Comments by "TheThirdMan" (@thethirdman225) on "The Humanist Report" channel.

  1. If Americans had spent as much time maintaining their democracy as they did maintaining their guns, this would not have happened.
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  2. Yeah, it got a little worse each time. Salami tactics.
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  3.  @user-se7vt5ow4e  And this was what Karl Marx said about labour: it adds value and without it, the product is worthless.
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  4.  @Kalysta  Don’t let him into the building in the first place. Just because he’s Elon Musk doesn’t entitle him to any more rights than anyone else, WRT entry. He’s told people to let him in and they agreed and then he told them not to let others in. He had no authority to do either. You wouldn’t let anyone else do it. Why Musk?
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  5.  @coolvegandad  Germany still has a political left. AfD got all the headlines but they are at least matched in number by a genuine political left. America doesn’t have a political left. It has two right wing parties, one of which has a handful of people in it who represent left wing values.
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  6.  @Discovery2024-rn8kn  Is this the old right wing trope that “the US is not a democracy, it’s a constitutional republic“? If so then you’re missing the point. It’s about your democratic rights. Use them or lose them. Democracy is not just a right; it’s a responsibility.
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  7.  @JonMac-gt1ow  This goes way beyond who won an election, Bubele.
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  8. That’s a bit debatable. But it’s definitely not terrorism.
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  9.  @PariahTheMassiah  Stop giving him oxygen. Ignore him. He doesn’t deserve an answer. He’s trying to railroad this thread.
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  10. Having the army on side is predictable but not a cast iron guarantee of much. People go into the armed forces for a variety of reasons. To be honest, I would be more concerned about those forces being used to fulfil an expansionist agenda than the extent to which they might be used against the public. At this point it more helpful to divert from comparisons with Hitler - which have been quite legitimate - and start to look for patterns elsewhere. Then there’s the question of the National Guard. The American structure is quite different from a lot of other countries. It’s possible that the Jefferson concept of a weak union of strong states might make for a bit of a safety net. I’m not familiar enough with the system. I would be more worried about far right groups like The Proud Boys, The Oaf Keepers and The Three Percenters than I would be about the formal services. That’s where the trouble will start. At some point a far right gun group is going to drive into a black neighbourhood… It almost happened the other day in Cincinnati, when a bunch of Neo Nazis started a protest on a bridge before they were chased off by the locals. But what happens when everyone is armed? If anyone wants to see an example of this, read Laura Silber and Alan Little’s excellent book, ‘The Death of Yugoslavia’. Yes, the formal army was used against individual states but in a lot of cases, the trouble was the crimes committed by the paramilitary groups. These were the ones who performed most of the ethnic cleansing. I think this is how a potential civil war will start. The road map is the civil war in the former Yugoslavia.
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  11. Well, some of us who have been reading about this sort of thing for decades saw it coming. Let’s see whether there are elections in 2026 and whether Trump accepts the result, assuming it goes against him. Leaving is simply a form of protest.
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  12. @ Er… I’m not American either but thanks anyway. But because the world’s most powerful person is so clearly insane, it affects everyone. Anyhow, there’s still some hope at least.
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  13. No but it’s either theft or espionage. Either way, it’s a crime.
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  14.  @sickbox.sickbox  Remember that more than 90% of wealth is inherited.
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  15.  @h.s.lafever3277  So is repeating everything you heard on Fox verbatim without understanding a word of it. Trump will turn on you eventually. You may depend on it.
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  16.  @coolvegandad  Not necessarily. This is going to depend on a couple of things: 1) the intestinal fortitude of a few judges who know full well that capitulation runs counter to their oath of office and 2) the ability of a small number of people, like Bernie Sanders, AOC, Jasmine Crockett and Jamie Raskin, to motivate the public and develop a viable policy platform to get out of the mess. There are many things that can happen along the way, including but not limited to martial law, blue states refusing to implement Trump’s rule-by-decree executive orders, extreme civil unrest from the extreme right paramilitaries (something that, under normal circumstances, would be a trigger for the insurrection act), attempted secession of a number of states from the Union, economic disaster, political assassinations and even civil war (along the lines of the breakup of the former Yugoslavia). It’s my belief that if the judges do their jobs properly and there can be a genuine democratic left wing alternative found to the Surrendercrats, there’s hope. But people have to engage.
