I am wearing green, black, and orange today (those are the “opposite” colors i.e. on the other side of the color wheel of red, white and blue). I have my Cuba baseball cap I could wear but 99.9% of the people who would see it would think I’m being patriotic instead.
Swim lessons 4 days a week. It’s great in that it’s through the city so it’s very cheap… but getting kids to swim lessons every day after work means we get home, eat something, then go right to bed. Not really how I was hoping to spend the summer, but at least the kids really love getting in the pool. And a couple times we went for frozen yogurt after, and those have been some really nice times with them.
While it may be a bit more stressful doing it solo, I also suspect it will lead to some really great memories (like the one you shared)
Mine are too young. Right now I’m trying to make it just about the fireworks, kinda treating it like “firework day” because firework shows are genuinely fun. Honestly I feel like if neither you or your wife are patriotic the other 364 days, kids won’t really care about celebrating America. My parents are very conservative but weirdly not patriotic at all, so for us the 4th never felt like a big deal.
Maybe the most annoying trait among Americans is the absolute confidence they have in their knowledge of history without actually knowing a damn thing about history.
on a campaign that promises to maybe overturn the last 5-10% of whatever trump is up to in office.
Not even that much. The the big tax cuts were probably the worst thing Trump did legislatively in his first term. It was incredibly unpopular - even a majority of Republican voters at the time didn’t want it. As soon as Biden got sworn in, you never heard a peep from him or other Dems about repealing it ever.
It’s crazy that back in the first Trump admin, the whole thing about passing something through reconciliation was that it couldn’t add to the deficit. This bill just blows up the deficit (not that it really matters) and it’s just… ok?
Funny enough, lots of stories of persecution - like being fed to lions - were totally made up by Christians. Their persecution complex goes back centuries.
This isn’t surprising to me. Outside of Christian Zionists and Jewish supremacists “support” for Israel was always extremely shallow. The American public largely supported Israel due to some vague understanding that they were our “ally”, and most had absolutely no idea of the Palestinian struggle at all. The ongoing genocide has been so evil that all these people with very unexamined, light support for Israel have been like “wait wtf”, and have switched positions as they have learned a bit more about the situation.
I know a lot of people who vote Republican. None of them under 45 support Israel. Older than that, it’s all racists and Christian Zionists.
lol I didn’t know it was just tents, but of course it is
There are nearly 3.4 million Palestinians in the West Bank. While I do not doubt it is the desire of the Zionist entity to ethnically cleanse and take over the entire West Bank - and they are very possibly planning it now - the logistics involved make it nearly impossible. While there may not be the same level of organized resistance in the West Bank compared to Gaza (I genuinely do not know this), the Entity has been unable to either hold significant ground in Gaza or expel the population. I just don’t see how it could practically be done.
That said, if the Entity actually does attempt to do this, I think the thesis that it is entering into a phase of fascism where it just moves from defeat to to defeat would be shown to be more correct. Unable to defeat the Resistance in Gaza, unable to defeat Hezbollah, unable to defeat Iran… so it moves on to try something else. But with every extension, the Entity just spreads itself more thin and makes it all the more vulnerable.
Biggest long term impacts:
‘- roughly 16 millions Americans will lose their healthcare
‘- massive expansion in terms of dollars and terror of state power against immigrants. I’ve been skeptical about efforts to terrorize, imprison, and deport immigrants due to the critical function they serve in the economy, but now…. I don’t know
‘- 200k federal employees will be permanently laid off (likely many are unionized, further weakening organized labor in the US)
‘- I’m not sure of the details on this one but I believe a large amount of federal land can now either be sold off or opened up for resource extraction
‘- the stats I have seen show that the average worker will be worse off by like $950 per year after this. Significant when you consider over half of Americans have something like $1,000 or less in savings right now. With the social spending cuts along with higher prices due to tariffs (not included in that number above), we are likely going to see serious mass immiseration. I believe this is genuinely an important time for the left in the US to get out there and talk with people. People are going to be in real hurt. We should try and help as best we can, but also people don’t want this bill (majority of Republicans are against it). It’s a naked giveaway to the rich on the backs of workers. Couple that with obvious fecklessness of the dems and all politicians support of the genocide in Gaza, and I think we approaching a time where people are more receptive to our message than ever.
Turns out the US actually can build something as fast as the Chinese can build hospitals, but of course it’s obviously done for evil purposes.
Direct action groups changing their names like I change the name of my fantasy baseball team.
The one response I’ve been using recently with good results IRL when they say the USSR failed:
“GDP per capita in Russia and most of the republics of the USSR didn’t recover until well into the 21st century. If the USSR had just limped along with low growth instead of collapse, GDP per capita today would be higher. And that’s before accounting for the fact that due to methodological tricks GDP favors capitalist nations, and especially the fact that GDP per capita doesn’t account for distribution; so more equal societies have been material conditions for more people than more unequal societies. Essentially, your typical worker in Russia or other former SSRs would be in better material circumstances today if the USSR never collapsed.
I feel like this needs a content warning but I have no idea what that content warning would say.
My friend is pretty smart too. They’ve been listening to some libertarian podcasts so I figured I’d listen to some to get a sense of what they’re being exposed to, and they way they analyze the world around them is just so…. basic. Like the polar opposite of dialectical materialism. I actually think I lost respect for my friend knowing that they hold these views.
While I’m not going to take Trump’s word for what’s actually in this trade deal, I assume it’s more about finance capital getting their hooks into Vietnam, which is bad. If it’s only about physical goods then sure, no big deal. But why is Vietnam accepting a 20% tariff (even though it’s obviously the US consumer that pays for it)?
Not subtle but I assume this means they are looking to completely eliminate Hezbollah.