Yes, it’s so obvious by now that even the Maga morons might be able to understand it.

And yet this is nothing new: The U.S. has been an oligarchy for at least thirty years or more, as evidenced, for example, by the fact that many, many people in the richest country in the world live as if they were citizens of one of the poorest Third World countries.

It’s unbelievable how absurd a country can be.

But he only did that for his disciple Jeffrey …you have to cut him some slack…

/s

Does it even matter what these people say? Apparently not, because none of them has ever said anything even remotely intelligent, let alone productive. Nothing but hate and lies for years - this latest embarrassment hardly seems worth reporting, given all the crimes the U.S. regime is committing.

But hey, politics works through entertainment, which the clever people behind these people naturally know. That’s why they’ve chosen a cabinet of clowns as straw men - because they’re so embarrassing that the relevant news doesn’t stand a chance against their entertainment factor.

That’s unfortunately how our world works, and that’s why the worst of them all always get off scot-free: their crimes are simply too complicated to generate any interest.

What’s with these headlines? This is already the third article pretending that something has changed: Live Nation still has a monopoly and, of course, isn’t going to change its business practices.

This ruling doesn’t change a thing.

The bottom line is this:

… it could cost Live Nation hundreds of millions of dollars and perhaps force the company to sell some of its concert venues when the judge hands out penalties later.

In a country like the U.S., where the legal system is rotten to the core, that will never happen. The behemoth won’t be taken down; instead, there will be a ridiculously small fine that bears no relation to the profits Live Nation makes by having no competition whatsoever.

Even if the judge were brave enough to order the breakup of this cartel, a small “donation” to the criminals in the White House would be enough to sweep the matter under the rug.

Headlines like these suggest that there is a chance for justice in the U.S. system - but that is simply not the case. It is always and exclusively the billionaires who win. That’s as sure as death and taxes.

They ran a monopoly? They’re still doing that, aren’t they?

Hey, what a valuable initiative. I mean, it’s not like there are any real problems in the world…

…if there really were, that would just be a distraction…

…and that can’t possibly be the case…

/s

My point is that US citizens could remove their criminal president, but they don’t do so despite all his criminal machinations and despite the most serious war crimes.

Unfortunately, I don’t see it that way. I’ve found time and again that even US citizens in the Fediverse tend to display a massive amount of completely misplaced, naive national pride.

It seems to me that even those here, due to the oligarchy in the US that controls the media, are massively misinformed or uninformed despite their flirtation with free media.

Added to this is decades of propaganda that Americans apparently cannot overcome even here.

The best example is this post: Instead of the all-too-necessary self-criticism, there are only excuses - even though the U.S. president is a pedophile and a serious criminal. Nevertheless, U.S. citizens act as if that were not the reality.

Thank you very much. That’s basically what I’m getting at: there’s hardly any difference left between the US and Russia - both countries are controlled by oligarchs. But somehow, on the international stage, it’s portrayed as if only Russia were controlled by greedy autocrats.

However, since the mechanisms of control in the US are still far less pronounced than in Russia, I thought it would be a good idea to remind US citizens that they don’t yet live in a dictatorship, that they could still turn things around for the better if they would only give up their apathy and finally take action.

In Russia, it’s completely different. And in the US, it will soon be the same if citizens don’t fight back.

Yes, absolutely. The astronomical budget of this “agency” led to the conclusion, from the moment it was approved, that it would serve to establish a secret police force loyal exclusively to the regime. Why else would funds equivalent to the military budget of a medium-sized country be needed?

I would say that it wasn’t us, the ordinary people, who created this terrible world, but we definitely allowed the worst among us to do so - and we even rewarded them for it, so that this monstrous world is now ruled by the most ruthless, like a monarchy that was believed to have been overcome. Apparently, civilizational progress is not bound to the passage of time, as I strongly suspect that we are regressing civilizational: back to absolutism with its degenerate rulers who give free rein to their perverse desires - and they can do so, because they are at the top of a society they exploit with impunity.

Yes, unfortunately that is true, except that these “legal entities” cannot be held liable for their crimes in the same way as humans. Therefore, the people who control these companies cannot be held liable for their crimes.

This is a legal trick that illustrates that the law has nothing to do with justice, while ensuring that billionaires are “legally” above the law that applies to everyone who is not a billionaire.

