DreamerOfImprobableDreams

I know it’s confusing because so many of the main characters are humans, but Star Wars actually doesn’t take place on Earth-- it’s set in a galaxy far, far away. So unfortunately, you’re going to have to travel a few hundred million light years to make it to the heart of the Empire. But the good news is Coruscant is an absolutely lovely city, with tons of fun stuff to do!

Because if everyone involved is quitting their jobs, they’ll have no money with which to buy food. Which means they’ll have to farm it themselves. And farming, even with top-of-the-line modern tech, is backbreaking fucking work. Also unpredictable as hell: bad harvests aren’t uncommon, especially for novice farmers with no formal training like these guys would be.

In other words, one bad harvest, and everyone in the system you’re proposing fucking dies. Yeah, there’s a reason in the 1800s people were abandoning their family farms for the horrorshow of Victorian era-factories en masse: because even that hell was still preferable to farming.

I’m truly sorry to hear you’re not having a good time here. Good news is, there’s a big old world out there, with plenty of countries to explore! I sincerely hope one day you’ll be able to find a country where you’ll be just as happy as I am in the US. :)

Yep, so many times Americans online say “the rest of the world” when what they actually mean is “Western and Northern Europe”. It’s so frustrating, and like you said more than a touch racist (usually unintentionally so, but that doesn’t make it any less shitty).

And what of the many atrocities committed by humanity?

I can be proud to be American and a human at the same time. Saying “I love my family” doesn’t mean I don’t love other people too, and it doesn’t mean I think my family is somehow better than other human beings, it just means I love my family. Same logic applies here.

Fuck that shit, the fascist dickheads don’t get to steal the flag from the rest of us.

They’ll pry my American flag out of my cold dead progressive hands, lol.

Yes, which is the single biggest reason I’m proud to be American: because our people’s willingness to stand up for one another and keep fighting for a better tomorrow, even against the most powerful opponents, even at risk to their own lives.

Abolishing slavery, ending Jim Crow, giving women the vote, becoming one of the first dozen countries on the planet to legalize gay marriage, helping win WW2, helping support Ukraine, donating more to foreign aid than any other country on the planet, the Marshall Plan, everything about NASA, best national parks on the planet, entertainment capital of the world, first country to land a man on the moon, the whole “nation of immigrants” things making us one of the most diverse countries on the planet.

And of course, none of that excuses the dark parts of our history, the slavery, genocide, imperialism in Latin America, among many, many others. But that brings me to the thing I love most about American: with the exception of the loud Republican minority, we’re a country that actually reckons with the dark parts of our past and tries to make up for them instead of sweeping them under the rug. And then we get to work fixing them.

We’ve made so much progress even in my relatively brief lifetime-- in agonizing two-steps-forward, one-step-back fashion, for sure, but that doesn’t make it not count. I’m so excited to see where we go in the future.

Which is why I’m proud to be American!

Seriously, if you’re feeling like you haven’t been able to contribute as much as you want yet, get to work making change. We always need new volunteers to help run election campaigns, and lots of local governments are desperate for new hires.

The good news is, those morons are largely confined to the Republican party, so it shouldn’t affect the outcome of the Democratic primaries at all.

Which is why I’m increasingly convinced RFK Jr’s real reason for doing this is to get his name out there so he can be Trump’s VP pick, so the two can claim they’re a “bipartisan” “moderate” “unity” ticket. throws up

There’s nothing moderate about Kennedy, he’s a full-blown MAGA far-righter. Which is why he’s being laughed out of the Democratic primary, thank God.

Yeah, to be honest I’m a bit worried studios might use this technology to start changing lines in already released movies, so subtly only film buffs who know the film line-for-line would ever notice.

Even done for well-intentioned reasons (like removing slurs from old-timey movies) it would open up a whole moral and ethical can of worms about whitewashing the past. And I have zero faith in studios to do it for well-intentioned reasons-- especially not when they’re under pressure by religious fanatics, authoritarian governments, etc.

Also, for some reason the dub and subtitles use different translations, so the character will be saying one thing and the subs will read something completely different. It’s confusing AF. Often end up getting so frustrated I just turn off the dub and focus exclusively on the subs.

And every Saturday morning, all the clothes vanish from my hamper and re-appear clean and hung up in my closet / folded in my drawers!

The “something” he’s not denouncing is genocide, my dude.

Can you provide sources for this?

The source is that Russia murders its own oligarchs the second they fall out of Putin’s favor, and anyone who holds up a blank sign in protest of the regime gets shipped off to the front lines. No way that man would survive a second if he ever went against the party line. Which means he hasn’t done so.

