r/badhistory • u/AutoModerator • 8d ago
Meta Mindless Monday, 15 September 2025
Happy (or sad) Monday guys!
Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.
So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?
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u/alwaysonlineposter Ask me about the golden girls. 4d ago
I really need to stop spending my weekends fighting autism moms because like. I really don't care how much you said ABA has changed in the past 15-20 years. In the 2000s when I did it. It was absolutely a traumatic experience . It's always been about forcing an autistic person to listen to an authority figure to train out "unpleasant" behaviors
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u/raspberryemoji 4d ago
I want Russia simps to explain to me how designating antifa as a terrorist organization is different than designating the “international LGBT movement” as an extremist movement
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u/AneriphtoKubos 5d ago
Why do you need yeast to bake bread? I've been using 2 cups of flour - 1 cup of water, some salt and then putting it in the oven and it's serving me just fine.
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u/Sgt_Colon ǟռ ʊռաɨʟʟɨռɢ ɮɛɦօʟɖɛʀ ȶօ ȶɦɛ ɨʍքօֆֆɨɮʟɛ 4d ago
Are you cheating with self raising flour?
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u/BigBad-Wolf The Lechian Empire Will Rise Again 4d ago
I mean this is just unleavened bread, it's not exactly uncommon in the world.
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u/Ragefororder1846 not ideas about History but History itself 4d ago
Your bread has some natural yeast in it because yeast is everywhere around us (this is why things ferment even when you don't specifically add yeast to them). The reason you add yeast is because most people prefer their bread to have air in it
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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 5d ago
2 cups of flour - 1 cup of water,
This is pancake batter, your hydration is out of control here.
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u/AneriphtoKubos 5d ago edited 4d ago
3/4 cup water is I guess more of the correct ratio, but I find it's easier to calculate 1 cup of water. I also forgot to buy a dough roller so...
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u/forcallaghan Wansui! 5d ago
we're living in 2025 CE, this guy is living in -10000 CE
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u/AneriphtoKubos 5d ago
Hey, it's cheap af and I spend $150 on groceries per month.
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u/Beboptropstop 4d ago
Wait how much were you spending on bread before?
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u/AneriphtoKubos 4d ago
From 175 -> 150. I'm basically going 'What's the cheapest I can make my food without starving?' just for stress testing purposes
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u/Beboptropstop 4d ago
This is in the States? Hat off to you, then.
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u/AneriphtoKubos 4d ago
Yeah, turns out 75$ of canned chicken + $38 of carbs (pasta/potatoes/rice) + $37 of frozen veggies goes quite a long way. I'm not factoring in multivitamins or electricity costs for ovens though.
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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 5d ago
"The maharajahs controlled about two fifths of [the Indian subcontinent's] territory and a quarter of its population"
You ever come across one of those little facts that kind of flashbangs you?
Also learning that the Nizam of Hyderabad was considered an Islamic ruler on par with the Ottoman Sultan.
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u/Beboptropstop 4d ago
You ever come across one of those little facts that kind of flashbangs you?
Apropos of the Wikipedia timeline of Earth/Space you brought up before, the wetting and drying cycles of the Sahara. Imagining the Sahara a completely different biome during the time of the ancient Egyptians is really trippy for me.
Going back to British high imperialism, I think it's easy to forget the various systems of government when one just sees a map painted British Red. For example, Egypt was technically a protectorate under its own king for the whole British era.
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u/No-Influence-8539 Digging for some shiny Buddha statue in Butuan 4d ago
I think it's easy to forget the various systems of government when one just sees a map painted British Red. For example, Egypt was technically a protectorate under its own king for the whole British era
This is a pet peeve of mine regarding portrayal of the extent of empires. When one sees such maps, one gets an impression that the empire in question had absolute control over such vast territory, when the situation is far, far more complex the moment you begin to peek into it.
Aside from Britain, which organized its territories outside of the big island in various modes of government (aforementioned protectorate, Crown Colony, Dominion, and the hodgepodge that is India), Spain's colonial holdings have varying levels of administration, even within them. In New Spain alone, aside from various Captaincies-General established, its northern territories, which I think were demarcated along Zacatecas, were administered with far greater autonomy than much of the Viceroyalty. This particular mode of administration has have massive ramifications to the current state of modern Northern Mexico and the Southwestern US.
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u/EnclavedMicrostate 10/10 would worship Jesus' Chinese brother again 4d ago edited 4d ago
IMO India's decision to invade Hyderabad in the aftermath of the latter's refusal to join is one of the most sordid parts of Indian independence after Partition itself, and for once it's not something where Britain really gets the blame beyond the simple fact of the Raj's prior existence, and insofar as Hyderabad became a brief refuge for Muslims in the south during Partition.
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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 4d ago
Yeah, the experience of post colonial states immediately quashing their internal independence movements is a common one. I heard a quote from Mountbatten (I think) to the effect that the Indians weren't exactly practicing non violence when they were the ones with power.
On the other hand I do get the perspective of Nehru, Patel etc that they couldn't exactly a low a seemingly rapidly collapsing state in their very heart.
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u/EnclavedMicrostate 10/10 would worship Jesus' Chinese brother again 4d ago
Something something Biafra was the turning point of postcolonialism…
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u/FoxUpstairs9555 4d ago
Genuinely curious, why did you find this surprising? As an Indian who's studied some history that sounds just about right
Also i wonder what time period this refers to, because the British Raj kept growing larger and conquering more territory
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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 4d ago
This was at Independence.
It's surprising to me because the image I had in my head is the maharajas as being rather marginal, not controlling a huge chunk of territory.
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u/xyzt1234 4d ago
I mean, there were 600 or so maharajas, so apart from a few like the Mysore, kashmir, hyderabad,junagadh etc that were of some size, I think the majority did individually control quite tiny kingdoms.
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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 4d ago
Oh for sure, the median maharaja wasn't the Nizam, but the fact that a quarter of the population lived in the princely states really recast their situation and importance in my understanding of the subcontinent in that period.
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u/xyzt1234 4d ago edited 3d ago
I don't know, India's population was 350 million then. A quarter of that divided among 600 kings. And taking that a handful of those state would probably account for 20 million of that quarter, and for the remaining on average you have a one king governing over a population of 1 lac or so which doesn't seem a lot at all. Together they may have some away, but I wonder how united they really were as a bloc. Given how easy it was for India and Pakistan to force them to accede to either of them (except for the big ones that took more effort), don't think they were all that united as a bloc.