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  17.  @rickicoughlan  Nah, unfortunately Australia historically hasn’t been kind to refugees.
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  18. A few points I’d like to add if I may. I’m Australian so I have no direct connection with any of this, though I have an American work colleague who is planning to return to the United States in the next year. First of all, it seems to me that there is a historical context through which this could be viewed. During the period between the implementation of the constitution and the bill of rights, there was considerable debate about how the bill would work and there was a lot of horse trading between the Jeffersonian Republicans and the Federalists. Jefferson wanted a weak Union of strong states (so he and others could keep their slaves) and Madison wanted a strong Union of weak states (to maintain a stronger trade position). In the end, the Jeffersonian Republicans won more than the Federalists did (ironically, the second amendment was one of the bargaining chips). So the question becomes one of states rights. If Trump is going to impose these conditions on all Americans, at what point do blue states — who would presumably be opposed to such measures — start to resist? Where, for example, is the cutoff point between what ICE, a federal agency, can do and what a state can do to stop them? Secondly, there is a nasty rumour afoot that Trump may impose martial law as early as this week. Whether or not that will actually happen or whether it even has any truth in it remains to be seen but at some point, there will be some kind of resistance from some blue states. That’s when federal troops come up against the state’s national guard. This would surely be a trigger for civil war and split the country into two major parts: the wealthy, blue, east and west coast states and the red states of the Midwest and the south.
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  19. @ You're not completely serious, are you?
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  20. And they’re right. For now. These things are happening in front of us but the downstream effects won’t be felt for a while. In a few months time, when people have started missing benefits they used to take for granted, they’ll look back on this time and realise that this was when they should have acted. If you can get them off social media.
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  21. @ 1) They haven’t ignored court decisions yet. They’ve appealed them but not ignored them completely. There was a situation a couple of weeks ago when the DoJ claimed not to have heard about the court decision on flights. The decision was valid from the moment it was made. They have stopped there for the moment. Wait and see. Trump Inc. paid a price for that. 2) The protest and town hall meeting numbers are very suspect. I was in media for 35 years and you become pretty good at estimating numbers when you have direct references to make. I don’t believe the numbers but the story is not the numbers: it’s the consistency with which he’s pulling people out in the evening to come and listen to him and it’s working. As I said earlier, they are the best hope. Every time some research group asks about what policies Americans would support, they almost exactly mirror what Berlin Sanders advocates. This totally flies in the face of the Surrendercrats, who have basically been cowed to hitching their wagon to the Trump train. We shall see.
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  22.  @Wolf-ln1ml  Well, I would ask you how much it actually means to you and what you are prepared to do about it. I’m not being critical of you here but I think this is an existential threat and needs to be treated as such. Mind you, it’s easy for me to say because I’m not an American. That said, we have serious problems with a duopoly and state capture in my own country. But we are not America yet. Americans have been taught all their lives that in the face of tyranny, “the people would rise up”. I’m not seeing much of that yet. in fact, I think it’s a hoax. But I remain hopeful that it will happen. I don’t want to see this resolved with guns and I think a peaceful resolution is possible. But it can only happen if people engage with the system and the thing that worries me is a lack of optimism that you reflect.
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  23.  @Wolf-ln1ml  Fair point. That being the case, we are in the invidious position of having to rely on Americans. Meantime, I continue to hope, which is not much help.
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  24.  @sickbox.sickbox  That’s almost entirely theoretical and doesn’t explain the widening gap between owners and workers. Without workers, the owner’s opportunity to profit would be very limited. Furthermore, as time goes on, the concentration of ownership at the top means the raise is much lower. Meanwhile, as real wages decline, workers are actually at greater risk. Billionaires, particularly, are at no risk at all. Maybe this is what you learnt in high school future enterprise but really these days it’s little more than an apology for rampant profiteering. The fact is that the market no longer generates jobs and almost never at a rate that’s needed. It’s entirely possible to achieve full employment without adversely affecting profits. But in a buyer’s market, your business owner has far more leverage that was probably ever intended. In the case of publicly listed companies, CEOs know that cutbacks are the ticket to higher personal profits because they are all on share packages. They also know that the market responds well to job cuts so that there is no incentive to expand a business. The more they cut, the higher their bonus and the higher their dividend.
