I mostly use Amazon to order stuff my tech-illiterate dad wants so everything it thinks about me is wrong.

Yes, the owner does important work, but that work should not give them the right to all the profits produced by the business. Taxes are not a solution to the structural inequality created by private ownership of the means of production, they are a bandaid that alleviates some of the worst consequences. The only way to resolve the structural inequality is for the means of production to be collectively owned by all of the workers who use it, and for business decisions to be made democratically by said workers or by a person elected democratically by the workers (who should themselves be an equal owner of the means of production).

A bunch of individual lawsuits or even a class action lawsuit is woefully inadequate for the task of holding ICE agents accountable for their crimes. It’s going to take revolutionary tribunals administered by councils of civilians. Even a “reformed” state will let them get away with it if we don’t take matters into our own hands.

The intent isn’t necessarily predatory.

Proceeds to describe an extremely predatory business practice and the corrupt incentives that motivate it.

Yes, our governments are in an actual war and a slopaganda war and Iran is winning both.

I hate to break it to you but belief in the existence of Satan is and has been a majority belief in the United States for as long as it has existed, as well as in every other country that is majority Christian.

This is why class politics is incomplete without an understanding of hierarchy. People within a hierarchy will try to pass accountability up the chain, and it stops at the first person capable of deflecting it down. The more egregious the offense the higher up the chain it goes so the ones at the upper levels make sure the hierarchy is as tall as possible so that accountability never reaches the top. Your manager is the next rung up the hierarchy from you and most offenses are minor enough for them to deflect it. Sometimes the bureaucracy enables the accountability to be spread across so many hands that it fizzles out, and sometimes someone has to take the fall.

TBF Howard Zinn has a rather pessimistic view of class struggle in the US and that is reflected in his book, at least in my opinion. In emphasizing that radical movements have always been crushed, deflected, or co-opted by the political elites he implies the inevitability of such outcomes and often misses some of the ways that those movements still succeeded in radically altering the class arrangement, and the experiences of those who lived quietly in the crossfire of these historical struggles are erased through omission. A lot of that is an understandable limitation of an attempt at an all-encompassing historical account though.

I think you’re just lashing out at me because you’re unable to explain why you think diversity makes it harder to implement universal healthcare, but what do I know. I haven’t studied the legal system in China.

I don’t understand what any of that has to do with healthcare.

FDR was a social democrat and the reason his social policy didn’t stick around is because he compromised with racists and allowed them to condition the passing of welfare policy on the exclusion of black and brown Americans from receiving any benefits, and he also did not sufficiently challenge the power of capitalist property owners. When the civil rights movement began to see success in forcing the universalization of social welfare the still-powerful capitalists were able to ride the wave of the racist backlash towards the near-total dismantling of the welfare state.

China has a larger population and land area than the United States and they have universal healthcare. There’s nothing special about the US that makes universal healthcare more difficult to implement except the entrenched special interests that lobby the government to prevent it.

The only barrier to implementing universal healthcare in the United States is the health insurance industry, the corruption it relies on, and the racism that the corrupt politicians use to turn people against their own welfare.

And I support the right of all people to self-determination and to resist occupation, oppression, and genocide regardless of whether it is carried out by their own government or a foreign invader.

If you can support the right of Palestinians to engage in armed resistance against Israeli occupation even if it is carried out by Hamas - a right-wing religious fundamentalist organization - then you should also support the right of Ukrainians to engage in armed resistance against Russian occupation even if many have bigoted or racist opinions about Russians. You should also understand that an occupation creates the conditions for such sentiments to flourish, and that oppressors of all sorts rely on that fact in order to demonize their victims.

All gender affirming care that is or has been provided to minors at scale is reversible. The standard for providing gender affirming care to minors is puberty blockers and social transition, never anything permanent like surgery. Personally, I don’t see any cause for concern about potential harm to minors from providing gender affirming care, but I do see the harm that is done to them when that care is denied and find it far more concerning given that a common result of that harm is the most permanent and irreversible outcome possible, suicide.

No one deserves this.

I dislike the Star Wars franchise in general but I loved Andor. Not sure it being a part of the franchise did it too much of a disservice though, I discovered it the way I discover most media (through word of mouth).

It’s based on which shows the companies that paid them to advertise own the rights to.

Imagine a firefighter prying you out of your cAIbertruck ICE (double entendre) edition with the jaws of life after the Full Self Driving^tm barrels off a cliff, only for both of you to be engulfed in flames when they puncture the gas tank conveniently nestled in the handle-free gull wing door.