The speech was certainly written with the Republicans in mind, so i wouldn’t be surprising if that was intentional.

So what’s in the centre then?

I agree that the Left - Right spectrum is constantly in motion – that’s why these discussions of what constitutes what are often contentious and vary from one country to another.

Because in the centre you have neoliberalism and so on.

If you simply define left as anti-capitalist and right as capitalist then what’s in the center?

Ok, so if we agree to define Leftist strictly as anti-capitalist, then fine. I was using it to mean more “left-of-centre”.

Fair enough – “left of centre” then, if we are defining Leftist strictly as just socialist/communist.

Yeah, nationalization can be a right-wing thing but it generally isn’t. Also, I wouldn’t say that control by the state is less left-wing than control via worker collectives; that’s just the difference between authoritarian and libertarian socialism.

Social democracy, as it is typically understood, is absolutely leftist since it is based around government regulation, social justice, economic equality, and a strong welfare state.

Bismarck also didn’t “invent it”; his government was more just a welfare state. Social democracy itself came about through various 19th Century thinkers, such as Eduard Bernstein.

No, it did not happen the way he described it. Firstly, there was a baby, not babies. Secondly, the child was not secreted somewhere alone, found after the parents had been shot and then deliberately killed.

Netanyahu is deliberately embellishing the story in order to heighten the outrage over October 7th, and then trying to frame anyone protesting Israel’s ethnic cleansing in Gaza as a supporter of what happened. It’s disgraceful.

Not really – MAGA-esque neofascism is just as overt in many European countries.

What makes the Overton window shifted towards the right in the US, IMO, is that (unlike Europe) the socialist Left never got a foothold in politics at the national level. This, plus years of Cold War, propaganda, allowed collectivist ideas like nationalized industries and universal healthcare to be branded as “Soviet” and somehow Un-American.

To this day, there are people on the Right in the US who believe that advancing any tax-paid public services is tantamount to communism, whereas in Europe there is broad support for the public sector on both sides of the political spectrum.

Immediately after October 7th, there were various sensational and outlandish claims made by Israeli officials that babies were beheaded, put into ovens, murdered in their nurseries, and generally singled out and made to suffer with intentional violence. Since then, no evidence whatsoever has been provided to substantiate these claims and the majority of them have been dropped completely.

UN records indicate that one baby did actually die along with her family after Hamas fighters opened fire into a safe room in Kibbutz Be’eri (page 10), but there were no recorded cases where multiple babies were intentionally targeted and killed in the way that Netanyahu describes.

None of this is to diminish the atrocities that were committed on October 7th, but it is telling that Israel and Netanyahu in particular seem dead set on making the events on that day seem as barbaric as possible in order to somehow justify the large-scale massacring of men, women, and children that is happening in Gaza.

And yet again we have congress members clapping like trained seals to debunked Israel propaganda and the characterization of anti-war protesters being in favor of the killing of civilians.

“My friends, defeating our brutal enemies requires courage and clarity. Clarity begins by knowing the difference between good an evil. Yet, incredibly, many anti-Israel protesters choose to stand with evil. They stand with Hamas. They stand with rapists and murderers. They stand with people who came into the kibbutzim – into a home – the parents hid the children, the two babies, in a secret attic. They murdered the families – the parents. They found the secret attic and then they murdered the babies. These protesters stand with them; they should be ashamed of themselves.”

*Thunderous applause, standing ovation

https://youtu.be/Kwi0uD2QlKw?t=5589

This is 2003 Iraq War levels of state-approved disinformation. I feel nauseated.

It doesn’t get ignored; it’s one of the most common criticisms of US politics.

I’m not sure that lack of jeopardy was the issue with Furiosa – after all, that’s always the case with prequels.

I also don’t think that Day One introduced enough new developments to keep things interesting. The concept of the monsters is so simple that the main characters figure out the “rules” (don’t make noise) within minutes of the first attack. And that’s pretty much it - we, the audience, are none the wiser about what they are, where they come from, or what they’re about by the end of Day One than we were by the end of the second movie. Personally, I didn’t find the character development as interesting as Furiosa, either.

Either way, i agree that the quality of the story matters and I think Furiosa succeed here, personally.

If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say the differences in the box office outcomes come down to the facts that the Mad Max franchise has more of a niche appeal than A Quiet Place, is more violent, and the movie was quite a bit longer in duration.

Its success is interesting as it doesn’t appear to have suffered as a result of prequel fatigue, unlike, say, Furiosa, depsite being noticeably weaker than the first two movies.

That, plus like everything else in America, an entire business has sprung up around running federal elections. Longer campaigns require more staffers, strategists, pollsters, advertisers, etc. It’s a billion dollar industry unto itself.

Yes, but the point is we are now in 2024. All those other presidents are either dead or retired.

Both are older than the state of Israel, FFS.

Defecting to the party whose own canvassers openly drop the word ‘Paki’ when think no one is listening is certainly… a choice.

The odds of a face-eating leopard moment are pretty good all round.

Like it or not, Twitter is still the de-facto place for breaking news stories. You just have to sift through the dross.

As much as Mastodon is a far nicer and healthier social platform, it has a long way to go before it gets anywhere close in this particular regard.

Oh, don’t get me wrong - Budweiser/Coors/Michelob etc. are all awful. However, most US states have good local breweries and craft beers. Lagers are generally not as popular as IPAs, but you can still get good ones. Admittedly, this varies quite a bit depending on where you are in the US.