The masses will always be attracted to the opiates offered them by those seeking to control them for greedy purposes.

No, they count as a colony as far as I’m concerned. But there’s a difference in how they are treated. PR is basically treated as an independent nation, despite having voted for statehood (ignored by the ruling GOP). HK wanted to have just a modicum of independence, and the Chinese government reacted with goons and gulags.

There was a time when the US was as colonialist as China, but in the 20th century it let the Philippines go, and passed on turning Germany and Japan into colonies, and let the Panama Canal go back to Panama. There’s an analogy to Hong Kong in there somewhere, or with North Korea which remains a totalitarian puppet of China to this day.

The US is far from perfect, but they’re not China. Not even close.

Yeah but why would we be more concerned about Chinese competition than say, the EU? Because China showed who they are in Hong Kong, and we want that to be as un-powerful as possible.

At least not until they use their influence operations to elect a pro-China president.

This article goes into some details that I’ll just recklessly post a big section of here:

Then, after he won the election, Biden committed to the cause like no other president had in modern times. He appointed one of the movement’s brightest and most aggressive reformers, Lina Khan, to run the FTC, as well as other fierce critics of corporate concentration in key posts, including Jonathan Kanter, who took over the antitrust division of the DOJ, and Tim Wu, who became a key economic adviser inside the White House. Six months after taking office, Biden issued a whole-of-government executive order that called on 17 different government agencies to take 72 actions to foster competition and protect consumers against monopolies. As a result, agencies like the FTC, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Food and Drug Administration have cracked down on public scourges like price gouging, noncompete contracts, and banking-related junk fees, and created new rules to make consolidated industries like the hearing aid market more competitive.

Under Kanter and Khan, the DOJ and FTC have also filed far more ambitious antitrust investigations than any administration in decades. Last summer, an investigation into several food production conglomerates over wage suppression and collusion resulted in an $85 million settlement, one of several successful DOJ investigations into no-poach and wage-fixing schemes across the economy. In December, the FTC successfully blocked the medical data firm IQVIA’s attempt to monopolize the business of advertising to doctors through the purchase of an ad tech company called DeepIntent. And in January, a judge sided with the DOJ in its suit against a JetBlue-Spirit merger, the first successful prosecution of an airline merger in 40 years.

The effect of a more aggressive posture from regulators goes beyond favorable court rulings: Under the threat of litigation, Amazon, Lockheed Martin, Berkshire Hathaway, and the chipmaker Nvidia were some of the companies to back off multibillion-dollar acquisitions of smaller firms. Biden’s regulators filed a record 50 antitrust enforcement actions last year, and mergers dropped to a 10-year low.

These actions don’t get media attention because the media treats the government like some reality TV bullshit

I think we’re running out of advancements that make life better, now all technology does is make production cheaper/increase shareholder value.

Like many, he was a right-winger until he became the victim of the right wing. Suddenly he became the most extreme example of the “woke” activists he used to attack.

Your commitment to long-term civilizational success, Elon, is not universally shared

It’s not even the majority position

What you call the “woke mind virus” cares about one thing only: equality

The levelers want to destroy everything because in the rubble we will all be equal

• Tweet reposted by Luigi, worshipping a capitalist 10x worse than the one he shot

That is fairly described as an NPC opinion

bad opinions should be called out as such

The who pronoun is entirely inappropriate here

This whole conversation in a nutshell

Don’t be sorry, be self-aware. You can look up my comment history, I don’t use this kind of language with everyone, but when in Trollistan, I speak troll.

As far as the Dr. Phil stuff, you’re describing a typical Lemmy user. Of course I’m male, only had about 98% odds with that one. Am I lonely? Occasionally, but less than most. Not that there’s anything wrong with being lonely, which is a very common emotion even among popular people. Subconscious feelings of inadequacy are references to psychoanalytic concepts that have long since been debunked. Dehumanizing? Quite the opposite. I’m trying to persuade the online masses to free themselves from the automated thought process of ideology.

Except I am careful with this. It would be a valid criticism if the opinion I don’t like wasn’t “lol at rational lib”. That is fairly described as an NPC opinion, unless you care to help justify it as something deeper. Rationality is not concession, bad opinions should be called out as such. And by the way, it’s not just people I disagree with - after all, this whole thread is me criticizing people who agree with me that billionaire wealth is out of control for choosing shitty argument tactics.

Such a normie reaction. I just wanna differentiate myself from all the NPCs who have let ideology replace their reasoning capabilities, as well as “rational centrists” who consider conceding to irrational Republican arguments to be a form of rationalty. If I’ve said something irrational, you can feel free to call me out on it. My username is an invitation to do just that.

These kinds of memes only exist to prove how edgy people are but they don’t accomplish anything. Saying “I’m so hardcore I even hate the billionaires people like” doesn’t do anything other than push people away from whatever movement you claim to support.

So true. Learn from the edgy George Floyd protests and the Palestine protests, which at best accomplished nothing and more likely played a key role in cutting off formerly-rising popular support for the causes they were advocating. Being edgy feels good to the person doing it, but it makes everyone else say “fuck that guy and whatever they’re in favor of.” Be smart not angry.

These meme would be far more effective if it didn’t have the bottom picture at all.

Worked for the IRA, OG Rednecks, and Zapatistas.

Give me a specific example of how violence worked for any of these. I’m not sure what you’re referring to with OG rednecks, but the IRA (as of 1997) abandoned violence because it failed to reach their goals and just angered the people they were supposed to be fighting for. EZLN only took up armed rebellion for a brief moment and never really tried to engage in battle, focusining on peaceful activity since the mid-90s.

a willingness to make the ones you are targeting bleed far more than you ever could.

The problem there is that the ones being targeted make a ton of money for what they’re doing, and can avoid this sort of problem by just being a little more careful. Meanwhile, there’s not that many people willing to risk prison and death to express their disdain for corporate healthcare.

Because the US government has more guns than any other entity on the planet. There’s no fight it loses.

Violence against the powerful begets fascism. Did violence work for Native Americans? Did it work for Palestinians? Did it work for the original antifa (you know, the ones who died in concentration camps)? Violence only works if you have more guns than the other side. If you don’t, stop and figure something else.