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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • This is why claiming to be a “prophet” (by any of a multitude of definitions) is so popular for cult leaders.

    You can say you have information from a deity, one way or another, or even that you get special treatment from a deity. No special powers needed. If people believe in the deity and they believe you were chosen by that deity, to counteract that would mean counteracting the belief in the deity itself.














  • This is one effect of a general lack of real consequences for corporations and those that run them.

    The company has already determined their likely fine after being caught doing something egregious. The profit from being early to market is significant, and so long as it is considerably higher than the likely fine, they go for it. The expected real earnings are the difference between the profit and the fine. It’s all made worse since so often the fine is absolutely nothing compared to the profit, since the numbers these companies are dealing with are so damn big.

    This is why you won’t see real change until we stop slapping corporations with fines and start slapping executives with jail time. That is literally the only way to break the cycle.



  • The US has a problem of representation. Specifically and especially since the Citizens United decision, corporate interests can easily flow money towards politicians to make them do just about anything they want. This exacerbated an existing problem with the corporate tax rate and has now brought it into laughably low territory.

    That’s all an oversimplification of course, but it’s not that Americans haven’t “figured it out”. It is far more complicated than that.


  • At one time it would have sounded like a conspiracy theory, but you don’t get here without a massive disinformation campaign.

    Trump’s supporters have been so programmed to accept everything he says at face value or, in some cases, just to ignore what he actually said in favor of the party’s updated spin. In all cases, they believe it is impossible that he could do any wrong, so any semblance of incongruity or poor leadership or any negative aspect of Trump at all must be due to lies of his opponents – even if that means the entire system would have to be rigged against him to an extremely unlikely degree.

    The last time the world saw these tactics used to such an extreme extent and with such success required a widespread campaign of so-called “denazification” after a very prolonged war.