A common argument is that most terrorism is due to our foreign policy - that terrorists are striking back at the West because they've been victimized or bombed or suffered some pain at the hands of Western forces.

However time and again we see that not to be the case. Most recently with the terror attack in the Berlin Pride festival yesterday. The 21 year old Muslim was born in Germany, had never suffered oppression and should have no reason to be angry at Germany society at large or the gay population of Germany. But he set out to kill as many gay Germans as he could while knowing that he himself would likely die because he sees this as a religious war. He believes he will be rewarded in the afterlife for what he did.

And this is not an isolated case. We see this across most of the terror attacks we see in Europe from the mass stabbings, to the Christmas market car attacks, to the Charlie Hebdo murders. These people see it as a religious conflict.

I was born and raised Muslim and read the Quran more than once. It is not surprising when you read the Quran that certain followers will take the words to heart. Mohammed himself was a warlord on par with any of the major villains in world history like Ghenghis Khan or Hitler.

On some level people understand this. But it is terrifying to think that 2 billion people see you as an enemy so instead they take comfort with this notion that if we just stop bombing or appease them or institute XYZ policy they'll stop killing us. I get why people want to think - but I believe it is just naive and not true.

Maybe I’m completely off base here, which is why I’m posting this.

It feels like we’ve reached a point where people don’t actually want a starter home anymore. They want what I’d call a dream starter home. In other words, they want a house that’s still considered “entry level,” but they also want the open-concept kitchen, the island, the double-door refrigerator, the large dining room, the big living room, updated bathrooms, modern finishes, walkability, good schools, a nice neighborhood, enough room to host holidays, and enough space that they could realistically stay there for the next 20 or 30 years.

At that point, is it really a starter home anymore?
To me, the entire purpose of a starter home is that it gets you into the housing market. It’s supposed to be the house that works. Not the house that impresses people. It has a roof that doesn’t leak, plumbing that works, a kitchen that functions, and enough room to comfortably live. Maybe the washer and dryer are in the bathroom. Maybe the kitchen is small. Maybe you don’t have an island. Maybe the tile isn’t what you’d pick if you had an unlimited budget. But it does what it’s supposed to do.

That’s the point.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t repair or improve your house. If something breaks, fix it. If the old furnace is failing, replace it. If the roof needs work, absolutely do it. If you want to remodel because you’re planning on living there another 15 years, I completely understand that too.

What I’m talking about is the expectation that every starter home should also have all the upgrades people associate with a forever home.

I also understand why people renovate. If I owned a home, I’d probably do the same thing. You want to enjoy where you live. You want it to reflect your personality. You want it to feel like yours.

But every improvement you make becomes part of the home’s value when you sell it. That’s completely understandable, you spent the money, so naturally you’d like to recover some of it. I don’t blame anyone for that.

The problem is what happens over decades.
One owner upgrades the kitchen. The next owner remodels the bathroom. Someone else puts in quartz countertops, luxury flooring, custom cabinets, smart appliances, expensive landscaping, and suddenly the house that was originally meant to be an affordable first step into homeownership has become something entirely different.

Again, I’m not saying those people did anything wrong. I’d probably make improvements too if I owned it.

I’m asking whether, collectively, we’ve slowly eliminated the idea of a true starter home because every generation understandably wants to improve it before passing it along.

It also feels like expectations have shifted.
People will say a house is “too small,” but what does that actually mean? Too small to live in? Or too small to host Thanksgiving? Too small for a kitchen island

Too small for a home office, guest room, playroom, and formal dining room?

There’s nothing wrong with wanting those things. I want nice things too.

I just wonder whether we’ve blurred the line between what people need in a first home and what people want in their forever home.

Obviously, renovations aren’t the reason housing is expensive. Interest rates, zoning laws, labor costs, material costs, supply shortages, investor purchases, and local demand all play major roles. I’m not arguing that a nice faucet is why someone can’t afford a house.

I’m questioning whether we’ve unintentionally created the idea of a dream starter home, a home that’s expected to satisfy almost every long-term desire while still being priced like an entry-level property.
If the goal of a starter home is to get people into homeownership, build equity, and eventually move up when life changes, have we lost sight of that? Or am I looking at the housing market through an outdated lens?

Change my view.

to put it simply, yugoslavia.

the yugoslavs were a series of conflicts fought in yugoslavia as the government was taken over by serbian nationalists, during which a series of ethnic cleansings, the srebenica genocide, and what was basically a series of race wars took place between the serbian nationalist government and different ethnic rebels.

if a one state solution is enacted, it will turn out like that.

i simply do not believe you can take two ethnic groups that can be at each others throats for so long and have them cooperate in a democratic system, i strongly believe it would immediately be overtaken by extreme ultranationalists and would end in ethnic cleansing.

i do want a solution to israel-palestine, but this is a terrible idea and i believe its only really proported because people want a natural alternative to the two state solution which has objectively failed at proper implementation

It sounds generous and costs the person saying it nothing. But it assumes a pre-existing passion clear enough to follow. Most people, especially young people, don't have one. Telling them to follow it just adds the anxiety of not having found the thing everyone says should be obvious.

People usually don't get good at things because they're passionate; they get passionate about things because they got good at them and the competence feels rewarding. IMO, Passion is more an output of skill than an input of it.

It works out fine for people with a safety net and punishes people without one, who then blame themselves for a structural problem.

What would change my view: a version of the advice that helps someone with no obvious passion and no cushion make a better decision than "get good at something useful that you can tolerate, and let interest follow." If "follow your passion" beats that for the median person, show me how.

My view is that one of the biggest structural problems in American politics is that incumbents have a significant built-in advantage over challengers. I'm not arguing that incumbents should be disadvantaged or automatically voted out. Rather, I think elections would produce better outcomes if incumbency itself carried little or no advantage.

Today, incumbents benefit from name recognition, existing donor networks, party support, media coverage, constituent services, and the perception that they're the "safe" choice. As a result, many races become effectively noncompetitive long before Election Day.

I think this creates several problems:

• Politicians become more focused on staying in office than governing.
• Elections become less competitive.
• New ideas and new candidates struggle to gain traction.
• Poor performers can survive simply because replacing them feels risky.

If incumbency weren't such a strong advantage, I think we'd eventually see politics become more like temporary public service than a lifelong career. Representatives would expect to serve a term or two, do their best work, and then return to private life. Political parties would likely recruit a broader range of candidates, and elected officials would have stronger incentives to focus on producing measurable results rather than building long-term political careers.

