There’s a long list of reasons why he attacked Iran and most of them are not distractions (although I do agree one of the reasons is to distract from domestic crises in general, Epstein being the least of his domestic worries atm, he’s above the law already).

This is a textbook US imperialist move, coordinated with Israel, to address imperial issues that existed long before the Epstein files were a mainstream story: maintaining US hegemony and securing israeli military dominance in the region, preventing Iran from becoming a regional pole aligned with Cihna, trying to open iranian markets to western capital, and projecting military strength to make the military-industrial complex side of his political supporters happy. Those goals have been discussed in US policy circles for decades, and happened now not because of the Epstein files, but because of the timing: Iran is going through an internal political crisis that is ripe for imperial exploitation.

If anything, seeing a distraction from the Epstein files in everything Trump does is the distraction from what he is actually doing.

Flattening the analysis to “Epstein distraction” when the topic actually matters to leftist internationalism around the world is some lazy memerot-brained liberal shit straight out of Gavin Newsom’s twitter. He doesn’t need to bother with distractions thanks to you and others who are doing it for him by seeing Epstein in everything. The mountain hidden behind the Epstein files hill is that he seized so much power that he doesn’t need to fear justice anymore, and is now trying to mess with future elections to keep that power. People are in denial about how much control he has already seized. Epstein files won’t matter until he is removed from power.

The guy did a coup and suffered no consequences, and showed everyone that he is above the law over anv over, why do you think he fears consequences for the Epstein files?

Not everything is a distraction.

Yup that’s the one!

On a long term quest to make more “shareable with a wider public” versions of some smug ideology classics.

Major capitalist countries are extremely authoritarian, the issue is not inherent to any ideology or mode of production.

Capitalism has the need for a strong privately owned military-industrial complex to protect the assets of its ruling class. This complex needs to sell weapons to sustain itself financially, so violence, war, repression, imperialism, colonialism are natural consequences of capitalism and don’t even need any “personality disorders” to happen.

“But authoritarian communism happened” gets an “eh ok sure whatever” from me given the state of the capitalist world, only a few elites within the imperial core are living a life free of authoritarianism right now (and that’s only because they don’t really notice it).

Thanks for correctly understanding the plight of orangites.

Good catch, I do draw in MSPaint :)

Lemmy users thinking they’re better than redditors but upvoting this

Thanks !

🫡

If you want to reuse it instead of the antisemitic one, I’ve uploaded a blank and more neutral version on my templates page ;)

Would be the case if they were able to read/understand.

They seem to just be stubborn and dumb.

I was referring to MLK’s thoughts on white moderates’ tendency to hijack/coopt civil rights activism and neuter it, not to anything he might have said about open borders (which he opposed afaik).

First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;” who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a “more convenient season.”

Truth bomb tbh

People will stop calling you a racist when you stop acting like one by repeating racist talking points. It’s in your hands.

We have the means to feed everyone on the planet. We decided not to. You are this close to understanding imperialism and capitalism, but I’m afraid that from what we’ve witnessed so far, you don’t have the ability to work both of your neurons hard enough to understand it.

Ellis Island opens in 1892, over a century after the USA were created. There were no federal immigration controls before that. States handled arrivals loosely, if it all. Most migrants simply got off their boat and stayed.

During its first decades, Ellis Island was not a modern border control but rather a filter for contagious disease and extreme incapacity (eg. they didn’t want sick or handicapped people, only able bodied workers). Admission rate was 98%, it was triage motivated by stopping the recurring pandemics in the dense urban environment of NYC.

US border control starts in 1921-1924 with the quota acts, although you could arguably say the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act is the real birth of it (that act did not come with the means to enforce it though).

Aristide Zolberg’s “A Nation by Design” goes through all of this. Read it and educate yourself instead of making a fool of yourself on the Internet. I must once again insist that you stop discussing history online. You will get clowned for it.

You don’t have to reply twice to the same comment.

You already made it clear that you do not understand the difference between military and civilian structures, and have a negative understanding of political history. Don’t need to clarify, we all saw it and understood.

That fetish of yours for public humiliation is not my kink, sorry. You’ll have to find someone else to continue the roleplay with.

The Great Wall and Hadrian’s Wall both served the same purposes:

• Deterring raids and armed incursions, a purely military role
• Marking the end of military control (eg. on the other side of this line you’re on your own)
• Signaling than anything within those walls would be subject to taxation (the price of military protection)
• Enabling signaling (chains of beacons/towers to warn in case of military invasions)

They were not designed to stop individual peasants or merchants. Those walls all had gates to let them in and out. In Frontiers of the Roman Empire, CR Whittaker goes through archaeological records to better understand Hadrian’s Wall and its role, and did not find any form of deterrence against migrants or any historical record showing any individual border control.

I am being condescending because you are being stubborn. I see no reason to be nice when you are speaking confidently about a topic you very clearly know nothing about, which happens to be one of my fields of expertise. You’d probably do the same if you were in my shoes, it is very frustrating to see misinformation spread on something you have academic knowledge of. If you are unwilling to learn and want to cling to your modern preconceptions of what a border is, then I must ask you to get the fuck out off radical leftist spaces and stop spreading your racist propaganda. You will never be welcome there as long as you hold those views.