I never said anything at all about Afghanistan.

You posted a meme about the current leadership of Afghanistan.

I think it’s terrible the state if affairs.

Then why would you post a meme smugly extolling the virtues of the current state of affairs? You can’t have it both ways.

I find this meme to be absolutely vile.

The good people of Afghanistan have been under violent US occupation for decades, and as their final move, the US looted the central banking reserves.

This effectively drained the savings of everyday Afghanis. They no longer have access to their bank accounts. The US stole all the money.

I often wonder, would the good people of Afghanistan be able to overthrow the evil leadership of the Taliban? I wish they could, but overthrowing the Taliban is much less likely when the US has left you in a state of devastation, poverty, and famine.

Then those same western chauvinists can post memes like this, delighting in the Afghan people’s suffering after causing so much of it. Disgusting.

I’m a little surprised that this comment has gotten so many upvotes.

Would you apply this same logic to the real world? For example, imagine if a manufacturing facility for Lockheed Martin or General Dynamics was bombed and thousands of working class Americans died. These people are building bombs that are being used in an ongoing genocide.

Would you consider this a heinous terrorist act, or a noble strike in the fight for freedom?

But what about the terror group known as IDF? They have unlimited free reign to spread their genocidal message and recruit followers. They also buy ads, and have a budget larger than all the terror groups you mentioned combined.

Saying “maybe people are the problem” is reductive and unhelpful. But I agree with you broadly, religion is just a system or a tool, it can be used for good or evil.

To judge if religion is a good system or a bad one, we can use a cost benefit analysis. This is what we have been attempting to do in this thread.

But when it comes to sensitive subjects like religion, many people have a tendency to avoid, overlook, and deny the associated costs.

Anti-science, misogyny, etc may be bad independently of religion, but they aren’t independent of religion. Religion is a source of these problems.

You can imagine a hypothetical religion that is simply a “social club” or whatever, but here in the real world religion comes with baggage.

Religion is why my cousin’s children have never seen a doctor in their life. Religion is why my gay friend in high school tried to kill himself. Religious indoctrination has led to lifelong shame and trauma in many of my friends.

And this was just from a “moderate” sect of Christianity- the millions living under fundamentalist religion have it even worse.

What you said is all true, but you are ignoring the negative aspects of religion.

Religious influence, both on their followers and on government, is anti-science, misogynistic, and anti-LGBT.

Religions are funded like pyramid schemes, with the most desperate and vulnerable as their victims.

Religious indoctrination is child abuse.

Literal genocide denial.

May these 269 monsters get the fate they deserve.

If we “all agree” and do a moonshot construction plan we could have electricity in 8 years. This is a fantasy, tho.

Best case scenario in the real world is operational in 12 years.

In the capitalist hellscape here in the US, a reasonable expectation would be 18-20 years.

20 years also happens to be the lifespan of our wind turbines. In 20 years, all of the currently running wind turbine blades will be in a landfill and new ones will need to be manufactured to replace them.

No reasonable person is suggesting nuclear as a short-term option. It’s a long term investment.

Are solar and wind really “clean” energy? Everyone in this thread seems to ignore the costs of these methods.

Every modern wind turbine requires 60 gallons of highly synthetic oil to function, and it needs to be changed every 6 months. That’s a lot of fossil fuel use.

Lithium mining for batteries is extremely destructive to the environment.

Production of solar panels burns lots of fuel and produces many heavy metals. Just like with nuclear waste, improper disposal of these toxic elements can be devastating to the environment.

Of course, solar and wind are a big improvement over coal and natural gas. I dont want the perfect to be the enemy of the good, I just want to be realistic about the downfalls of these methods.

I believe, with our current technology, that nuclear is our cleanest and greenest option.

Accurate representation of US veterans.

The world finding another oil and gas reserve is like an alcoholic finding a secret door to a fully stocked bar.

We’re probably going to drink ourselves to death.

You’re not wrong, these Trump trial judges are bending over backwards to avoid any grounds for mistrial. In one sense they are doing the right thing inside the legal framework, but look at the downsides.

The public is watching how a rich and powerful man can game the system, even as a criminal defendant the system is working for him. Every incarcerated person can see the reality: they were treated with default brutality, but Trump is treated as royalty.

And even worse, they are allowing Trump to delay every verdict until after the election. If he wins the election he pardons himself, this is a horrible precedent for our democracy.

Even if we overlook the unimaginable horror these humans are enduring, this is terrible policy.

Sde Teiman detention is now the world’s leading terrorist recruitment center, and I have little doubt that its graduates will be seeking revenge on the West with suicidal furor.

Yes the Ford F-150 can be used to commute, but you dont see UPS purchasing a new fleet of F-150s to deliver packages. People dont usually accept that level of inefficiency when the price tag is measured in billions.

My point was that the US has a variety of child-shredding and apartment-exploding warplanes that they would be happy to sell to Israel, so why did Israel choose the plane-destroying version instead?

Other commenters gave a good answer: these are likely in the F-15E family, which are equipped to shred children and explode apartments.

Removed by mod

Biden lost my vote when he told the American people he saw pictures of 40 beheaded babies.

I still have hope he can earn it back- but that would require a significant, unlikely change in foreign policy.

I would start with MLK, collected essays, no one writes about protest more eloquently.

A Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn gives a great broad overview.

Death in the Haymarket by James Green is a great history of the first decades of the labor movement.

Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Leadership in Turbulent Times goes in depth on LBJ and the civil rights movement.

On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau for the classic philosopher’s take.

We’ve Got People by Ryan Grim details the successes and failures of the movement in the last decade.

You should educate yourself on the history of protest. The media has always been a serious impediment. There was never an “entire population” uniting or a “simple goal that others could get behind”. It was always extremely difficult. It often looked hopeless. Many people were killed in the streets, and others were brave enough to replace them.

Overall I think feeling helpless in the face of monumental challenges is normal. But closing your eyes and telling yourself “nothing can ever change, so why bother” is self-soothing and pathetic.

Things can change, and you can be a part of that positive change if you put in real effort.

What are we gonna do, vote?

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal” - Emma Goldman

In the last 100 years, protest movements have given us women’s suffrage, workers rights including the weekend and overtime pay, gay rights, civil rights, etc. History shows us that we can have positive change, but it’s not as easy as just voting.

We can see right now how protest movements are moderating the Democrat’s support of Israeli war crimes.