WrittenInRed

Like I said, coming out and saying he supports the forced removal of Palestinians is awful, and neither Biden or Harris would have done that obviously. It seems pretty obvious neither of them are actually happy with Israel. But whether the US president is happy about it or not, lsraels end goal is and always has been ethnic cleansing either way. So while it is worse to express support for that goal than to express disapproval, as long as the US keeps up the supply of weapons - which we will almost assuredly do no matter what, Trump or otherwise - then to all the people being ethnically cleansed it doesn't mean anything. The Biden administration has been expressing support for this since at least 2023, via its actions rather than words. That's what people mean by Trump not being meaningfully worse for Palestine. Not that he isn't worse than Biden or Harris, but that the ways in which he is worse on this specific issue don't matter to the people who are actively the targets of the genocide. If you're being bombed by US funded weapons then who gives a shit what the person approving those weapons says about it, they sent them either way.

Worse in general or just in regard to Palestine? Obviously he's so much worse in general, which is why I did vote for Harris. But specifically on the issue of Palestine no matter what the genocide wasn't stopping, the Biden admin made it pretty clear there wasn't actually a red line Israel could cross that would end the supply of weapons, considering every one they did make was blown past with no consequences. And Harris repeatedly signified that wouldn't have changed.

But it's also not productive to try and assign blame to people who didn't vote, or voted 3rd party, though. The problem isn't that people didn't want to vote for the conservative party instead of the fascist party, its that we only had those 2 options to pick from. Obviously one of them was less harmful overall, but that doesn't make them meaningfully better for Palestine, or even a good/appealing choice. Our entire political system was built to represent slaveowners and rich white men, and that's so deeply ingrained into every aspect of its design that there's no way to move away from those roots from within the system. Even if Trump lost this time, what's stopping him from running again? Or the next version of him? Or what about the continued corporate capture of the government and both parties? None of those can just be voted away, and placing responsibility for fixing things entirely on voting just wastes time that would be better spent organizing while they continue to fester and grow.

Pretty much no one thought he'd be better, more like not worse in a meaningful way. Obviously saying the US is going to turn Gaza into a resort is worse than not saying that, but that distinction is pretty unimportant to everyone who would be killed or driven out under a democratic president anyway. The end goal has always been to fully settle Palestine, what exact form that takes or whether the US funds it with a smile or a frown doesn't change that.

In addition to the other replies, there's also quite a large difference between the actions of a foreign government doing something our current government already considers human rights abuse and the actions of a foreign government defended by our own, carried out with weapons manufactured and supplied by us, and where any criticism or protest of said support is categorized by nearly every politician as either antisemitism or tacit support of republican extremism. Both are genocide, but trying to protest the actions of the Chinese government as a US citizen in the US is pretty pointless, it's better to focus efforts where it has a more direct impact. You don't need to evenly split your attention between every single issue in order to be allowed to talk about any of them.

Proton's free plan is definitely more than good enough to slowly migrate off without paying for pro imo. I used it for my main email for the longest time and the only thing I even noticed was the no autodeleting of old trashed emails.

Personally I switched off of VPN to mullvad at least, and am looking into self hosting bitwarden and using tuta (and now addy.io too thanks to a comment here). Honestly I'd been considering switching for a bit anyway just to be less reliant on a single service for everything, so this kinda validated that since even if this specifically isn't a dealbreaker something else could definitely end up as one. Even if I don't fully move off of proton because moving emails is so annoying, it will still be nice to at least have some other options set up.

That labor won't be gone, we'll just go back to openly using slavery. This one isn't even a bullshit interpretation thing like birthright citizenship, slavery is explicitly totally fine if done to prisoners, so life without parole is 100% to be read as "made into a slave".

I guess we're back to full on slavery then, complete with slave catchers. Obviously it never fully went away because of prison labor, but this is definitely a step up. It feels nearly identical to how it worked right before the Civil War which is great (/s).

I'm all for this, obviously the housing crisis is caused by a bunch of factors but really no one should own a second home until everyone has a first. Providing more free/affordable (and actually high quality) housing is also important, but preventing people who don't actually live somewhere from buying a house that will sit empty or be rented out to tourists for a majority of the year is a good thing and seems like a great starting point to try and tackle the airbnb problem specifically.

Even beyond that, they're all part of the same big club. Something like Jimmy Carter's funeral was a perfect chance to make a completely empty gesture and at least pretend that you're actually treating Trump like the existential threat to the entire US you kept claiming he was. But not only was he invited, Trump and Obama were casually talking and laughing with each other. It's all just empty theatre, both parties serve the same interests at the end of the day, the only difference is how overtly they systematically strip your rights away. They let each other be the boogeyman for their voters and then trade back and forth slightly undoing the last administrations policies but never fully enough to revert all of them.

Sure, whatever you say. He might not technically be exonerated, but he might as well be. You had 4 fucking years to actually do something about Trump, but this is the system working as intended. The US keeps drifting further and further right with power further consolidating in the hands of billionaires and corporations, while the Democrats sit on their asses and act like they're completely helpless to do anything meaningful to actually help ordinary people while in power. Then when they lose elections they get to blame minorities or leftists and use it as an excuse to drift further right.

I posted this in another thread but I also wanted to say it here so it's more likely one of you will see it. I get the intention behind this, and I think it's well intentioned, but it's also definitely the wrong way to go about things. By lumping opposing viewpoints and misinformation together, all you end up doing is implying that having a difference in opinion on something more subjective is tantamount to spreading a proven lie, and lending credence to misinformation. A common tactic used to try and spread the influence of hate or misinformation is to present it as a "different opinion" and ask people to debate it. Doing so leads to others coming across the misinfo seeing responses that discuss it, and even if most of those are attempting to argue against it, it makes it seem like something that is a debatable opinion instead of an objective falsehood. Someone posting links to sources that show how being trans isn't mental health issue for the 1000th time wont convince anyone that they're wrong for believing so, but it will add another example of people arguing about an idea, making those without an opinion see the ideas as both equally worthy of consideration. Forcing moderators to engage in debate is the exact scenario people who post this sort of disguised hate would love.

Even if the person posting it genuinely believes the statement to be true, there are studies that show presenting someone with sources that refute something they hold as fact doesn't get them to change their mind.

If the thread in question is actually subjective, then preventing moderators from removing just because they disagree is great. The goal of preventing overmodedation of dissenting opinions is extremely important. You cannot do so by equating them with blatent lies and hate though, as that will run counter to both goals this policy has in mind. Blurring the line between them like this will just make misinformation harder to spot, and disagreements easier to mistake as falsehoods.