More companions.

It’s funny how some people go on and on about the importance of democracy except when primary elections don’t go their way, at which point either the DNC rigged everything, or the DNC needs to step in to ‘fix’ the wrong choice the primary voters made. Sometimes they offer both simultaneously, because fuck consistency.

Like in what world are these issues comparable?

Everyone who already knows that Trump is a moron can’t actually develop a lower opinion of him.

Anyone who doesn’t know that Trump is a moron is too dense to parse anything more complex than a ten-second Fox News soundbite.

Thus, Biden giving a mediocre performance hurts Biden much more than Trump doing his normal word-salad oral diarrhea hurts Trump.

It’s not fair or logical, but it’s the way things work at the moment.

People keep disregarding the substance of his arguments

Speaking as someone who thinks that much of the doomerism around the debate is premature…

These debates aren’t about substance. They’re about optics. And Biden didn’t put on a good show last night. The only saving grace is that he was up against Trump.

The frightening realisation to take away is that most people don’t have a visceral horror of fascism in the way that progressives on Mastodon do.

Oh, don’t worry. Many of the people on the Fediverse don’t have a visceral horror of fascism either. To them it’s “Both sides are fascist” because otherwise they might feel uncomfortable letting Trump win, and wouldn’t feeling uncomfortable about that just be awful.

I’ll edit it then.

“Would you like to kill me? Jk jk! Unless…? 👉👈🥺”

Uh, I don’t exactly know how you square that with the large number of countries which successfully overthrew their own dictators in the past century.

Death sentence does not, and has never, worked as a deterrent.

The death penalty doesn’t work on irrational actors - ie the desperate and the mentally unwell. Those who commit most crimes. The death penalty as a deterrent to rational actors (such as opportunistic politicians) is very much part of the mental calculus that goes into decision-making.

It’s also super fucked to say “sometimes you gotta kill a guy cause too many people agree with him.”

No, that’s actually pretty normal. People agreeing with genocidal dictators is a bad thing, and taking out the dictator is greatly preferable to taking out all the people who agree.

I guess Gale’s, maybe? But the other three make their intentions clear pretty early on.

Espionage outside of wartime is still done through the civilian courts, and treason trials (such as for an ousted genocidal dictator) would likely be done through civilian courts as well.

But yes, they’re generally more military/extreme edge cases that I feel the death penalty is warranted in. Murder? Theft? Taking up two parking spaces? Prison is good enough.

Arce confronted the general commander of the Army — Juan José Zúñiga, who appeared to be leading the rebellion — in the palace hallway, as shown on video on Bolivian television. “I am your captain, and I order you to withdraw your soldiers, and I will not allow this insubordination,” Arce said.

https://www.npr.org/2024/06/26/nx-s1-5020668/bolivia-coup-attempt

1. The death penalty is an important bargaining tool with the spies of other countries in regards to serious cases of espionage.

2. It may be necessary to apply the death penalty in the case of a state in dire circumstances in which the release or escape of a prisoner may be regarded as deadly to the commonwealth - such as a dictator with large minority support or support amongst the elite still remaining being prosecuted for their crimes.

3. As deterrent in extreme matters of desertion, war crimes, or crimes against peace.

“I’m in charge here.”

“Oh, fuck, you are? Let me check my chain of command- damn. Yep, says right here. I’ll go back to my barracks now and wait to be arrested.”

Peak noncredibility, I love how weird the world is some days.

One of many reasons I oppose the death penalty for almost all crimes.

… is something important enough to kill a 100 JFKs for.

To the Israelis, maybe. To Americans, Israeli money has become a polarizing issue over the past decade.

It’s a state sporting F35s and such.

Man, plenty of US allies are involved in the F-35 program and the US doesn’t bend over backwards for them. It’s really not that important in the grand scheme of US-Israeli relations.

Contrary to the delusions of realpolitik types, international relations are a matter of relations, not purely moment-to-moment vulture capitalist behavior. Israel is coasting on internal factors within the US government at present - the lack of actual mutual loyalty means that, should those internal factors (Israeli dark money and the political influence of evangelical millenarians) ever weaken, the institutions of the US will see little reason not to throw Israel to the wolves.

And it was a west-leaning country in a region full of oil and big trade routes.

Other way around - their loyalties weren’t firmly lodged with either of the superpowers, so the US in the 70s and 80s put a lot of time and effort into wooing them.

Their loyalties still aren’t lodged with anyone, but we keep sucking them off anyway.

So… no different than the Russian troops?

Oh no

Not Mountain Dew

Just say no, kids