Nah, most Americans have no shame at this point.

Well, to start, all the rich left winger hollywood sorts should be funneling their absurd wealth into programs and initiatives that counter the authoritarian fascist agenda. Oh, no, those people, like Leonardo Di Caprio, are too busy preaching to us about green/progressive values, while slutting around with 25 yo models on private ‘carbon-footprints go brrrrrrr’ yachts in the Mediterranean, and or funneling their money into pro-Israel/genocide denial/PR spin efforts, etc. The notion that the right wing has all the money is strange, its more that the progressives just dont want to contribute / back up their words with actions. And, what goes for those hollywood showboaters, goes for a large majority of Americans who come online and whine about it not being their fault.

And it goes triple for the democratic leaders, who are either too limpwristed/ineffectual to be able to accomplish anything significant, or are quietly complicit/encouraging the same general agenda – implying that, based on your democratic process, the agenda isn’t a “wedge issue” between the two sides of the country, but they’re all basically in lock step. Afterall, some democratic politicians have said they favour the tariff approach, but they’d be ‘nicer’ in the language as they tried to fuck all America’s allies over – and it’s highly unlikely that they’ll do much to reverse the damage Trump is causing on that front.

And yes, if there’s no representation / your government’s gone rogue, the assumption from the rest of the world is that the American people would nut up and solve it with Violence. Because news-flash, that’s the image America has branded itself as historically – and they’re increasingly showing that they only understand the threat/use of violence on the world stage in terms of international relations.

The US dollars dominance is largely tied to deals made with places like saudi arabia, which basically make oil trades settle in USD, as far as I’ve heard at least.

I’m surprised Trump hasn’t forced the Trump Cryptocoin to replace it for international settlements. Maybe that’s a year three fiasco that they’ve got waiting on the sidelines. The US’s push for approved ‘stablecoins’ to enter markets is basically along the same lines, pushing for a thinly veiled “independent” virtual currency to become the default, while still maintaining control over it in the USA.

If I lived in an apartment that had rats in my unit, and I was too lethargic / apathetic to deal with it – and then those rats started infesting / destroying all the other apartment units in the building – it’d be my fault shits getting rat’d, and there’s no amount of “nah, not my fault, I didn’t elect the rodents, I didn’t formally invite them in, I didn’t even bother to get out of bed” that would realistically make my neighbours go “oh, ok then, continue on with your rat infested shit hole lifestyle”.

They’d rightly find ways to fine the fuck out of me / kick me out of the building.

America has a whole lot of very wealthy people, people who claim to be progressives and to care about things like human rights – who basically lied/didn’t really care about those topics, and preferred to just kick back on things like luxury yachts while preaching on about how no one takes climate change seriously. But even more, America IS a democratic system. In other regions of the world, where people live under dictatorships, like in Iran, North Korea, parts of China, Russia, etc – you can make a fairly clear differentiation between their “people” and their “government”. The reason for that is that the people don’t have a “representative” democracy/government, where they’ve gotten a chance to vote for who runs the country. Americans DID have that choice, and opted for Trump - be it through apathy or idiocy. They collectively decided, through a representative democratic process, to have a convicted fraudster, rapist, and alleged child molester, diaper shitting orange octagenarian be their representative / leader. Twice.

It’s what the Trump’s want to see too, families tend to have similar values – and Jr just married a Russian plant from Putin’s circle, wedding paid for by her dear russian oligarch buddy. It’s also what the majority of Americans want to see, based on how they voted.

sloppy.

The US doesn’t care, and the rest of the world is unable to hold them accountable, which is also why the US doesn’t care.

Trump literally joked about committing war crimes in Venezuela in his first state of the union speech this time around. A room full of American politicians laughed alongside him. A few democrats wrote an angry letter.

It isn’t until the very end of the article that they even bother to discuss the obvious approach to the fee on transactions – a flat rate fee. Like I know some of the flat rate fees in Canada are around $0.04 per transaction – no matter the dollar value of the transaction. Which is a huge profit margin, really, for banks – cause they’ll charge people like $3 if you’re not their customer at an ATM, even though your withdrawal only costs them $0.04-$0.10 in network fees.

I generally agree with you, but there are also a bunch of older generation ‘norms’ and etiquette things at play in some of these situations / scenarios.

So first off, there’s definitely back channel reasons for some customs/behaviours. Consider for example the recent example from Trump’s trip to China, where Xi had Trump sitting in a lower chair, with the intent of creating a specific dynamic to the meeting and photo-ops. Or how Putin made sure to introduce Merkel to his pet dogs, having discovered she had a fear of dogs. Higher-tier diplomacy often involves such shenanigans, in part as it sends a message in itself.

One older tradition/norm, or ‘way to flex’, is exactly what the article mentions – showing up late. There’s an old saying I recall hearing my mom say (passed to her from her dad), along the lines of “If you need to meet with someone, arrive 5 mins early to be respectful of their time. If someone needs to meet with you, arrive 5 minutes late so that they understand you’re busy / getting your time is a privilege”. In more modern terms, think of it like a webinar/video meeting – if you need to attend a webinar/virtual meeting, you should be logging in to the system early to make sure there are no technical issues on your end. If it’s not something you need to attend, or if you don’t care about it that much and are just pressured to go to check a box on a list for your boss, you might not bother pre-checking connections: you don’t care if the other party has to wait 5 mins for you to sort it out, you don’t care about wasting their time.

