- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politics@lemmy.world
The partner of late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell, completed a second day of questioning on Friday, where she shared information on about 100 different people with the Justice Department.
Maxwell, who was convicted of child sex trafficking in connection with the disgraced financier in 2021, met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche for about three hours on Friday at a courthouse in Tallahassee, Florida.
She also sat down with Blanche to answer questions for about six hours on Thursday as the Justice Department tries to quell fallout over its handling of the Epstein files.
You have wonderfully and eloquently summarized it all. On a depressing, dytopian level of hopelessness. Yes, that’s the same impression I get. The average murican (excluding some poor awakies like you who have to sit in midst of a moribund system, they’ll have to observe decaying, knowing exactly why and how) gives the impression of a prime Dunning-Kruger-example. Overconfident and loudly voicing an opinion that shouldn’t be voiced at all. By the power of a great imaginary sky-friend.
Like your awesome Carlin said (hope to quote it correctly): “of course the american dream is still relevant. You just have to be asleep to believe it”
I grew up with high respect for that great country. And only some decades later I pity the average Joe who has to live there.
I appreciate the praise and sympathy both, hah!
Yeah its… well, in one way, its very, very tragic and sad, essentially just in my lifetime, the US has gone from ‘sole world superpower’ to ‘absolute laughingstock / basket case’, to see the massive amount of unnecessary harm this does to ourselves, and to others.
Once upon a time, a patriot was defined by love of one’s country, one’s countrymen, a broad sense of collective empathy and desire to see the maximum good for the maximum number of them.
But this is no longer the case, now ‘patriotism’ is, to many, either a dirty word, or a jingoist and fanatical cult that worships at the altar of the God Emperor, who sits senile and deranged atop the throne of a long dead sense of American superiority, doing and believing whatever the mad king says in a vain hope that this will somehow re-manifest a mythical, falsely remembered past ‘greatness’.
But, in another way, it is fucking infuriating to people like myself, and many others of apparently uncommon intelligence / insight (for an American), who have been describing the bad trends, outlining how to fix them, then screaming that they need to be fixed soon or essentially all will be lost…
Only to be broadly gaslit and patted on the head and told ‘dont worry, its not that bad, you are catastrophizing!’ by most of society… as all our worst fears just objectively are occuring in realtime.
People did not realize Carlin was not joking when he said that line, they did not take him seriously enough.
… Its… its like being in a car with an overconfident, drunk or high driver and other passengers.
You ask them to slow down, to be more careful, to stop, let me out, and their responses are braggadocious, then angry, then the car crashes, and they blame you for ‘distracting’ them.
To give you a non American cultural reference: I agree with David Bowie, I too am afraid of Americans.
Oh yes, bowie was a special one too. RIP.
And I can totally feel you. I would probably have long emigrated. I remember back when I was younger people thought a green-card (if that stuff is still a thing, I dunno) to work/live in the US was the tits. Now I wouldn’t even consider working there if I’d be making less than, dunno, 20k net a month? Considering you’re always just a severe illness or accident away from bankruptcy… In that case even 20k can vanish with near light-, nay, ludicrous speed.
And exactly knowing what is going on and how to fucking fix the shit, but noone gives a rat’s ass…this is something very…is there a fitting word for it? Especially if you see people getting fucked, cheering at the people that fuck them raw, wondering why their asses hurt. To use a more vivid language 😁
But, it’s not just you guys. I witness the same trend here (krautland) too. Hitler isn’t even fully rotted yet, and we’re close to have voted nazis into power again. That also fuck exactly those peeps that voted them and cheered for them. Leopards ate my face hm?
Just keep the sheeples busy with work, social media and…well that’s enough already.
That word you are looking for is ‘maddening’.
This is why so many Americans identify with the Joker, use terms like ‘clown world’, why I have an extremely dark sense of humor at this point.
Being well-adjusted to a deeply sick and dysfunctional society is not a sign of mental wellbeing.
And yeah, I would have gotten out some time ago now, but unfortunately I’ve been crippled by injuries, and thus, impoverished by the rest of US society… so I’m here for the long haul, untill I more fully recover both my body and my finances… though the good news there is I am making good progress… but the bad news is it may take a while longer still.
In the mean time, … welp, just gotta hope Trump and the Reps don’t cancel the Disability Insurance part of Social Security, otherwise I’m homeless in a month or two, and then likely dead or in some kind of prison or internment camp in another couple months.
The current plan for the homeless is, as with brown skinned people, concentration camps.
‘Maddening’ seems like a good fit. And the joker (using the latest movie as base) also fits well the open eyes in a dark world. How else to cope if not with dark humor. I see it the same way and my humor has always been very dark. And with each decade i become more “incompatible” with social groups and need to restrain my cynicism and misanthropy. But how could one not become that when running around with open eyes, unclouded and unaffected by propaganda?
Fuck, I’m sorry to hear that dude. I always cuss at our local injustices here towards handicapped and whatever else, but then I hear/read something from you guys and it all seems relatively grear again. Like our saying “complaining on a high Niveau”. We are far from perfect (and even drift in the wrong direction), but, in principle, we have a social/medical net. Homeless people, in theory, get their welfare, everyone does who can’t work. We were even close to the much better solution “universal income”.