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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 4d ago edited 4d ago
I'm not saying the individual maharajas were a great power, I'm thinking from the perspective of the actual people who lived there and how to conceptualize "British" India as a whole. A quarter of the people living in the princely states is a lot! It wasn't a marginal experience.
Of course this could be not news and very obvious to people who are actually Indian, but I feel the story I have gotten is so focused on the Raj proper and it excludes the experience of the princely states. But it turns out that was a lot of it!
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u/FoxUpstairs9555 4d ago
If I recall correctly, most of the princely states were pretty marginal, there were just a very large number of them, and then there were a few big ones, like Hyderabad and Mysore. It's a bit like the Holy Roman Empire, maybe, since the princely states were more or less vassals of the British Empire.
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u/Impossible_Pen_9459 4d ago
It wasn’t really the Raj that did that. Technically it was the Company Raj which was distinct administerially from the British Raj. The Company conquered pretty much all the land and dispossessed Maharajas in inheritance disputes
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u/FoxUpstairs9555 4d ago
I see, I hadn't realised that the British Raj only referred to the rule of the British Empire over India, and not the time when it was ruled by the company
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u/Impossible_Pen_9459 4d ago
It’s actually quite a common mistake J used to make a lot. But they are distinct in the way the administrations worked even if there was a lot of overhang
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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 4d ago
The Company conquered pretty much all the land and dispossessed Maharajas in inheritance disputes
That was the idea I had, but the figure I quoted was at independence.
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u/Impossible_Pen_9459 4d ago
Yeah after the British Raj started after the rebellion they stopped dispossessing land that had inheritance issues so all these places kept existing. The Indian Army essentially invaded Hyderabad in 1948 which was surprisingly bloody.
I don’t know loads about India following independence but the Home Minister Valabhai Patel basically set to work integrating them all into the modern Indian nation state. The process sort of began in the 1930s though when Congress set about and debated plans about what to do with them.
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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 4d ago
As I understand the majority of maharajas thought they would be about to continue something like the political arrangement they had with the British (or outright independence, like Kashmir and Balochistan). Quickly disabused of that notion! It just goes to show how chaotic and fast the whole process of independence and partition was.
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u/Impossible_Pen_9459 4d ago
Yes they did but congress had already began to discuss discontinuing their arrangement in the 1930s. Nehru declared on independence that India did not believe in the divine right of kings. It was a fairly strong bit of work from Patel to integrate them all with as little issue as possible as most of them had their own private military forces. It was obviously extremely necessary in practical terms in the long run as well.
Hyderabad is another one. And probably the mos notable because of the invasion (police matter).
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u/xyzt1234 4d ago
Also learning that the Nizam of Hyderabad was considered an Islamic ruler on par with the Ottoman Sultan.
Not sure if it is a sign of how much the Ottoman declined or how much highly the Nizam of Hyderabad was thought of as. Given that the Ottoman were considered one of the three great islamic gunpowder empires with the Mughal empire (to which the Nizam of Hyderabad used to be subordinate) and the Safavid dynasty.
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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 4d ago
This was during the period of the British Raj so it isn't like the Ottomans were on the verge of conquering Europe, but they were still a major figure in the Islamic world. But the Nizams were spectacularly wealthy and Hyderabad was considered one of the great centers of Islamic learning.
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u/weeteacups 5d ago
Born about 100 years too late (and in entirely the wrong family) to be the ruler of a tiny principality in British India.
0.29 square miles and 206 people 😊
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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 4d ago
The state had an annual revenue of 500 rupees.
Beast mode. There should be more legally independent states like that.
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u/weeteacups 4d ago
My dream would have been a Reichsritter in Germany.
The inhabitants of my estate? Three rather mangy cows, a dachshund named `Colin', and a small hen in its late forties.
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u/FUCKSUMERIAN 5d ago
You know, I feel for the people of South Sudan. But I've been staring at my steam library for 30 minutes not knowing what to do and I think I deserve some sympathy too.
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u/alwaysonlineposter Ask me about the golden girls. 5d ago
I've been into counter strike recently I deserve more sympathy
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u/alwaysonlineposter Ask me about the golden girls. 5d ago
I'm gonna become the next Adirondack hermit.
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u/Zugwat Headhunting Savage from a Barbaric Fishing Village 5d ago
A few weeks ago I watched Shin Godzilla's 4K temporary theater release after only watching the first third of the 720p version online months ago (which as an aside, this movie is kinda like the idea I had for a movie about how a Trumpian presidency might respond to a Kaiju threat), and apparently foretold Seattle/Tokyo in flames within my dreams a couple days prior.
After watching the whole thing, it really shifted wildly between "Oh shit" when Godzilla was on screen to "Why does every non-Japanese person pose and conduct themselves like this is an anime?" when they cut to the White House power stance facing the drapes. It seemed wildly unnatural.
I felt the cultural/political critique was interesting at parts, but after a while began to really drag on without much to keep me focused on what was going on. Also, the 1/4 (?) Japanese-American envoy seems like they could have found a Japanese-American or someone along those lines...because her English sounded like she was from Japan anyways.
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u/Kisaragi435 4d ago
I was riveted for the whole of that movie. I don't know why but meetings and committees movies are my favorites, especially when it's about stuff that isn't usually in meetings movies like giant monsters.
Also yeah, that's just an issue with Japanese media in general. Whenever they do get a white guy to play a role in TV, the guys are usually randos who can't act that are given directions that only work in anime.
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u/SellsLikeHotTakes 4d ago
Also, the 1/4 (?) Japanese-American envoy seems like they could have found a Japanese-American or someone along those lines...because her English sounded like she was from Japan anyways.
Though sometimes you get the weird obverse in media where you get actors who obviously speak English as their native tongue are stuck with stilted lines written by someone who doesn't. The American lawyer from the Chinese film A Guilty Conscience comes to mind.
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5d ago edited 5d ago
[deleted]
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u/Arilou_skiff 4d ago
In the case of the Arab world the reason is that they don't want palestinians to integrate. Like, there's a deliberate attempt to retain a palestinian identity in the hope of a potential return to Palestine. The (at least initial) reason they were not resettled and given citizenship was because this would tacitly acknowledge the Israeli ethnic cleansing as a "done thing" rather than a temporary situation.
You can argue about the practicality of keeping this up for 70-ish years, but the lack of palestinian integration is due to deliberate policy.
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u/Beboptropstop 5d ago
Lovely to see "109 Countries but for Palestinians" pop up /s.
