Not a justification for that either. “Seizing” ships is another word for piracy.

Waste it doing random shit. If I was in your position I’d start getting through my watch and read list. Oh and learn a new language, that never hurts.

I mean, yes, but this “victory” came at the cost of two hundred thousand dead, God knows how many wounded, twenty years they could’ve used to develop their country and even tighter Taliban control than before the US invasion. Afghans managed to kick the US out, but they did not succeed at defending anything. If I was Venezuelan my lesson from this would be “absolutely don’t get into war with the US,” because such a war would leave their country in ruin just like Afghanistan.

If they do that will you protect them from the wrath of the US war machine? Exactly.

What? You’re not making any sense.

there’s simply 0% chance that any family anywhere in this country is living in poverty with that kind of income.

The original Substack addresses this point, but the short of it is: Most income gains from 35k to 100k are cancelled out by a loss of government benefits, so there’s a lot less difference between these than you’d expect. You only start making real gains starting from 100k. Now a family making 100k will have expendable income that’s true, but the vast majority of its income will still go towards essentials so it’s still one emergency away from insolvency.

Edit: This means that a family with two incomes and two young children making 50k is getting a market price equivalent of 50k in government benefits, so we can crudely approximate families straddling the poverty line as making 100k net. In that case the difference between the effective official poverty line and the proposed poverty line is a large but realistic 40%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#Poverty_income_thresholds

TL;DR: “The U.S. poverty line is calculated as three times the cost of a minimum food diet in 1963, adjusted for inflation.”

Uh… right where they are? The American welfare state is insufficient across the board, so it needs to be strengthened across the board, and employers across the board should be forced to pay living wages.

I mean those are technicians, not factory workers. For those see: https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes519199.htm

Or the middle option: She’s incompetent but this is what the people guiding her want.

I mean depends on execution but giving members even a cursory view of socialist literature and ideas would make it a worthwhile affair. This is the sort of thing that would have real teeth if widely implemented.

Don’t join the army and don’t be a cop, especially not in 2025. Odds are you’ll be sent to beat up protesters.

As a wise man once said: Things will have to get worse before they get better. The average American will need to suffer a lot more before they’re ready to think about taking their guns to protests, let alone using them.

Africa moment.

This is what happens when people from the other side of the world stick their nose where it doesn’t belong.

I don’t call anyone by their family relation except my grandparents, everyone else (including my parents) gets called by their name. That said this is absolutely not normal where I live and nobody does it other than me and my immediate-ish family. I think it’s because I didn’t grow up with, say, mom calling dad “dad” or anything of the sort.

/Middle Eastern

Based on policy? Yes. Based on beliefs and values? No. For historical reasons European countries have a stronger welfare state, but that’s mostly inertia. Compared to America Europe is still in its Southern Strategy phase, and given the rapid success of the far right I’d say the nationalism is actually worse, in part due to America having never been an ethnostate. Stuff that either doesn’t find purchase or remains restricted to the right in America sees a lot more popular acceptance in, say, France and Germany. This is the case for anti-immigration sentiment, for example, and don’t get me started on French laicite. The American right being more mature and having had more time to organize* shouldn’t be confused for Americans being more rightwing in their values.

*The modern European far right has only really had ammunition since the 2015 immigration crisis, while in America it dates back to the Civil Rights Act in 1964.

Idk American geopolitical rivals are probably laughing their asses off looking at him.

Iraq war moment.

His history is… uh… concerning, to say the least (though the Nazi tattoo thing is bogus), but still can’t be worse than a corporate dem.