the main reason to expand unions in developed countries, particularly the us, is to *decrease* the ammount of union-related political and policy dysfunction - like, the automakers don't get to dictate tariff policy if steel workers are also a union

Tocqueville, who I am sure Americans have read

Our ten point plan, which I am sure the president of the United States read and understood before agreeing to...

Kind of but Kamala was also happy and that didn’t do miracles for her

Feels like it’s getting increasingly worse
Back then you might get away with ignoring public opinion on a few issues of limited salience, but now you can get into a war that blows up the entire global trading system without even bothering to justify it to your citizens

On the other site it feels like people always cherry pick those replies to characterize it as all of Bluesky even though plenty of us over here think those people are freaks too

"the war is a distraction from the epstein files" in the same way that "cutting your own lung out is a distraction from your melanoma diagnosis"

ill be honest, mamdani is making me kinda hopeful. maybe the lib policy wonks and the anti-establishment leftists can get along after all

It also sucks that some leftists will only see a vindication of their stances on issues like Gaza in Biden’s loss while failing to see this bigger picture

I’m not sure people who aren’t on the other site can really imagine how bad left wing antisemitism has gotten over there
It’s like Elmo’s algorithm destroyed their brains and now you get called a Zionist if you don’t want to say shit like ZOG and goycattle

50 years of Republican government, encapsulated.

Apropos of nothing, these sorts of parallels always hide more than they reveal. Consider the following: if you slotted in, say, "Tibetan" and "Chinese" into the post Joel is replying to, would you still feel as neutral as some of you do about expressions of omnicidal hostility?

This, combined with "vice signaling" (taking pride in antisocial behavior) has given us the reign of the Stupid Asshole, something most people are against, but can only be remedied if we're not too polite to talk about it

transphobia is the gateway drug of bigotry, you start out getting some terfy oxycodone for your broken leg and next thing you know you're freebasing the Protocols behind arbys

Well yes I think the BBC deserves a lot more anger for not stopping the harm than he does for an imperfect apology
If someone pushes you and makes you hit me, I’d be more mad at whoever pushed you than I would be at you even if you didn’t apologize

That seems more like a conversation to be had in private with whoever was harmed and, well, he can have it with the actors but not with every spectator

This isn’t like asking someone to apologize for, like, getting drunk and saying mean things
It’s like asking someone to apologize because they hit you while they were having a seizure
There’s no accountability to be demanded when there’s no agency

The man has literally spent his entire life apologizing for something he is literally incapable of controlling yet people’s reaction to an incident that exposed him to a hate mob is that his apology wasn’t “good enough”
Like were the other 23948810 not good enough too or

Cassie Pritchard @hecubian_... 23h Yeah the distinction between "accidental/ unintentional" vs "involuntary" is eluding a lot of people in the discourse right now. We've all hurt people by accident, so it's relatable and we reason from our own experience. *Involuntarily* hurting someone is much rarer Cassie Pritchard @hecubian_... 23h ... I think a lot of times people do apologize for *involuntary* harm anyway when it happens, but I don't think you can be reasonably said to be *obligated* to apologize for it in the same way as you actually usually are obligated to for *unintentional* but agentic harm

Cassie Pritchard @hecubian_devil X.com If I hit you with my car because I looked at my phone, that's an accident but I'm still morally culpable despite it being unintentional. If someone hits me from behind and pushes my car into you, that's involuntary and I'm genuinely not at fault in any sense. Cassie Pritchard @hecubian_... 23h Or to take the second person out of the equation, if you have a heart attack and pass out at the wheel and hit someone, that's *involuntary*. It would be pretty silly to ask someone to apologize for having a heart attack while driving, right?

I’ll just leave this here

And I still think comparisons between physical and verbal tics are always difficult because avoiding a situation where your physical tic can put someone in danger doesn’t normally require forgoing social situations altogether

When I read this, what I think is he should have been more explicit that his words can still cause hurt even if he doesn’t mean them, but I also don’t get the impression that he was unaware of that and worded things that way on purpose because he thinks it’s no big deal

But just as you’re asking people to have empathy for the black men who suffered a hurtful action, I would ask you to have empathy for someone who has had to apologize for his condition his entire life to not interpret his words in the most uncharitable way possible

I absolutely believe that would have been the best apology[…]

I also feel like even though “words cannot hurt me” is naive thinking, there is a clear difference in that verbal offenses are hurtful *because* someone means them
That doesn’t mean it won’t be hurtful to hear the N word but the effect is clearly not the same as it being used by a genuine racist

It would help if you could be explicit about what you believe instead of dancing around the issue every time you’re questioned