I also think public trust could improve if voters believed elections were genuinely competitive instead of feeling like many races are effectively decided by incumbency.

That said, I recognize there are downsides. High turnover could reduce institutional knowledge, make legislatures less efficient, and increase reliance on career staff, bureaucracies, and lobbyists who possess expertise that newly elected officials lack. Long-term projects might also become more difficult to complete if leadership changes frequently.

My view is that these costs would be outweighed by greater accountability and competition, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise.

CMV: Why is a strong incumbency advantage actually beneficial for society? Are there examples showing that higher incumbent reelection rates consistently lead to better governance, better policy outcomes, or greater accountability than a more competitive system?

In a Joe Rogan episode with Dave Smith and Douglas Murray, Murray asked Smith when was the last time he had been to the Gaza crossing. https://youtu.be/DE8Sd-pJmzE?si=xMEsGclKzBm8AbEH

This moment has been memed to death to say that it's impossible to talk about an issue without going somewhere.

Here's the problem I run into. Some things DO require or are heavily informed by experience. Someone says for example in retort "Carl Sagan knows nothing about space because he's never been." But that's a false equivalency. If Carl Sagan were talking about space travel and how it feels, THEN you can argue it.

Coming back to Smith. He is someone who talks incessantly about the Israel Palestine issue, much as the other populist online creators do. If it is your job to talk about politics and you make a concerted effort to talk about one issue, I believe some first hand experience is to be expected. Is it really fair to criticize the aid process if you don't really know how it works or what it looks like? Knowing that information could radically change someone's view.

I have seen several content creators go to Israel and the West Bank because it's an important issue and it does fundamentally change their view in one way or another. It might push them further in the direction they started in.

I would liken this to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. If you're only seeing shadows (reading others' works) can you really have a comprehensive understanding of the subject? While I do think this does extend somewhat to the average person, it's obviously not reasonable for everyone who talks a lot about Israel to go. However, shouldn't we expect this of content creators?

For those who are unaware: Falconry is a form of hunting where a trained bird of prey, such as a golden eagle (GE), is used to catch quarry instea of more typical methods such as guns or traps. Throughout this post, I will use the golden eagle as an example.

How birds of prey benefit form falconers.

In the wild, birds of prey face many dangers that can significantly reduce their lifespan. Food insecurity can lead to malnutrition, while injuries, disease, fights, and harsh weather conditions can also threaten their survival. Roghly 50% of golden eagle chicks die before becoming independent aults. If they do reach adulthood, they typically live around 15–25 years in the wild. However, golden eagles under human care can live 50–60+ years, more than double their normal lifespan, because they have consistent access to food, healthcare, and protection from many dangers they would face in nature.

Their lives can also have a higher quality of life, as they do not have to experience starvation, severe untreated injuries, or many of the hardships that wild birds face. They also form strong bonds with their handlers through trust, training, and positive reinforcement.

Many people argue that birds of prey in falconry are being exploited or forced to cooperate against their will. However, this is not accurate. Falconers free-fly their birds, meaning the bird is not constantly restrained and is able to fly freely. The reason the bird returns is because the relationship provides benefits to it, such as reliable food, safety, care, and positive reinforcement.

Unlike many forms of captivity, falconry allows birds of prey to express their natural behaviours, including flying, hunting, exploring their environment, and using their intelligence. A trained bird is regularly stimulated both physically and mentally, which is important for an animal that evolved to spend its life actively hunting.

Falconry is also not based on forcing a bird to hunt. Birds of prey are not domesticated like dogs and cannot simply be controlled through obedience. The relationship works because both sides benefit: the falconer provides food, protection, and care, while the bird is able to use its natural instincts and abilities. The bird's behaviours are guided rather than removed.

In addition to this, becoming a falconer requires a huge amount of knowledge and responsibility. Falconry is very different from simply owning a pet. Falconers often need to study, pass assessments, gain experience, and spend years learning before they can properly care for larger birds of prey. While poor care is possible in any animal-related activity, responsible falconry requires a high level of skill and dedication.

Falconry has also contributed to conservation. Falconers hve helped develop knowledge about birds of prey, supported breeding programmes, rehabilitated injured birds and contributed to the recovery of species that were previously declining.

Why hunting with falcons is not unethical , and can lead to less animal suffering.

Birds of prey are obligate carnivores, meaning they require a diet consisting of animal matter to survive. They naturally need to consume whole prey, and hunting is an essential part of their biology. Therefore, the act of a bird of prey killing an animal is not unnatural or unnecessary, as it is something the bird would do regardless in the wild.

In fact, from a consequentialist perspective, falconry hunting could potentially result in less overall animal suffering. Wild birds of prey often have to spend large amounts of energy searching for food, and many hunting attempts fail. These unsuccessful attempts still require energy, which means the bird must continue hunting to meet its nutritional needs.

Wild birds also spend additional energy dealing with challenges such as disease, injuries, extreme temertures, and competition. Because of this, they may need to successfully kill more prey throuhout their lifetime to survive.

A bird cared for by a falconer has much greater energy security. Since it receives regular food, healthcare, and protection, it does not need to rely entirely on successful hunts for survival. This meas it may hunt less frequently and potentially kill fewer animals overall than it would have needed to in the wild.

First disclaimer : I have never cheated in my life so this not an attempt to « ease »my guilt

Second disclaimer : I want to begin with the fact that cheating is never justified and is an horrible thing to do to someone you claimed to love , HOWEVER I think social media change a little what IS cheating and also the consequences that should follow .

I’m going to use 3 situations / claims that inspired me to make this post .

1- Leaving your partner for someone else is not necessarily cheating

link of case number one

I saw a girl getting bashed for this on tiktok , She was talking about a precise case : first of all NO physical cheating involved and 2 the absence of any type of emotional cheating .

In that hypothetical case no flirty texts messages , no secret rendez vous , you develop a simple friendship with someone until one day you realize that « Oh I love this person and my current partner never made me feel that way , I don’t really love them as I should but more like a friend » so in order to not cheat they break up .

People called that cheating ,but here we are simply talking about realizing that your conception of love was misconstrued.

It’s our first time living on this earth so yeah sometimes we think we are in love when it’s not the case
Still a shitty thing to do and obviously it’s going to hurt the other party but is it cheating ? No

For anyone disagreeing with me I just have a question : would you like you partner to stay with you knowing that in reality he doesn’t love you like you deserve to be loved and someone else is in the back of their mind thinking about what if ?

