Tale as old as time. The abused grow up to become the abusers.

Maybe they won’t win. But it’s inevitable that the leading Democratic candidate will have a position on immigration just as far right as Trump’s. Trump will of course be more performatively cruel about it. The Democrat won’t want to make big shows out of torturing innocent people. But they won’t actually want to defund ICE, to decrease the number of ICE agents, or to close any of these facilities. ICE funding has only gone up and up and up, regardless of what party is running things.

Sad inevitability: if a Democrat somehow manages to win in 2028, they will not close these facilities. In fact, they will expand them.

They’ve never heard of the Streisand effect, have they?

Every Democratic politician needs to be calling for the deportation of Trump and his entire crooked family.

Sure, there is that difference. But the series doesn’t even address the fact that he’s already killed hundreds of people. Intentionally or not, it’s still absurd to hand wring about killing when you’ve already killed hundreds of people, accidentally or not, and the one person you’re worrying about taking down is literal genocidal maniac. To me that just sounds like not being willing to take responsibility for your own actions. Intentionally or not, Aang killed hundreds of people. And it’s not like he never went into the Avatar state again after taking out the Northern fleet. Hell, he fought Ozai while in the Avatar state. Maybe he should have just “accidentally” killed Ozai while in the Avatar state and just washed his hands of moral culpability, just like he did all the other people he killed before then.

Regardless, Aang found a way to make peace with the fact that he had taken hundreds of lives. But when the person in question is someone of power and renown? Then it becomes something to fret over.

Thanks! Fixed.

For me, the best version of this is Avatar: The Last Airbender. Aang spends an entire arc lamenting how he may need to spill blood and kill the Fire Lord. Meanwhile the very same Aang had previously sunk an entire naval fleet single-handedly.

How many thousands of sailors, most of them probably people drafted against their will, did you kill that day Aang? Remember when you literally sliced entire ships in half? Your hands cut through steel, would you have even felt the flesh you were cutting through? Or how about all those ships you sank? A fair number sank instantly. You think everybody got out safely from those ships? Or how about that time you destroyed that giant drill machine, the one manned by thousands of soldiers, outside the walls of Ba Sing Se? You think everyone managed to miraculously escape that fireball? And those are just the major battles. How about the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fire nation soldiers you casually tossed around like rag dolls with your powers of air, water, and earth during dozens of minor skirmishes? What are the odds you managed to toss all these men around like playthings and NOT have a few of them have their skulls bashed open on rocks when they hit the ground wrong?

The point of this is not to condemn Aang’s actions through the series. His actions were fully justified, as he was fighting a war against an expansionist colonial military power. What he did was an objective good. But by the time he’s hand wringing about having to kill Fire Lord Ozai, Aang had almost certainly already taken hundreds of lives. Hell, he probably killed hundreds just in that final climactic battle against the airship armada. The Hindenburg disaster saw 1/3 of the passenger and crew parish. And that was from an airship that crashed when it was already landing and close to the ground. Aang was dropping ships from miles in the sky. Maybe some soldiers with fire bending powers could somehow slow their own descent enough to survive, maybe they had some parachutes. But there’s zero chance that Armada didn’t have a fatality rate at least comparable to the Hindenburg disaster.

So Aang blithely kills hundreds of conscripts without a second thought. But then he has a crisis of conscience that takes multiple episodes to resolve, and that crisis of conscience is all about…Fire Lord Ozai? This is like if someone nonchalantly participated in the Firebombing of Dresden and then suddenly developed complex moral doubts about putting a bullet in Hitler’s head. Aang had already killed hundreds of people that Ozai had sent to their deaths. No one was forcing Ozai. He wasn’t a conscript. He had full autonomy; he’s the absolute ruler of the Fire Nation. He doesn’t even have a Congress or Parliament to answer to. He has absolute total moral responsibility for every evil thing the Fire Nation has done. Yet, when it comes to actually holding the powerful accountable, suddenly Aang wants to talk about the morality of killing.

The real irony of all this is that the people being genocides right now in Gaza have a much closer genetic relationship to the actual human beings who wrote the Torah than those who are genociding them. We’re watching the actual descendents of the ancient Israelites being exterminated right now.

On the other hand, there have been Jewish states before modern Israel, and it always ended in tears. Maybe believing that you’re God’s chosen people inevitably causes you to act with an arrogance and belief in your own invincibilty that eventually causes your country to be destroyed. If you believe God literally wants you to have a piece of dirt, why practice good diplomacy and have good relations with your neighbors? Your only concern is keeping God happy. In the Old Testament, the Israelites suffered invasion only when they somehow let God down. With that as your cultural foundation, what does that do to your nation’s foreign policy?

Part of me really is starting to wonder if giving folks who think they’re God’s special chosen people was a terrible mistake.

The rich aren’t accessible, but their property sure is awfully flammable.

It’s not enough to reform campaign finance. We need to destroy the class of people behind this. We need to really wage class war, a class war of annihilation.

We need a national wealth cap. 1000x median household income. Anything more is taxed at 100%.

But what is ownership? Ownership is the society-recognized right to the exclusive use of property. But society establishes certain limitations on those rights, including requirements to allow the lawful access by law enforcement to the property.

You intrinsically give law enforcement permission to access property if they have a warrant. It’s just part of the bargain of land ownership.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation - controlled by another billionaire and their heirs

Susan Thompson Buffet Foundation - controlled by Buffet

Sherwood Foundation - controlled by Warren Buffet’s daughter

Howard G. Buffet Foundation - controlled by another Buffet family member

NoVo Foundation - controlled by Warren Buffet’s son

Billionaire philanthropy is a disgusting scam. It’s a way of buying social influence for your heirs. Even if they don’t get the money directly, the heirs retain control over the foundation and can direct it to whatever causes, often political causes, that they personally support. It’s a way of giving your heirs money that they can use to obtain more power - which is ultimately the only use billionaires have for their fortunes anyway. The only use for billions of dollars is to obtain power, and these foundations are a way of passing power and influence to the next generation tax free. It’s an abomination. You should not be able to donate money to foundations that you control.

They’re going after the wrong people. They should be disappearing Republican politicians, accusing them of secretly being illegal aliens.

People need to start kidnapping and disappearing:

1. Conservative white Republicans.

2. Evangelical preachers.

3. ICE agents.

4. Police officers.

5. Republican politicians.

Just dress up as ICE, bust down their doors, and haul them off. If they try to show a birth certificate or passport, grab it from them, tear it in half, and call it a fake.

White Christian conservatives need to learn that they will not come out of this unscathed. They need to know that they are just as vulnerable as anyone else, and that they themselves are a minority group in this country. We need to put the fear of God in these bastards. That’s the only way this will ever end.

We should just parachute Hegseth over Tehran. Let the Iranians do what they want with him.

Time to vote blue no matter who motherfuckers.

I don’t have to worry about being drafted, I’m officially morally unqualified to serve in my nation’s armed forces!

Have red pandas just been little people in fur suits this whole time???