volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@NZedAUS I think that you are focusing on Trump and missing the larger situation: it's not about what Trump has left or what he says, it's about his supporters projecting onto him.

What he has isn't fear and racism; it never was. What he has is a significant swath of US voters who feel disconnected from the federal government and see in him a vessel to express their discontent. Plenty see him as a way to set fire to the institutions that they feel have let them down.

All Trump has left is fear and racism? No. What he has is a crowd that uses him to vent their discontent.

@Laukidh No, it can't be ended. There is literally no one who can end it. The aggressor s are too dispersed without formalized command and control structures, so the aggression will continue, the war will continue.

That's just reality on the ground.

There can be no ceasefire because there's no one to agree to a ceasefire. The rockets will continue to fire, the war will continue.

That's just the unfortunate reality. It does us no good to turn a blind eye to it.

@Linux_in_a_Bit remember that the plane full of people died because the pilots violated procedures. The human factor was key to that tragedy.

And there are parallels with this.

@GaryRLundberg Right but with stories like these I always think we need to go deeper, looking at the structural issues that make them stories in the first place.

Often enough when there's a story about potential presidential exercise of authority the problem is that he has the authority in the first place, and we should probably reconsider granting that authority to the president, no matter who the president is.

@Roddee so much of that from the Afghanistan claim through the NATO claims have been roundly debunked for years.

But more importantly, even if all of that nonsense was true, the Biden administration has been empowered to overcome it all. He's had years to implement his policies that would have easily fixed that supposed sabotage.

So the story is not true in the first place, and even if it was true it doesn't make sense to say the president was so hamstrung. It's a false story that doesn't make sense anyway.

@GaryRLundberg It's funny how people are acting like a company with $3 billion in contracts is a little powerless victim with this story.

Maybe we shouldn't be putting all the eggs in one big corporate basket in the first place? This is a symptom that things went a little off the rails, and this helps put things on a better footing?

@Hash should I say that Democrats are all Russian bots for choosing a candidate that hasn't been able to trounce Trump? I mean that's a really low bar, but the Democratic Party wasn't even able to get there.

The party members that chose Harris must all be Russian bots, huh?

Anyway do you have any actual arguments, or just name calling?

@Hash that's some nice reasoning you got there.

@strypey I'd say so much comes down to how we in the general public frame our engagement with the federal government. It's there for the grass roots to take on if we want to.

Most importantly, we just need to teach civics. So few actually know how the federal government works and so people don't realize the levers they have to change things.

This starts with emphasizing the role of Congress and our congresspeople over the president. It's sad how few people even think about their congresspeople when they're the ones who actually have power to tackle so many of these issues.

Civics!

@europesays Republicans passed FEMA funding...

@fkamiah17 the content of the article doesn't really match its headline claim.

It's not so much Blinken approved actions as ones shoved down his throat that he was left to spin in ways that the two countries would agree to.

@bronakins I don't think y'all realize how well that played with Trump's audience.

He's not afraid of 60 Minutes or fact checking. He doesn't really care. But he did enjoy using that to score political points with his base.

@aureliano

@info No, neoliberalism didn't say there was no alternative. It said there were certainly alternatives, but you won't like the result.

And now we see people going down the alternatives on the left and right ends, and they don't like the results.

No uncertainty there. Just conformation that the results would indeed be pretty negative.

@breedlov people are allowed to have different opinions... even different from their spouses.

@spytfyre talking about solving the problem of people doing things you don't approve of.

We can solve this you say. Solve what? The problem that people like a thing you don't think they should like.

@wiredfire

@HarriettMB information that could have ended Russian attempts to invade Ukraine? What?

That's not possible, so whoever told you that is not someone to be believed.

Trump is invested in Project 2025? No. That was a different group, and Trump has roundly rejected it.

Not that a president has power to end democracy even if they wanted to.

Sounds like you're falling into a trap of trusting some folks really out to spread misinformation.

@wiredfire you're still approaching this as a top down task whereby you engineer humans to your suit personal preferences instead of appreciating the diversity and humanity of the situation.

These are people we're talking about. People have different drives and opinions, and that's part of the beauty and strength of society.

We don't need to "fix" these humans that simply have different values than your own.

@spytfyre @trumpet

@ravirockks keep in mind that ground-based antennas are far, far more efficient and effective than even low orbit satellites.

This is a matter of physics that cannot be overcome by advancing satellite technology. Everything from the speed of light through bandwidth limitations restrain satellites from performing as well as ground-based antennas.

It might be possible that services like starlink will become ubiquitous fallbacks, but they will never be able to compete with ground-based transceivers just because of the physics involved.

One way to think about it is comparing Wi-Fi to wired ethernet. There's a very good reason that data centers continue to use wired ethernet instead of just going wireless.

@SherBeareth What double speak?

Yeah, Harris is awful, but beyond that it's important to realize that both sides believe that the description you provided applies to the other side, so it doesn't really get anyone anywhere.

It's just the exact same rocks that both sides are throwing at each other. So what progress does it make?

Anyway, it's important to realize what your enemy is saying if you want to contest them. Or else you're just preaching to the choir, and what's the point?