I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but what the fuck is normal? Nobody’s really normal. Even the so-called neurotypical are riddled with undiagnosed disorders. Normalcy is just a social fiction. Don’t let it limit your options.

I think that you’re probably right. I also think I may be projecting a bit, and conflating my country’s apathetic embrace of fascism with my own executive dysfunction. Seems all of a piece. Anyhow, thanks for the words.

The thing is, it can be really hard to accurately assess why you feel an aversion to things, and whether or not that aversion is misplaced. I can come up with scads of seemingly reasonable objections to, for example, going to the gym. That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t benefit from it.

Overcoming an innate aversion that you’ve convinced yourself is a part of who you are can be life-changing.

The big caveat there is that knowing things doesn’t change the world. Scads of people are acutely aware of the problems facing society—maybe more than at any time in history. Vanishingly few feel empowered to do anything about it.

I’m not pro-ignorance by any means; education is the silver bullet. But we urgently need to find better ways of translating our spectacular surfeit of knowledge into individually actionable mechanisms of social change.

I can see how it’s easier to fuck someone than to actively listen and (at least pretend to) empathize with them. It’s easier to go without the former than the latter, as well.

I’ve been blissfully unaware of this trend, because I’m not on any other social media! I get that posting this is a bit of smug self-satisfaction, which nobody likes, but I feel strongly that corporate social media is a scourge, and that far too many people farm out their critical thinking to random “content creators.” Black-box content algorithms are not doing you any favors, and they will affect your thinking if you subject yourself to them.

He is, to quote Dan McCoy, a prolific motherfucker! I always enjoy his work.

Trust you to bring such a granularly appropriate reaction gif. 'Preciate ya, ummthatguy.

Downplaying 9/11 as one of ‘a handful of retaliatory strikes against US interests.’

The language is provocative, but factually accurate.

Not even vaguely what fucking happened.

Yeah, it seemed plausible, but I couldn’t find any evidence at all that this took place. Fair enough.

Fucking all of this.

Yeah, it’s some real tanky-tonk incendiary language. And the timeline’s all wrong. The US-backed regime started in 2001, and lasted until 2021. Seems like they just grabbed the first couple of years from the wikipedia article.

That we sold to both sides of the Iran-Iraq War is undeniable; the idea that the war itself was our fault and that 9/11 is just ‘blowback’ for that is fucking insane.

It does appear that the current historical consensus is that the Carter administration did not give Saddam the proverbial green light for the invasion. However, there are more than enough contemporaneous claims to the contrary to convince anyone who’d rather believe that they did.

Christ, I don’t even know where to begin.

I mean, fuck the house of saud. And the US does share responsibility for all their depredations, just as it shares fucking bibi’s.

We were involved in the violent overthrow of many democracies throughout the years, this I agree on. But funny enough, Egypt isn’t one of them. So this had potential to be a good point, but failed by being posted by someone utterly detached from reality.

Yeah, the CIA may have helped coordinate the 1952 coup against the Egyptian monarchy, but doesn’t appear to have precipitated the 2011 overthrow of Mubarak. Happily, this gets me out of diving into whether or not Mubarak’s government could plausibly be called a democracy. Plenty of truth there, otherwise; a misstep, as you say.

'Whatabout’ing 9/11 by implicitly arguing against it as a ‘violent act of terrorism’ as originally quoted, and then trying to justify it by the implicit comparison of 9/11 with the French fucking Revolution of the oppressed lower classes finally striking back against their oppressor.

Yeah, the French Revolution parallel is a real stretch.

Do you really not see any of these as objectionable.

Oh, of course I do. I just have really low expectations when it comes to the veracity of claims made by lemmy tankies in general, inclusive of underpantsweevil. I don’t disagree with you—I was just mildly surprised to see your response, given the average factual content of any of their posts.

Thank you for taking the time to respond! I hadn’t read about some of this stuff for a while, and wouldn’t have otherwise. Best of luck to you.

Old underpantsweevil’s hinges are certainly quite wobbly, but in this particular comment they’re simply providing some historical context for the 9/11 attacks. I don’t know how fair it is to describe the NA regime as brutal, relative to Afghanistan’s current and former governments, but that’s a pretty minor quibble.

They’ve stopped short of claiming that the attacks were justified, and the assertions made are broadly true. What in particular do you find objectionable, if I may ask?

Oh, for sure. It’s just that there’s no actual cleavage in the picture. And the meme is about cleavage. It’s not as if there aren’t millions of images that would’ve suited the meme better. I can’t fathom the thinking behind selecting this image, unless the person making it either didn’t know what cleavage was, or maybe thought a picture with cleavage was too ribald for a meme about cleavage.

I feel like whoever made this didn’t really know what cleavage was.

Perhaps the Balrog underestimated Gandalf, thinking it could cast him into the abyss, then fly back up to deal with the rest of the Fellowship. Alternatively, maybe it calculated that its best chance of defeating the wizard was to grapple with him at close quarters. Either way, the Balrog falling doesn’t necessarily mean that it wasn’t capable of flight.