WoodScientist

joined 3 months ago
[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 2 points 14 hours ago

MAGA will decide they want to deport Irish-Americans. Ireland will respond by saying they don't let people claim residency that many generations back. MAGA will piss and moan. Eventually they will make a deal with the UK government. The UK government will build a large prison camp in Northern Ireland, right near the border with the Republic of Ireland. Irish Americans will be banished to the camp, in direct line of site from ROI land, until such time as ROI willingly accepts them in as refugees.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 3 points 14 hours ago

Supreme Courts around the world have found all sorts of ways of exercising power. They can deputize citizen volunteers to serve as temporary court enforcers. They can outright order the military to stand down and arrest the president. Hell, they could dig into the ancient tradition and declare the president an outlaw - literally outside the protection of the law, making it legal for anyone to straight-up kill the guy.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 27 points 16 hours ago

I for one could never vote for a man to be president. Men are just too emotional to serve as leaders. Do you really want some roid-rage dude with his hands on the nuclear button? Please. Men are just too pigheaded, irrational, and obsessed with petty dominance issues to be trusted with real power. They're like selfish little children. Can you imagine it, a male president? The very idea is laughable! Only someone who knows just how hard it is to birth and raise a child should be trusted with the power to direct the military to take lives. Only women can really grasp the real stakes involved. /s

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 12 points 16 hours ago

The sad truth is that while Kamala would have been better in many other ways, in terms of Israel and Gaza, Trump, Biden, and Kamala are clones of each other. Gaza's fate was written on October 7th. The Israeli right has long held plans to ethnically cleanse both Gaza and the West Bank. This has been their goal for decades. Part of their long term strategy is to so antagonize the Palestinian population that violent uprisings are inevitable, thus providing justification for genocide and ethnic cleansing. Israel may not have directly known the specifics of the October 7th attack in advance. But Israel has a long standing policy to antagonize Palestinians to generate the cassus belli it needs to launch its ethnic cleansing campaigns.

And frankly, I do not blame any Muslim for staying home in the election, regardless of what other benefits Kamala had over Trump. You cannot tell someone, "yes, I am going to murder your people. But I still need you to vote for me in order to protect democracy."

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 9 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.

They could work to remove the destitution and desperation of working people. But if their workers weren't in such dire straits, then they wouldn't have so much power over them. Workers with good pay and a healthy work-life balance also have more time to pursue unionization and other political activities. Even if improving the lives of the people would objectively increase the wealth of the ultra-rich, it would still decrease their power. And ultimately, the only reason people ever obtain that level of wealth is because they desire power more than anything else. People who aren't power-hungry monsters cash out and retire early long before they reach billionaire status.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Honestly, this attitude is downright suicidal for our species right now. Capitalism took centuries to develop. Anything that replaces it will form over a similar time scale. And with climate change, that is time we do not have.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Allegation: the DNC exhibited overt favoritism in the primary process to ensure Hillary won the primary.

Your response: but Hillary won the primary, therefore she won the primary!

No one is disputing that she won the primary. The problem was the DNC put their thumb on the scale through the entire process. Hillary was the presumptive nominee from the beginning. People voting for Bernie on day one had to vote against headlines that said, "Hillary is already 1/3 of the way to getting the nomination!" The DNC also collaborated very closely with the Hillary campaign, and they did not do so with Bernie's campaign. They even went so far as feeding her debate questions ahead of time.

Yes, obviously Hillary actually won the primary even without the superdelegates. Any brain-dead moron can consult wikipedia and see that. There's no need to parrot the obvious. But you're completely missing the core of the issue - that Hillary only won the majority of non-superdelegates and only won the primary popular vote because the DNC threw the weight of the entire party behind her nomination at the exclusion of all other candidates.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 days ago (3 children)

In the case of the US, yes. The US started out as 13 independent countries. It was only the Articles of Confederation and later the Constitution that defined the US as a country. Disband the US constitution tomorrow, and the US becomes 50 independent countries.

[–] WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 25 points 2 days ago (17 children)

They're not being precise with their language, but their point is largely true. What they really mean is that the US has the oldest still active Constitution in the world. The UK has existed in a continuous government for far longer, but they don't have a written Constitution like the US does.

Yeah, it's easy to shit on Americans about being ignorant of history. But this person's point is largely true. The US has had the same constitution in effect for nearly 250 years. It is the oldest written constitution on Earth still in effect. Most nations have revolutions or complete rewrites of their foundational legal documents long before they reach this point.

And this is also why the US has such political instability right now. We have a Constitution that was written for the needs of 250 years ago. It was formed from a series of compromises that made sense in the politics of 250 years ago. At this point, we really should scrap it entirely and start from scratch. Having the world's oldest Constitution really isn't something worth bragging over; it just means you're running obsolete software.

This is true. Long range missiles like this are only practical with either nuclear warheads or modern precision guidance. If you can land them right on top of a tiny target, they're useful. If your target is an area miles in diameter, they're also useful. But back in WW2 they were just vanity projects.

Ah go shove a pineapple up your ass. A big one.

 

The people of California will be united again! California will be whole once more!

 

So this is a fun thought exercise. Here I dig into my Catholic upbringing and try to make a stretched doctrinal case for why literally praying to St. Luigi might just actually make sense from a religious perspective. I'm no longer a practicing Catholic myself, so take it as you will. This is just me trying to stretch doctrine to see if I can argue that praying to a literal St. Luigi may actually be doctrinally viable.

Inquiring minds want to know. If one wishes to take things too far and take the "St. Luigi" thing literally, how can that be possible? Can you really pray to a saint for divine intervention, when that saint is clearly still a mortal man walking among the living?

First, on saints. There are official saints of the Church, but technically those are just the ones that the Church has decided that beyond any reasonable doubt are actually in Heaven. But according to doctrine, there are likely millions of saints, people that have reached Paradise and can intercede on mortal behalf. We've only had enough evidence, such as repeated miracles, to provide enough evidence for the official list. And the canonization process involves miracles attributed to unofficial saints. Usually someone will pray to someone that isn't on the official list, and when they receive some purported miracle, such as an unlikely cancer recovery, that is attributed as a miracle to that unofficial saint. In fact, the only way someone can become an official saint is if people pray to them while they are an unofficial one.

So, that's how one might pray to St. Luigi, even though he isn't a recognized saint. But what about mortality? The man is clearly not in Heaven right now, he's sitting in jail. How can one possibly pray to a living man for divine intervention?

But here's where the doctrinal loophole comes in! You see, technically, Heaven exists outside of time and space. Time need not work the same way there it does here. If the spirit of a saint can reach beyond the bounds of the universe to intercede on mortal behalf, they can also reach across time as well. Heaven exists outside of space and time.

So if one prays to St. Luigi, you are not actually praying to the mortal man sitting in a jail in New York. Rather, you are praying to his ascended soul, which has the ability to intercede both forwards and backwards in time. Maybe Luigi will be executed. Maybe he'll live a long life and die of old age. But when he does, he will ascend to Paradise and become a saint. And he can then answer prayers from anyone, in any place, in any time.

So yeah, if that's your thing, doctrinally, a case can be made that it is perfectly fine to pray to a literal St. Luigi!

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