Apparition of Jack

Everyone should just sit down and smoke a hookah

I think for Israel to wake up to what it’s doing and to stop the slaughter, they need to be convinced by the world that the horrors of antisemitism won’t be repeated again. In many ways I think the world has failed on this regard; the amount of explicit, violent antisemitism that still floats around the cultural mainstream is just too frightening for many Jews to accept. While it might have only been Nazi Germany that committed the Holocaust, the fact that the rest of the world is still seeped in even “causal” antisemitism tells me we’ve failed as a planet to assure them they won’t be hurt again. Jews are just people like anyone else; the fact that the word “Jew” itself is often shorthand for “greed”, “conniving” or even “subhuman” tells me we haven’t done enough to move on from the catastrophic biases that led to the desperate creation of Israel in the first place.

Israel vs Hamas is like an unstopped force meets an immovable object. Israel - and especially the more fanatical elements in it - will refuse to relinquish Israel at any cost and are prepared to wipe Palestine off the map to achieve it. They’re convinced only Israel can keep Jews safe from another Holocaust (and in a world rapidly seeing the rise of neo-Nazism it’s hard not to see why) so they’d never surrender it. Hamas (and Palestinians as a whole) on the other hand (rightfully) see Israel as the settler-colonial project that it is and will never forgive some random wealthy white European nation sprouting up on the land that has been theirs for over 1,400 years, not to mention the 75+ years of displacements, imprisonments, murders, checkpoints, wars, etc. Not to mention the religious zealotry on both sides who see each other as the spawn of Satan destined to be destroyed during some final climatic battle or whatever. It has to be one of the complex and screwed up geopolitical hotzones of the modern age. There’s very, very few easy answers here. I basically try to ignore it completely it’s so hard to dissect.

So, I don’t have any single purpose for making this, but the bill is about to become due. America’s complete refusal to invest in its citizens and instead focusing on giving all of its wealth to handful of unaccountable corporations and oligarchs is finally going to catch up with it. I don’t know how things are going to play out, but there’s going to be a lot of poverty, confusion, anger, injustice and downright MAGA insanity coming over the next few years. It won’t be hopeless, make no mistake, but unfortunately there’s no way to prevent the bullshit at this point. The absolute heartless, racist, corporatist insanity that has infected the minds of far too many Americans is going to wear out it’s grievance-based political momentum, and it’ll be regular people who suffer as a result. I can’t say for sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw an explosion of things like food lines, homelessness, untreated illnesses, protests, police crime, fist fights, family arguments, riots, racist judgement, sexism, migrant-blaming, mental illness, drug abuse, closed businesses, empty city streets, broken infrastructure, dirty water, and countless other forms of social rot. And again, this isn’t to catastrophise. Humanity has gone through worse in the past and come out on top. As much craziness there’ll be there also be moments of grace, truth, compassion and upliftment. If anything, this could be the impetus for society to finally create something better. But it’ll also be prudent to prepare for the chaos to come at the same time, so that you and your communities aren’t caught unaware. If there was ever a time to make peace with your family, your purpose, your life story, your friends, your community, your commitment to love and justice, and your faith in basic human decency, it is now. Godspeed. Edit: Feel free to lock / delete this thread if it doesn’t meet the site’s standards. I’m just throwing my thoughts out there.

@zazen Fantastic videos man. I’ll be sure to check them out.

America isn’t the wealthiest country on earth because it produces a bunch of cheap socks and wall clocks for its citizens. America is the wealthiest country on earth because it control and unparalleled global trade network that it sits at the top of, allowing it to purchase socks and wall clocks from countries that produce it for much cheaper. America is basically the Capitol district from the Hunger Games. What Trump is trying to do is turn all the Capitol socialites and businessmen into the coal miners and fishermen from Districts 11 and 12, lmao. It’s up there with Caligula declaring war on the sea with “out of touch edicts from corrupt despots”, lol 😂

It’s the Pandemic, stupid! All of these negative trends - teenage illiteracy, increased anti-social behaviour, incredibly high rates of mental illness - can all be traced to the collective trauma of the pandemic. For about two years the entire world was shuttered inside, forced to communicate online, devoid of all other human contact and for most people faced with the prospect of sickness and mortality for the first time in their lives. This wouldve hit doubly hard for children. It was barely five years ago and we haven’t barely even spoken a whisper about it since. For society to stop self-destructing we first all need to admit how much it fucked us all up, lol.

Get back to me when any of these tinpots promote democracy.

And y’all made fun of me when I said bring back Christian Democracy

Have some damn faith in the system, man. The US - even under Trump - isn’t Russia. There are countless judges, activists, politicians, assistants, aides, regular people, etc all resisting this insanity. Even if you do get arrested at a protest (and that’s a huge if), there are countless things that need to go wrong before you end up with life behind bars. Yes, this requires a degree of faith and courage. But no great moment in history was won without these. I’ve said it before but ultimately our fight isn’t just a political one, but a moral and philosophical one at that. By resisting non-violently we’re showing that humanity is fundamentally better than the corrupt kleptocrats the Trump admin portrays us as. And like the others pointed out - there’s safety in numbers. Is not just you vs the riot police. It’s millions upon millions of furious, rational Americans, activated through a common sense of humanity, truth and kindness, working together to take down this regime. We’re in this together.

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?