I kind of suspect things were always too big and complex for one person to address but the rampant individualism of our society obscures that history.

China has plenty of right wingers and social conservatives living there. They just can’t organize for their beliefs outside of the existing political structures.

“I trust the United States government and so should you!” -Alphane Moon

How’s that relevant? Do you have counter evidence for any of the points I made or are you just desperately trying to prove you’re not a dupe?

I do check out RFE/RL and its sister outlets from time to time. It’s pretty obvious that their agenda aligns 1 for 1 with American foreign policy objectives. To be fair though, the US wouldn’t fund RFE/RL if it didn’t effectively dupe people into believing it was an unbiased source.

I think you mean it’s designed to prevent partisan interference. RFE/RL’s purpose is to support US foreign policy which makes it inherently political. It is undeniably a propaganda outlet and therefore comparable in function to RT. You may trust American propaganda over Russian propaganda but that doesn’t mean the former is not propaganda.

What an absurd response. This is akin to saying RT isn’t Russian state propaganda.

If you have to defend Nazi’s because the SC will give them a more favorable decision then the legal system is already fucked beyond repair.

Well that’s exactly the problem. If people use AI generated images for commercial purposes they may accidentally infringe on someone else’s copyright. Since AI models are a black box there isn’t really a good way to avoid this.

The problem isn’t just publishing though, it’s academia as well. Scientists are incentivized to publish in “prestigious” closed access journals such as Nature. They are led to believe it’s better for their career than publishing in open access journals such as PLOS One. As such, groundbreaking papers often get paywalled. Universities then feel obligated to pay outrageous subscription fees to access them.

This is true for board games as well. The classic example being Monopoly.

I go back and forth on this. When I was younger the Palme Dutt essay you cited would have sounded like nonsense to me. Now I see his work as a brilliant analysis of the conditions that give rise to fascism. Going back and tracing the circumstances that led to my change in perspective is not easy. What was the relative impact of comments like yours or my life circumstances that led to a change in my perspective? I can’t say I know for sure.

Unfortunately, that’s not how it played out. California residents actually voted for proposition 8 which banned same sex marriage. It wasn’t until a court case invalidated said proposition that same sex marriage became legal.

I think you might have your history mixed up. The courts legalized same sex marriage in California in 2008 but it was banned again after proposition 8 was passed by voters. It’s possible deep canvassing was used in the campaign against proposition 8. However, it certainly didn’t tip the scales. Same sex marriage only became legal again in 2013 thanks to a different court case that invalidated the proposition.

That said, I do think there are contexts where deep canvassing may be effective. For example, similar methods are an essential part of labor organizing. Progressive causes are just too resource poor in the US to use such methods at scale.

Unfortunately in the US deep canvassing is not a viable strategy for most political campaigns since it’s too resource intensive. It’s far more effective to canvass as way of identifying likely voters. Then you can make sure they vote when the time comes.

Their first statement was factually incorrect and their follow up explanation was just unfounded conjecture that made no logical sense. When I pointed that out they just refused to engage.

Whether or not you want to call it a defense, you are providing justifications for Biden’s lack of action. Going on to suggest that your opinion is just “how reality works” even though you’ve made factually incorrect statements is just too rich.

Exactly how was my question “uninformed”?

They would if they were actually given the choice.

This has to be a bit right? The irony of being high while also trying to justify why Biden doesn’t push for legalization is just too funny.