Hegar

It’s also important to remember that non-violence serves the interest of entrenched power. The state is at its core a violence-control structure. When people excersize the power of violence in their own interests, the state must reassert it’s dominion or risk collapse.

Non-violent requests can be accommodated without elites feeling like their ill-gotten power is threatened. But it’s often the violent demands that scare them into doing so.

the deputy marshal “fit the general description of a subject being sought by ICE.”

100% chance the description was “Mexican”.

Why repost low effort trolling?

Securing the resources to spend on communal projects that benefit the state is one of the many reasons that state employs violence against its citizens, yep.

Roads are a great example because across the world, major road projects were always built to speed up the military getting to and putting down rebellious provinces - bearing arms against their subjects.

All states are instruments of violence, that’s their sole function. Anything they do that makes our lives easier is just the velvet glove over that iron fist. It’s easy to pretend otherwise when the state hasn’t turned its violence on you yet.

Bearing arms against it’s citizens is literally the entire point of a government. The state is just a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. The only time a government is not bearing arms against it’s citizens is when the threat of bearing arms against it’s citizens is enough to get what it wants.

Gaining high status or power changes your brain, suppressing empathy and making you neurologically less able to consider the pain you inflict on others.

The powerful become evil, it’s just how human brains work.

(Here. Are. Some. Sources)

Yes! House of reps is what I meant. Thank you.

There are some exceptions and it’s definitely not all they do, but attending to the interest of the powerful is their day-to-day work.

Senators accept bribes from various industries and wealthy individuals in order to block or advance legislation on their behalf.

Because a Senator’s electorate is the entire state, they are more likely to be servants of large state-wide industries like dairy in WI, oil & gas in TX, etc.

This is as opposed to the Congress, where the make-up of their specific district can alter which moneyed interests they benefit most from serving.

Every state has only 2 federal Senators, compared to a variable amount of congressional reps based on population. So individual Senators are generally considered more powerful.

Lol oops. I have no specific thoughts on pacificism, truth be told.

It’s important to question your beliefs when presented with evidence. My views on pacificism have loosened a lot, for example.

But the two view you mention are ones where the left is objectively correct. Homosexual behavior is a biological fact in almost all animals and non-binary gender systems exist across the breadth of human cultures.

Any belief system which serves as a permission structure for brutalizing others can safely be rejected as false.

anyone but Trump probably can get elected

That’s not how a fascist coup backed by the majority of our corrupt elites works.

He’s a slimy career politician who has ambition where his ideals should be.

They definitely have not. Not publicizing a fool proof nuclear counter-measure defeats the purpose of achieving it in the first place.

You’d MUCH rather your opponent know a nuke strike is pointless, rather than they try and later be surprised that only one lucky one got through.

Sometimes I miss australia.

sin is religious bullshit anyway

Yep, that’s why I used the word.

Suggesting that “people are idiots” actually explains behavior is just like believing in sin - it’s just giving up on understanding reality. It makes as much sense as a right wing christian trying explain away their opponents as sinners.

Sin is never a sufficient explanation for human behavior. Meaning anytime we think “it’s because they are bad”, we’re missing something big.

All behavior is an attempt to meet needs. Any correct explanation of behavior identifies the need and how the behavior is believed to meet it.

They may not be smart, on average as a group. But that’s not why they keep doing this.

Identities with more rigorous behavior requirements often persist longer. It seems counter-intuitive but the greater the buy-in required, the more appealing the identity seems to be.

In some weird and deeply human way, displaying your devotion to these doomed and unreasonable defenses probably increases the individual’s status among their sovereign peers. That’s the payoff that we don’t see when we only look at the financial and legal costs.

Yes, pretending you have questions when you just have insults is a great example of trolling.

“FreedomAdvocate” just immediately sounds like a troll account. Aaaannnnd the comment history is almost nothing but trolling. Surprise surprise.

People always think that the spark of invention is all that’s required, ignoring the social and material tinder and kindling that’s required for something to be useful and take off.