this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
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politics

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[–] [email protected] 384 points 1 month ago (6 children)

Wow, a hugely wealthy oligarchical capitalist facilitating the rise of fascism?

How completely unpredictable, with no historical precedent whatsoever!

Who could have possibly expected this?!

[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 month ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 92 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Man... that's one of the things that seems like a conspiracy theory to a great many people, but just actually is true.

Dude literally got caught doing massive amounts of money laundering for literal Nazis during WW2 and by all rights should have been convicted of treason.

Its like how most people don't know that IBM machines enabled the Germans to tabulate and keep track of the holocaust, that their machines spit out the UIDs that were tattooed onto the victims at the death camps....

... I think that 'War is a Racket' by Smedley Butler really needs to be added to the basic K-12 curriculum alongside 1984 and Brave New World...

But oh oops, the Republicans already destroyed our education systems, nevermind.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

And definitely not Woodrow Wilson!

[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 month ago (3 children)

How much money do these fuckers need before they are content enough to not rat fuck American democracy so they can eek out a few percent more on their billions?

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago (1 children)

... The answer is infinity.

Capitalism requires constant growth, constant extraction, constant return in investment, constant tendency toward monopolies and wealth disparity until you end up with a neo feudalistic caste society.

You can either attempt to restrain and regulate the system, which we are currently doing a rather poor job of, overthrow the system, which is nigh impossible given the precarity of the average prole, or you can just watch as we head closer and closer to... some kind of hybrid of the handmaids tale and elysium.

... Or, maybe, escape to a slightly less insane foreign country, but you're gonna need a lot of money or a very lucrative skill set as an employee to do that as anything other than an illegal immigrant.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago

You know, I always wondered where the professionals ended up in Elysium. Like there are the medical professionals taking care of the earthlings, but the life saving machines are in Elysium so they aren't needed up there.

But like, what about the software folks? Like there's an epic shit ton of software going on in that movie that just kind of gets handwaved.

Passification is handled by robots and crazy humans. Other than the one executive who comes down, where are his direct reports? There is no way he was interested in the factory management, that would be a middle management job. And then what about accountants? Researchers designing the tech on Elysium?

It never really made a whole lot of sense that Elysium was just the rich. They can't just "get" everything they want up there, it had to come from earth.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Not until they are the god king.

Capitalism eventually turns into feudalism.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

No, capitalism is feudalism with loot boxes! Because I could win the lottery.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

How much does a single round of ammunition cost these days?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

7.62 x 51mm goes for around a dollar a round.

5.56 x 45mm is about 50 cents.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Jesus that's a lot more than I would have expected.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I'm sure its Obama's fault, somehow.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Well yeah, he had the audacity to be black, which scared bubba and jimbo so much they had to buy a year's salary worth of bullets before ObAmA tAkEs ThEiR gUnS

Also, crickets when Trump said he'd take the guns and worry about the courts afterwards.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

It was already teetering but Sandy Hook is what pretty much locked permanently high ammo prices

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The motto of the Post is literally “Democracy dies in Darkness”, and it was adopted immediately after Trump was elected. It is deliberately positioned as pro-Democrat and anti Trump. I didn’t have a high esteem of Bezos, but I am still disappointed.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Nobody else finds this ominous? Besos was not exactly Trumps friend. Why is he being a bitch now? What does he know what's changed

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I don't know about you, but I get this feeling there is a massive coordinated campaign between the monied interests behind the scenes. The Republican party is unpopular, by a lot. Voters are super pissed off about abortion, and it's consistently been a losing issue for the GOP that they can't help but double down on. Donald Trump is a criminal that a not-insignificant portion of the population think should be in prison. SCOTUS is openly corrupt, Kamala pulled in over a billion dollars last quarter, while Trump's small-dollar donations have all but dried up.

Yes, the wealthy typically support the GOP, but like... why this election are they going so hard for Trump? If Kamala appoints a competent AG, there's a very real chance Musk gets hit with election interference charges. Bezos had to know that this was going to lose WaPo subs, because the right doesn't trust WaPo thanks to years of distrust sown by Trump so there was no way this wasn't going to cause a financial hit. Ditto for the LA Times. So just... why? The whole vibe of the thing just feels off.

Edit: also not to mention the praising Hitler thing, the number of his former staff who are endorsing Harris, the number of former and current members of the GOP who are endorsing Harris, the fact that he's been adjudicated as a rapist, his obvious sundowning, his "enemies within" remarks, wanting to send the military after his perceived enemies, his desire to see Israel completely obliterate what's left of Palestine...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Almost makes you think they’re throwing it to the criminal so the rest of them can continue being criminals, doesn’t it?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

Money is stronger than any ethics or morals billionaires pretend to have

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

If trump actually...shudder...wins, he could do as he's said and bring down the fascist military hammer on any type of dissidents. These billionaire ghouls don't care what happens to the country or world, they just care about their hoard.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The guy that "gifted" millions to political commentators from CNN tries to influence politics? No way!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Some real bald-headed behavior right here.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

The world is full of surprises, my friend.