Apparition of Jack

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/21/pope-francis-dies I’m not that old but he was easily my favourite pope in my lifetime. His commitment to refugees, peace, the environment and criticising excessive greed were always inspirational to follow. It’ll be interesting to see who comes next. Rest in Peace, Bergoglio 🙏 😢

“Why should I care about slavery abolition? Freeing slaves is just some radical leftist agenda. Slavery is as much a part of God as emancipation. I will not become a political advocate; if you can’t accept slavery as part of truth that’s YOUR problem” - Leo Gura if he was around in 1860

- Mao Zedong 🤣🤣

Aww man, you’re calling it quits already? Don’t worry, we’re not giving up on you that easily we’ll get you to see the light yet!

Who brought Tucker Carlson into it? No one mentioned him but you. And if you’re worried about somehow being as bad as him, don’t be lmao, you’re a much better man than he is and always will be. You don’t have to be so hard on yourself all the time. You’ve legitimately helped countless people man, me included. No one could look at the broad strokes of your life and say that you’ve done anything but try to help the world. But you’re still dealing with some unresolved issues, and one that’s holding both your own and those around you’s development. And once you deal with them, oh man, that’s where the real fun begins

How can you be so sure they aren’t? I’m beginning to think you’re wrapped yourself up in some sort of warped solipsism dude. Your insights are magnificent, truly, but it really feels like you’re missing some sort of crucial, basic recognition of Other somewhere down the line.

What good is truth if there’s no one left to share it with?

The Left > the Right dude. Yes it’s not above criticism but when one side is fighting to give millions of people living wages and one side is fighting to throw seniors on the streets, then there is no moral comparison. Your commitment to “debate-at-all-costs” is actually a huge personal failing of yours dude, honestly. You’re happy to sit on your millions of dollars and private bunk houses while countless people around the country suffer under this administration. There’s a reason why the poem includes the line “and I didn’t speak out, for I was not one of them.” Sitting on the sidelines during times of great injustice is on par with being complicit in those injustices. Get off your high horse dude. The GOP are insane. They need to go down. All of this aggro devil’s advocate nonsense is taking away crucial energy from resisting Trump and his bootlickers.

Maybe stop beating up on us first? With your resources, wealth, platform, ethnicity etc you could be a powerful ally in defeating Trumpism Leo but instead you spend all your energy telling us the same tired right-wing talking points we’ve heard a million times before. I don’t get it.

And what we’re is saying is that “leftist goofy shit” is seriously overblown by the corporate media so that anyone actually fighting to increase people’s material well-being is associated with giving dogs sex change surgeries or something instead. Like Emerald said Kamala actually ignored identity issues during her campaign and instead focused on a platform of expanding health coverage, giving new home buyers government grants etc (you know, things that will actually solve society's problems), but she still lost because the media convinced voters that 400 billion gay terrorists from Somalia would invade the country if Trump didn’t win and we’d all be having circlejerks in churches instead. Trump’s vile economic platform won in large part because people were too distracted by culture war noise to see what he and his cronies (Elon, Thiel etc) were actually going to do to the material and financial makeup of the country instead. Million’s of people’s social security, Medicaid, hell even just basic fucking jobs are at risk because enough people thought there was some secret trans cabal lurking around every corner to turn the frogs gay.

I mean, let’s not also forget that the right-wing have a bunch of (much worse) culture war bullshit too. So many Republicans support lowering the legal marriage age. Basically every MAGA dipshit agrees with breaking the First Amendment and forcing nationalist Christianity on everyone. All of them would make criticising America illegal if they could. If anything they’re the ones trying to drastically police the world’s culture; they’re just too stupid and self-interested to admit this. EDIT: Like, why is it better that trans people are banned from the military than being allowed freedom of religion, freedom of conscience etc just because some of those trans people made the boomer army receptionist uncomfortable? Why do we accept deep seated racism, sexism, homophobic etc as preferable to banning kids learning about gay people in schools? MAGA is an authoritarian nationalist movement, why are we going to bat for them?