It might make sense for him to self-censor to avoid angering one of the few places that are allowing him to stay but even that’s not a given: if he felt something needed to be said badly enough, he’s shown to be the type of person who would rather something be said and take the repercussions on the nose than to leave something unsaid.

And yet he’s happily kept his mouth shut about Russia actively committing genocide.

If I were him, I’d get on the next plane to the US and happily spend the rest of my life in Leavenworth rather than allow myself to become a propaganda tool for a bunch of genocidal fascists. The fact that he hasn’t done that speaks volumes about his character. None of it’s good.

Snowden doesn’t make any public statements any more without express permission from the Russian government. You can’t trust anything he’s said in the past few years, especially not since the war began.

February 24, 2014. The residents of Crimea wake up to find soldiers all over their peninsula. They wear no insignia, refuse to answer any questions about who they are or what they want. But they speak with Russian accents. The Ukrainian military, leaderless, stripped to the bone by Yanukovych’s corruption, can’t do anything but watch.

Within a few weeks, “referendums” are held under the watchful eye of these mysterious men with machine guns. Crimea “votes” to join the Russian federation with 98%+ of the vote.

Four months after that, as Ukraine is gearing up to hold presidential elections to replace Yanukovych, pro-Russian “separatists” suddenly pop up in most Eastern and Southern Ukrainian oblasts, seizing control of government buildings and demanding their regions be annexed by Russia. And I’m sure the fact that these “Ukrainian separatists” all had Russian accents, and many just happened to look exactly like known FSB officers who’d “mysteriously” quit just a few days before was a total coincidence, too!

Fortunately, they’re prevented from seizing power in most oblasts. Unfortunately, that’s when Russian “volunteers” “on vacation” roll over the border in the Donbass with tanks they “bought at military surplus stores”. (Seriously, the Russian government actually tried to claim that in its propaganda!) Again, the Ukrainian army is such a disorganized mess there’s nothing it can do.

Fortunately, this time people know what’s going on, so volunteer militias form to push back the invaders. (As you might expect, there was precisely zero oversight or vetting of these militias for the first few years, so some did have some pretty extremist beliefs-- this was the Azov Battalion’s origin story, for example. Ukraine’s since integrated most into the real army and forced them to at least make a show of abandoning their extremist beliefs; how effective this has been, someone with more knowledge of the situation than me will have to say.)

After months of fighting, the conflict settles into relatively frozen lines. At this point, the EU tries to mediate a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, called the Minsk Agreement. The deal is never actually fully implemented, mainly because Russia refused to hold up its side of the bargain. But it does cool the war down to a frozen conflict. Between 2015 and 2021, only a few dozen troops die per year, standing guard on unchanging frontlines.

Ukrainian society obviously doesn’t forget or forgive any of this. But gradually, the war drops in importance in people’s minds. People’s minds turn towards more immediate concerns, like combating corruption, fighting poverty, and joining the EU (which is seen by most Ukrainians as necessary to accomplish the first two goals).

However, in the background, the country is rebuilding its gutted armed forces. In hopes of being good enough to join NATO, sure. But also, you know. Just in case.

And then in February 2022, “just in case” became reality.

This is the last straw for a ton of people, who are sick of the corruption, the chaos, the government that runs roughshod over their rights and lives while leaving them to rot in poverty. The protests swell in size. The riot police step up the violence against them, but that only makes people madder, and more determined to take to the streets.

(This is also at least partly because opposition also sees this as their big political chance and publicizes the hell out of the protests, encouraging more people to join in. The US Embassy also makes no secret about being on the protestor’s side, too, with the then-US Ambassador even going out to the Maidan to give cookies to the protestors one day. This is where a lot of the conspiracy theories about “US backed coup!!!11!111!11111!!!” come from, but like, my brother in Christ, you cannot psy-op hundreds of thousands of people into massive street demonstrations for months on end unless they’re willing and fucking eager to play along.)

Then, on February 20th, 2014, after two months of escalating protests, the riot police open fire with live ammunition. 100 people are killed. And the protestors still refuse to give in! In fact, they begin threatening civil war if Yanukovych doesn’t resign, immediately.

February 23, 2014. Yanukovych vanishes, without a trace. (A few days later, he’ll pop up in Russia, where he’s been living ever since.) The protestors won! Sure, Ukraine is left leaderless-- there’s no Constitutional provision handling what to do if the president just up and vanishes without resigning-- but it’s not like anything’s likely to go wrong in the next few days while they sort things out. Right?