#however I literally have a govt job now so . well see what happens w that but my employer is gay so at least theres that

[unganseylike]

on one hand i think a lot of college is fake woke shit and people who will go work for a corporation as soon as they leave. on the other hand im gonna miss walking into a classroom the first day and the professor immediately opening using text from the communist manifesto bc theres a baseline expectation that people wont be immediately opposed to communism (whereas in my conservative home town my teachers would belittle me for not being an ardent capitalist). or the experience of another prof being so enraptured by his own argument against capitalism he unconsciously threw a marker across the classroom. and a lot of other subtle stuff. like the assumption people wont be homophobic or will make an effort with pronouns etc, and you can make jokes about this stuff and people will find it funny (in contrast me making a joke this summer in different environment about all clothes being gender neutral and shocking someone). Like even if its just performative, i’ll miss that expectation of leftist politics when i leave college

[stephendavid]

[I posted some of this in the Comments section but YouTube censored and deleted it, clearly for political reasons] This video contains a Sky News Australia interview with Bush (W/Jr) advisor Michael Duran. What is truly amazing is that Sky News presents itself as a "Conservative" outlet, but this is from it. I have been an enthusiastic follower, esp. of Alan Jones, for sometime. But in this segment with a Neo-Con RINO, no one on the panel questions any of the lies and foolishness this ignorant clown says. His basic premise is : diverse Muslim groups hate each other more than they hate us. The 9/11 and other terrorist attacks weren't really aimed at us. They were meant to trick us into fighting and causing instability in Muslim countries so they could take advantage of it to destroy their Muslim enemies. (you know, the 'Moderate Muslims" Bush constantly reminded us about. I supported Bush after 9/11 because he did a good job of temporarily uniting us and getting us through the national trauma. He also launched the attack on Afghsnistan in order to destroy Al-Qaida and their training camps. But it quickly became problematic when he labeled it a "War on Terror". As was mentioned frequently, you can fight a physical enemy with (physical) armed forces but you cannot fight and defeat a tactic (terror) with missiles and warplanes. To make matters worse, you can't defeat an enemy if you choose to be willfully ignorant of who they are, what their ideology is, their motivation, and why they want to destroy you. 20 years and countless Islamic terror attacks later, and Bush advisor Duran is still promoting nonsense demonstrating this willful ignorance. Bush almost immediately went on a campaign of endlessly promoting the lie that "Islam is a religion of peace." After every Islamic terrorist attack around the world, we were told this. Keep in mind that, no other religion has been given that label which needs to be reaffirmed on a regular basis, year after year, when various adherents carry out murders, executions, beheadings, knife attacks and bombings around the globe. No one has to remind us that other religions are "Religions of Peace" because it's rare that any of their adherents carry out such attacks. And of course, because they were so enchanted by their own lies about the vague and undefined "enemy", Bush and his advisors, such as numbnutz Duran, refused to study the enemy's ideology - Islam. it was much easier to lie than study the actual 1400 years of doctrines and motivations that launched a 7th century bandit and warlord to take the middle east by the sword and convert, subject (dhimmihood) or execute all who fell within their power. When I was a teenager in the 1960s, I launched a study of world religions that included the important and Primary texts of those religions. That included the Bhagavid Gita, the I Ching, the Tao Te Ching, teachings of Buddha, Zen masters, Yogis, writings of Milarepa (Tibetan) etc. I also read the Qur'an completely. However, unlike other texts, I read it once and tossed it. Whatever was somewhat "good" in it was derived from Jewish and Christian Scripture. But even that was just commentary aimed at changing the meaning or narrative of the original text. And other than that the Qur'an is filled with hatred and violence - aimed specifically at Christian, Jews and pagans. As I was an extreme passivist at the time, I abhorred the foul book. Since 9/11, I have purchased a number of different translations, along with reading the Sira (Muslim biography of Muhammad), and regularly consult Muslim websites to access the large collections of hadiths/Sunnah which preserve the sayings and deeds of Muhammad. Muslim apologists cherry pick verses from Qur'an to support their false claims, but the vast body of Islamic texts make it clear that Islam is the religion of War, Hatred and Terror. It started that way with Muhammad, and it continues over 1400 years later. So the idea that we could attack Al-Qaida and the Taliban and install democracy where the people's own religion did not support democracy and human rights, was simply a fool's errand from the beginning. Following WW2, the US and Allies performed an extensive "de-Nazification" process to remove as much of Nazi ideology from society as possible to support the new Democratic nation. And prior to the Nazis, Germany had been a Christian country. A study of German church history reveals that it had become spiritually weak and the average German had little interest in it (attendance had become drastically low), which facilitated the rise of fascism. But the society historically had the foundations of Christianity to support democracy and human rights following WW2. Numerous global studies/surveys taken among Muslims since 9/11 demonstrate that, while most Muslims don't want to risk their lives in terrorist attacks, many are OK with financially supporting extremist groups (e.g. see the Holy Land Foundation Hamas terrorist financing trial conviction, 2009) and the vast majority of Muslims around