this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 81 points 1 year ago (2 children)

He got real close to an actual thought provoking comic here but just couldn't resist drawing that arrow just in case we're too dumb to get the message.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Don't forget the vaccine syringe because???

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And is that a.... Lego brick?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Didn't notice that lol. Congrats to him on the subtlety I guess.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Ehh, I am not sure I'd call something virtually everyone would agree with thought provoking.

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Brought to you by the same people that cheered like baboons for the Patriot Act. 9/11. Murica.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The Patriot act that passed with a ton of bipartisan support? That Patriot act? The one Obama promised to rescind while he was campaigning and then renewed after he won?

Don't make the mistake of believing any of these assholes are on your side. The worst of the worst legislation is always bipartisan. We've got faces and heels and at the end of the day they're working towards the same goals.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is a reminder that Democrats, in large, are not leftists. They are capitalists. They pass capitalistic legislation that benefits largely the rich and status-quo, which makes them conservatives.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There is no leftist party. There is Batshit Insane Party and Everyone Else Party.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Everyone Else Party implies they're on our side. There's the Mask Off Authoritarian Party and the Still Pretending They're Not Authoritarians Party.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

America has two authoritarian right-wing parties to pick from. One is less right wing than the other, but they're still both to the right of the major right wing party in my country (New Zealand)

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

People aren't political parties though. The OP is referring to followers of a specific belief system, not somebody registered as a D or an R.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Idk, Ben might be an idiot but he was pretty libertarian before he went all in on Trumpism.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

He was a raging narcissist who perpetually thought he was smarter and more special than everyone around him. I'd say that fits pretty well with most libertarians I've met.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Garrison’s gone so far right he’s starting to raise left talking points.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Not how that works lol, horseshoe theory is bullshit

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don’t doubt you, care to share your references?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Communism is stateless, fascism isn't

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This is the kind of explanation that doesn't explain anything to the people who need it explained.

If it helps, consider horseshoe theory as the idea that all authoritarian systems start doing similar things, completely independent of economic models.

It's still not great, but at least there's an observation in there.

You can start a separate conversation on whether there's any value to conceptualizing a left/right spectrum at all (there isn't)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

The extreme left isn't authoritarian. It's communism or anarchism, which are both stateless

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just to flip this, do you have any sources that horseshoe theory is a real thing? That's the funny thing about language, someone put Theory in the name and now people think it's a real thing.

To save you the trouble, it hasn't held up under academic study. Plenty of info on Wikipedia about it.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Overton window overflow

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago

Aren’t all of those part of the executive branch

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I liked the image, saw the author, unliked it, then realized that is cringe and shitty people can also have decent takes every now and then. I then reliked the image.

Edit: fuck the antivax shit though

[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Except Ben's biggest issue with those is that they stopped a fascist coup...

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Did they though?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I thought when it was when he was creepily showing Greta getting “spanked.” 😮

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

How am i supposed to understand with no cum

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Why is there a syringe and a Lego?

[–] [email protected] 55 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The syringe is there because Ben's an antivaxxer

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The Lego is there because he stepped on a lego once and it was clearly the government's fault.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I KNEW IT!!

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But seriously, I'm dying to know what insane shit they've come up with about legos and the CIA.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Lego released a pride set.

That's it, that's the tweet. They're big mad that Lego offered the tiniest but of token support to queer and trans kids, and they think that - like anything that upsets them - it's all part of the "Deep State Conspiracy."

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The decades long TSA infiltration of the Danes finally bears fruit.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No idea, but it looks much better without them

alt image

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Both hurt to step on.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So in 2001 when the PATRIOT Act was signed, that created the Department of Homeland Security (or DHS) under which the FBI, CIA and NSA were placed. If we give the US the benefit of the doubt (for a moment) the notion was that some government departments that didn't like each other very much would consolidate data for common concerns, which might help stop further terror attacks.

Spoiler: It didn't stop further terror attacks. The DHS was so concerned about Islamist terror from the Middle East (so much so it was abducting Americans for being slightly too Arab and too Muslim) for the CIA Extrajudicial Detention and Enhanced Interrogation program. That is to say, they were being taken to foreign black sites to be tortured until their mind was scrambled.

One the other things I noticed at the time (I'm old) is how the DHS was beholden specifically to the executive branch of the US federal government, where before the FBI and law enforcement were kept at respectable distance so the president wouldn't misuse police officers as goons or hit squads. In the 1930s, part of the point of the Waffen SS (or the SS in general) was to have a police / military force that was loyal not to Germany but to The Führer, himself In fact, it was a big deal in the NSDAP party doctrine to create chains of command and loyalty not through national structures but through structures of the party organization. So when George W. Bush created the Department of Homeland Security, I was even then getting are we the baddies? vibes.

Anyway, so it's a bit weird to me that the DHS isn't mentioned here as the name of that giant thorny branch. Other than the TSA the other three were their own separate things until that happened.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Because the dhs isn't investigating the republican God emperor. Nothing more complex than that.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

"Judicial" should be some kind of engorged, tumorously enlarged branch.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

It's not just the American people these days. Edward Snowden's book goes into some detail about how the NSA has access to many counties internet infrastructure etc.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

I always knew Legos were just another tool to keep us in line!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

That alt-right dipshit lifted the idea from "The Gang of Four" lore from the 1980's Cyberpunk 2020 TTRPG. He just replaced DEA with TSA, which in itself is asinine. Why not ATF? The TSA is a joke.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Because the tsa is responsible for enforcing the no fly list Jan 6ers are on

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Best guess: they made him drop his pants at the airport to do a cavity search.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Does he know that all of those agencies are part of the executive branch?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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