Musk claimed that a journalist just posting their names was committing a crime. Doing real harm to his little twerps would probably put you first in line for the Gulag

The one whose name sounds like a printer model

Nothing will fundamentally change

For the record, every major country is enagaged in Political Warfare against their enemies so I’ve said nothing controversial. Secondly, China is not inherantly bad or inherantly virtuous. They participate on the global stage just like everyone else, so you should ask yourself why you immediately dismiss China’s agency here. Finally, and most importantly, China’s approach to Political Warfare is laid out in the Three Warfares doctine, and has been well-documented. You can read more about it here if you’re really interested acting in good faith: https://sci-hub.ru/10.1080/01402390.2013.870071

If not, you can continue to label people who say things you don’t like as conspiracy theorists. Oh and I’m not a Democrat, I’m probably further to the left than most people on this app but I don’t worship or apologise for vast and powerful nation states. Whether that’s China or anyone else.

Edit: spelling

Or sarcasm, even

Their comment history is literally just Fox News. Covers the full gamut from trans athletes to Hunter Biden conspiracies. I didn’t know these people existed on Lemmy

I think it’s important to make such arguments without neglecting to point out that some very real, very desperate people are counting on the assistance USAID currently provides. People will die because of this.

A much less evil way to handle this is to reroute the funds to some benign organisation who will carry out the existing functions of USAID. But that’s not what Musk is doing. There’s no nuance. Much like his first month at Twitter, he’s just taking a wrecking ball to the government and seeing what’s left standing. Unfortunately the largest imperialist arms of the US government (State Department, DoD) are still left standing, while the one that is currently relied upon by some of the most desperate souls on the planet has been destroyed.

It was no secret that USAID was an arm of the State Department and used as a smokescreen for CIA business. But that won’t matter to all the mothers who will watch their infants die because Musk pulled the plug with no warning

That’s literally what USAID was for. For spreading anti-communist, pro-capitalist, sentiment by feeding the needy. Until the world’s evilest richest man got rid of it and showed how nakedly corrupt the US political system is

Let’s not forget that China is actively engaged in political and information warfare against the West. Any hypocrisy they can point out will just contribute to the fracturing of alliances between the West and the rest of the world. So it very much benefits them, strategically and financially, to point out stuff like this. Not that I think the people of Gaza will care about the selfish reasons a superpower might have for speaking up for them

Some insight from across the pond:

Our last Prime Minister was a British Indian from the Conservative party. Recent right wing and far-right members of cabinet have included many more Brits of Indian descent, including two of the most heinously anti-immigrant cabinet members we’ve ever had. One of them, Suella Braverman, ran for party leadership on an anti-immigrant platform, pointing out that Indians are the largest group who overstay their visas in the UK.

I think very similar things can explain why Usha Vance, Kash Patel, Vivek Ramaswamy and the like can align with an openly racist MAGA crowd:

1. Class matters more than race. Most of these people grew up privileged and don’t identify with the common immigrant or brown person’s experson

2. Power hungry people come from all backgrounds and will do whatever they need to get what they want (in Usha Vance’s case that’s being first lady one day)

3. Submitting to model minority status, as many well-to-do immigrant families from South Asia do, means implicitly accepting, and ultimately reflecting, white supremacist values

And as with all issues rooted in history, you can blame the British for some of this. A white supremacist world view where Indians stand above the darker races was introduced to India by the British over a century ago. The British wanted East Africa to become “the America of the Hindu” so they educated and trained a generation of Indian colonial administrators and enforcers. This world view of Indians as superior to others, if subordinate to whites, did not disappear with colonialism. A lot of the people who held those views came directly to Britain and their children became right-wing voters and politicians. The connection with the US is less of a straight line, but you can hear it when you listen to Vivek talk about African-Americans, for example.

you guys continue to gaslight what it effectively was

You keep using that word but I’m not sure you know what means.

What it wasn’t was an opportunity to change the system by making a political statement

I’m not even advocating for people to vote third party or boycott the election. I’m just making the argument that if a political party wants a group of people’s votes, they should court those people. If they fail to do so, and those people choose not to vote for them, the political party only has itself to blame

What does any of that have to do with what I said? I’m talking about the strategic decision the Democrats made to not make concessions to the people inflamed by the genocide in Gaza. In no way did I deny that Trump is far worse than Kamala/Biden. Pointing out that Kamala/Biden made a conscious decision to not move left on this issue isn’t gaslighting, not that you’re even using the term correctly

Democrats then: “We’ll win without appealing to Arabs in Michigan or anyone who demands we stop funding Israel. Shut them out of the DNC and scold them at every turn. Who cares how they react or that they’re forming PACs like ‘Arabs for Trump.’ We don’t need their votes.”

Democrats now: “We lost because you STUPID Palestine-lovers wouldn’t vote for us. Your country needed your votes, Gaza needed your votes. It’s actually your fault that we didn’t bother appealing to you.”

Trump lies like regular people breathe. Anyone who believed him was a fool. But I’m not looking forward to all of the sanctimonious dipshits making mean comments about Palestinians/Arabs who voted for him in the hope that he would be better than Biden.

People were desperate and the Democrats made damned sure they felt voiceless, so they threw their lot in with the devil in the hopes that some babies in Gaza would live to see their next birthday. Again, they were fools. But seeing people gleefully throw the impending (and continued) genocide in their faces makes me feel sick

This is actually hilarious. It looks like the entire sub is just people posting anti-Linux memes and being downvoted to death

For Lemmy just replace racism with unsolicited Linux advice

As someone else pointed out, the premise of this question is extremely faulty. Being user-friendly is one of the main advantages of proprietary software because they have teams of researchers and designers making sure that things are as frictionless as possible for the user. This isn’t to say they don’t use dark-patterns or engage in anti-consumer practices, but I’m certain that if you did a random sampling of F-Droid and the Play Store, you would find a lot more polished and user-friendly software on the Play Store than the FOSS apps on F-Droid

Trump’s obsession with McDonald’s is too well-documented to be a PR stunt. He absolutely did eat his order, and every sycophant by his side would have followed suit

The CEO of Skype would agree