the world support Shariah, including draconian laws oppressing women, homosexuality and religious minorities. The only countries where such Shariah support was low were in countries that had been heavily influenced by western democracies, such as Lebanon (originally Christian), Turkey (formed under secularist Attaturk) and Indonesia (former Dutch colony, multi-ethnic with 15% non-Muslim population). While the occupying coalition claimed to be installing democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, they allowed inclusion of clauses in both constitutions that disallowed any law to be passed that conflicted with Shariah - the actual basic foundation behind Islamic terrorism in the first place. As a result, blasphemy and apostasy laws were put in place with capital punishment. These laws were aimed and misused against religious minorities (Hindus & Christians) and there have been occasions where individuals had to be removed from Afghanistan to save their lives. And that is what is happening on a wide scale now that Biden has suddenly removed their military protection and the Taliban has returned. As long as we pumped endless supplies of cash along with a military presence, while propping up a modern infrastructure the Afghan government failed to maintain, they would reap the benefits of the artificial democracy non-Muslims foisted on it. But as soon as the non-Muslim cash and military were removed, it took literally no time for the entire system to implode. Our original goal should not have been the fool's errand of democracy implementation, which was an impossible task, given the situation described above. The goal should have simply been to remove the fangs (Al-Qaeda) of the tiger (Taliban/Afghan govt). That meant to destroy/weaken Al-Qaeda, destroying their training camps and completely burn down and destroy the Opium Poppy fields that financed the terrorists through heroin sales to the Cartels and ended up pumped into the arms of Americans. This is one serious thing our military did little to nothing about. A big deal was made over finding Osama Bin Laden, but he was never located by our military in Afghanistan. He was eventually located via surveillance and Intelligence years later living peacefully in our duplicitous "ally" Pakistan, and taken out by Special Ops -- not by Afganistan occupation. The bottom line is that we should have bombed Afghanistan until they had no ability to continue their terror attacks and then left. At most, one could argue in favor of building and maintaining a military base on location (E.g. Gitmo) for rapid response if/when Al-Qaeda began to rebuild. But we should not have wasted 20 years of money, resources and lives propping up a fragile government that could never exist without us. We obviously should have left along time ago. But, although I have not been a Trump supporter for personality reasons, it's clear that he was the only one who could have extracted us without causing the totally chaotic mess that our current feeble and demented President created almost overnight -- all the while hiding "on vacation" in Camp David and Delaware. Trump's agreement with the Taliban was that we would systematically withdraw by May if they agreed to not attack our forces. By even Biden's admission, the Taliban lived up to their agreement. But Biden took over in January and by April had announced that he was going to reneg ion the agreement and keep our military presence in Afganistan with the goal of leaving by the anniversary of 9/11. It appears obvious that he did this as some kind of foolish symbolic gesture (we retreat by the anniversary of their attack???). But that was a serious breech of Trump's agreement, making it null and void. And every expert, as well as basic common sense, said we should have pulled all US and coalition civilians out furst,first, followed by any Afghans who provided support (translators, etc) or otherwise would be specific Al-Qaeda targets. Following successful evacuation of civilians, we absolutely should have removed all the millions of dollars worth of sophisticated US military weapons and hardware, such as drones, tracking devices, night vision goggles, etc. Our military should have been the very last to be evacuated. But that did not happen because a feeble bodied and feeble minded withering old man was put in charge as US Commander-and-Chief and Leader of the Free World. How do we put ourselves back together and return the US to the prominent center of the world stage as a "Superpower" that we held just a mere half year ago? The world and the US are radically different then they were even a few short weeks ago. Congress needs to invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Biden from office for medical (cognitive) reasons. But that would mean elevating Kamala Harris to the highest office -- something NO ONE wants, Keep in mind that Harris was polling in last place in the single digits before being the first Dem to drop out following the DNC debate. In fact, it was totally shocking when Biden's handlers chose her to take the number 2 slot, given the way she had eviscerated Biden -- outright implying he was a racist and siding with his accuser regarding sexual assault charges. But since taking over as Vice President, she has done literally nothing. She was put in charge of the Southern Border crisis, yet ignored the situation and routinely refused to personally visit the Border. When the problem became catastrophic, she was finally pressured into action, but instead of visiting the Southeastern points where the crisis was at a peak, she flew down for a photo-op in the Northeast area of the Border -- literally hundreds of miles from the crisis. And she has been silent and mimicking her boss by hiding away during the current fiasco in Afghanistan. Whenever confronted with a difficult or embarrassing question, she routinely throws her head back and laughs -- Kackling until the questioner gives up and moves to the next topic. She would not be any serious improvement on Biden, which is probably why the Dems are afraid to remove him. aAll we can hope for is the near guarantee that the Republicans take both Houses in 2022. We'll have to wait and see.