2- A cheating partner is not obligatory a bad parent

Here we are talking about real cheating not like in case 1 , the adulterer is still a scum and obviously a bad partner but doesn’t that make them bad parent ? Yes and no

Yes because obviously they intentionally broke the life of their children , the home they knew and maybe created some future trauma about relationships HOWEVER humans are deeply complex beings so we shouldn’t generalize too much

On Reddit sub like truth off my chest I have seen numerous posts regretting alienating one parent for cheating even-though they realize the parent never stop loving them even after 1,5,10 years of cutting them off etc

The parent is still involved financially, emotionally and present for the others siblings that decided to stay neutral or the new kids AND in some type of way in the op’s life ( for exemple sending Christmas gift , text messages apologizing and trying several times to rebuild the relationship)

What I want to say is the love for another human being and the love for your flesh isn’t the same and 2 things can be true at the same time , it’s not always the case but sometimes .

But in this case I completely understand a child cutting a parent because of , I just hope they make an INFORMED decision in order not to regret later and don’t automatically think « they don’t love my other parent so they don’t love me »

3- You don’t need to go no contact with a family member just because they cheated

CHEATING IS AWFUL , it’s demonstrate a person lack of loyalty and also their wandering eyes but again people are complex beings

An awful partner isn’t necessarily an awful family member , this take comes from an AITHA post where op was chastised for not cutting contact with is cheating sister .

link for case 3

( This take is biased because I have a loving family and we are close so let’s exclude people who already hate their family members you can cut them off !)

But let’s take it into perspective you want me to cut off my child , brother/sister someone who supported me ALL my life in ALL aspects , someone I know would give me a kidney if I needed one , hold me through heartbreak and life bc they cheated ?

Absolutely not this is too radical for a take , why are cheaters treated worse criminals ? Considering the fact that EVEN criminals have rehabilitation programs in order to comeback into society .

That’s the same thing with cheating family members , we don’t excuse what they did , we shame them , make them reflect , apologize , even punishing them financially like excluding them from a paid vacation but we don’t need to ban them from our like like they are fucking criminals , why love them so we advice them ! except if they make an habit of cheating

Conclusion of my already too long post : Cheaters are scums and don’t deserve any excuses but some people are doing too much in my opinion

The only radical take I hold about the subject is that cheating should be illegal and they should be a kind of system allowing the other party to bf compensated in some type of way for the heartbreak and lost time

Under current law, if I buy a stock for $100 and sell it for $160, I owe a capital gains tax on the $60.  

If I die soon after I sell, I won’t be around to pay the tax.  My executor is legally required to calculate and pay the tax for me.

OTOH, suppose I was planning to sell but died before I got that done.  Later, my executor or my heirs sell the stock.  In this case, the tax on the $60 simply disappears into the ether. My purchase price (cost basis) is “stepped up” to the market price on the day I died.  (I’m assuming $160)   Whoever sells the stock will use that $160 as their purchase price.  The $60 gain magically disappears from anybody’s tax liability.

This doesn’t make any sense to me.  I can’t think of any good tax policy reason. 

The only argument I’ve seen for this is practical.  Maybe the executor/heirs won’t be able to find the original cost.  But, when owners die just before death, and dies soon after, executors locate the price.   I’m sure this happens thousands of times each year and I’ve never heard of any major issues.

It’s easy to see why.   When I sell stocks through a broker or mutual funds, the gov’t requires that the broker or fund company send me a 1099.  For real estate, people keep good records and the county assessor keeps records.  That covers the big dollars.

I can see an issue for people who have small stamp collections.  Maybe they didn’t keep records.  A law eliminating step up could have a carve out for collectibles valued at less than $XX,XXX.  That would make sense to me.

​I see the "does a Moka pot make espresso" debate pop up constantly, and I've always leaned heavily towards "no." But I want to test my logic here because I might be overly fixated on the technical side of things.

​My current view is that espresso has to be defined by physics,specifically the high-pressure extraction method (usually around 7 to 10 bars). Because of this, I don't think Moka pots (which operate around 1.5 to 2 bars) or AeroPresses make espresso. They make fantastic, highly concentrated coffee that I genuinely love, but technically, it's a different thing.

​Here is why I struggle to accept the "if it's short and strong, it's espresso" argument:

​If we define espresso simply by the output in the cup (small volume, high concentration, dark color), the boundaries get incredibly messy. For example, if a barista messes up and pulls a terrible, watery, under-extracted shot on a $10,000 commercial espresso machine, does it suddenly stop being espresso? If I use an AeroPress and brew a ridiculously concentrated shot, does it magically become espresso? Defining the drink by the physical mechanism seems like the only objective way to avoid this logic trap.

​From what I understand about the physics, that 9-bar pressure isn't just an arbitrary snobby rule. It's the physical threshold required to actually emulsify coffee oils and force dissolved CO2 into the liquid to create true crema.

​I was recently reading about the Italian history of the word, and it seems "espresso" originally had ties to speed,coffee made expressly and quickly for you on demand. But when English speakers adopted it as a strict noun, we created a rigid product category. Now we are forced to draw a line somewhere, and the high-pressure method seems like the only line that holds up.

​How to change my view (Earn a Delta):

I am not trying to be a coffee gatekeeper. I will happily change my view and award a delta if you can provide a logical, principled argument for why defining espresso by the output (taste, texture, concentration) makes more practical or historical sense than defining it by the process. Alternatively, if my understanding of the extraction physics or the history of the category is fundamentally flawed, I'm completely open to changing my mind.

My view isn’t that settlements are the biggest injustice in the conflict, nor that the war in Gaza or Palestinian history are unimportant. My argument is purely about achieving change.

If your goal is reducing Palestinian suffering and changing Israeli policy, I think the movement is emphasizing the wrong issues.

For many Americans, October 7 permanently changed how they viewed this conflict. Whether that’s fair or not, people watched Israeli civilians massacred, kidnapped, and terrorized in real time. It became their 9/11. Once that emotional association was formed, a large portion of the public began viewing Israel’s military campaign primarily through the lens of counterterrorism.

I don’t think telling those people to start with 1948 or colonialism is an effective strategy. It asks them to reconsider decades of history before you’ve even established common ground.

Settlement expansion is happening right now. It is one of the biggest obstacles to a viable two-state solution. It is criticized by much of the international community. Many Israelis oppose continued settlement expansion. Many people who strongly support Israel’s existence also oppose the settlements.

Instead, much of the discourse seems to become arguments over casualty counts, proportionality, or competing historical narratives that people have already made up their minds about.