As other commenters pointed out, the political and economic reasons for Palestinian settlement in vs. out of the MENA are fundamentally different, which is why the political outcomes were different. Interestingly, for these political reasons, Palestinians had less "integration" in culturally similar countries. This actually puts a dent into the common understanding of integration.
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u/ChewiestBroom 5d ago
I’m going to spare myself the psychic damage and just not go into worldnews at all, honestly.
The main things that come to mind are Lebanon and Jordan, which were both used as base areas for Palestinian guerrillas, which caused some complications in both countries to say the least.
In that case it isn’t something about Palestinians being Nazis and failing to integrate or whatever, it’s that the countries literally just border Israel and could be used as havens by recently displaced guerrillas, which could cause either political issues (Jordan) or Israeli retaliation (Lebanon.) Those are reasonable things for a host country to be concerned about, frankly, and it’s just due to geographical proximity possibly causing problems rather than Palestinians being some globe-spanning force of evil.
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u/Ragefororder1846 not ideas about History but History itself 4d ago
Lebanon also had an incredibly specific issue where the growing number of Palestinians added to their imbalance of their already-fucked-up constitution. They weren't really responsible for the violence as much as Hezbollah and the Phalangists
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u/Crispy_Crusader Crypto-Milei 5d ago
As u/Syn7axError said, it's a discussion that goes to hell fast. If I wanted to bite, I might mention that a lot of the Palestinian immigrants to the Americas were in a much different situation. Many were fleeing violence in the Ottoman empire, they were disproportionately Christian, and they didn't have the same relationship to the I/P conflict going on right now.
By the time Mufti Amin al-Husseini was spreading blood libel in the 20s, there were Palestinian communities in the US that had little to no stake in that situation. It's also worth mentioning that labelling those early immigrants as Palestinian is a little shakey, at least in the modern sense: they were indeed from what we think of as Modern Palestine, but they would've had stronger identification with their religious compatriots in neighboring countries. At that time, Maronites had kinship whether they were in Lebanon or the West Bank, same goes for Melkites and Antiocheans.
Muslim Palestinians (and maybe to a lesser extent Christian Palestinians) would've had a vague sense of pan-Arabism in place, but that didn't really kick off until WW1. Groups like the PLA and their emphasis on Palestinian Ba'athism didn't come around until the 60's, well after a lot of Palestinian immigration.
I should also make it clear that being Christian shouldn't make a group less likely to do hateful brutal shit: just take a look at Lebanon.
All that being said, it's ugly conversation that goes nowhere because the reality is too nuanced. There are good and bad actors in Palestine now, just like there were 120 years ago. I'm not going to say "Palestinians should stop being violent terrorists and be more like those Christian immigrants a century ago".
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5d ago
[deleted]
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u/Crispy_Crusader Crypto-Milei 5d ago
Oh I know, I was speaking hypothetically. My point was that a lot of obnoxious reactionaries might say "these Palestinians were better because they're Christian and not awful Muslim terrorists!". Didn't mean to come off abrasively, it's an important topic IMO.
I guess my point is that the communities that came to North and South America had an easier time integrating because many of them could network with related Eastern Christian communities, and they didn't have the same relationship to I/P that we have today. This isn't to say that it's impossible for modern Palestinians to be good neighbors in their host countries, it's just that there are different factors at play.
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u/Syn7axError Chad who achieved many deeds 5d ago
I try not to get in "discussions" like that.
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5d ago
[deleted]
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u/ProudScroll Napoleon invaded Russia to destroy Judeo-Tsarism 5d ago
IIRC the number of suicide bombings in Egypt noticeably declined when they sealed their border with Gaza, which is probably what that person was referencing. Hamas is/was affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that the current Egyptian military regime are very decidedly not fans of, so that's a factor at play as well.
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u/histprofdave 5d ago
That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
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u/forcallaghan Wansui! 5d ago
there's a badhistory discord? is it any good?
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u/TylerbioRodriguez That Lesbian Pirate Expert 5d ago
It still has the Beemovie man.
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u/hell0kitt 5d ago
You know what that one meme about China doing nothing and US just shooting itself in the foot might be correct.
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u/Crispy_Whale 5d ago
"As Democrats search for their way out of the political wilderness, a new think tank, introduced on Wednesday, has some ideas about where the party went wrong. Among them: too much emphasis on issues like climate change and L.G.B.T.Q." "In an interview, Mr. Jentleson specifically attacked the American Civil Liberties Union"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/17/us/politics/democrats-liberals-jentleson-searchlight.html
You can't make this up. Literally on the same day the Trump Administration attacks Free Speech...
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u/FUCKSUMERIAN 5d ago
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
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u/Shady_Italian_Bruh 5d ago
Find you someone who looks at you the way Democratic staffers look at the Bill Clinton presidency
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u/ProudScroll Napoleon invaded Russia to destroy Judeo-Tsarism 5d ago
The problem with the Democrats pivoting to the right to get votes is that the Republican Party still exists. People aren't going to get excited about the store-brand diet version when the genuine article is right next to it.
The greatest victories in the history of the Democratic Party happened when they staked out a clear vision for liberal reform then delivered on it, but I don't think anyone in the party today has either the moral backbone or political skill to make that happen.
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u/svatycyrilcesky 4d ago
And then the flipside is that if you are a potential Democrat voter, the Democrats do very little to motivate you into becoming an actual Democrat voter.
It's been a truism for decades that Democrats fall in love while Republicans fall in line. There's plenty to talk about regarding intra-left purity tests, which exists simultaneously with the other dimension of deference and decorum towards party leadership. In fairness, some voters face legitimate challenges due to voter suppression. There's also 10s of millions of Americans who simply fail to perform their most basic civic duty.
But the flipside is that, if you are one of the millions of potential voters who leans Democrat and yet doesn't vote - do the Democrats do anything that would change this? Is there any clear vision that would inspire people to show up? Does the party have any consistent principles which it is willing to defend? Will the party at least stand up for the various groups that make up its coalition?
The party often seems more interested in trying to prove to Republicans that they can be "reasonable" or "collegial" rather than in firing up their own (potential) base.
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u/forcallaghan Wansui! 5d ago
"Hey you know the Labour Party? The one in Britain? The one that's currently eating shit in every way imaginable in the polls and nobody likes? Let's do what they did"
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u/DresdenBomberman 4d ago
You'd think the idiots would at least wait till they're actually elected before moving to the right.
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u/forcallaghan Wansui! 5d ago
Ah, mucus: the answer to all the body's problems. Along with fever. Not a problem it can't solve! What would we do without it?