Homelessness being illegal is one of the most dystopian things there could be. But probably helps greatly in
getting cheap labourpunishing bad people for their crimes.Crossing fingers your
realismpessimism won’t be fulfilled and trump suddenly dies of penile rotting cancer and untreatable adult testicular torsion. But I could totally imagine camps. You could even name them bad-people-killing-facility and Murica, nay the whole world wouldn’t even flinch. It would just be noticed and maybe harshly judged by some random, yet uninfluential, intellectuals. Like with what the Jews currently do. Especially weird if you grew up here, where generational guilt is still taught at school.Could you explain ‘Complaining from a high Niveau’?
I don’t know what Niveua means, though I am guessing the phrase is roughly equivalent to ‘Get off your high horse’ or ‘Check your privilege’ or ‘The view from the ivory tower’…
… which all roughly mean that a person has a fairly decent, wealthy and secure standard of living, and the stuggles of the poor either do not matter to them, or are literally not even conceivable to them, as they’ve never had to deal with those kinds of problems, and have no idea how difficult it is.
…
But uh yeah… America hates the poor, and whats worst is that they’ve trained most of the poor to hate themselves and other poors, for being poor.
It is so obviously stupid when you break out of that mindset, but, its very well trained into us, very hard for many to escape.
…
Regarding Jews/Israelis, I just wanna clarify a distinction there.
I have many Jewish relatives, here in the US.
They all despise what Israel, and Israeli Jews sre doing.
There are in fact more Jews in the US than there are Jews in Israel.
For a great many of them, the actions of the state of Israel do not speak for all Jews, and many US Jews denounce what they have been and are currently doing, many of them have been taking part in and even leading protests against the ongoing Palestinian Genocide.
Oh no, I totally botched that translation 😁 I meant this more in the sense of “I cried because I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet”. Like when 99% of the country is great but you’re complaining about the 1% that isn’t.
That hate for the poor is here too, maybe just not THAT exaggerated as to throw them in prisons for free labour. They are the best scape-goat for everything that is bad. Our people living on welfare are also always the source of everything that destroys our future. And despise for them is a very common thing amongst the regular joes and Janes. This was actually one of the main points why I stopped working. This workplace - ethics here are unbearable. Mixed with the sheer stupidity or ignorance. No Jacqueline, it’s not the fault of welfare that “those beggars make nearly the same like me without lifting a finger!”. It’s your boss that sacks 99,9999% of all profits for him while paying you jack-shit.
That’s also a very deeply imprinted, I dare to say indoctrinated, life-motto here: lick the asses above you, kick the asses below you. I always found this to be deeply wrong and incredibly disgusting.
As to the jew-topic: I have a very deep disdain for religion/cults. As they’re the epitome of evil to me and most often, if not the source, the the justification for tremendous violence, injustice, sexism, racism and whatever else *isms on this rotten planet. So, while I don’t like what the Israelis do, I don’t mind at the same time. It’s child-abusers killing other child-abusers. And mysognists for free on top. Couldn’t cheer for one side. The hipocrisy of it is what drives me nuts. I grew up learning how bad we are for what we did one-two generations before. And now they do the same and still play the victim- or antisemitism a card.
To be clear: I dont care for people’s beliefs. The organized crime, errrr church it is what I despise. This fucking tribalism.
Hey, no worries!
I think my guesses were fairly close?
Either way, if English is not your first language, you speak it better than most Americans I know, and I appreciate you translating / conversing in it so well… I am of course your stereotypical American who only speaks English, lol.
As to general hatred of the poor… yeah, I know it occurs basically everywhere, to a sickening degree.
I’ve had many Eurozone online friends over the course of my life, and they’ve explained to me how in even the highly developed areas of Europe, each different country has their own fun flavor of social ostricization and bureaucratic mess of how assistance is qualified for.
As to the religious angle: I get the sense that we broadly agree, disagree on a few things, and some may be lost in translation.
I totally agree that religious extremism, religiously motivated acts of hatred and violence of all kinds are detestable.
I am an atheist myself, but uh, I realize that though I may disagree ultimately with whatever religion as an explanation for how the world works… many religious people are not extremists, and despise their own religion being tarnished by participating in horrific acts.
But at the same time yes, the absolutely insane irony of Israel, a state made for genocide victims… is now committing a genocide?
Fucking absurd.
Maddening.
…
Anyway, I am not sure that the rest of what I’m writing is necessary or relevant, you may already know some of it, but it is hopefully helpful additional context as to how politics and terminology surrounding Jews functions in the US:
In the US we have a term ‘Secular Jew’.
Non-practicing Jew, Non-devout Jew, Irreligious Jew.
Terms like that.
What this basically means is, someone who is Jewish by culture, by heritage, who partakes in some level of Jewish customs or traditions… but they are really atheists or agnostics, they do not really believe that the Torah, the Old Testament, is more than an important piece of their history, they do not devoutly follow or study it.
It is quite common in the US that many Jews are this kind of irreligious, and they are often quite politically liberal or left.
Conversely, in the US, on the right wing of politics, we have many, many fundamentalist extremist Christians who believe strongly in an apocalyptic doomsday scenario that very much revolves around Israel, the state, Israel the land, Israel the Jews living in Israel.
So, you end up with this wacky nonsense world where… Jews, left of center, in the US, say ‘Israel does not represent all Jews, their actions are very bad.’
And then the other side, the right of center US Christian extremists, say ‘Israel does represent all Jews, to criticize Israel is to criticize Jews.’
They say this despite most of the actual Jews in the US saying and believing the opposite.
It is madness.
I get some sense that this also occurs in European countries, but I am not familiar with… to what extent this occurs, I am not familiar with to what extent it is a massive driver of politics in general.