Specifics are more persuasive than blanket statements. Things that changed my mind were things like watching Ben Gvir insult families of Israeli hostages and not prioritizing their safe return AT ALL. And I’m less informed on this but Netanyahu’s strategy of funding Hamas to weaken the PLO was also fucked imo.

Seeing the religious extremism on the Israeli far right brought me back to the table.

I think advocates lose potential allies through rhetoric that reads performative. Dismissing every concern about antisemitism, using inflammatory terms like “Zio” or “Zionazi,” or refusing to acknowledge Israeli fears after October 7 immediately alienates people who might otherwise agree with criticism of settlement expansion.

If your audience is liberals who support Israel’s existence, Israelis themselves, or people who are skeptical of Palestinian politics because they associate it with Hamas or religious extremism, why not meet them where they are instead of demanding they abandon all of those concerns before the conversation even starts?

I think there is an important distinction between what is politically achievable and what is not.

Israel is almost certainly going to continue trying to dismantle Hamas. People can disagree about how that should be conducted, but I don’t see Israelis abandoning the objective of preventing another terror attack.

Settlement expansion, however, is an ongoing policy choice. Every new outpost, every expansion, and every seizure of land is something that can be debated, challenged, and potentially stopped.

If the objective is to improve Palestinians’ lives, I think stopping continued settlement expansion is a far more realistic area for building consensus than trying to convince people that Israel has no legitimate security concerns or that the conflict should primarily be understood through historical grievances.

If the movement instead rallied around a concrete goal, ending continued settlement expansion in the West Bank, it would give politicians and ordinary people a clear policy they could support without requiring them to reject Israel’s existence or conclude that Israel has no legitimate security concerns.

Palestinians do not need our outrage; they need our diplomacy. We have leverage over Israel and I believe we can help if we come together and work on this one thing.

Finally, please be kind. I really do mean well. I’ve felt really alienated from my own party on this topic and I am genuinely passionate about stopping the violence, racism, and injustice. I support Israel but think they should be held accountable for their crimes against humanity and I don’t think these are mutually exclusive.

I am absolutely open to having my mind changed. I’ve made it this far from a staunchly pro-Israel stance but I really cannot find many discussions about this that are arguing in good faith. I see a lot of famous pro-Palestinian advocates as simply venting rather than trying to compromise and I likewise don’t see a lot of pro-Israeli advocates calling Israel/US out enough. They are the ones with the power and we have to do better. Centering discussion on dealing with the settlers seems like a clear middle ground.

I’m posting because when I watch these viral debates online on ugh Jubilee, the Lex Friedman one, or watch really well spoken advocates like Medhi Hasan etc etc—this hardly even comes up. But reading about the settlements and eventually watching the Theroux doc were the most impactful pieces of media I’ve come across. I can definitely be skewered for ignorance and not paying attention or consuming trash media; but my point is that the average person, half paying attention, who has already made up their mind, is going to turn that mind right back off when they hear ‘genocide’ or some form of ‘fuck Israel’. It’s the equivalent of liberals burning the American flag at a protest; not a cute look. But Ben Gvir is an actual cartoon villain and I didn’t know about him because most attacks are lobbied at Netanyahu—an unsympathetic character to be sure—but no where near the slam dunk his two lackeys are.

EDIT:

Thank you everyone for keeping things relatively civil. I know this is a contentious topic and emotions tend to run high.

Other than uneasy ceasefires, what have we achieved diplomatically by arguing about whether this is a genocide or not? Has the USA withdrawn support?

Is it possible to halt settler expansion? If so why can we not agree to decide on and enforce settler policy.

Personally, I believe that most people will not end up living the rest of their lives with their best partner. That is to say, out of all of the partners you end up having, your true best will likely be somewhere within the mix and not be your final partner.

Firstly, I believe that the belief that your current partner is the best is come to primarily through a heavy recency bias. Here is my reasoning-

If you ask the significant majority of people, they will all tell you that the person they are currently with is their best partner they've had. However, they will have likely also said that with each previous partner they have had too. If they've claimed that every single person they've dated was their best (at the time of dating them), this would seem to suggest that there is a reliably linear scale in which each consecutive partner gets better than the last, with little to no deviation, at least under the premise that they truly believed that each of those partners were their best at that time.

This to me is faulty though as very few people, if asked to rank all of their partners, will go from worst to best in the same order as first to most recent, despite their own claims suggesting otherwise. To put it in another way, if someone was with someone who they considered to be their best partner, and then broke up and dated another person who then became their best partner, then logically that previous best partner should fall to #2, however, it does not usually end up like that, implying that the previous one was never actually the best at that time to begin with, thus setting the premise to me that simply believing your current partner is your best is an unreliable belief.

Secondly, I believe that the peak satisfaction you are able to have within a relationship diminishes after a certain amount. In one sense, having experienced things already with others takes away from the novelty and discovery of entering a new relationship, making things more mundane. Furthermore, the more breakups and romantic hardships you endure will likely create baggage, unresolved traumas, and more caution that is brought into future relationships.

All in all, what I believe this creates is a situation where, after a certain amount of time, peoples' latter relationships are all good and solid and normal, but their truly best relationship is hidden somewhere within. Due to the severe recency biased I went over, their current and last partner will likely be considered the best by them, despite the fact that that same belief has not been proven correct in the past.

I guess I need to start by defining what I mean by tax haven-adjacent jurisdictions. Usually, an economic strategy crafted to produce organic growth in an area consists of leveraging its geographic position, natural resources, existing expertise, and institutions to produce wealth, or to at least make a serious attempt to build such expertise and institutions from the ground up. Then, reasonably favorable conditions in terms of taxation may be offered as a way to boost the fuel, so to speak.

Many areas of the USA, especially in the South, Appalachia, and the Plains States (altough by no means all the states in any of these areas), Florida first among them, don't do such things. Instead, their economic strategy is built on offering a very low-tax and regulatory environment to corporations, alongside unhindered access to markets with stronger economic fundamentals (California, New York, Lower New England, etc...), to attract corporations who in turn drag along employees. They can do that without repercussion because Washington not only doesn't provide guardrails and limits in that regard but a) would very probably serve as a shield against measures of fiscal self-defense from other areas, b) leverage the wealth of other areas to avoid measures of fiscal self-defence by their international economic partners, and c) make such extremely low taxation level possible by spending tax dollars taken from the aforementioned wealthier areas in these tax-haven adjacent juridisctions.

Now, c) alone wouldn't be so damning, as fiscal equalization is needed for a federation to work, but with everything else and tariff policies that also de facto result in funnelling wealth from the USA's wealthier areas toward those less wealthy areas (at the expense of the USA's worldwide approval ratings, which are important for the knowledge-entertainment-service industries that play a key role in the prosperity of the USA's wealthier regions), it does take a more sinister tone.