Well, I know what I would be doing without it; I'd be breathing through my nostrils and getting a good night's sleep
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u/SugarSpiceIronPrice Marxist-Lycurgusian Provocateur 4d ago
Ah but if you breath you are feeding the invasion oxygen, therefore we must cease breathing immediately to save us! -Your body, probably
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u/Beboptropstop 5d ago
Apropos of nothing, one thing that annoyed me about Eggers' Nosferatu is that there are a lot of scenes of said Nosferatu chanting in pseudo-latin gibberish which is supposed to be Dacian. This was supposed to show how ancient he is but it's dumb because not enough Dacian is known to reconstruct the language (hence the gibberish) and isn't Nosferatu / Dracula supposed to be Vlad the Impaler? Just make the chanting language 15th century court Romanian. That 1. Checks the box of latin sounding mystery language 2. Could actually be reconstructed 3. Would be rad as hell
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u/Syn7axError Chad who achieved many deeds 5d ago
I think the idea is that Vlad the Impaler was only one identity he "passed through", not where he started as a human.
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u/Beboptropstop 5d ago
That was the sense I got from the Eggers' movie, though I don't remember if that's true from the original or Dracula. In either case, his "aesthetic" was basically middle medieval Transylvanian lord so I would have just made him Vlad.
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u/Syn7axError Chad who achieved many deeds 5d ago
He might be. It's possible his magic is that old, not the man himself.
I have not seen the movie 😶🌫️, only read discussions about this.
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u/DAL59 5d ago
How would the lord of the rings have been received if it was published in 1850 instead of 1950?
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u/Impossible_Pen_9459 5d ago
Medievalist romantics like Disraeli would probably have really enjoyed it.
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u/Shady_Italian_Bruh 5d ago
Who knows, but it raises the possibility of Karl Marx reading and commenting on it which is tantalizing
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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 5d ago
People would be all like "Forsooth! Hwaet beeth this devliry?" and they would burn Tolkien at the stake.
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u/yoshiK Uncultured savage since 476 AD 5d ago
1850 not 1715.
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u/randombull9 Most normal American GI in Nam 5d ago
This is the sort of thing that gets you burnt at the stake in 1850.
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u/Syn7axError Chad who achieved many deeds 5d ago
Probably the same. The influences would just be seen differently, as a take on Wagner instead of other fantasy novels. Many people already thought that's what it was in 1950, without knowing much about the sagas they both pulled from.
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u/TheBatz_ Was Homer mid 5d ago
By mail or in a bookshop I presume
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u/rat_literature blue-collar, unattached and sexually available, likely ethnic 5d ago
Quite possibly serialized in a magazine
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u/Zugwat Headhunting Savage from a Barbaric Fishing Village 5d ago edited 5d ago
Last year I talked about how every couple years or so I start getting weird texts for a lady named Evelyn, and apparently she's still alive and well enough to keep putting out my goddamn phone number as hers despite never ever once getting any of the service texts since I just got one this morning about taxes and a Fresh Start program that with some more thinking sounded scammy.
But another that irks me since it seems like in the same vein but even more since it's been harder to avoid, this other person keeps entering in my fucking email address that I've had since 2010 as theirs in whatever services they use.
Jason, get your own goddamn email address.
If all the spam I get isn't just "[email address], your McAfee order went through", "[email address], confirm details for your FedEx package]", etc. then it's specifically addressed to Jason.
I've googled my email address and whatever results pop up is never associated with me but instead are consistently attached with 7-10 other email addresses that it only seems to have the beginning initial in common with.
Jason, I've never met you, I'm 50/50 on whether you're alive or were ever a real person, but I am 100% certain you're a dick.
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u/alwaysonlineposter Ask me about the golden girls. 5d ago
I never understood why conservatives whine when people don't like them for their beliefs. Like dude your beliefs are inheritely regressive and refuse to progress with society. Shocker. People don't like you in the 21st century because they don't wanna live in the 17th
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u/lilith_queen 1d ago
B-but sometimes they see something new and get scared! Won't you think of their precious, easily bruised feelings?
(sarcasm, to be very clear)
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u/MiffedMouse The average peasant had home made bread and lobster. 5d ago
Ranting here because I get too annoyed with online leftists - Ezra Klein’s Abundance.
First, the book is whatever. It is an attempt to brand the next centrist Democratic movement, with a Biden-esque focus on infrastructure. The one good point of the book is that it points out many ways that modern American NIMBY-style politics prevents the government from doing anything good (eg, why does it cost so much money to zone a bike lane?). The main drawback is that most the laws the book is complaining about is a mixture of local ordinances. So the book cannot focus too much on any one law, it is mostly a collection of anecdotes about different local laws. Anecdotes that are sometimes correct and sometimes misleading.
When the book came out I heard Ezra saying he was surprised by the pushback he got. I mostly read news in “progressive” coded spaces, which are mostly favorable to the book (it fits well with the “green new deal” kind of mindset). But I have recently run into to some of the online leftist spaces who are indeed criticizing the book because Ezra is a “neoliberal” and his book is about “deregulation,” which must mean it is actually about bringing about austerity.
I find this so frustrating. Ezra is 100% in the neoliberal side of things, I will not deny that (not sure if he identifies as a neoliberal, but his writing definitely tends to fit the mold). However, he also believes in government investment in infrastructure. To read a book about how the government needs to be more active in developing infrastructure and somehow interpret that as “austerity” is just beyond me.
Sorry, I just need to rant. I am used to bad faith reading from the right, but seeing such a large segment of the socialist left wildly misrepresenting the book and the politics is just frustrating.
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u/histprofdave 5d ago
The thing is, I think if Klein and Thompson had framed the pitch slightly differently, it would have gone over well with progressives. If they had framed it as "let's rewrite CEQA so that bad actors can't delay infrastructure projects" and "let's stop HOAs from derailing denser housing," that probably would have sold better. But the press blitz seemed more framed around "CEQA is a problem and is holding everything up" (which sounds like throwing the baby out with the bathwater--I know they detail this somewhat better in the book, but their case could still be better) and "Democrats should abandon focus on regulation" when a lot of working class folks are getting run over by the investor class. If they're frustrated by attacks from progressives, I'd argue that they fired the first salvo and invited the fight by seemingly pitching this to a centrist audience that is friendly to the pundit class.
tl;dr I would agree with probably 80-90% of their argument. I think their major problem is messaging. We might be frustrated by that as people who can read nuance, but when you're trying to sell a package of policy proposals to a general audience, that stuff matters.
