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. :)
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.
ACA was a bunch of half-assed bullshit.
Tell me you weren’t paying attention to US politics in 2008-2010 (which were the two fucking years of nonstop backbreaking fucking effort it got the ACA to be passed) without telling me you weren’t paying attention.
Yeah, assuming her feet don’t smell I’d have no issue with her cutting her nails on the train-- if she was catching them with a plastic tray, baggie or even a napkin so they don’t fall on the seat someone else is about to sit down on. But she’s not doing that, which is gross and disrespectful to your fellow passengers, IMO.
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.
Lovely! What part of Germany was this taken in?
For the same reason fascists constantly accuse of “virtue signalling.” Dickheads like this have convinced us everyone is secretly as much of an amoral, power-hungry narcissist as them. So when we talk about caring about other people, they assume we must be lying for some kind of political benefit-- because there’s absolutely no way we actually care about other people, nobody does that, right?
(This is also how they sleep at night, by the way: sure, they’re bad, but everyone else is just as bad as them if not worse, so who cares.)
So yeah, a dickhead like Putin is going to assume every other country must secretly be just as revanchist as his Russia.
Also the fact that the most recent Republican president, spent pretty much his entire term trying to serve Ukraine to Russia on a silver platter.
And Republicans reacted to this betrayal by… making him the frontrunner for the GOP nomination in 2024.
Yep, the Republican base has proven they’ll vote for literally anyone with an ® next to their name no matter how many felonies they commit. And because they’re fanatics, they turn out to vote every time, no matter what.
The only way we get out of this nightmare is to hold the line, keep voting every cycle to keep the mainiacs out of power until the party inevitably implodes due to demographic shifts. Hopefully it’ll happen soon, worrying about this shit is exhausting. But until then, we can’t afford to be complacent.
Nah, it’s what happens when you read them as instruction manuals.
The fact that the guy you replied to totally ignored all my points about, ya know, the ongoing genocide is fucking telling.
Friendly reminder Russia is committing atrocities in the occupied territories. So any kind of negotiated “peace” that involves Ukraine giving up territory means them consigning all their citizens living there to torture, random executions, wanton sexual violence, having their children taken away, and worse!
That’s what you’re calling for when you advocate a “negotiated settlement”.
True, but there are definitely places where it’s much better to be trans than others, and Russia’s near the bottom of the pack.
Best joke I heard is: if everyone’s pissed at what you said, and your only defense is “technically, it wasn’t illegal for me to have said that!”, it was probably a pretty bad argument.
This. People this controlling and with this little regard for other people’s rights and boundaries tend to react extremely poorly to having their control challenged. The most dangerous time in any abusive relationship is when the victim leaves-- and make no mistake, OP, that’s what’s happening to your friend. Escalation to physical violence in these circumstances would not be out of the ordinary.
Please be careful, and make sure your friend has a plan to make sure she’s in a safe place where her soon-to-be-ex can’t get to her before she breaks up with him. And I would strongly recommend you both get a restraining order if that’s something you feel comfortable doing.
I know this may sound paranoid, but it’s always best to err on the side of caution in potentially dangerous situations like these.
Tell ya what: don’t use a sexist metaphor next time, and I promise not to overreact. ;)
Sorry I didn’t put a ton of brainpower into spicing up the wording of a throwaway comment on an anonymous message board I wrote at near-midnight my time.
Yeah, there’s precisely zero chance this doesn’t blow the fuck up in El Salvador’s face in the long run. Not to mention it’s horrific on every possible level.
Hope to god El Salvador manages to figure out a way to get rid of this guy, and fast. Otherwise they’re in for a very bad few decades.