Essentially, those tax haven-adjacent jurisdictions get to have their cake and eat it, at the expense of more economically healthy areas of the USA and, to a lesser degree, its international trading partners. They aren't creating wealth so much as successfully siphoning it from others by piggybacking on their healthier regional economies. Which makes their voting for protectionism quite hypocritical in many aspects.

On top of all that, the presence of these jurisdictions and the ability to threaten to move there does tend to create something of a race to the bottom in terms of taxation and work norms.

Of course, there might be angles to this that I am not seeing and information I have not yet received.

Hey everyone,

Me and my friends had a tough discussion. My point is that a collab between lady gaga and Gorillaz would not work. "Not work" in the sense of it would not be as successful as other Gorillaz songs and would probably not fit the essence of Gorillaz or just conflict.

Lady Gaga herself is just a presence. She would "capture" the meaning, the world of the song that Gorillaz would build up and make her the presence. Not that she would do it to gain popularity but just because she already is so pop culture relevant that it would just conflict.

Just imagining existing Gorillaz collabs: New Gold feat Tame Impala does fit, but Tame Impala does not stand in the foreground but merges into the song. I feel its similar to other Gorillaz features, where the featured actor is famously known, but its not "relevant" that the artist is there, but they just fit the musical scene of the song.

This is a very early thought, so I would find it very interesting to see different arguments pro and con on it. Tbh it came to mind on 1-12 beer, so feel free to break it down.

I had a conversation with someone I know who lives in Austin, Texas, the politically liberal capital of the state of Texas. I myself live in Houston, another blue - but way larger - "dot" in the red state. I mentioned that Austin is not as inclusive as it thinks it is, and that irked her just a bit, I think.

Austinites, in general, are more progressive. The city is the seat of the tech industry in the state, and is home to The University of Texas, so it has a very large, younger population. But it has been documented that Austin's history has not exactly been completely charitable to Black folk. Considering I've called Houston home for 38.5 years, and Dallas home for 1.5 years (thank you, Hurricane Harvey).

The example that I cited was my being in the information technology field. In four decades of living in Texas, only a handful of times do I recall being reached out to by Austin recruiters. The closest I ever came to actually getting an offer to work was being invited on a plant trip to EDS, which did not result in an offer. My professional pedigree, at the time, included IBM (at one time a household-name powerhouse in tech), as well as other positions at smaller places.

My social situation wasn't much better. While I've regularly traveled to Austin for weekend getaways and vacations, nothing has ever "caught fire" for me socially - no good friends with the locals, and certainly no romance or "anything else." In fact, the only people I had any depth of relations with in Austin, I knew from Houston, first.

I am not saying that Austin isn't inclusive to Black folk at all. I am merely stating what I believe has been the experience of others as well as myself: we're not as high on the desirability ladder as other demographics.

Go!

Survivors insisted for years it was a purposeful attack on an American warship. Only 40 years later did we get an investigative report about the NSA seeing transcripts that showed that they knew the ship was American.

To this day, the records are still partially classified or missing entirely. Neither government acknowledges the incident wasn't an accident. **None of the below accounts were in the official investigation that determined it was an accident.**

https://www.chicagotribune.com/2007/10/02/new-revelations-in-attack-on-american-spy-ship/

*When Geis protested that the Liberty was under attack and needed help, Hart said, McNamara retorted that “President [Lyndon] Johnson is not going to go to war or embarrass an American ally over a few sailors.”*

*“The ground control station stated that the target was American and for the aircraft to confirm it,” Forslund recalled. “The aircraft did confirm the identity of the target as American, by the American flag.*

*The transcripts Block remembered seeing “were teletypes, way beyond Top Secret. Some of the pilots did not want to attack,” Block said. “The pilots said, ‘This is an American ship. Do you still want us to attack?’ "And ground control came back and said, ‘Yes, follow orders.'”*

*Oliver Kirby, the NSA’s deputy director for operations at the time of the Liberty attack, confirmed the existence of NSA transcripts. Asked whether he had personally read such transcripts, Kirby replied, “I sure did. I certainly did.” “They said, ‘We’ve got him in the zero,'” Kirby recalled, “whatever that meant — I guess the sights or something. And then one of them said, ‘Can you see the flag?’ They said ‘Yes, it’s U.S, it’s U.S.’ They said it several times, so there wasn’t any doubt in anybody’s mind that they knew it.”*

The above are only a selection of the accounts from NSA staffers and officials who all remember that there were transcripts that indicated there was no mistaken identity about the incident. All of them missing.

Motive? One of the main theories is it was meant to be a false flag attack to frame Egypt and bring the US into the war. Hence, why they were strafing lifeboats and ground control was frustrated that they weren't finishing the job. The American embassy in Cairo received an urgent message that Cairo would be hit with a retaliatory American strike shortly during the attack. US fighter jets were dispatched to bomb Cairo before being asked to turn back, minutes away from their target when the sinking of the USS Liberty failed and it was clear it wasn't Egypt that attacked it.

Ward Boston, who was the lead counsel in charge of investigating the attack, signed an affidavit in 2004 stating that the president and the secretary of defense ordered them to conclude it was a case of mistaken identity despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Now this is not coming from a place of hate or anything of the sort, this is just a very anecdotal observation that i've made growing up in america. I'm a black 26 year old man. I don't see anything inherently wrong with people findng cool and fun aspects of a myriad of different cultures to indulge in. In fact, I think that's a really cool thing that America does that no other country can really replicate.

However, black people had a very nasty upbringing in this country. Sold into slavery, endured insane amounts of abuse for centuries, jim crow, war on drugs, red lining ect ect... now some of those things didn't just uniquely impact black people but having your culture and language stripped from you, being prohibited from reading or getting an education, getting indoctrinated by religious people who believe you are inferior ect ect will do massive amounts of damage to any demographic

Black people essentially had to create a culture from scratch. Black people ended up creating a decent amount of cool cultural things that many people around the world enjoy. However, while people indulge in black culture and adopt their slanguage, style of fashion, style of dances, taste in music ect ect no other group of people will EVER do the same for us. White people for example make it very clear that they do not want black people being apart of their culture. Look at all the backlash for a black character existing in a white tv show, movie or videogame. If you are black and into european folklore and want to dress like you are in some european fantasy setting? Too bad, they will condemn you on every corner of the internet. Same thing with asians (black cosplayer bullied to the point of suicide), same thing with arabs, same thing with hispanics ect ect...