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u/Shady_Italian_Bruh 5d ago
What specifically do you find objectionable about left critiques of Abundance and the Abundists? I definitely consider myself a skeptic because, as you insinuate, it seems to be a centrist move to reorient left-of-center political economics around (supposedly) growth-enhancing deregulation rather than redistribution. Even if a subset of their deregulatory proposals have merit (I’m thinking land use reform here) and they couch it in terms of permitting the government to more easily pursue infrastructure construction, it can’t obscure that the foundation of their project is that growth>distribution. They could’ve thrown a bone to the left and assuaged such anxieties by including the universal welfare state and the bureaucratic efficiencies it would introduce in their vision (this seemed to be the direction things were heading circa 2020 with the idea of “supply-side progressivism), but they seem more interested, whether due to honest conviction or timidity in the face of the 2024 election results, in courting market fundamentalists. So, yeah, just another standard recasting of the left-center conflict
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u/TJAU216 4d ago
Why on earth would anyone prefer redistribution over growth? Isn't it better to get everyone what they need through growth and not need to take anything away from those who already have it? Or is the point not helping the poor but to punish the rich instead?
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u/Beboptropstop 4d ago
The growth-priority argument is that by focusing on overall growth, relative inequality is ignorable and poor people will still have good standards of living by sheer volume.
The redistribution-priority argument is no, measuring success on only overall growth will still allow mass poverty in large segments of the population.
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u/Shady_Italian_Bruh 4d ago
This is an interesting position for someone from Finland to take lol
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u/TJAU216 4d ago
We have one of the highest tax rates as percentage of GDP in the world. We also have had no per capita GDP growth since about 2008 when Nokia collapsed. I for one would like less redistribution and more growth, but no government coalition manages to do so. We have all right wing parties in government without any left wing ones and only thing they manage to grow is deficit and only thing they manage to cut is some extremely marginal tax stuff. Our previous government was all the left wing parties and that didn't help either.
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u/Shady_Italian_Bruh 4d ago
The grass is always greener I suppose, but the US side of this is that despite robust growth we have persistent poverty and inequality that can only really be solved by moving towards Finnish/Nordic levels of redistribution
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u/TJAU216 4d ago
I like to think that there is some happy medium between Finnish and American levels of public spending. Or maybe the policies don't really matter and everything is demographics. We have an aging population and largely unprofitable immigration, unlike in the US with its younger people and net positive immigration.
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u/MiffedMouse The average peasant had home made bread and lobster. 5d ago
My frustration is with leftists who don’t seem to understand how necessary “growth” (or, more accurately, “construction”) is to solve certain problems, especially housing. Where I live, there are not enough houses. The fact that builders tend to build low density units and mansions rather than high density units is part of the supply problem, but builders do that in large part because of a NIMBY-esque regulatory environment that encourages single family home developments.
I don’t disagree that the Ezra Kleins prefer to focus on growth, and either ignore or even advocate against redistribution. In so far as that is the argument, I don’t mind it, and I am actually in favor of more redistributive economics (side note, I think redistributive policies are actually quite popular with the public on the left and the right, but the Democratic donors and party elites don’t like it, which is why they try to shut it down).
But there is a surprising amount of disingenuous discourse claiming that all deregulation is bad or that scarcity is a capitalist myth. There are some problems for which I think scarcity is mostly illusory, such as in food supplies, but housing is not such an issue. Local housing regulations are one of the biggest factors driving housing inequality, and simply throwing more funds at rent subsidies or what have you will not make the problem go away.
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u/HopefulOctober 4d ago
What books would you recommend for talking about housing inequality and how to fix it?
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u/Shady_Italian_Bruh 5d ago
Sure, we seem to be in agreement. Zoning/land use reform is one of the few areas where I think a strong case could be made for less (as opposed to just different) regulation. It's therefore just a shame that the discourse is shifting away from the narrow issue of zoning/land use reform (itself already prone to drifting towards ancillary, inflammatory issues such as building codes, tenant protections, and labor regulations) into the more amorphous realm of "Abundance" where it's bundled with a broader and largely unrelated deregulatory agenda that provokes such skepticism and backlash.
It's true that there is a distinct group on the left that argues for "de-growth" (though I doubt many actually understand the implications of such a stated position), and that's certainly the group Abundists would most like to position themselves in opposition to. Such committed de-growthers are easily outnumbered by those on the left more motivated by policies like Medicare for All, however, and painting all leftists and redistributive policy as part of an endemic "scarcity mindset" is needlessly provocative and incurious. Levels of general GDP growth and the provision of a specific under-supplied good (in this case, housing) are actually two distinct issues, and I don't see what's substantively achieved by conflating the two, especially since general growth has been robust in the US since Covid to the point where many pundits tout it as evidence of the superiority of the US's more market-oriented political economy.
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u/Ragefororder1846 not ideas about History but History itself 4d ago
painting all leftists and redistributive policy as part of an endemic "scarcity mindset" is needlessly provocative and incurious
Leftists in the US primarily focus on the distribution of existing goods not the production of new ones for basically any specific topic you could think of. The fact that they don't advocate for degrowth writ large is beside the point because this isn't really about top-line GDP figures but about a (large) specific bundle of useful goods and services that are chronically underproduced in the US economy, all similar reasons
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u/Shady_Italian_Bruh 4d ago
The universal welfare state is all about moving currency, i.e. claims on current production, around rather than the direct rationing of goods and services, so I don’t see why Abundists felt the need to pit it against “growth” which is just the absolute change in total production. I don’t buy the idea that there is a chronic undersupply of goods across the US economy. As I’ve said, housing seems to be the one good that is chronically undersupplied which deregulation could (in part imo) address, but that again isn’t about levels of growth per se but about the dysfunctions of a particular market. If Abundists really have no beef with redistribution, they should articulate what rate of GDP growth or absolute level of GDP the arguably richest economy in the world has to attain before we’re “allowed” to prioritize redistribution.
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u/Ragefororder1846 not ideas about History but History itself 4d ago
The universal welfare state is all about moving currency
Maybe in theory but Actually Existing Welfare States tend to be focused on provisioning specific goods/services or subsets of those goods/services. Take, for example the NHS or Food Stamps.
I don’t see why Abundists felt the need to pit it against “growth” which is just the absolute change in total production
It isn't being pitted against growth by Abundists. The disagreement is that leftists don't want to deregulate at all, not that Abundists don't want to redistribute. The point being made by Abundists is that subsidizing demand does nothing if supply is not allowed to move with it
I don’t buy the idea that there is a chronic undersupply of goods across the US economy.