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  25.  @sickbox.sickbox  More than 90% of wealth is inherited.
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  26. Everyone needs to see this. Politicians are not the problem. They are a symptom of a greater problem.
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  27. Question everything. Can we question the results in the states Trump won?
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  28.  @erinmac4750  I'm sorry but I'm not American and I don't know who Taurio is. Thanks for your comments.
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  29.  @UdumbaraMusic  I understand that Listerine is a good fix for cock breath.
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  30. That’s funny because idiots like Musk consider themselves to be oppressed.
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  31. @todd92371 Religion is part of the problem. Sorry.
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  32.  @dalekrenegade2596  I do. We have to get this kind of inflammatory language out of the narrative.
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  33.  @toddmorningstar4206  What do you mean “hazards on wheels”?
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  34.  @dalekrenegade2596  You mean be like everyone else? No thanks. Who monitors standards then? Do you actually want to be like them? Dude.
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  35.  @phoenixalba1125  No, because inflammatory language is what got you here in the first place.
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  36. @ Yes. Exactly.
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  37. @ You need to take a look at yourself and why you’re doing this. If you want to be like them and call everything terrorism and treason, then why don’t you just join them? Dude.
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  38.  @dalekrenegade2596  You’ve got to stand for something. Otherwise, if you want to call everything “terrorism” or “treason “ then what’s the difference? You become just another version of them. Dude.
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  39.  @moonbeamz8207  Ah, okay. I thought this might have been another “don’t buy EVs because they burst into flames” (which they don’t).
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  40. @ I dunno. It looks like the windows break pretty easily!😁 Is this limited to the Cyber Truck? Or does it apply to others, like the Model Y?
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  41. Guilt complex.
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  42. No, in other parts of the world there is universal healthcare. In America, that’s called socialism and everyone is scared of it.
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  43. So are we going to sanction extra judicial killings because we, the great unwashed, think someone deserves it?
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  44.  @sharimeline3077  I’ve been watching. That’s totalitarianism.
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  45. @j.heilig7239 Adorable? Never heard of the word. I don’t think I committed to any one possible outcome, did I? There are lots of potential scenarios. Will there be another election? Would Trump accept the result if it goes against him (I think we can discount that)? The decades I’ve spent reading about these sorts of governments definitely suggest that an election, much less a free and fair one, is pretty unlikely. But I can say this based on the consistencies I see, compared with what I’ve read, rather than on unjustified hubris.
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  46.  @j.heilig7239  Adorable? Never heard of the word. Sarcasm. Now that's a word. That's what I think, is it? I don't recall being wedded to any particular opinion. I have been reading about this stuff (fascism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism) for a couple of decades and the signs at this stage are not good. But I'm not going to shackle myself to believing one way or the other until something definitive happens.
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  47. @ MSNBC have run it.
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  48. Jennings has resigned.
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  49. @ That doesn’t make any difference. They were going to get fired anyway.
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  50. @ This is where it has to start if there is going to be any meaningful resistance. People like Musk rely on social standing/status. It’s intimidating to most people and he knows it. Authority is an agreement between two people. Someone wearing a fluoro vest and holding a stop sign has authority because your mind associates those things with certain social and legal parameters. In less formalised settings, authority is up for grabs. A person who assumes authority can often get past another simply by demeanour and use of language. Have you ever heard that story of the celebrity trying to jump the queue at the airport demanding, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ and being told, ‘I certainly do sir now would you mind resuming your place in the queue?’ People like that gain authority because others don’t resist. In this case it was early days and I can forgive the people involved (even though this is one of the greatest security breaches in history). But forewarned is fore armed. Musk is motivated by very different things than the rest of us. For him it’s no longer about money. It’s about power. He will take as much power as you allow him to.
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