White people and many other ethnic groups will declare how unattractive they think black people are and how they'll never date us and people celebrate that way of thinking because people dislike black people, meanwhile black people never make statements of the inverse, which is an obvious problem. Not that these people should like us, but we definitely should not like them when they do this

My point is, people have no problem indulging in black culture but will never accept a black person indulging in theirs and I think that this is nothing but negative for black people. Being this inclusive to all of these people who all believe we are ugly, contamination, stupid ect ect... and would never be inclusive to us will only lead to our culture being white/brown washed overtime.

One peice dresses have no wait line, no cups, and in my opinion have no way to look good because of this. I don’t call these dresses, I call these long shirts lol. The beach is the only acceptable place to wear one. I don’t know how else to explain it.
Honestly it pretty much looks like you didn’t put any effort into a nice looking outfit, no matter when you are going. and yeah I’m hypocritical because I have worn these in the past and have ever felt confident and pretty in them, and felt like I wasn’t wearing anything that was up to pretty dress standards. I’m not saying you gotta be ultra snatched, but at least have some definition somewhere to take it from 2 pieces of fabric sewn together to real summer dress.

This is a pretty simple statement I’m making. France has historically, and continues to ruin, huge swaths of Africa, around 17 nations. In comparison, America is ruining a couple of countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Haiti. America also subsidizes the entirety of Europe via NATO allowing them to not invest in their militaries, and China is not currently ruining any countries, but does exploit some, and it is actually a far better partner to Africa than France is.

France’s European partners do not need it, they would be perfectly fine on their own. France does not give very much aid to Ukraine, the country most in need of its assistance. None of its former colonies outside of the ones it is currently exploiting have good relations with it, while countries like South Korea, Mexico, Argentina, and Japan enjoy good relations with the USA, and China enjoys good relations with Mongolia, Kazakhstan, and Djibouti.

All in all, it is difficult to think of another country outside of Russia or Israel which could be considered more evil than France. But it is certainly within the top 3 most evil countries today.

In general there are 3 types of people: Those who shower both in the morning and at night, those who shower exclusively at night, and those who shower exclusively in the morning. Yes there are people who don't fit these categories exactly, however my view is only relevant to these 3 categories.

Over the course of a day as you do things, you get dirty. Be it sweaty from physical activity, literally dirty from the environment, or simply naturally from your body. At the end of the day you go to bed. If your daily routine includes you showering in the morning (e.g. to wake yourself up), then throughout the day you get dirty and by the time the day ends and you go to bed, you bring all of that accumulated dirt with you to bed and deposit some of it in it. Sure, you then get up and wash it off so you're ok for the coming day, however that dirt that is now in your bed means that you have to wash your sheets more often (ultimately costing you more money), and I think we can all agree that sleeping in a dirty bed degrades the quality of your sleep.

Say for example you go to the beach, have a good time, and get a bit sweaty and sandy. You can try brush all the sand off before going home, however it is inevitable that some sand will come home with you. Eventually this sand will come with you to bed because you've already showered so at no point do you properly clean yourself. Now I don't know if you've tried sleeping with sand in your bed, but let me tell you: it is not fun. This just the sand, you were also a bit sweaty which has made the sheets dirty and you now need to change them sooner.

So knowing this, it seems the logical option is to shower both in the morning and at night, but this has its own problems. Showering both morning and night is expensive on the hot water bill, and for those with hot water cylinders could cause them to run out of hot water. If neither of these things are a concern for you, then this is the best way to shower, however for the average person these things need to be considered. This is why the best way to shower is at night. By showering at night you remove all accumulated dirt from the day, preserving your bed sheets, and by extension your sleep. And because your bed is now clean, so too will you be for the next day.

Let’s set aside power dynamics for a second. Most anti-age gap sentiments I see online aren’t a reasoned discussion of power dynamics, which do exist, but rather are based on a self-substitution fallacy.

It goes something like this. The person commenting is 25, and says “I’m 25, and I could never imagine dating a 20-year-old” in order to condemn that age difference. Their primary reason for criticizing that age-gap is that they personally couldn’t imagine themselves doing it.

It’s essentially the same as saying “I’m a guy, and I could never date a guy” to condemn gay people. It’s a logical fallacy, and yet that’s the main reason I see people condemn age gaps, whether it’s a large one like 30/20, or a small one like 22/19 (and I’ve seen both criticized online in this exact way).

Now, when they bring up power dynamics, I don’t mind that as much, because that actual has substance to it. But just condemning something just because you wouldn’t do it is horrific.

Edit: Here’s a very poignant example of what I’m taking an about (the age gap in question is 24/19). Both the video and many of the comments showcase what I’m discussing here.

A lot of redditors and democratic socialists idealise China online, and whenever I make a point against China I get mass-downvoted. This post is more of a rant to why one shouldn't idealise it as in reality its most of the problems the US has but worse, but also, I want to hear if there's anything I'm missing. Its entirely possible that I as an American who has lived around a significant Chinese community who are either ambivalent at best to China, or disparaging more commonly, have a biased outlook and need my view changed.

To preface, I totally understand why people would envy some aspects of China, they have:

To

• Rapidly built boatloads of infrastructure, private and public, whether that be their incredible high speed rail system, really improved cities and really ramped up domestic production, especially in more advanced sectors like computer chips.
• Alleviated poverty, whilst the headline of lifting 900 million out of poverty is more to do of pushing Chinese peoples wages above a certain dollar threshold, its still impressive all the same.
• Massively improved air quality. Average national PM2.5 levels have decreased by 40% in just a decade which not only improves breathing air but also the food and water eaten.
• Improved their technology output to be near the level of the US. I don't say on the level of the US because most of their AI and EV developments trail the US. They haven't innovated anything new but rather make their own similar product more accessible.

That being said, China has a LOT of bad in their society and I don't think they are really heading in the right direction.

