Seriously! I completely melted.

It is taco Tuesday, afterall

I found that you get the biggest upvote response when you are either edgy or more black and white takes. Medium takes may be both more correct and nicer overall, but they don’t get the most engagement. I would find that after I had a “big comment” that did well, I would make edgier comments for a while after, chasing that high.

That’s not so much a problem here since a thread doesn’t have thousands and thousands of comments or is flights against for attention. Typically I read all the comments on a Lemmy post. Doing the same on Reddit would both suck away my time and my soul, haha.

While it’s definitely still possible, I’m optimistic that the US doesn’t have a history of being forcibly silenced. While we may not be great at mass‑movement or general‑strike action on a national scale, or at least we are out of practice, we’re not used to being afraid of speaking our political beliefs and I don’t see that switching overnight.

In a nation like Russia, that kind of political submission to the state was seemingly drilled into people during the Soviet Union (really, through much of recent Russian history). No one runs into the street to take cell‑phone video of Russian thug troops rounding up political foes. They know that if they speak up, they’ll be alone, isolated, and face a bad fate. But in the US, we get outside and document. We know the names of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.

And consider hypothetical war support: there’s no way the political ruling class would survive if the US got into a meat‑grinder war like Russia’s in Ukraine, with millions of casualties. Vietnam almost broke the country, and there were only 58k deaths (not to belittle the number, but Russia has suffered around 1.2m in military losses in just four years).

I think Jan 6 was a wake‑up call that it’s not a joke and not crazy to think they would attempt (and could succeed with) a coup here. I 100% think Trump and co. will try again to stage a coup or fix themselves in power, but I don’t yet believe they’ll succeed.

Yeah, that info is just a decision based on the political optics of how the joint operation was conducted (who should strike first). If Netanyahu wasn’t in Washington the week before, pressuring Trump to act, would Trump have opted to hold hands and go for it with Israel? I feel like this is what Netanyahu has been trying to get the US to help them do for years and years.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was at the White House last week pressing the administration to do what it must to derail Iran’s nuclear program, its ballistic missile infrastructure and its support for proxy militias in the region.

Like the kid that keeps asking dad for a PS5, but dad keeps saying no or offering lesser prizes. They finally asked on the right day, when dad was already in the mood to get that PS5, and dad said “fuck it, let’s go get it.” Luckily for Netanyahu, Epstein shit is being stirred and Trump has a nose for making distractions.

My sense is that Trump is going for the “we’re at war and therefore it would be imprudent to have elections” argument. I agree that this will drag on, but I think it depends on if Trump is able to successfully pull off the first ever skipped election in US history.

I don’t think his supreme court would go that low to allow it, but…the chance that he succeeds is not 0%, which fucking sucks.

I honestly don’t know if US was driving the ship on the decapitation strike. I think Netanyahu might have been the one who wanted to take the shot and Trump just saw it as a convenient distraction at a time when he desperately needs a distraction. Neither here nor there, really, because both are in it together. Maybe they both (Trump and Netanyahu) had their foot on the gas?

That situation was different though. Japan was 100% getting invaded and they knew that when the bombs were dropped. Maybe not right away, in the very immediate term. Iran does not believe the US will execute a proper invasion as it has not been credibly threatened. If Iran believed that invasion was imminent, then the calculus would be different.

Here’s a little guide:

• Threats of banning, having unpopular views, being mean, uncivil discussion <-- Not against the law. “Free speech” discussion doesn’t apply. Just two parties having a disagreement.
• Assault, legit harassment, libel, doxxing, etc <-- Against the law and you can be arrested/fined/sued. “Free speech” discussion applies, but in the case of these, the government has indicated that the speech is not protected under free speech. It’s about the government enforcing which speech is allowed and what is not.

In the cases presented:

• What OP talked about in the initial post was not a free speech issue. The government isn’t involved unless a law was broken, which I don’t think it has.
• What you’re talking about here regarding harassment/doxxing IS a free speech issue because the law will stop the harasser and technically infringe on their right to “speak.” However, in this case, at least in the US judicial system has said that harassment falls outside of the allowable speech covered under the law and so it’s okay for the government to infringe on that right for this case.

Does that make sense?

Your free speech is not violated when someone disagrees with you. Your free speech is violated when the government stops you from speaking your mind. “Bullying” may be not nice, but it’s not a free speech issue. That’s just two people having a disagreement in an uncivilized manner.

Well said. It is so frustrating when people don’t understand that people disagreeing with them does not mean their freedom of speech is being violated.

Even the banning example, which is commonly pointed to as violating freedom of speech, is typically (not saying it is always) used when the user is breaking civility rules or rules established by the community which the user assented to by participating in the community discourse.

It is fine to do both. If you have a point to make that hasn’t been made about a subject, you are allowed to make it.

But people should know that commenting on something should add something to the conversation, otherwise you should indeed just use your up votes. Like how supreme court uses concurrences. “I agree, but for different reasons.”

Wait til they release their paper on water. You’ll be shocked.