Then you missed an opportunity to justify that opinion.

Germany isn’t perfect. Nobody is. But there is no lie that the USA no longer is the bastion of freedom it claimed to be, but is a lot more like 1930s Germany than today’s Germany is. Let’s talk some facts.

Germany scores 40/40 in terms of political rights, and 55/60 on Civil Liberties. This score matched their 2023 score, and while the 2024 report isn’t done yet, we can get a look at 2023’s view. Germany collected all available points on the political side of the equation, for its Mixed Proportional Representation system, vibrant political parties, and good political system balance. The areas it gets dinged on include:

• Women are underrepresented in government.
• Non-Native Residents find it hard to become citizens.
• There are concerns about the retention and analysis of data, including possible retributory use that could impact free speech.
• Politically motivated crimes are on the rise.
• While Germany overall is doing a good job on equal rights, Roma and Senti people face discrimination, and women still show an 18% underpayment compared to men.

Perhaps you take exception to ‘gave rise to Fascism’ and ‘unleashed two world wars’? I get you. From a pure factuality standpoint, this statement leaves something to be desired. Germany didn’t give rise to Fascism. IMO, that ‘honour’ goes to Italy. And World War 1 was mostly started by Austria. but let’s be clear here. Germany viewed the fight between Austria and Bosnia to be just the opening it needed to take on Russia and France. And World War 2? 100% started by Germany, in their quest to find lebensraum, or living space, while they displaced undesirables like Jews and Slavs. While Italy started Fascism, it was Germany that objectively planned to bring its own brand of fascism globally. Maybe you’d prefer: “The nation that fanned the flames of both world wars, starting one and enlarging the other, and was the largest force for the spread of the toxic ideology of Fascism, has become a global model of democracy”?

I agree with the rest of it, too. The USA has fallen to becoming what we fought against in the 1940s. And Germany may well become what has to fight against to us in the 2030s…

Definitely hope for the best that we’ll actually get healthy food from this, but expect the worst in that they will fuck it up and somehow make us sicker.

They might not even get it when it affects them. As long as the leopards eat their enemies faces, they’re OK with having the leopards eat their faces as well. Hate is a powerful motivator, unfortunately.

I think the worry here is that the protests are only attracting tens of thousands in each venue, and a few million at most nation-wide. These numbers should be higher. 75 million people voted for Harris. Another 2 million voted for third parties. And 90+ million stayed home. Big cities should have hundreds of thousands or even millions in the street, and imagine what would happen if a cool 100m turned out nation-wide tomorrow.

The worry is that we won’t get even 10% of those numbers, and a nation of 330m will be led to Fascism by 77.5m people actively supporting it and another 90m just whistling past the grave.

This is why we need to move everyone over here. Everyone who is here who can still talk on Reddit should link posts to here and encourage people to leave. Alternatively go to the Denver Discord. But we need to get off Reddit. Like others have said. Reddit admins are most definitely hard-right with their heads so far up Trump and the Republicans collective ass that they can taste what they had for dinner…

And this is the bullshit reasoning that got us into this mess.

The time to have principles is in the Primary, where you and your buddies go out and convince the rest of the Democratic leaning people that maybe we should impress AOC or some other leftie to run in the Primaries, then convince people in places like this to vote for that leftie in the Primary. Once the Primary happens, you have to weigh what happened and will happen, and vote accordingly. By not voting, the people you’re insisting I have compassion for voted for the Shitgibbon and everything he has done. Harris might have continued funding the IDF, but because of the people you’re sucking up to here, Trump is directly supporting the genocide with an eye for preemo real-estate after it’s said and done.

Don’t be stupid and enable that cruelty. Wait. Too late for that~!

It starts making sense when you remember that the GQP’s biggest beef with Kerry is the same beef they have with Obama and Clinton and Biden.

The GQP’s biggest beef is that all of those folks and many more are Democrats and get in the way of their Permanent Republican Majority.

$$$. That’s the answer.

Foreign gulags give the shitheads plausible deniability when it comes to situations like the mistaken deportation of a legal resident. So, they can rendition you to El Salvadore, and there’s jack and shit you can do about it.

But a good third of our country will celebrate it even as the leopards eat their faces, because at least the leopards ate the faces of people they hate.

Absolutely!

Yeah, fuck off with your ‘it can’t happen here’ bullshit.

It’s not different if Dems keep pushing the same tired neo-liberal memes and keep fellating the rich and powerful, but maybe they could try an alternative plan, you know, doing rather than just talking?

Yeah, nah, fuck right off with that bullshit. Fascism bad. End of line.

Maye the next Republican will be a competent Fascist and we won’t get another do-over.

Not quite,

Overall, 50 percent of those polled said they disapprove of “recent tariffs announced by Donald Trump,” split between 39 percent for “strongly disapprove” and 11 percent for “somewhat disapprove.” By contrast 39 percent said they approve, of which 21 percent did so “strongly” while 18 percent did so “somewhat.”

It is still disappointing that 39% will align with Trump despite all of this, but keep in mind that there’s a floor to Trump’s support numbers. We’ll never be able to approach all of them.

Let’s see what happens on the undecideds over the next few months as the impact of Trump’s tariffs hit. Heck, keep an eye on that 18% “Somewhat Approve”. That’s got to make some of the GQP reps a bit nervous!

Dear reader, the most surefire way to recognise a person who has his head so far up Trump’s rear that he can taste the burnt steak Trump had for his last meal is see the letters T, D, and S strung together in the empty-headed attempt to politically attack somebody else. It’s not smart. It doesn’t win the argument. It is a clear sign that the person using these letters in this way is a sycophant for the current admin and should be avoided by every decent person on the fucking planet.

This user asked what was being protested. I made it clear what was being protested. I knew this user was not here to debate honestly or faithfully because it doesn’t take any effort whatsoever to find the answer to this user’s bad faith question. But I answered so it can’t say the Left doesn’t know what it’s protesting. Denied that avenue, it drops some both-sides bullshit and then goes on a political attack.

I don’t give a shit about what it thinks about my points, or where it thinks I got them from. It asked the question, and showed why other users here are calling it a Sea Lion.

I actually didn’t use Gemini to compose my response to this person. I used it to figure out how hard it was to use. It wasn’t and it pointed me to two more things I hadn’t thought of when I made my own answer. My answer came from myself, and is basically what you said, but with more people. People want Trump and Musk’s hands OFF their social security cheques. They want them OFF their paycheques. They want them OFF the services they rely on day to day, and most of them are not the takers that Team Red thinks all users of service are.

In your quest to make nice with the guy I’m calling out for his dickish behaviour to the rest of us, you implied I used an AI bot to compose my answer. To be clear, I did not. I just read the signs of the people standing around me. Thanks for that implication, though!

Not everyone can be reached, but I don’t think no one can be reached either. It just takes the Dems growing a fucking spine, though, which is the harder lift, IMO.

Small community during a slow time. Sorry I missed this!

Nothing to report on my end.