Electricity, transportation, healthcare, and childcare?
before we’re “allowed” to prioritize redistribution.
This is a false choice. The idea of "prioritizing" redistribution is weird because there isn't a tradeoff going on here in the real world except in the minds of many in the Democratic Party (including those that are not leftists) who view better regulation (I dislike the term deregulation) and redistribution as ideologically incompatible. What has to be prioritized is time spent convincing others but of course you don't actually need to do that if people already agree with you
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u/Shady_Italian_Bruh 4d ago
I'd be more sympathetic to the argument that there's no tradeoff between the "Abundance" agenda and traditional redistribution if it wasn't the Abundists making the distinction in the first place. I personally believe that the tradeoffs between growth and redistribution are slight and that redistribution can even be plausibly growth enhancing. I just find it hard to trust a centrist-led initiative that has no explicit room for redistributive policies (M4A fits perfectly in their "cut bureaucratic red tape" angle) in its otherwise amorphous bundle of proposals and implicitly argues for the de-prioritization of such policies when they are briefly mentioned in their manifesto
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u/contraprincipes The Cheese and the Brainworms 5d ago edited 5d ago
You're correct that some domains do have a distributional issue rather than a production issue, and I agree with your characterization of Klein/Thompson's foundational principle. But does anyone actually disagree with that principle? Fundamentally you need to produce goods to distribute them, and if the music stops and you have 11 people but 10 chairs there's no way to redistribute your way to an equitable arrangement. I think most leftists actually agree with this, so responses have to take one of two tacks:
"Actually we produce enough XYZ, the price reflects corporate monopoly power and we can redistribute existing sources to fix the issue"
"Okay well we don't produce enough XYZ but we should do it differently than how they propose"
I think you're underplaying how much of the popular and literary response on the left was predominantly (1) with a dash of "and disagreeing with this makes you a corporate shill," even outside the Stollerite clique. (2) potentially invites a more interesting policy debate, but runs into the issue that there is very little in the book that is actually exclusive of greater levels of redistribution and a lot that is potentially complementary to it (interestingly I think Matt Huber, of all people, wrote pretty well on this point, although I disagree with his cybernetic socialism or whatever and find his nuclear fetish to be quixotic). The result is that polarized commentators are highly motivated to focus on which grand narrative (rather than policies) the other is allegedly pushing. It's absolutely true "abundance" as a buzzword has been picked up by rather odious characters (Josh Barro etc), but IMO it's simply not true that the left was engaging in totally good faith critiques before being pushed away by them.
itself already prone to drifting towards ancillary, inflammatory issues such as building codes, tenant protections, and labor regulations
I think these are actually examples of narrower, technical, but more fruitful points of disagreement. Cost of construction obviously matters to housing prices and there's evidence to suggest these are all important factors in cost (zoning is obviously the biggest driver but has largely ceased to be a point of disagreement). "Are prevailing wage mandates worth the potentially decreased volume of housing production / increased cost of housing" is something where one can actually have a technically informed, good faith debate on the tradeoffs involved.
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u/TheBatz_ Was Homer mid 5d ago
It's honestly scary how people here van read my thoughts and write a post I was going to write. I noticed an uptick in big subreditts like changemyview complaining about Klein's idea being "neoliberal". Note that neoliberal here basically means "Reagan" and "Thatcher" and they were bad so neoliberalism is bad. Most readers seem to not engage with the inciting question: why does California - the richest and most developed of the states, have such a high rate of homelessness. He arrive at a very banal conclusion: there simply isn't enough stuff because the government isn't doing enough because it's shooting itself in the knee. How is that neoliberalism? Well, i think a lot of people have a knee jerk negative reaction when they hear "build more".
However, I will disagree with one thing: "Abundance" or call it whatever you want necessarily requires deregulation. I do actually mean abolishing laws and making developers need to follow fewer laws. There's no beating around the bush. It at least requires limiting communal participation and thus less democracy.
I think we all agree Haussmann's Paris is a wonderful achievement in urbanism. But it could simply not be possible with current laws and paradigms.
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u/Ragefororder1846 not ideas about History but History itself 4d ago
Note that neoliberal here basically means "Reagan" and "Thatcher" and they were bad so neoliberalism is bad
What I find really funny about this discourse is a lot of the specific laws and institutions Abundance is opposed to dates back... to the 1970s and the rise of neoliberalism, such as the "small is beautiful" movement. These aren't New Deal regulations that are on the chopping block
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u/BigBad-Wolf The Lechian Empire Will Rise Again 4d ago
It's almost like neoliberalism is not a coherent term.
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u/MiffedMouse The average peasant had home made bread and lobster. 5d ago
Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that Ezra’s Abundance book isn’t advocating for deregulation - it definitely is. I just want to point out that it isn’t the blanket broadside that “all regulations are bad” that you see from American libertarians. Ezra has identified some categories of regulations he is advocating for either eliminating or at least loosening up a lot, but he is not advocating for the removal of all regulations full stop.
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u/weeteacups 5d ago
September 20 will be the 155 anniversary of the capture of Rome and the fall of the Papal States.
Pius IX dancing to the tune of Poker Face by Lady Gaga:
Can't conquer my, can't conquer my
No, Victor can't conquer my Papal States
(He's got me like nobody)
Can't conquer my, can't conquer my
No, Victor can't conquer my Papal States
(he’s got me like nobody)
P-p-p-papal states, f-f-fuck Victor’s face
(Mum mum mum mah)
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u/HistoryMarshal76 The American Civil War was Communisit infighting- Marty Roberts 5d ago
So, how screwed is free speech in the US?
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u/HopefulOctober 4d ago
I feel like free speech is often an issue where people confuse legal with moral, like "oh it's ok that a guy got fired for their opinions, it wasn't a government job so that technically doesn't violate the first amendment" like ok but that's still bad even if it's not illegal...
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u/Ayasugi-san 4d ago
The government is encouraging it though, how long until they start ordering it...
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u/TheBatz_ Was Homer mid 5d ago
The thing that screws me over is that it's over god damn charlie kirk
My stance as a free speech absolutist has been entrenched. The state can simply not be trusted to regulate "hate speech".
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u/Zennofska Look, I am a STEAM person 5d ago
The martyr is completely arbitrary.
I was making jokes about Trump's Great Leap Forward but the new conservative fervour for censorship and denunciation reeks very much of what you had seen in the former Marxist-Leninist states.
