You're right I can't resist but I am glad you learned how paragraphs work over the course of this discussion.

Ha well I'm gonna keep asking everytime you respond to me so you know, don't.

At this point I think you're a paid agitator shill.

Fuck off AI troll.

Likewise and that's why we are done. AZ and J+J, the fuck outta here you know what I was saying. Also those are *examples of the system working*. They actually cut against your argument.

No, they are in fact not. Like not at all.

Then I don't think you have any, as I suspected.

Buddy have you ever been outside the country? Also this is a good thing! Unless you don't think vaccinations work which you are obviously 1 step away from if not already over that line.

Easy, can you admit that all the vaccine skepticism since then has been dead wrong and none of it came to pass as true?

There was no mass death, there was no mass side effects, there are no "vaccine passports". None of that came to pass. Hell the OSHA requirements were even overturned.

If you can admit that then we can discuss.

#1 who did you vote for

#2 you are literally doing the thing! You should actually read the article, it's basically about you!

Murc’s Law says, basically: only the left has agency; the right is merely reacting, having its hand forced, being “pushed” or “shaped.”

This is not some quirk, it is central to reactionary psychology. Every fascist (and fascist-adjacent) movement ever has told itself the same story: our opponents are destroying everything, they’re forcing us to this, we have no choice but violence.

It is, at a base level, a way of denying responsibility, of saying, “we know the shit we’re about to do is bad, but it’s not our fault, you made us.” Once you recognize the pattern it shows up *everywhere*. (If you know an abuser, you’ll also find it in their rhetoric.)

It’s one thing for reactionaries to cling to this but what’s irksome is that right-wingers playing the refs have basically trained mainstream political journalists to echo it. It is laced throughout US political coverage.

This was all said in 2020 and yet none of it happened or stuck around past 2021. Almost like for all your loving of "freedom" you're actually being led around by the nose by bad actors who are all too ready to manipulate you with fear for their own ends. You're being made the stooge of the so called elites and have been since 2015.

No responses until you declare what country you reside in.

Republic and Democracy are not and never have been exclusive to each other and if you read our founding documents by our founding people they explicitly understood that. It's a Democratic Republic, simple as, this is literal elementary school civics

This idea that they are somehow exclusive to each other is simply conservative propaganda from people *who don't like democracy* because they don't like when the process means they don't get what they want.

But they know that's pretty stupid sounding to just say so they've crafted this false narrative that somehow they are these disparate concepts that cannot co-exist, that direct democracy is the only form you can call it democracy when democracy is a big wide spectrum with many forms, the US is just a Republican, represenative form of it.

"If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy."

Bingo, it can't bomb it's way to victory and Trump hasn't even made the political and public case for the war as it is right now much less the necessary ground invasion that it would require to force the straight open and accomplish their stated mission as it stands (which by Trump's own admission they have yet to accomplish)

So what's left is an uneasy stalemate and Iran can wait it out because we no longer have any economic leverage over them, they're already sanctioned to the gills, nowhere else to go. We gave up that economic leverage when Trump melted the JCPOA in 2018.

Now what's going to happen is Trump is going to have to make a deal anyway and it will probably end up restoring most of what they would have gotten from the agreement anyway but Iran also has less incentive to agree to the same conditions. What a mess.

https://whereofonecanspeak.com...

“Murc’s Law” is named after a commenter at the blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money who noticed years ago the habitual assumption among the punditry that Republican misbehavior can only be caused by Democrats.

Do Republicans reject climate science? Must be because Democrats failed to persuade them!
Did Republicans pass unpopular tax cuts for the rich? Must be that Democrats didn’t do enough to guide them to better choices!
Do Republicans keep voting for lunatics and fascists? It must be the fault of Democrats for being mean to them!

Even Trump's election was widely blamed on Democrats — who voted against him, to be clear — on the bizarre grounds that Barack Obama should have rolled over and just let Mitt Romney win in 2012:

That article has big "I sleep in a racing car. Do you?" energy.

Obviously you're not really buying the water bottle but giving your support for this scrappy young upstart, they might not be able to make it otherwise!

Oh I was once 15 years old too. To be so naively doomer takes me back to simpler times mountain.

"Turning a big dial that says "cut labor" and looking back at the audience of shareholders for approval"