@UnderpantsWeevil
@lemmy.worldHow does your theory hold up when applied to areas that are predominantly a service or agricultural economy?
The Nevada service sector is the heart of the Democratic vote in that state, just as one data point. Similarly, if you go out to California or New York, you'll find far more service sector democrats than white collar professionals. And where do you think all those Mississippi Democrats are coming from if not the agricultural industry? Millions of African American and Latino ag workers turn out for the Ds every year.
While those conditions do allow for authoritarian regimes to maintain strength in third-world countries, they do not apply one to one to the U.S.
Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, the Dakotas, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Utah, Kansas, Colorado, Texas - show me a mineral rich state and I'll show you a right-wing mega-millionaire (maybe even a billionaire or four) bankrolling the bulk of the conservative political scene.
The US is a hodgepodge of municipal and state authoritarian regimes and has been practically since its founding. With the exception of the Lincoln-era Abolitionist movement, it took us until the Great Depression to get a popular brand of politics meaningfully decoupled from some sponsored industry. Even then, its flaky and hesitant and prone to being co-opted.
But you're fooling yourself if you think we haven't brought our imperialist practices home to the core. Every dirty trick and bloody fist you've seen employed abroad has a parallel back home - often with an individual or organization that tried it first in one place before importing or exporting it to another.
flipping through my big list of Star Wars characters to dislike
There are so many people ahead of her on the list.
Prequels C3PO, all the cringe and none of the comedy
Rose Tico, the plot hook that can't act
Watto, the flying anti-semitism
Snoke, what are you even doing here? The practice sphere Luke spared with in A New Hope advanced the plot more than you did.
Porkins, the pilot who couldn't hold it together
Maz Kanata, a bargain basement Yoda and absolutely abhorrent waste of Lupita Nyong'o's talents
Jar Jar Binks
Everyone who made the Star Wars Christmas Special possible
I get being a bit annoyed that they gender-swapped Luke Skywalker got to just kinda mime her way through the first three movies. But if the worst thing Disney did was file the serial numbers of the George Lucas originals and ad a splash of color to the cast, I can almost forgive them for it.
Even just within the third trilogy... Daisy Ridley was fucking trying to give that ham of a script some spice. And she managed to leave more on the table than Hayden Christensen did with the Anakin role. Hell, she ran circles around the desiccated corpse of Harrison Ford, an honorable mention for some of the worst performance in the series.
She's not even in the top five worst characters in the sixth best Star Wars series. Cut her some slack.
She even had a decent character arc to become likeable.
Her whole arc was supposed to explore the idea of a kind-of rational and legitimate hatred, then see where it led.
::: spoiler spoiler Time and again, her bigotry caused new injury to herself and to others. But then this was held in contrast to Ed Mercer's persistent failed efforts to extend an olive branch to rival alien races who were unable to divest of their own bigotries. :::
That's what made the latest season of Orville so fucking good.
::: spoiler spoiler The whole season is about trying to build a coalition between the liberal Planetary Union and the fascist Chak'tal and ultra-conservative Moclan. But, in the end, their commitment to their own moral compass paves a way for an unexpected alliance with the Kaylon that yields far more fruit than any kind of strategic military compromise with the corrupt governments of the Chak'tal or Moclan. :::
It wasn't just that she became likeable. Its that the guiding principles of the Planetary Union usher the crew towards a better galaxy, even when that path isn't immediately clear from the outset.
Researching the Lie of Evolution
is such a weird turn of phrase even on its face. It is anti-science in the strictest sense. "Any amount of money investigating the veracity of claims is a waste, because we should just intuitively know the truth of all things."
Taken to its logical conclusion, this implies Ken Ham is claiming to be omniscient.
Dividends paid out to taxable accounts are taxed.
Dividends that pay into non-taxable accounts can accumulate until they are withdrawn.
So, for instance, if you own $100 of Exxon in a regular brokerage account and $100 in an IRA, the $5 dividend you get from the first account is taxable but the $5 from the second is not.
This gets us to the idea of Trusts, Hedge Funds, and other tax-deferred vehicles. If you give $100 to a Hedge fund and it buys a stock in the fund that pays dividends, it never pays you the dividend on the stock so you never have to realize the dividend gain. You simply own "$100 worth of Citadel Investments" which becomes "$105 worth of Citadel Investments" when the dividend arrives.
Propaganda is a very well known way to enact influence on a foreign nation.
Historically, the most effective use of propaganda is by the domestic government on its own citizenry. Closing out foreign sources of media, shutting down opposition venues for news and discussion, and criminalizing private parties that attempt to distribute outside opinion tend to facilitate the imposition of a national propaganda campaign.
The people making the content have the right freedom of speech, but the people making the editorial decisions on what is / isn’t shown do not have that same right if they are not American citizens.
This isn't simply closing off access to "free speech", it is closing off access to reporting on world events and international opinion. American citizens do not have the right to free expression of they are blinded and deafened to any kind of outside perspective.
How, exactly, do domestic residents gain information from the outside world if the state has the right to censor anyone outside of its borders from sending news into the country?
The primary concern isn’t the content, it’s who controls the editor’s desk.
If the US policy towards international media is "only American citizens have the right to sit at the editor's desk" then we're not talking about free speech, we're talking about political control of the press. The "American citizens" canard is simply an excuse to deny Americans access to outside media.
It is also highly disingenuous. Nobody is proposing the US block access to the BBC or CBC on these grounds.
The path to ending the conflict is through boycotts, not the president.
US House overwhelmingly passes anti-BDS resolution
We've already seen individual states go so far as to issue state sanctions aimed at BDS movements. US House Resolution 246 seems to be an exercise in vote counting by the AIPAC Lobby to advance a national bill to the same effect.
Palestinian freedom will seem impossible until it becomes inevitable.
The South African Apartheid system likely would have held up indefinitely if the US was the only country involved deciding its fate. And the Afrikaners had far less influence over the US Congress than the Israel lobby.
I don’t want that kind of blood on my hands.
The joke of the modern American electoral system is that all the "viable" candidates are bloody. And if you abstain from voting or vote third party, you're accused of supporting the winning candidate, regardless of your personal politics.
That is, I think, a big part of what drives the street protests. Americans who don't want to be complicit in this barbarity have no other actionable way to express their condemnation.