The problem is Leo is at the end of the day, corporate corruption and vested interests are a 10000x bigger problem than whatever minute problems leftist ideology will ever have. People will continue to elect sentient toads like Trump because they think a few trans athletes is a bigger problem than millions of Americans having no health insurance. Their lives will continue to get worse and worse whilst the actual, deep-seated problems in society go unresolved. Sure, there might be like, a handful of progressive activists who are out of touch, but I’d much rather a world where everyone has decent healthcare and education if it means a few young people get too on board made-up internet sexualities than a world where trans people are banned from public service whilst everyone starves, goes homeless and ails. We need to provide for people’s basic needs first. After that then we can debate gender and sexuality all we want, but not before.

More people need to take a page out of Bernie’s book. Simply ignore or reframe the question entirely. If some dipshit culture war commentator says “do you support men in women’s sports?”, just turn the discussion on its head by saying something like “look [commentator], I know the people at home agree, whether you’re male, female, trans, not trans, we’re all suffering under corporate greed, we’re all suffering a lack of healthcare, etc.” Its not hard guys lol just talk about the shit that wins people over.

I mean, crime still exists, doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to go out and rob a car. Everyone has their biases. That’s natural. I even said I’ve struggled with mine. But biases can be overcome, and changing how you talk about people is one of the best ways to do that. Like, why keep using the words “tranny” or “n*****” if you’re not interested in reinforcing those ideas yourself?

I’m not sure I follow.

Have you ever heard of a self-fulfilling prophecy? How is this any different to someone in the 70s saying “there’s no reason to stop saying the N word (hard “r”) because people just say it anyway.” Or someone in Germany in the 30s saying “there’s no reason to stop making Jewish jokes because we all just make them anyway.” Now I’m not saying that trans people are in the same position as Jews in Nazi Germany, but my point is that language has power. Just because society (as it stands) repeats certain words doesn’t mean you have to, especially if they have negative connotations. For someone so in contact with the human mind you seem to have a hard time grasping basic social wisdom man

Well, as full people and not just the butt of a joke / shallow stereotypes. Think the difference between “trans woman” and “girl with a dick” for instance.

@Leo Gura You’re technically correct, and if I’m being completely honest with myself I’m guilty of being off-put by things like tampons in men’s bathrooms, but you could also argue that just showing basic respect even on discussion forums will normalise queer identities more and lay the groundwork for acceptance down the line, right? Like, just on a personal level, I’ve overcome a lot of my own biases towards trans / gay people just by listening to grounded, respectful language about them and not just reducing them to silly jokes, even if they’re not meant to be malicious. We might not have widespread social acceptance for trans people today but if we continue to treat them like full human beings maybe in 10-20 years down the line their existence won’t seem so weird. Be the change you want to see in the world and all that, no?

The problem is that the Right overrwhelmingly has horrible economic policies (destroying social security, neglecting infrastructure, tax breaks for the elites, etc) but they use culture war noise to keep people from voting in their material self-interest. Ive always been of the opinion that 90% of politics is material - people generally speaking don’t care about if you’re gay, trans, a minority etc, all they really want to know is will their kids have a good life and will they be able to pay the bills. Republicans don’t offer that. They offer the exact opposite. MAGA conservativism is a death cult that demands the blood sacrifice of countless working peoples on the high altar of Greed. Until most Americans realise that, countless people will go bankrupt, homeless, go into medical debt, develop chronic illnesses, fall into crime, drug abuse, prostitution, and even die as all the wealth in society is funnelled to a group of sadistic sociopaths at the top. It’s like the collapse of the USSR but a million times worse, because this time it’s self-inflicted. God Americans are stupid. Sorry. End rant.

Why do Democrats not simply go on the attack? Spam scary images of Trump with his terrible policies plastered in big red letters everywhere. Literally just remind people time and time again how evil he is. Conservatives always do this shit because it works, why are progressives / liberals so adverse to this?

@Twentyfirst This is insane, even the most delirious MAGA cultists wouldn’t want Russia and Europe at war. In fact it’s pretty much only Putin who wants to keep fighting at this point.

He’s so fucking stupid

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/livestory/canada-election-liberals-will-form-next-government-cbc-news-projects-9.6738893 Good news for sanity, humanism and democracy worldwide. Almost like siding with narcissistic fascists is a losing strategy

A lot is certainly happening but be careful not to mistake the ego’s fears for insights. I wouldn’t be surprised if big things are on the horizon but how or what they are exactly no one can ultimately know. Best just to stay grounded and take things as they come.