Honestly, even in the private sector, I’ve cancelled meetings with people if they’re more than 5 mins late without notice, though you’ll usually allow for at least a 15 min window depending on what’s on the agenda.

That said, it’s clearly getting spun to try and drum up clicks. They don’t mention how long people were waiting, for example – big difference between Vance waiting 5 mins, and him waiting 2 hours.

Kirk was 2025. It’s 2026.

“May history not accuse us of turning the pain of ​those who suffer into a common sight along our shores,”

Bit weird to hear a Pope talking about history judging folks. Pretty sure religious folks tend to worry about a different sort of judgement, when it comes to immoral stuff, more so than ‘history’ judging them. One of the general ‘draws’ for religion being along the lines of “Don’t worry if you’re getting fucked in real life, your tormentors will get theirs in the next life, and god’ll set you up in heaven for your suffering”.

Also, history seems to show that people generally don’t care/get judged for historical wrongs, and/or that responsibility for historical wrongs gets diluted, generally absolving individuals of wrongdoing. It takes a LOT of bad stuff to have a significant impact on that front – just look at the church’s history with things like Crusades, religious indoctrination/genocides, or child molestation, and how many people still view it in high regard.

It’s almost like large international sporting events like the World Cup, are just tools to help hide crimes against humanity from the front page.

It isn’t big in North America – but yea, 16 different cities, from coast to coast, and from Canada down to central Mexico.

The total number of matches has increased – Qatar had like 64 matches, this time its around 100. Each venue seems to be hosting like 5-9 games. So it’s basically gone from 64 matches in a concentrated area, to… this clown show.

Canada too! Hotels are whining in Canada, after having jacked prices up to like $1000/night for the event.

It’s surprising, having the event done in 16 different incredibly geo-distant locations, with jacked up hotel prices, doesn’t seem to be a draw in a market where soccer is a lukewarm sport (it’s a bit bigger in Mexico, I think, but Canada and the US not so much). Shit, with the recent immigration surge from India, you’d prolly get more buzz goin by hosting cricket.

Rereading what you said, “Lemmy leans left”, yeah you just might be, that’s exactly the kind of crap that is telling.

Who cares what Lemmy “leans”. I don’t give a fuck why do you?

So, you care, considering you’d just used it in a prior response to question my stance / position. Part of that position notes that I care, because user content rules means that if a platform leans left or right, it can become an echo chamber silencing even moderate positions – which was a pretty big part of my initial comments, that you’ve cared enough about to bait me for multiple replies.

I’ve already provided you with my reasoning for not replying in detail. I’m not changing my position on that front just because you decide to pester me. I’mma just go ahead and stop replyin now too, since you either don’t seem to get the point, or you seem to just be trying to bait a reportable offense.

So I’ve gotten a handful of upvotes, and about 3x more downvotes, on my initial comment highlighting this bias / trend. So about 1/4 of the people who ‘voted’, generally seem to agree with me – that seems to re-affirm my note that lemmy leans left on this subject in general, and that I’m not alone in this viewpoint.

Lemmy’s not anonymous. Having accounts banned from communities is not no risk, especially if you lazily want to just use one account on the site.

Stating opinions that are deemed against/negative towards certain niche groups can translate into rule violations – rule 4 specifically states anything deemed transphobic is a rule violation. You quite literally cannot discuss any non-overtly positive viewpoint of any of the groups listed in that rule, without potentially pissing off at least a few people, who would report it and result in a ban. If they get you to reply a few times in a thread, mods are within their rights to ban the person holding the non-majority view based on ‘multiple’ rule violations.

Asking to have a conversation about those topics openly, is just baiting people into getting banned.

As annoying as this’ll be, I’m sure, I’m not even willing to raise them on lemmy at this point. Lemmy leans heavily left, generally speaking, and moderate right-wing comments will get you massively downvoted, and at times banned/censored, even when discussed in a largely theoretical sense.

Sorta like calling out Israel’s genocidal behaviour on Reddit – even if it’s generally ‘true’ / you’re able to support such comments factually, if you talk about it you’ll likely get banned/censored. While you can point in its general direction, actually trying to discuss it is a no-win situation.

Meh. I don’t dispute that there are issues for democracies at the moment. But one of the issues is that the “right-wing” nutjobs often have a few legitimate concerns regarding equity programs, which can function as gateways, enticing people down those paths of thinking. And if anyone raises those more moderate concerns, left-wing progressives attack en masse, practically pushing people along those extremist paths at a faster pace. That gets even more problematic given the electoral systems that’re in place, as well as the general “two sides” structure of many democratic countries.

So while I’d agree that something like an official end to all trans-related rights initiatives would be a negative sign for democracies, I definitely wouldn’t call it the ‘Start’ of the collapse.

Threat verbiage allows for non-threats to still be called threats, that’s the point of what I was highlighting. Flying pigs are not a threat, they don’t exist – dragons are not a threat, they don’t exist either. You can still throw them on a Risk Registry/Threat listing, and call them a threat, because there’s no definitive, objective, quantifiable process for determining what a threat is.

So yes, you can say Cuba is a threat. Even though for all practical purposes it isn’t a “real” threat or a credible threat, you can still put it on a list and declare it ‘technically’ a threat to US national security. Just like you could put flying pigs on that list, or dragons, even though neither of those things exist, nor would any sane person think theres a real risk of america falling due to flying pig attacks – if they’re on a threat list, they’re a threat.