Not that specific example, but I have used that approach before. I think the first time was about 10 years ago. There were a couple queer people in my friend group who would throw around the f-slur, which was whatever, but one night when we were drinking one of my straight friends called me it, and that bothered me. So the next day I sent a group message talking about how it made me feel uncomfortable and I didn’t like it being normalized. It was a little awkward, but from then on everyone stopped using it and we all remained friends. In the long term, I think people actually respected me more for standing up for myself (since I was generally more of a pushover), and it stopped a behavior that had been making me uncomfortable and driving a bit of a wedge between us.

Most of the time, stuff like this don’t come from malice, but from people having different norms or expectations and not understanding each other. They might get defensive in the moment, but once they’re aware of it there’s a good chance they’ll stop. While people can be dicks, we are fundamentally social creatures and wired to avoid friction.

I will say it’s easier to confront people when you have a voluntary relationship with them, because if they’re dicks about it you can always just not hang out, but you can’t do that with coworkers. If they attack you for expressing how their behavior makes you feel, then you can probably bring it to HR and you’ll have a stronger case to say it’s malice.

This website completely changed the way I thought about this stuff and I found it super helpful.

The line to walk, generally speaking, is, “When you do [specific behavior], it makes me feel [specific emotion].” So for example, “When you ask me if everything’s ok, it makes me feel pressured/put on the spot.”

Keeping it about your own feelings makes it less confrontational while still bringing attention to the problem - you don’t wanna get drawn into a whole debate about whether there’s anything wrong with asking if someone’s ok, but you want him to understand how you feel and (hopefully) take that into account in the future. If he does get defensive, repeat the message once to make it clear you’re standing your ground, but then drop it and move on. A lot of times it’s just a matter of the other person not realizing how it affects you.

Having said that, speaking as someone who’s very much had the same mentality in the past, there are a lot of advantages to having friends in the workplace. Something to understand about this approach is that it’s actually good for building relationships because it allows you to confront the behaviors that bother you while openly communicating your feelings, and people may even respect you more for standing up for yourself. Just remember to walk a middle ground, you don’t want to veer into aggression or passivity.

Could do worse tbh.

There’s a difference between the government’s interests and the interests of individual politicians. Politicians don’t have access to public funds, in the same way they have access to the money in their bank accounts, so public funds must be transferred into the private sector. The easiest way to do this is through military contractors like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin. There’s a rampant and widespread conflict of interest where politicians give those companies lucrative contracts and the companies have various ways of giving them kickbacks. All the politicians have to do then is to sell the public on spending more on the military.

As long as the companies are paid, it doesn’t matter whether the money is coming from domestic taxpayers or from other countries. In the case of Israel, there are also various lobbying groups focused on that issue who can also reward politicians from doing what they want. So yes the US government may be giving the weapons away for free, but the individual politicians are getting paid, so what do they care?

Before the 90’s, it was easy to do that because they could just point to the Soviet Union as a threat (even though we massively outspent them even then). During the 90’s, there was a period of relative peace, which was a crisis for the shareholders, and there was some expectation that the bloated military budget could be cut, since the primary threat is was supposedly there to counter disappeared. But with 9/11, they found a new threat to justify it. Once those wars wound down, then it became China, Russia, and Hamas. If if weren’t them, it would be something else, and if they couldn’t find something else they’d simply create it. There must always be some existential threat to justify the spending, or else the war profiteers stand to lose a lot of money.

The US needs to vote third party in order to fix the voting system.

Then let me provide some context. Trump and Harris are both hawks who fully and unconditionally support arming Israel and slaughtering people in the Middle East. The same was true in 2020, when it Biden v Trump, in 2016, when it was Clinton v Trump, in 2012 when it was Obama v Romney, in 2008 when it was Obama v McCain, in 2004 when it was Kerry v Bush, and arguably even in 2000 when it was Gore v Bush

Those of us who are doves have been waiting for over 20 years for a candidate who isn’t an extremist hawk who wants to commit mass slaughter on the other side of the world, where it can safely be kept out of sight and out of mind. Neither party has ever delivered on that. The military-industrial complex is extremely large and extremely lucrative for politicians, and it has only gotten larger and more influential under Biden - as well as being much more deadly than ever, with what’s happening in Gaza.

We’ll never just be handed a choice to get in the way of that system, but it absolutely must end. The only ways of accomplishing that are 1) forcing politicians to oppose it by making our votes conditional on that issue, or 2) building our own party from the ground up that’s committed to opposing it. Otherwise we will keep seeking out new conflicts until we end up kicking off WWIII, and ofc in the meantime it will be impossible to fix the numerous crippling domestic issues we’re facing because so much of our money is tied up in bombs.

What does that have to with anything? No one’s claiming that Trump would be good on Palestine or that you should vote for him, it’s a whataboutism.

Correct! That’s a great reason not to vote for either of them.

What my individual plan is is irrelevant, I’m just describing what will happen. Do you forsee a future where Kamala Harris makes a call to arms for people to rise up and fight against the National Guard and the military? If so, you need a reality check.

And for the record, we already have camps that foreigners are rounded up into.

No. Like you say, riots, and of course the ongoing epidemic of stochastic terrorism, possibly with more violence directed against politicians and the government, but it’s definitely not going to look like tanks shooting at tanks, and it’s also not going to look like people crawling through tunnels a la Vietnam. What American simultaneously cares enough about politics to risk their life over it, while also being willing to go live in a trench without their phone for a month? No, as long as it’s an option to live a normal life where you can return to your couch and watch or read the news while feeling righteously indignant and engage with social media however you like, that’s what people will do. Look at the January 6’ers, for example, who fully expected to return home and be able to post all about the exciting event all over social media.

Now, that all goes out the window if some lunatic decides to start WWIII with China and institutes a draft (assuming we don’t all just die in nuclear hellfire). You tell people they’ll have to give up their phones and go live in a trench anyway and maybe some decide they’d rather fight the people making them do that. Americans generally love war, but a lot of that comes from being completely and totally separated from any real life consequences from it. And of course, no insurgency would stand any chance of defeating the US government without foreign support.

immiserated possibly a billion more

Hmm, this graph must be upside-down or something, weird.

Fascists paint themselves as being a third position that supercedes the left-right dichotomy, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually true. Everything about it is right-wing and it’s not actually as incompatible with capitalism as fascists claim. Every fascist regime has partnered up with capitalists, who often support them into power in the first place.