No shit. She’s there because it’s the closest she can get to COP29. She didn’t intend to come there to support your agenda and made no secret of it.

That seems to be the problem, though. If someone comes by and uses your protests as a platform for their own causes under the guise of allyship, is that not a reason to be irritated?

Each side is trying to wear down the other rather than make massive territorial gains as in the early days of the war.

The end result is the fucking same and you’re here arguing over pointless technicalities as if they mean anything.

Ah, that explains it, you think that speeding up the genocide of Palestinians is a ‘pointless technicality’. How… charming.

It’s funny that you accuse me of being bad at abstract thinking when you couldn’t understand the simple point I was making that just like the US has the capabilities to make things worse, they also have the capabilities to make things better, which biden has not used at all.

Okay? That’s not at all relevant to the fact that things can get much worse, something you denied, and what we’re arguing about.

This may be shocking, but biden’s support for the genocide is already “to the hilt”.

Don’t know why I expected any sort of consistency from you, though. Anything to peddle your fascist-enabling genocide-supporting “BOTHSIDES” shite, self-contradiction be damned.

I’m well aware of the US’s capabilities, but apparently biden isn’t because he bent over for a fascist in a foreign country to supply their campaign of genocide with billions of dollars in weapons.

How does that in any way contradict what I said?

You don’t understand how it can get worse because you think the current level of support is the most the US can do to support the genocide. In the next four years, though likely it will gruesomely end sooner, you’ll see hard evidence of just how much more support the US can lend to this atrocity, since apparently abstract thinking is not your strong point.

This may be shocking, but biden’s support for the genocide is already “to the hilt”.

That reflects a severe paucity of understanding of the US’s capabilities in this situation.

As opposed to democrats backing israel to the hilt right now? You may not believe this, but the bombs dropped during democratic party rule don’t hurt less.

This may be shocking, but things can absolutely get worse, and ‘to the hilt’ is an English idiom which means ‘as much as possible’.

You should really take some time for self-reflection for thinking that me criticizing democrats for the genocide they’ve been fully supporting for over a year now somehow means that I support trump.

Oh, okay, you’re just giving asspats to people who literally voted for Trump, who openly espoused the value of intensifying and backing the genocide by all means possible because you want to criticize the Democrats. Okay. Very believable.

Who do we vote for if we don’t want genocide? No, I’m not asking for a supposedly “better” genocide, I mean NO genocide.

There wasn’t a no genocide choice. The idea that picking ‘more genocide’ as a protest of that is somehow understandable is deluded or vile - or both.

Except for having relatives slaughtered in a genocide with the help of democrats :)))

That’s even more fucked up that you cheer on the slaughter of your own relatives under the Trump regime backing Israel to the hilt.

Spoken like someone who doesn’t actually have to suffer the consequences of throwing the election to fascists. :)

Don’t worry, they have plenty like the above commenter who are willing to give them plenty of asspats and play apologist about how they opted to kill more of the people they supposedly want to save AND massacre American minorities.

Don’t worry, the spineless cunts will all fall in line when the time comes, like the good little fascists they are.

And plenty of non-Republicans were ready to buy into that.

Yes. It was bad for slaves as well. The post-Roman polities maintained slavery, so it’s not “The slaves are now free”, it’s “The slaves are now under a system with a poorer quality of life for everyone, from top to bottom”.

What about those on the periphery, with minimal protection from the state both before and after the fall? For them, the only real difference was the tax collector stopped showing up.

Tax collector never stopped showing up - tax collector was just working for someone different after the Empire fell.

As for those on the periphery, the only ones which would have fit the idea of those with minimal protection from the state would have been those literally outside of the borders of the Empire - the Early Empire pursued highly proactive anti-raiding strategies on the border, with large forces ready to respond to any incursion, while the Late Empire stationed many small garrisons along all the borders.

Furthermore, there is ample evidence that the benefits of the Empire reached into the periphery, including the benefits of long-distance trade, high-quality consumer goods for the working class and peasantry, architectural expertise, and resolution of legal disputes.

Please don’t take this as analogous to the modern day in any way. A modern village/town will break down rapidly without access to modern logistics, which was not the case then.

No, places broke down then as well. After the Roman presence in Britain left, Britain itself not exactly being in the heartland of the Empire, the resulting collapse into infighting and outside raiders was so total that even things as simple and universally needed as pottery suffered a horrific decline in both amount produced and used in domestic consumption and in the quality of the work, to the point where post-Roman British pottery is instantly identifiable compared to Roman British pottery. Some 200 years pass before pottery quality begins to recover. Aqueducts stop working in short order if not dissembled and cleaned, lower quality roads (via glareata and via terrena) fade without regular maintenance, brigands destroy all semblance of trade and free travel, even farming techniques decline with large-scale local mortality without the ability of skilled migrants to transfer location and then transfer their skills.

Civilization is fragile, in all cases.

“God I love rampant brigandry and not having clean water. Oh, if only trade routes would shut down and feudalism would grow from the ashes of our society! It’s really too bad that ethnic supremacist polities didn’t rule over my people sooner, I love being excluded from legal protections due to an insufficiently pure bloodline.”

The decline and fall of the Roman Empire was fucking horrible for normal people, and it’s bizarre to me that people think otherwise.

I apologize if this comes off as tetchy. I’m in an ill mood today.

Cute.

I am happy that Democratic voters did not learn that they can support genocide and still win elections.

Unlike every other time we’ve supported the ongoing Israeli genocide and still won elections.

Good thing the anti-genocide party w-

Oh, what’s that?

The message sent is actually “More genocide is a winning position to the electorate”?

Huh. Almost like this was a stupid idea from the start by privileged types who won’t suffer the consequences of their actions.

Right, I don’t deny that Harris was less evil on other issues, but I do not subscribe to the ideology of lesser-evilism.

Yeah, fuck the lives of American minorities, you have to make yourself feel good when you’re in the voting booth! 😊

Harris and Biden are unconditionally supportive of everything Israel does. Short of direct involvement of the US military, it’s not really possible for Trump to be meaningfully worse than that.

Remind me of this genocide-downplaying take in three months or so, please.

Mood. Lest the doom become too strong, though, let me just note that Rome also survived a lot of insane incompetents at the helm.