I guess since they're federated you can comment across with the same account no? Is it better conduct to comment in a given instance with an account from that instance? Edit: he he, just noticed your account is from lemmy.ml so
Also for subscribing to specifics subs.
But yeah, multiple accounts is definitely an option.
I think this is sound reasoning and mostly I tend to agree. At the same time, there is this strange inverted sense of sincerity or honesty about Western Imperialism, where it seems to need to make real its caricatures of the "Enemy" in order to substantiate its worldview and justify its actions. This often makes it hard for me to know what the play (or even the Game) is. The US Empire wants world hegemony, sure, but it also can't get too far ahead while keeping the "Enemy" image realistic. It is worth considering how much of this plays out consciously, and to which extent, and in which (controlling or not) elements of society.
Maybe "limited hangout" is the wrong term and overly implies direct strategic action, but there is this need, for the system to work, for things to be in constant conflict, this "Enemy" following you beat for beat, always threatening to surpass you.
In some way, alarming everyone to the realities of mass wholesale spying, when combined with the ability to gaslight, deflect, distort, and invert and invent blame, ends up legitimizing it as a form of necessary or reasonable action. Again, not necessarily a classical "limited hangout" but it has similar normalizing effects.
An interesting thing about Snowden is that he seems to be or have been a pretty run of the mill "US master of the world" type moron, scared of the latest muslim/chinese/russian ideological threat, willing to do anything to stop this (to his mind) legitimate threat, and then had his wordlview challenged by seeing how seeing how the sausage is made. I think he still believes in that greatness and superiority, just doesn't think it's enacted correctly. The base is still rotten.
Some peripheral arguments I've seen made wrt limited hangout are along the lines of:
The encrypted services people flock to (like Tor and Signal) are developed by US int and may be backdoored
Migration to these services are signs of critical thinking/politicial dissidents/criminal activity, and makes it easy to filter and target those elements of society, even if all you get from those services is metadata (contact webs/networks, times, etc)
Having people go to these platforms and use encrypted software gives a sense of false security as the communications data is still being sent through controlled/owned/surveilled entitities, continues to create value for the Empire (data collection and just regular business), and stops true political action -- controlled op basically
The encrypted services allows CIA etc to operate covertly more easily, same with crypto to finance operations etc
Things of this nature. It gets a bit inviolved and conspiratorial, but worth considering, if not necessarily as actual strategically implement action, but in the sense that the society shaping effects are still there, and we are clearly far away from freely associating, speaking candidly, organizing politically etc.
Even if directly fighting surveillance through using encrypted, decentralized platforms and so on (all of which I support), is positive change, it still has the potential to neutralize and redirect potential political action due to a sense of achievement and intellectual satiafaction when it can be argued that the fact that a tiny fraction of a percentage of peoplr bother with it just underscores the futility of it.
Eyes agreement nations frankly which of course has an inherent interest in portraying all its enemies as just as bad as it.
Fact is America, NATO, Eyes agreements countries spy more, more pervasively, they violate norms, business agreements, etc.
I think this is on point. It (Western imperialism) projects the truth of what it really is on others, and pretends to fight it.
Yet we have Snowden as proof of how far the US and its vassals go
Possibly limited hangout?
Another guy whow as alive until Feb 1965 said that as well. His autobiography helped wake me up. It's all on repeat until enough people break through. I'll admit I was not as quick to realize, though. Denial and self preservation. Reality is hard to swallow.
An issue with this kind of "resistance" is that it's already accounted for and baked into the system. "International ostracism" for them means they didn't get to complete their "normalization" with the Gulf compradors as quickly and smoothly as planned, thus legitimizing them, and that westoid libs struggle to loudly maintain and defend their dissonant view of the Zionist entity as a victim in the face of such plain view advertisement to the contrary. They are essentially lamenting the lack of subtelty in commiting ethnically cleansing settler colonialism. Not the underlying issues, which will never be confronted under the worldview that causes them in the first place. The German libs are especially hilarious, trying to flip the script and pin Euro anti-Jewish sentiment on the muslim migrants and supporters of Palestine while gearing up to start lebensrauming on them using the same logic as before, a record on repeat but in complete denial about both what's playing and the fact that it's the same damn track over and over. Round and around it goes, crazy tribal self deception.
Late reply, didn't see.
Something to keep in mind is that a heavily externalized idea of God is a bit simpleminded. We are not owed anything.
The theist/nontheist discussion is a dualistic one. While dialectics as a method and process is sound, the idea is ultimately to unify opposites, not pick one or define yourself in opposition to one.
It's possible to take the very valid misgivings you have and turn them into questions rather than using them as conclusions.
When you look at the history of the occident, it is built on things that weren't organically grown by its people, and the Abrahamic tradition, as well as the Greek, was adapted in a strange way to try to claim it -- The actual producing tradition is foreign to it, and so you see that even foundational, culture defining output like Dante's Divine Comedy was essentially lifted from Ibn Arabi & Co. The conceptions that informed this appropriation and further developed from it can easily color your thinking and put a veil over your eyes when you are forced to live among its proponents.
Keep in mind that Islamic Theology is not as literal minded as the western approach. Basic things like God not being an external entity as such, and certainly not a man-like one, and man is not created in God's image and so on. It's subtle, as are its interpretations, because it (and its interpreters) belongs to a long tradition. Ditto for Orthodox Christianity.
What made you leave Islam? Did you find your way back?
Dystopian signage
Now in AAVE™
Imagine if Kubrick made his Aryan papers. Instead we get the hack ass lib fantasy Schindler's list drivel. Spielberg is so awful