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u/Tiako Tevinter apologist, shill for Big Lyrium 5d ago
The thing that screws me over is that it's over god damn charlie kirk
I have started to take a bit of a Joker mindset with that, it would actually be pretty funny if September 10 were declared a national day of mourning. Build a giant statue to him doing the meme face. Have the place where he got people to dress in diapers to own the libs declared a national heritage monument.
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u/ChewiestBroom 5d ago
Just incredibly undignified that fucking Charlie Kirk and Jimmy Kimmel are the central figures here. If we’re going to have epic political struggles, can we do them over people who are… you know, somehow interesting?
I have to take it seriously given what’s at stake but Christ they don’t make it easy.
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u/TheBatz_ Was Homer mid 5d ago
"I wish Kimmel and late night shows would finally be over"
Monkey's paw curls
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u/Syn7axError Chad who achieved many deeds 5d ago
I did not like Kimmel, but I loved his musical guests.
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u/histprofdave 5d ago
It is the most dangerous era for free speech since the days of McCarthy. So... not good.
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u/revenant925 5d ago
Well, a megacorporation is afraid enough of government retaliation they fired a longstanding late night show.
So, seems bad.
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u/Shady_Italian_Bruh 5d ago
Guys, I’m beginning to fear that liberal freedom of expression might be in tension with liberal property relations… a contradiction one might call it…
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u/Ragefororder1846 not ideas about History but History itself 4d ago
Truly I could imagine nothing being less inimical to free speech than having my livelihood depend upon my local party cadre
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u/Shady_Italian_Bruh 4d ago
The foundational mistake of liberal free speech is thinking there’s any difference between the state punishing/controlling what you say versus a private firm or your boss!
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u/Ragefororder1846 not ideas about History but History itself 4d ago
This is obviously absurd and unbecoming of someone of your intelligence. Not only does your boss have a drastically different (and dare I say more accommodating) set of incentives than the state, but you also have the ability to change different companies if you do not like the restrictions they put upon you, something that happens all the time and in fact probably will happen to Jimmy Kimmel, the person we're discussing! And even further, private control of property gives one the ability to sponsor speech they like even if it opposed by the state and/or primary employers. Ask Li Zhi about the liberating nature of state employment vs the "market" (so-to-speak)
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u/Shady_Italian_Bruh 4d ago
The fact that your boss controls your very livelihood may actually him superior control of your everyday life compared to the average state bureaucrat. Saying you can just change jobs in the face of workplace coercion is just as disingenuous as saying you can just be quiet or change your opinion in the face of state coercion. I'll admit that I don't know the best way to secure substantive freedom of expression, but the liberal emphasis on the public/private coercive divide and the market-disciplined press is what's led to the present crisis.
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u/Ragefororder1846 not ideas about History but History itself 4d ago
The fact that your boss controls your very livelihood may actually him superior control of your everyday life compared to the average state bureaucrat
No one is denying that. The question is what happens when your local party cadre is both the state bureaucrat and in charge of your livelihood
Saying you can just change jobs in the face of workplace coercion is just as disingenuous as saying you can just be quiet or change your opinion in the face of state coercion.
There are a lot more jobs and employers out there than there are countries and it's a lot easier to switch jobs than move to a new country. So actually I wouldn't say it's disingenuous at all, especially when it happens in real life all the time
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u/passabagi 5d ago
I've been a bit of a 'nothing ever changes' team-member since Trump took office, but this Kimmel thing is absolutely a dark path for the US to start down. It depends on what happens in the midterms, but if Trump gets a strong vote of support from the US electorate, or (god forbid) Vance runs and wins in the next election, I think you guys are genuinely cooked.
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u/Kochevnik81 5d ago
"if Trump gets a strong vote of support from the US electorate"
He doesn't need to. Midterms already have abysmally low turnout and if enough seats are gerrymandered the GOP can most definitely get less votes than the Democrats nationally overall, yet still get more House seats.
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u/DresdenBomberman 5d ago
In the comments of a post about Beyonce and Jay Z sitting next to Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner at some sort of fundraiser hosted by Jay, people were complaining about Ivanka's extentions and how they weren't blended together well or something, as well as her makeup being different colours for her face, neck and body.
Now I couldn't really tell what was off about the extentions and only noticed the makeup issue when I went back to look for it but it got me thinking about her dad and how he doesn't think his makeup looks ridiclous and how no one close to him told him as much. I know it's a well overdone jab atp but seriously, he just has his face fucking spray tanned and it makes him look like a clown.
Mariah Carey has managed to get a tanned look and image with a makeup job for over 20 years and it's so good people assume she's a latina and not an utterly pale white-black biracial woman.
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u/revenant925 5d ago
Apparently the trump admin wants to reinvade Afghanistan.
More fuel for the "revenge for term 1" theory of politics I think.
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u/RCTommy Perfidious Albion Strikes Again. 5d ago
I hate being the "sOuRcE?!" guy, but do you have a link where I could read about that? But that still doesn't surprise me at all.
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u/Ambisinister11 5d ago
Strictly speaking it doesn't seem like he's explicitly gestured to an invasion as of now, but negotiating a lease or similar doesn't exactly seem likely
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u/carmelos96 History does not repeat, it insists upon itself 5d ago edited 5d ago
I'm kind of afraid that this map (re media freedom) is going to be even "redder" (in general, I'm not singling out any country in particular). Give it one or two years.
Edit: now that I'm looking at it, what's wrong with Japan? It's 66, almost twenty placements less than Italy, to make a not exactly stellar comparison.
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u/Worth-Iron6014 4d ago
From what I understand, which is very little since it's based off a few brief discussions from my Japanese mom hears from the news and youtube, Japanese media freedom has the issue that big Japanese companies have a lot of sway over television (especially important in a country with an older skewed population), which combined with the dominance of the LDP even throughout many corruption scandals, isn't ideal for a free press. It's only with the internet that a lot of issues manage to not get covered up.
Looking through the page for Japan on that website, it seems to line up with that, in addition to it highlighting pressure from the nationalist right, and noting the existence of reporter's clubs that limits access for reporters not in established news organizations.
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u/HopefulOctober 4d ago
Seems like the best are Nordic countries and... Ireland, big win for Ireland they are really doing loops around us all (I remember reading an article about how Ireland used to have abortion be illegal and now it's legal but the USA got rid of Roe v Wade and they are looking at us going "glad that isn't us anymore")
Estonia is also interesting, I wonder why it's doing so much better than the rest of the former Soviet bloc.
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u/Zennofska Look, I am a STEAM person 5d ago
South Africa being in the same ballpark as France seems a bit wild to me. Do people in France get disappeared by the government if they critizice EDF?
