Schmerika

> - Outside of the USA, the median is at 35%.

A little important context for that poll: Globally, people believe the US is a greater threat to peace, stability and democracy than any other country.

And it's been that way in every poll I've seen since 2003.

> there's no mushroom for that.

There is actually quite a large body of research, going back as far as the earliest scientific literature on psilocybin (and LSD), about this exact thing.

Useful keywords: microsomatognosia/macrosomatognosia (feeling one's own body shrink/grow), Alice in Wonderland syndrome (AIWS), and Lilliputian/Brobdingnagian hallucinations (seeing tiny people or giants).

Besides which, if you ever are so lucky as to try a significant dose of mushrooms, you will probably see for yourself that you've been underestimating their significance in our cultural traditions.

> America might have still lost, so there's a claim to a Pyrrhic victory.

Might have??

America has spent - at the lowest possible estimate - at least 8 trillion dollars on the "war on terror". Probably more like 20-something. Trillion.

That's enough money to have transitioned to entirely clean energy, housed every homeless American, and solved world hunger. With change.

The DOW is over 50 thousand though, I guess, and the Epstein class are richer than ever.

> for example, the current regime seeming to throw Israel to the wolves in order to cover its own military blunders.

Uh, what?

Israel threw themselves to the wolves, if 'wolves' are what we're calling the consequences of doing ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and genocide.

America have been the single greatest force by far holding the 'wolves' at bay. If they stop because the 'wolves' are threatening their own stability, that's not really "throwing Israel" anywhere.

More than 14,500 children were killed by Israel in that period.

14,500 / 154 = more than 94 children per resolution. Seems fair.

How many children did "Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Russia, China combined" kill in this period, I hear you whatabout: Highest reasonable estimates are ~5,000–10,000 children.

... So, no. I don't think it's unfair.

Now let's compare how many sanctions have been inflicted on each country above. If you measure by number of sanctioned individuals/entities, a rough ranking would be:

1: Russia. 2: Iran. 3: North Korea. 4: Sudan. 5: China. 6: Israel.

... So if you're trying to hint that the whole world is only against genocide because they're antisemitic, the facts you're referring to don't really seem to back you up. At all.

Hind Rajab. Sidra Hassouna. Reem and Khaled.

The premie babies at Al-Nasr hospital.

Over a hundred bombed hospitals.

The Irish president's sister kidnapped and abused.

Assassinating negotiation teams and scientists.

Murders of whole families who dared to speak out to the world.

Running over a teenager with their hands zip-tied behind their backs with Caterpillars®.

The paramedic massacre in Rafah.

The hundreds of journalists. The tens of thousands of children. The doctors raped to death.

The people who never get mentioned in these lists of atrocities, buried in mass graves with their children, hands tied.

The people dying from n-order effects, slowly, painfully, barely noticed or counted.

...

And little/no sanctions from our civilized Western democracies. (Except on the people calling it out, who can't use a credit card or bank any more, or even receive donations.)

We are far worse than useless. The stain is set for all time.

A reminder for any Americans reading this: 98.15% of 2024 voters chose a Presidential candidate that supported the above.

> There's lots of physical labor jobs that pay more.

More than a billion?

... Let's keep things in perspective here.

Are you saying that with the awareness that this will be used to remove privacy from social media?

To be perfectly honest, I actually do think we should stop all the both sidesing - but only after following it to its logical conclusion.

Have _both sides_ actively collaborated in genocide?

... Yes.

Therefore, _both sides_ have breached any recognizable red line of decency. _Both sides_ have breached hard-won national and international law.

Time for something better than both sides unapologetically arming live-streamed genocide.

"Oh, you're one of those single issue guys" - if the issue is genocide, then yes. Why aren't you? Why aren't 98.15% of 2024 voters?

As pointed out below: it's our culture. And that's not okay.

> Your second sentence is a great example of the type of both-sidesing that needs to stop.

I don't see how you can disagree with the simple truth of it tbh. In what way is that not what happened?