Trump stumbles through conspiracy-laden Fridman interview

Try being a Guatemalan and moving to the USA.

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seth meyers GIF by Late Night with Seth Meyers

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Is “easier than navigating a deliberately xenophobic immigration process meant to be awful for people like yourself” really going to be our standard for “everyone can do this”? I’m curious how one could actually set the bar for humanity even lower.

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:100:

Rightoids: Harris is hiding from the press and not giving interviews!

Harris: (Gives very high profile interview)

Rightoids: Not like that.

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i would like to hear WHYY’s Terry Gross interview all 4 candidates. she would emacsculate and eviscerate Vance and, i believe, push those very questions you suggest RE: Gaza, genocide and more.
but, i do tend to live in the clouds somewhere. like a place where that kind of journalistic interview could actually ever exist.
::sigh::

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Legal issues aside, I’d say it’s about the same.

I imagine an interview between her and Trump would go about as well as her interview of Gene Simmons. I’m not sure it would be helpful, but it would certainly make headlines.

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That is way easier said than done. And it’s not just economics. Our income should allow us to go wherever we want, but ties of family, work, community and yes, comfort, would make it very near impossible for us to relocate. I would say that statement might apply to some young folks getting started, who certainly have more freedom in setting down roots, and for wealthier old folks who are retiring and free to relocate, but for the vast majority of us, it would be very difficult to cast it all aside and start over elsewhere. Not that there are not those who do, and will continue to, but to make it sound easy is disingenuous.

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I’l be sure to tell that to all the homeless people I see at stop lights… they should stop whining, clearly since others might also have a hard time in other places… /s

It’s not the oppression olympics, dude. Stop pretending like everyone in america is living like the 1%, because it’s just not the case.

And no, not everyone has the choice to pull up stakes and go move to an entire different state, for a million and one reasons.

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No. They absolutely should not be able to. We have a Constitution. Sure, there are some things reserved to the states, so that each state can have somewhat different laws. But when it comes to fundamental rights, they cannot do their own thing. Your example specifically is something no state can do. The very first amendment to the US Constitution says, among other things, that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” The 14th Amendment extended this prohibition to the states.

If one state wants to mandate that anyone over the age of 75 has to take a driving test every year to maintain their driver’s license, they can do that. If another state wants to set that age at 70, and a third state wants to have no such limit at all, they can do that. But for more fundamental rights and freedoms specified in the Constitution, the states are absolutely not free to do their own thing. You are wrong. And that’s leaving aside the issue of how difficult it is for most people to just pick up and move to another state. The point is, they shouldn’t have to. This is America, dammit.

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Is he mistaking convictions for interviews? Asking for a “friend.” /S

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This might be a good opportunity to read up on the difference between “negative freedoms” (the absence of external constraints preventing you from doing something) and “positive freedoms” (having the conditions to actually act on one’s free will).

Imagine you’re alone in the middle of a vast desert next to a small well of contaminated water. No one is preventing you from leaving, or for that matter from doing anything you want. From a “negative freedom” point of view you’re all set! But practically, your only options are to drink the contaminated water until you die of sickness or starvation or to wander out into the desert until you die of dehydration. From a “positive freedom” point of view you’re screwed.

That’s what people who find themselves economically trapped in oppressive societies are dealing with. And economics aren’t the only reason a person may be trapped in a bad situation; there are also matters of family and other social support networks. A woman shouldn’t have to give up her reproductive freedoms to stay in the same state as her ailing parents or to keep joint custody of a child. Not to mention all the minors who have no say whatsoever where they live; should they be forced to live in a medieval theocracy instead of a place that protects basic Constitutional rights?

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Yeah, but there is always someone MORE oppressed, so only the singularly most oppressed person in all of human history can EVER complain! No one else! They can just move… and if they can’t get out of the desert fast enough before they die, well, then they should have just tugged on those boot straps just a bit harder, shouldn’t they have! QED!!! /s

schitts creek oh snap GIF by CBC

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“…oblivious to the fact that his own behavior is the opposite of traditional religious values…”

No, his behavior is not the opposite of traditional religious values. Any hatred, depravity, and general idiocy you can think of has some counterpart in religious “values”.

Stop pandering to cults.

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Overzealous atheists are equally as annoying as the overzealously religious, IMO.

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I Mean Come On GIF by Late Night with Seth Meyers

Especially ones that are harsher towards some religions over others - Dawkins sort of half giving the Church of England something of a pass, while coming down harder on Catholicism and Islam. As if the CoE didn’t spend several centuries justifying an incredibly brutal empire that killed probably hundreds of millions of people over the centuries and contributed to our current problems with climate change. Why give them a pass while condemning others?

For that matter, why ignore the very real differences in faith traditions and even how individuals or groups act with regards to the world. The Catholic church as an institution is not the same as Catholic groups who fight for a better world (Catholic workers orgs, for example).

But generally, I am just tired of people being willing to dismiss literally billions of humans just because of something that makes them “different”… how is that kind of religious intolerance any different from other kinds of intolerance? It’s that thinking that allows people to justify antisemitism, or Islamophobia, which helps to contribute to violence against those groups that serves no purpose other than trying to “wipe those groups out”… Just… bullshit.

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On pretty much every important moral issue of the last few hundred years, from slavery to LGBTQ rights, you somehow find believers and non-believers on both sides. The difference between them is not nearly so important as having empathy for other people.

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Um… are you really trying to suggest that there has never been a non-believer who hurt a child? Are you kidding me?

Cherry picking doesn’t help shit. The bible says LOTS of shit, some good, some bad. People interpret the book in very different ways, from literal to allegorical. Focus on people’s actions and you’ll see a far more complicated world than this tribalism your pushing here.

Los Angeles Anniversary GIF by The Paley Center for Media

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