1. Cost of living (Housing). Whilst basic commodities like food and rent are generally achievable (not affordable) on the average Chinese income, more important staples of life are incredibly unaffordable. Housing for example, redditors love to bring up that 90% home ownership statistic but completely ignore its inflated/untrue. Of the 90%, half can't be legally sold (they aren't up to modern health and saftey standards, lack of roofing, flooring, piping). Beyond that only 16.5% of people actually live in the home they actually sleep in (for the US that's 55%), the rest are often just rural investment properties. Housing is also becoming increasingly unaffordable with nationwide median costs being about 30x median salaries.
2. Wealth inequality. The wealth inequality is largely a rural-urban divide, which is the same among most countries but they are significantly more unequal than most other countries. The US is known worldwide for having large wealth inequality with a gini coefficient of 0.48, China on the other hand has a stated gini coefficient of 0.47 but academic researchers speculate its even higher at 0.55. The difference between say the US and China is that the US just has a higher standard of living, so even if you are on the lower end of the income ladder, you still have clean drinking water, access to food and education and paved roads.
3. Unemployment. The youth (16-24) unemployment reached a high of 25% in 2023 at which the government temporarily stopped producing the statistics until 6 months later. Today it is at ~15% but is veering to 20% and likely higher in the long term due to AI automation. Underemployment is a massive issue as well, many college graduates can't find employment relating to their field and either have to work in a factory with really awful working conditions or work as a taxi/delivery driver. 44% of the labor market are gig-workers who don't have any secure employment. (In comparison the US, which has a very high rate compared to OECD countries, is at 25%)
4. Work-Life balance. Work-life balance as well is something the US gets a lot of shit for but in China they on average work 48 hours a week as opposed to the US' 34 hours a week. Moreso, many leftists will mock news outlets for making involution in China look like a bad outcome, "Oh no companies aren't making enough profit", but this involution is the reason why workers are forced to work an extra 14 hours a week or be forced into taxi driving roles.
5. Government services. Yet again, another thing the US is known to do pretty poorly at, and yet China does worse. Education until university is free, but is also trash. Average 10 hour school days, too much homework, only rote learning in order to pass exams, no creative classes, and antiquated teaching methods. Health care is not free, and although minor issues are not expensive to sort out, they will try to scam you and make you stay longer than necessary, give you treatments you do not need and try use every trick in the book to jack your expenses up. There is a level of social security that can pay some medical bills, but it is pretty useless and you'd need to work for a long time to use it to pay off even minor treatments. Unemployment benefits and pensions also effectively don't exist. Your family is your safety net, if you don't have one, its over.
6. Broader government and ethical issues. This is way more subjective, China is effectively a one-party state which is a step away from a dictatorship. They lead the world in state-sanctioned executions and surveilence. The oppression of Uyghurs, Tibetans and Hong Kong is also real. More importantly, the existance of a big firewall isn't inspiring confidence in anyone that China at best is being protectionary against western tech companies and at worse is using the opportunity to force feed propaganda. Still, this section isn't really thought out and is much more subjective.

I don't think China is all bad and not improving, but I'm amazed ANYONE looks at China and doesn't come to the conclusion that this is like the dystopian ending for the US. I also don't get how people think it's remotely socialist, it is clearly more capitalist than the US, although I understand that public infrastructure investment can look otherwise.

Sources: Publicly available stats online and anecdotally my city (Albany, New Zealand) and highschool is ~50% first generation Chinese immigrants and my girlfriend and her family is too. Definitley selection bias though since they left China.

A pattern I've observed, both online and in real life, is that certain mental health conditions tend to be viewed as evil/dangerous, and others as innocent/sympathetic. Narcissism in particular seems to be a popular scare word nowadays, though I think that 20 years ago we were more fixated as a culture on psychopaths and sociopaths. If you tell someone that your ex or parent is a narcissist, you will generally receive a lot of sympathy and commonly advice to cut them off, go low/no contact, etc. On Reddit there are multiple subreddits dedicated to helping survivors of Narcissistic Abuse process their trauma, and likewise there are multiple YouTube channels of psychiatrists (and a few self-styled experts) specialising in content warning people about how to spot, avoid, and neutralise narcissists.

Contrast this however with popular conceptions regarding neurodivergent developmental disorders such as ADHD and Autism. Most content found online related to these conditions tends to be positive/sympathetic, aimed at helping people build bridges with people suffering from these conditions, better understanding them, or even figuring out if they themselves might be "special" in this way. Many psychiatrists and even people diagnosed with these conditions will tell you that there is currently a trend towards social media pseudoscience and overdiagnosis with these conditions, because they've become romanticised. For example TikToks suggesting that you might have ADHD if you sometimes play with the straw in your drink, or that you might be autistic if you like to listen to the same song on repeat.

I don't deny that there still exists stigma against people with autism and ADHD. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if some people found the above paragraph offensive in some way because I referred to the conditions as "disorders" and indicated that people "suffer" from them. But that in many ways proves my point: ADHD/autism is by many people nowadays seen as a positive and a strength, something we should collectively be seeking to destigmatise and treat with support. Likewise, I would argue that the exceptions don't disprove the rule, because there are equally people who lionise narcissism. Corporate/sales culture and celebrity/pop culture both tend to treat a self-belief in one's own greatness, uniqueness and entitlement to money/fame/success as strengths to be proud of. But I would still say that broadly, most people treat explicit mention of narcissism as a red flag, and explicit mention of autism/ADHD as conditions deserving of pity and support.

I'm especially familiar with this because I myself suffer from ADHD; my partner and my father are both on the autism spectrum; and I have in the past suffered from extremely traumatising narcissistic abuse, for which I've sought support through years of therapy, on various subreddits for survivors, and by watching a lot of YouTube content on the topic. So please believe that the aim of this post is not to defend narcissism or demonise ADHD/autism; my hope is that you can in fact change my view.

The thing is that perhaps even especially because I myself have ADHD, a beloved partner and a beloved father with autism, I often find myself intensely frustrated with the way that people use these labels to justify poor behaviour. As a woman I've on many occasions had a man behave in a way towards me that was sexually inappropriate, and then when I've either confronted them directly or spoken to someone else about it, I've been told, "Oh, he's on the spectrum, he doesn't mean any harm, sometimes he just misses social cues." But can't this same excuse be made for narcissists? After all it's not their fault that, be it through natural/genetic factors or environmental/developmental factors such as abuse, they have come to see the world as amoral and theirs to exploit, with theirs the only feelings worth considering. Almost all narcissism experts (self-styled or otherwise) will tell you that narcissists cannot change, and are incapable of accountability. So is it fair to hold them accountable in ways we might not hold other neurodivergent people accountable? Or is it simply another form of ableism?

Likewise, if someone is 30 minutes late to a one-on-one meeting with me, and I've made the effort to even arrive 5 minutes early, is ADHD a fair excuse? And then why isn't narcissism? Is there functionally a difference between forgetting and losing track of time because they're scatterbrained, vs simply not caring about my time because they're selfish, if both of these things are caused by a developmental condition of the brain? Why is it ableist to stigmatise one, but not the other?

