It was no secret that USAID was an arm of the State Department and used as a smokescreen for CIA business. But that won't matter to all the mothers who will watch their infants die because Musk pulled the plug with no warning

Let's not forget that China is actively engaged in political and information warfare against the West. Any hypocrisy they can point out will just contribute to the fracturing of alliances between the West and the rest of the world. So it very much benefits them, strategically and financially, to point out stuff like this. Not that I think the people of Gaza will care about the selfish reasons a superpower might have for speaking up for them

Some insight from across the pond:

Our last Prime Minister was a British Indian from the Conservative party. Recent right wing and far-right members of cabinet have included many more Brits of Indian descent, including two of the most heinously anti-immigrant cabinet members we've ever had. One of them, Suella Braverman, ran for party leadership on an anti-immigrant platform, pointing out that Indians are the largest group who overstay their visas in the UK.

I think very similar things can explain why Usha Vance, Kash Patel, Vivek Ramaswamy and the like can align with an openly racist MAGA crowd:

1. Class matters more than race. Most of these people grew up privileged and don't identify with the common immigrant or brown person's experson

2. Power hungry people come from all backgrounds and will do whatever they need to get what they want (in Usha Vance's case that's being first lady one day)

3. Submitting to model minority status, as many well-to-do immigrant families from South Asia do, means implicitly accepting, and ultimately reflecting, white supremacist values

And as with all issues rooted in history, you can blame the British for some of this. A white supremacist world view where Indians stand above the darker races was introduced to India by the British over a century ago. The British wanted East Africa to become "the America of the Hindu" so they educated and trained a generation of Indian colonial administrators and enforcers. This world view of Indians as superior to others, if subordinate to whites, did not disappear with colonialism. A lot of the people who held those views came directly to Britain and their children became right-wing voters and politicians. The connection with the US is less of a straight line, but you can hear it when you listen to Vivek talk about African-Americans, for example.

you guys continue to gaslight what it effectively was

You keep using that word but I'm not sure you know what means.

What it wasn't was an opportunity to change the system by making a political statement

I'm not even advocating for people to vote third party or boycott the election. I'm just making the argument that if a political party wants a group of people's votes, they should court those people. If they fail to do so, and those people choose not to vote for them, the political party only has itself to blame

It's not weird but please consider therapy, friend

I have never identified with anything more than this guy's disdain for the TSA

The '90s was 30 years ago. In the '90s the '60s were 30 years ago, so I think the analogy holds up

Off-screen, Pacino is 84 and currently dating a 30 year old. A 20/30 year age gap on-screen seems quaint by comparison

This is also why he loves bringing up Hannibal Lector. Who he refers to as 'the late great Hannibal Lector' and is occasionally confused about whether he's real or not. He will literally give a speech about how immigrants coming in are like Hannibal Lector because he doesn't understand what asylum seeker means

She's doing a great job of pointing out how antiquated our laws are when dealing with this stuff, while also pointing out the police really don't care about you.

There are countless others who undoubtedly acquiesced to the blackmailers' demands, and countless more who will in the future. Just putting one thief in jail without trying to understand the wider criminal network does little to help actual people

It feels weird that this is now a trilogy. In my mind, there are two Bill and Teds... plus that new one

Did you not read the end of the article you linked? His wife definitely had black roots, but it was a family secret.

Earlier this year, the mystery of whether Vivian was descended in part from Africans was finally resolved. In a February episode of the PBS show, “Finding Your Roots,” host and historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. presented Rosanne Cash with her DNA results and family genealogy. Vivian Cash’s maternal great-great grandmother was indeed an enslaved Black woman, Sarah Shields, whose White father in 1848 had granted her and her eight siblings their freedom and their passage into Whiteness, too.

Basically Vivian's great-great-grandmother was a black enslaved woman, and her descendents hid this fact to save themselves from Jim Crow laws.

It's possible she and Johnny knew but kept it quiet because they lived in the deep south in a time when it was scary to be in any way black. The 'one-drop rule' is still a thing for a lot of americans, after all. We know that Vivian wife was living in fear of the KKK whenever he went on tour. I would imagine he said whatever he had to say to keep her safe while he was away