they’re particularly clever. They’re just dangerously mediocre.

The far right are a bunch of crooks and Russian agents. It’s not that they think we can progress as a society without spending money on research. It’s that they’re being paid to make sure western society collapses.

Wilders, Le Pen, Farage, whatever the knobheads in the AfD are called. They’ve all been found to receive funding from Russia. It’s not that they’re dumb enough to think this is a good idea, they’re just evil enough to profit from it.

Steps are being taken in the right direction. The US has also been making progress, which I’m sure will continue if America doesn’t give up on itself next month.

That said, it’s not nearly enough. As long as the focus is on innovation and growth rather than sustainability, and consumers don’t really give a fuck, it’s going to be difficult to see any change.

But I’m very happy with my Fairphone, and my next laptop will no doubt be a framework. Baby steps.

And you keep herr/frau, so technically it would be Frau Professorin Doctor Jones.

Generally when opening an email you condense it, and simply refer to the person as “Sehr geehrte Frau Professorin Jones” - Very honoured ms. professor Jones. They’re very humble.

I find it weird that nobody mentioned this. If you don’t have back problems and you’re tired of shoe horns breaking, in addition to reconsidering your technique, get a short metal one.

Sounds like you’ve had too much internet.

Either that, or you have a fascination for human suffering. Which you might want to see a therapist about if you can afford it.

In either case, signing off and doing something you enjoy offline might be a good idea. I’d take to the mountains, but that’s just me.

Sure… Until it isn’t.

But for a brief moment they will thrive while the world around them burns, and I guess that’s what they live for.

Have you considered leaving yourself as well? What are your personal push/pull factors?

It’s been argued that brain drain was a big part of how Orban managed to push through constitutional reform, as he barely had the majority to do so and made it very hard for expats to vote. Heading the clever people leave also significantly weakened the opposition at home.

Meanwhile foreign capital is pouring in, as why wouldn’t you invest in a EU country.

(See: The European Union’s authoritarian equilibrium by @rdanielkelemen@eupolicy.social)

I guess hieroglyphics were to the priesthood of the time what Latin is to the Catholic church today. A dead language that you artificially keep alive in order to situate yourself in some sort of historical legacy.

They created this militia by invading and mobilising resistance. Now they are doing the exact same thing. The only way I can see them exterminating Hezbolla this way is if they extend their genocide to Lebanon, and are successful at it. If not, all they achieve is to fill the next generations with hate just as they have done in the past.

If Israel backed off, recognized Palestine and Palestinian territory, ended illegal settlements and began complying with international law, sent Netanyahu to the Hague, apologized, recognized the equal human rights of Arabs, and promised to help rebuild infrastructure in Gaza and the West Bank and to help Palestine gain safety of water and electricity independent of Israel, and then committed to this agenda, they would achieve peace in a heartbeat.

But that’s unreasonable, right? But what exactly about it is unreasonable? Complying with international law? Recognizing Arabs as humans?

This would be the only way Israel could, in fact, defend itself. In fact, simply stopping the genocide would probably go a long way. But that’s still unthinkable for Netanyahu.

This notion of defence by bombing everyone around you is not sustainable when you need to defend yourself because everyone around you hates you. This is not the wars of the 19th century. Netanyahu is doing absolutely nothing to make Israel safer.

And worse still, he knows that. He never wanted to make Israel safe. Removing people is the point, no matter the cost. His project is to clean the land of Arabs. No matter the cost.

That’s an interesting take. I think you should ideally be invited before your military march into a foreign country and start bombing in order to claim it’s not an invasion. It’s not one of those things you can assume you have permission to do until the country you’re invading starts fighting back.

Lebanon is not Hezbolla. But the bombs are falling in Lebanon, and it is Lebanese civilians that are being killed and displaced. They are invading Lebanon,.

That Lebanon hardly has a government to speak of and is doing awfully already does not mean you can just rightfully bomb it. What the fuck.

Shoot, you’re right. I’ve seen so many stupid takes in this conflict it has made me dumb.

I’m sorry, but “limited ground operation” is the same type of shadowy bullshit language as calling the genocide in Gaza a “strategic operation”.

I don’t think anyone is making the point that it’s literally the exact same thing.

But what we’re witnessing is that Israel can bomb a civilian population to rubble for months and months, and all the intensional community can stutter out is that they “have a right to defend themselves”.

Now they are bombing a foreign capital and sending in ground troops to their neighbouring country to fight off a militia that they themselves are responsible for creating by invading in the past, and we know exactly what the chorus will be. Right to defend themselves.

We will see our Lebanese friends and their families murdered, all for Israel’s right to defend themselves.

In Germany, the line was that they would stop at Poland. People make up different excuses for different atrocities.

I think a lot of people are rightfully fucking tired of excuses, and that’s the point. Not that it’s literally the same thing.

I agree completely that Hezbollah makes up a huge problem, and after their involvement in Syria there’s not a hint of legitimacy left in the organization if there ever was any.

But one would do well that to remember their origins: They are what’s left of the resistance from the last time Israel invaded Lebanon. So that’s what a great fucking success that was.

And Hezbollah are not Lebanon. They control territory, and they need to be fought, but this in not how one fights terrorist organizations. This is how you create terrorist organizations. Which is exactly what Israel did the last time they invaded.

Yeah, this shit has been spinning out of control for ages now. Nobody wanted to wake up to realities and take action before it was too late.