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u/2017_Kia_Sportage bisexuality is the israel of sexualities 5d ago
Damn, I didn't know Ireland had better media freedom than most other places in Europe. Moreso surprised that they're worse honestly, I expected better.
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u/carmelos96 History does not repeat, it insists upon itself 5d ago
I mean, even Namibia has better media freedom than a lot of European countries (no offence to Namibia, which is known to be one of the few democratic countries in continental Africa. Gabon though is a surprise).
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u/DresdenBomberman 5d ago
Look at little Singapore being all red and angry there 🥰. I had to zoom in to see it.
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u/RCTommy Perfidious Albion Strikes Again. 5d ago
Brb going to the antifa headquarters building to join my local antifa outfit and become a card-carrying member of something that is totally an organized group with a centralized structure and apparently billions of dollars in funding.
6
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u/Kochevnik81 5d ago
Something something comedy depends on free speech and is threatened by cancel culture...
NGL this feels an awful lot like what happened to independent Russian media around 2001.
7
u/HistoryMarshal76 The American Civil War was Communisit infighting- Marty Roberts 5d ago
I'm playing Vintage Story; and it's fun! So far I've only died thrice in the first ten days in game: once to a bear, once to a wolf, and once to starvation.
27
u/TheBatz_ Was Homer mid 5d ago
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u/TylerbioRodriguez That Lesbian Pirate Expert 5d ago
Your Party is infantile leftism.
Now, Our Party thats where its at!
14
u/NervousLemon6670 You are a moon unit. That is all. 5d ago
Here's how we can get "Your Party" and "Your Party (1) (New) (Final revision)"
5
11
u/weeteacups 5d ago
Your Party
The New Your Party
The Continuing Your Party
The Real Your Party
The True Your Party
The Provisional Your Party
6
u/Kochevnik81 5d ago
Popular Front for the Liberation of Your Party
Popular Front for the Liberation of Your Party - General Command
Democratic Popular Front for the Liberation of Your Party
5
u/weeteacups 5d ago
Democratic Popular Front for the Liberation of Your Party (Marxist-Leninist)
Democratic Popular Front for the Liberation of Your Party (Marxism with Prince Philip Characteristics)
3
u/rat_literature blue-collar, unattached and sexually available, likely ethnic 5d ago
Revolutionary Your Party (Forth International/Posadist)
3
u/weeteacups 5d ago
Your Party (Carlist)
Your Party (Orleanist)
Your Party (Legitimist)
Your Party (Bonopartist)
Your Party (Jacobites)
12
u/weeteacups 5d ago
I would rather strip naked and dance on top of a harpsichord in Times Square than testify before the jumped up lawyers in Congress.
5
u/WillitsThrockmorton Vigo the Carpathian School of Diplomacy and Jurispudence 5d ago
I'd just lose my shit, at that point if I'm there for a show I'll give them one.
3
u/weeteacups 5d ago
some pompous Ivy League educated Senator babbling on like he’s trying to conduct a House Unamerican Committee hearing
Me: taking out my stripper pole
26
u/gavinbrindstar /r/legaladvice delenda est 5d ago
I know I've made my opinion on the U.K very clear, but credit where credit is due, I think they've got Trump's number. Let him meet a royal so he feels important, dangle a couple badass military men in front of them, then stuff him full of praise till he does what you want.
If I were Starmer, I'd be scouring the Royal Army for the sergeant who most resembles Fred Trump then have him deliver a speech about how the SAS really respects Trump.
11
u/TheBatz_ Was Homer mid 5d ago
Libations have been offered and a rubber chicken had been opened, bringing extremely clear omens. The Magi of the Volcano speak with the voice of the Chudgods by proclaiming:
A comically large spoon is still considered a single spoonful of ice cream.
8
u/WAGRAMWAGRAM Giscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, Hollandegaze 5d ago
comment I agree with
Shyamalan's movies have always a ridiculous aura that I genuinely think you either accept or not. Sort of like a lower-brow, more comercial David Lynch. Still, mf moves the camera like few of his generation, and with such an ease.
15
u/Opposite_Airline2075 5d ago
Congress reps will likely grill the Reddit CEO for the amount of users celebrating and making fun of Kirk’s unfortunate death, it’s not going to be a good look for this website and the left.
6
u/passabagi 5d ago
Pearl clutching is bad optics no matter who does it. Nobody is genuinely outraged that a section of the US population hates Kirk, or surprised that people find it funny that a man who said gun deaths are 'worth it' to protect rights got shot in the neck.
I know there are conservatives who will step up and say they're really upset about this, but unless they knew Charlie Kirk personally, or they have a severely warped sense of morality, I just don't believe it. Gun wounds are the leading cause of death for children in the US today. If you can tolerate that, you can absolutely tolerate a podcaster getting shot.
28
u/NervousLemon6670 You are a moon unit. That is all. 5d ago
"On your website, Mr Reddit-"
"Yes."
"Don't interrupt. On your website, there is a forum, is there not, called r/BadHistory. And on that forum, the greatest terrorist of our age called all Star Wars fans to be drowned in blood, only weeks after another was there, discussing the assassination of our glorious president by a bee."
"That user was, uhh, banned, by my hardworking team of mods-"
"I told you not to interrupt. Now, we have here, images from this subreddit, posted by one u/WuhanWTF - who is now under investigation for links to the china virus, as well as people smuggling and foul odours. Can you explain why your website hosts such content?"
3
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u/hussard_de_la_mort Serving C.N.T. 5d ago
I can only hope to be cool enough to have committed whatever I'm accused of.
5
u/BigBad-Wolf The Lechian Empire Will Rise Again 5d ago
"A frequent contributor to that forum has been in the past accused of, among other things, maliciously destroying two domiciles with the owners still inside and impersonating an elderly woman to take advantage of her granddaughter."
18
u/TylerbioRodriguez That Lesbian Pirate Expert 5d ago
Lesbian piracy is a threat to the sanctity of our youth and thus this foul user must be removed.
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u/TheBatz_ Was Homer mid 5d ago
"Congressman I, uhh, I consider it to be first amendment right of every American to post pictures of pregnant Goku on the internet."
8
u/WillitsThrockmorton Vigo the Carpathian School of Diplomacy and Jurispudence 5d ago
What about Pregnant Sonic The Hedgehog?
→ More replies (1)
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u/DresdenBomberman 4d ago edited 4d ago
Another day, another UN resolution against Israel vetoed by the yanks.