I guess your authoritarian regime starts to look good when the Americans slaughter an elementary school full of your children?

I don’t understand the need to paint everything in black and white, not every conflict has a straight-forward “good guy” or “bad guy” - the US is self-interested and hates Iran because the current regime challenges US hegemony and deposed a US-backed autocrat to get in power. Meanwhile, Iran is a horrible, authoritarian theocracy that engages in medieval criminal punishment spectacles. It’s all bad.

even if that’s true, telling them this doesn’t help them or solve their ignorance - just a thought that we can have more or less useful reactions to ignorance, we don’t want to incentivize doubling down on false beliefs for example

EDIT: I thought you wrote “you’re an idiot” in response to the person claiming the US defeated the Nazis, nevermind.

Most Europeans in 1945 believed the USSR toppled Nazi Germany, it really is only after the USSR collapsed four decades later and the US took global supremacy that people started to say things like the US defeated the Nazis.

https://www.vox.com/2014/6/16/5814270/the-successful-70-year-campaign-to-convince-people-the-usa-and-not

tl;dr in 1945 nobody was confused that the USSR defeated the Nazis, it took until the 1990s for this perception to shift to the belief the US defeated the Nazis.

much luck! I wish I was able to help more, but I don’t use Mastodon and I’m not too familiar with this issue unfortunately 😞

could be however you’re making the posts is configured to default to NSFW? 🤷‍♀️ I don’t know what platform you’re using, but based on the tags I assume Mastodon?

did you mean to mark this post as NSFW?

real Ken M energy

If someone claimed to be a solarpunk but said said they loved Nazi Germany, would you think there was some kind of inconsistency or hypocrisy there?

Solarpunk is politically opinionated, it’s not agnostic or neutral about its political and ethical positions (about climate, about colonialism, about capitalism, etc.) - solarpunk is very critical of the United States because of this.

oh yikes; you might be on the wrong instance there, too - I don’t think loving America is consistent with being solarpunk, fyi

what is the goal at this point?

Hm, my point wasn’t that reparations is unfair to both sides, but that there are better and worse ways to go about it.

Regardless, I think measures that aim to fix economic inequality and wealth distribution, and particularly efforts that are rooted in morally defensible arguments about repairing the harms caused by slavery and racism are noble and worthwhile. I’m even happy for imperfect versions of this where the US government pays reparations using tax money - it’s a much better use of my tax money (whether I personally benefited from slavery or not) than a lot of the villainous stuff the US currently does with my tax money.

Besides, the positive outcomes are alone worthwhile.

Typically I think of reparations as being sent to those who can show their lineage goes back to African slaves in the US, in which case it’s usually African-Americans who are the primary beneficiaries of reparations, not bureaucrats in Africa.

The way you are thinking about reparations makes me think you are not very keen on projects of social justice in general. Maybe you’re just jaded or cynical about the possibility for justice to be handled fairly, but I think we should be motivated to supporting and finding paths forward that help people whether they are perfect or not, and I just don’t get that vibe from you.

yes, I do think reparations has many problems with it - ideally it would be a matter of transitioning wealth accumulated through slavery from the people who benefited from slavery to the people who suffered under slavery. We are generations away on both sides, but it’s not like the effects haven’t certainly enriched some while hurting others even today.

Usually when I hear about reparations, the idea is to use tax money to do it, but at that point a lot of the people paying the taxes for reparations are also the victims of generations of slavery, so … I dunno, doesn’t feel like the most targeted or ethical approach.

And yes, who do we decide who receives reparations? Is it just for slavery, or are we going to recognize the way slavery and racism are intertwined and related?

What about reparations for other racist choices, like segregating Black communities and building interstates through their communities, polluting and robbing those communities of health, wealth, etc.?

Again, reparations is just one tool. I’m not sure you can really argue that racism has been properly dealt with or solved, or that reparations has no place in a program of racial and social justice, even if we can pick out logistical difficulties.

Further, why does it feel like you are against this project of justice, rather than for it?

I think this might miss the point of reparations

I thought the point of reparations is not to “pay off” a historical wrong, but instead is meant to help offset the generational of disadvantage caused by slavery and racism to those who suffer from that legacy today

we need all kinds of changes to end cycles of poverty and generational trauma, and reparations is just one tool among many to help with that - but it’s more about fixing the broken thing now than about absolving guilt

yeah, and a NPS score for humans would be even worse tbh

yeah, I don’t think that makes too much sense - we’re social creatures, we probably should care about what other people think

I admit my insecurities are unhealthy, and the way I’m approaching my insecurities is unhealthy, but I don’t think the right conclusion is to think I’m a goddess or a 11/10, nor to completely ignore everyone’s opinions of me.

And besides, part of the reason I feel insecure is because of the feedback I get from society - I’m pretty sure based on the way people treat me that I’m not attractive, etc. - so in some sense I just want confirmation of what my lived experience is already telling me

exactly, it is so enshittified - and I’m not surprised Tinder already had this system on their backend (a hidden ELO score), that’s so scummy

no, I didn’t know about that - but hey, now I know at least I can upload my photos to Tinder and see how attractive Tinder thinks I am 😅

don’t you want to know if you’re a good citizen!? 😭

(admittedly I based my sense of self-worth on my grades)

you get one star for saying that: ★☆☆☆☆

it does seem like one of those horrible, but monetize-able, ideas that I can hardly believe hasn’t been introduced already