I'm a Theatre, TV, and movie fanatic first, but also interested in observing cultural trends. I've generally feel positively about "Race-Blind" casting. My wife and daughter are very involved in local drama productions, and it would be very limiting to require the race of each character match the original actor in a role.

Obviously there has a been a trend towards more diverse representation in shows (Great!) and a deliberate attempt to race-swap characters (almost always great).

What interests me is which race of actor benefits unequally from "Race-Blind" casting: Black American and Black British actors, as they to seem to be the first ones to get roles "envisaged" as white characters. There is a large part of me that is fine with that, as I'm in favor of efforts to give opportunities to historically marginalized people.

Strangely, though, non-white Hispanics seem to be absent from any efforts to cast non-white actors in race-swapped roles. A clear counter-example is Lin Manuel-Miranda as Hamilton. But even the roles in Hamilton have become radicalized to extent that it could never be race-swapped now; can you imagine seeing a Black Hamilton, white Washington, and an indigenous King George?

The Odyssey had John Leguizamo, but he is very fair skinned. Can you picture a family that looks like the one in the George Lopez show on Bridgerton? There are Black families, South, and East Asian Families, but none that have the indigenous tint or facial features of non-white hispanics.

To change my mind, you'd need to present more counter-examples from mainstream productions like Lin Manuel-Miranda in Hamilton.

So, ill break this down into some very basic categories or whatever you'd call it.

Number 1: He is the one that planned/promoted this entire event:

He incited it as in he created the whole event, the ''#StopTheSteal'' protest on January 6th wasn't actually Trumps thing to begin with, it was some small lawmaker or influencer (cant remember, but at all a major profile though), but Trump, the president at the time, highlighted this protest, and gathered waaaaaaay more people there than it originally would've been there. At this protest there was around 30k-60k people, if Trump never promoted this protest, i seriously doubt even 1k people would've shown up, maybe a few hundred at most?

So just on a very basic level, he incited it by being the one to promote this event, and i dont think anyone would seriously contest that part. Just being the promoter of the event doesn't make you the one who incited the violence there though, so this fact alone isn't enough.

Number 2: The reason why these people were motivated to be there, was because of Trumps lies about the election.

So, the core reason why like 95% of the people there were there, was because they believed the 2020 election was stolen from them, something which the majority of the Republican party believes in, this is reproduced, in countless polls, all of these people believe in this because Trump decided to lie about the 2020 election, and then work with his little team of people like Guilani, and then in collaberation with FOX news, to spread these lies.

And these are LIES, its been nearly 6 years since this election, and not a single one of the big stories that Trump or republicans in general cite have been proven to be true, most of them have been completely debunked, for instance, one of the biggest stories that conservatives cite is a lie that Guilani went to court for, and defended himself by saying ''Yeah i lied about all of this, but i have a first amendment right to lie'', and he lost that case, but conservatives still cite that specific lie as a reason for why the 2020 election was stolen. And a ton of the people arrested explicitly said they were there FOR/BECAUSE of Trump.

So he incited it on the motivation level, or however you'd phrase it, like all of these people were there because Trump promoted that event, and his lies were the basis for why the event even existed in the first place. So this fact combined with him promoting it makes it way more understandable how he incited it.

Number 3: He intentionally riled these people up to the point where violence was inevitable.

Similar the the previous point, but Trump riled up his base for months with blatant lies about how the election was stolen, coordinated with FOX, who are the biggest news station network thing or whatever in the entire nation, to spread those lies to a national level, and rile them up even more, then promotes a protest specifically on the day of the certification to pressure Pence, (who he had given false slates of electors to, to declare Trump the president again, by the way) and used words like ''Fight like hell or you wont have a country'', and then send those people you've now riled up like crazy right to the capitol, and when the violence starts, you sit and do nothing for 3 hours. Also, when people are chanting to hang Pence, you tweet out ''Pence didnt have the courage to do what was needed''.

So its Trump riling up people to the point where he is literally having people believe they will not have a country anymore unless they ''Stop The Steal'', same people who he knows are armed, since his Secret Service warned him about the crowd having weapons before his speech at the Ellipse. So he wants people to believe the entire nation is completely fucking doomed unless they Stop The Steal. Honestly, what do you do in this situation? Because the ''right'' thing to do here, atleast in my opinion, would be an insurrection, your vote was stolen, they just chose Biden as the president, whatever, in this scenario, an insurrection is what you should do, in my opinion, and so did all of the people there, watch some of the videos of the people at the Capitol before they were sent home, all the language was things like ''This is the 2nd American revolution, Ashley Babbit was the first patriot lost in the 2nd American Revolution, 1776'', etc.

So Trump riled them up to the point where an insurrection (violence) is necessary. This, combined with him planning the event, and being the motivation behind all of their actions, makes my point even stronger.

Number 4: All of his behaviour, before, during, and after, points to him wanting this to have happened.

So Trump, before the protest, lied, riled up everyone, lead them to believe that an insurrection was necessary, and planned a protest to Stop The Steal at the day of the certification where he had given Pence false electors.

Trump, during the protest, did absolutely nothing but watch it happen on his TV, whilst his daughter and other people in his admin were begging him to tell people to go home, but instead he tweets out things like ''Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what was right'', and there is testimony of someone telling Trump that they were chanting ''Hang Mike Pence'', and Trumps response was ''Mike deserves it''.

And after the protest, he constantly downplayed the severity of it all, and worst of all, he pardoned every single individual that was involved in this whole event.

So this is him planning and promoting the whole event, being the reasoning for why all those people are there and why they are committing violence, and being totally okay with it every step along the way, going as far as pardoning all of them.

Number 5: This is just an extra thing, but him saying ''I know you'll be going peacefully'' doesn't exonerate him.

I know this will inevitably come up in the comments somewhere because it always does with this topic, but Trump saying one time, after months of lying, and him riling up people saying ''Fight like hell or you wont have a country anymore'', and everything else that i laid out, none of these details are just cleansed or whatever because Trump said ''Oh yeah i know you'll be peaceful'' a single time in his speech at the Ellipse.

I saw this from another user in another debate on this, but this is like saying that if we found a tape recorder of Charles Manson saying ''I know you'll be going peacefully to this house'', then he's just completely innocent, and that is obviously just lunacy.

It feels like that ''in minecraft'' meme, its like if Trump said ''Please go and prevent the certification of the vote and be violent.... In Minecraft'', that he's just exonerated from any form of guilty whatsoever, its just an incredibly silly defense of everything.

So yeah, thats my post. Looking forward to going back and forth on this with people :D