Why is non-news like this still so popular in the US when there are so many more important issues, such as the fact that the government is breaking its own laws by continuing to prevent the publication of the Epstein files, that it is executing people in public with no trial and no reason whatsoever, that it is continuously breaking existing laws, that it is betraying and extorting long standing allies, that it is shamelessly enriching itself in a way that is unprecedented even in the history of the US, which is certainly famous for this … the list goes on and on, but still, non-news about Erika Kirk gets upvotes??? Why??? Because the US users need someone to hate instead of themselves?

Even people here on lemmy don’t seem to realize how attention is being siphoned off - because they post stuff about a completely irrelevant person and thus do exactly what the US regime, which is promoting this person, wants them to do.

It really couldn’t be any more stupid.

Why don’t you just focus on the president and his organized crime operation? Why do you allow yourselves to get distracted by his bullshit? Why do you even help with this orange child molester out by doing his very bidding!

Just do the world a favor and participate in the nationwide strike planned for tomorrow.

Rule of law, huh?

It’s almost like something straight out of the Nazis’ playbook back in Germany: seizing power by abusing the law. Hitler first made use of the so‑called “Reichstag Fire Decree” to undermine fundamental rights and launch a campaign of terror - using violence, mass arrests and intimidation to eliminate political opponents; at least formally, these measures were covered by law.

Subsequently, these and all other heinous crimes committed by the Nazis were rapidly enshrined in legal form, backed by police force and intimidation - for example the “Enabling Act,” which stripped parliament of its powers and allowed the cabinet (in practice controlled by Hitler) to enact laws, even contrary to the constitution.

Overall, it was a takeover that used and even created the appearance of constitutionality, in which the Nazis interpreted and applied the law at their own discretion and enforced it with violence and intimidation. The rest is history.

When I look at the US news since January last year, it all seems very familiar - with a rather insignificant difference being that instead of the Reichstag fire, another staged “emergency,” namely illegal immigration, is being used as a pretext to undermine civil rights…

Of course they do, this is their mindless tactic and it’s obvious to everyone with half a brain because it’s so mindless (it used to be much more skillful).

This can only work because there’s so much money behind it. Otherwise, it would never be possible to maintain such obvious bullshit. It can only work because there are billionaires and because these billionaires are all inhumane monsters - psychopaths by definition. It is the logical consequence of unbridled capitalism, which, contrary to all the narratives that people like Milton Friedman have made famous, is not a free market, but always produces the monopolies we see today.

The civilizational regression we are experiencing today is the direct result of this: of too much money in too few horribly unscrupulous hands.

In itself, it’s simple, but billionaires are doing everything they can to prevent people from realizing that - as in this case: hey, let’s just have our own fascist Super Bowl show. It’s just sooo fucking stupid, but so are people.

I guess this is how it is: Despite its blatant absurdity, all of this is only possible because people allow it - that is just a fact. With all that monstrous shit going on in the word besides better judgement I find it increasingly difficult to attribute this to any other reason than that there is a significant proportion of people who are incorrigible, arrogant and ignorant beyond saving - and then some who are just plain evil. Perhaps that is human nature, which Kant and all other Enlightenment thinkers always denied because they wanted people to believe in the good of the people so they can do good instead of evil.

Well, this shows once again that the right-wing extremists need their own artificially staged reality in order to somehow justify all the outrageous lies of the MAGA leadership: they simply cannot allow people to peacefully celebrate sporting events.

It’s really absurd how blind these idiots are. They just can’t see that the imaginary enemy images that are being mindlessly propagated here simply serve to distract from how thoroughly degenerate the leaders of this “movement” are, from the fact that they are actually the enemies of all halfway decent people.

The stupidity is really only surpassed by the ruthlessness of the criminals responsible for this moronic deception.

Great, great, so once again there will be a nice investigation, after which absolutely nothing will be done. It would save a lot of time and money not to investigate at all, but hey, the whole point seems to be that you can hide under the cosy cloak of the rule of law before letting the worst of the worst get away with all their crimes.

In some Nazi concentration camps, the steps that forced laborers had to climb while heavily laden were deliberately made of different heights to make the ordeal even worse. This is the same disgusting and abysmal malice. Pure evil for which there can be no excuse.

I find the AI audio translation on YouTube, which Google now seems to be imposing as standard, to be the most absurd thing of 'em all: even the intros are so poorly translated that it couldn’t be more ridiculous.

I’m sure many users don’t realize that this is supposed to be a “feature” and mistakenly believe that the foreign-language video they deliberately clicked on is obviously AI-generated because the audio track is so horribly bad.

Well, another reason for PeerTube…