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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: October 19th, 2023

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  • A lot of it is truthful information for sure. But sentences along the lines of “the west has never forgiven Haiti” are quite obviously biased and tell of a rather black-and-white view of the world. The west is not monolithic. Haiti is so far away from those countries that most of the west probably couldn’t care less about what’s happening in Haiti. Just like most South American countries couldn’t care less about what’s happening in Ukraine.

    With the former colonial powers of Haiti, especially France, that’s of course a different case and they contributed a lot to the sad state of affairs in Haiti.

    In any case I think if you asked the average Haitian what they would like to see in their country it’s probably the same thing people need and crave everywhere: Peace, and a good economical perspective to improve their livelihood. And for that it doesn’t matter if you’re part of an empire or not. You can very much be free and be part of an empire.

    Ultimately you need stability to achieve peace and prosperity and the chances for that are often even higher when you’re part of an empire. Most people on earth would always prefer peace and stability over revolution if there’s any alternative to the latter.



  • Well that’s not the type of emotional argument that I was referring to lol. I don’t know why you would think I’m talking about myself. I don’t own a car.

    I’m just trying to understand others that don’t live like me in order to find the necessary compromises. Because that’s what needs to happen in a democracy.

    I understand that you’re desperate but not much good will come out of that emotion. It’s not that people are evil and care about nothing and that this is the reason why they don’t act in a meaningful way. This line of thinking is just plain wrong for the vast majority of the population. Yes, people are also lazy but they also have many many everyday problems and can’t make changing their lifestyle right here right now their top priority. Yes we have to fight for changes, in the media, on the policy level and also make the good alternatives a good deal to choose. But that won’t happen with accusations and self-righteousness, I’m sorry.


  • You can try to teach people what a good consumption decision is w.r.t. global change. But it won’t work in 99% of cases. People are often emotionally attached to their way of living and many have tied a part of their identity to it.

    I don’t care about what counts as excuses because there is no ethical consumption in capitalism. What I care about first and foremost is reducing GHG emissions effectively, within the system that we’re currently living in. And for everything else you have to offer people real alternatives if you want them to change their behaviour. And changing that behaviour will not come true by only making factual arguments but by understanding people’s emotions and identities and accounting for those in your argument. It’s clear that people in rural communities (and a large share of the population lives there) will drive cars for many years to come and these cars have to be EVs.



  • Well it’s baffling to me to have “pollution” as the first point of that list. It’s just beyond my comprehension how one could state that a non-combustion car doesn’t help with pollution problems. Yes alright, there’s still microplastics… But hey, please visit a city like Beijing and tell me again that EVs don’t combat pollution on a massive scale.

    It’s nice to be critical and yes, cars are shit for our society. Nevertheless our society has been built around them and people will drive cars. They might do so less in 50 years but right here right now with the way society is organised EVs do definitely play an important part in reducing emissions. Change takes time. And people like the ones protesting against the Gigafactory prefer to ignore this context. To me this line of thinking is naive to say the least and can also be seen as self-righteous and delusional by those for whom no alternative is available now. Lecturing people about their lifestyle is not going to change anything.









  • Maybe I just expect better from people on the left. But you’re right… Why should they be different?

    But still. If one cares about one topic so much that they would not vote for someone because of it. Then why would they not go the extra mile and think about what the consequences of their decision will be with regard to that topic? And I don’t think that you have to be a political junkie to have such thoughts. It’s no rocket science at all.

    You’re totally right that material change is needed. I just doubt that there’s so much Biden can do until next year. Even if such decisions were made right now, it would take a while until the effects would be felt. And if changes are not enshrined in law, they’ll be gone soon. But there’s no perspective to achieve that as long as you don’t control house, senate and presidency.



  • I wasn’t advocating for voting democrat solely because of Trump. I was advocating for carefully weighing the consequences of ones decision in elections.

    Politicians should learn what their base cares about and do something

    I’m sorry but to me this is just borderline naive and it completely ignores all societal and political realities. The US has a 2 party system. It’s shitty but right now that’s exactly what it is.

    That means: All the things that some voter wants can only be represented by either one, or the other election platform or ideology. But even if you had a system that allowed for 5 or 6 parties to coexist in parliament… What do you think: How many compromises would you have to make to allow yourself to vote for one of them? I’ll guarantee you that you will always have to accept a lot of discrepancies between your ideals and the ideas a party wants to realize. Because that party must appeal to many voters if it wants to have a perspective to govern, i.e. implementing their ideas.

    And that is why there is no such thing as “what their base wants”. The base of any political party will be diverse in their interests. To claim that the democratic base has ending the genocide in Gaza as their top priority is just wrong. It might be a sizable chunk of young voters but of course they can tip the scales in a close race.

    But there’s another thing that I find naive here. And I see it in so many comments of the loud “anti genocide joe” faction: And that is the part “and do something” in your quote above. Why do some people think that the president of the US is so almighty that he could just snap his fingers and boom, the genocide is gone. He can’t make these decisions alone. He’s part of a system of checks and balances for very good reasons. And the political reality is that there exist many, many competing interests in politics, there are binding contracts, there are diplomatic ties, etc. etc. To conclude: It’s practically impossible for Biden to stop the genocide right now. So if anyone insists that one should not vote for him because he hasn’t used his divine powers for ending the genocide yet… For me it’s just dumb. It makes no fucking sense at all.