Yes, exactly. That’s why I’m concerned about the system in my home country. However, I find it incomprehensible how anyone who is a US citizen can still believe in the illusion that the US is a democracy. It has been an oligarchy for at least thirty years and, to be honest, always has been - that is to say, a nation that is actually ruled by a few instead of by its people. This was the case long before the first term of the current, unusually criminal president. He has changed little in terms of the facts, but is simply particularly unscrupulous, thus making it obvious that the US system has long since ceased to have anything to do with democracy.

I’m sorry to have to say it so bluntly, but your comments suggests that, like many Americans, you are not really aware of what a democracy is. If there were such awareness in the US, it would not be possible, for example, for there to be no statutory health insurance, no protective rights for workers, and so on.

Is that really what democracy is about, or is that just what billionaires have made of it?

I ask because you are applying a monetary standard instead of what the citizens want. This leads me to suspect that you are a US citizen, as this system no longer has much to do with democracy at all since the fewer than twenty people who make up the Supreme Court, the highest judicial authority in the US system, ruled that there is no upper limit on “campaign donations,” that they do not have to be disclosed, and that “political consultants,” such as Musk, do not need confirmation by the people to be entrusted with powers that in any other democracy worthy of the name would naturally require the consent of the citizens.

Oh, and one more thing: the Supreme Court has also ruled that the US president is de facto above the law – which is also incompatible with any democratic constitution.

I would say that it wasn’t us, the ordinary people, who created this terrible world, but we definitely allowed the worst among us to do so - and we even rewarded them for it, so that this monstrous world is now ruled by the most ruthless, like a monarchy that was believed to have been overcome. Apparently, civilizational progress is not bound to the passage of time, as I strongly suspect that we are regressing civilizational: back to absolutism with its degenerate rulers who give free rein to their perverse desires - and they can do so, because they are at the top of a society they exploit with impunity.

Why is non-news like this still so popular in the US when there are so many more important issues, such as the fact that the government is breaking its own laws by continuing to prevent the publication of the Epstein files, that it is executing people in public with no trial and no reason whatsoever, that it is continuously breaking existing laws, that it is betraying and extorting long standing allies, that it is shamelessly enriching itself in a way that is unprecedented even in the history of the US, which is certainly famous for this … the list goes on and on, but still, non-news about Erika Kirk gets upvotes??? Why??? Because the US users need someone to hate instead of themselves?

Even people here on lemmy don’t seem to realize how attention is being siphoned off - because they post stuff about a completely irrelevant person and thus do exactly what the US regime, which is promoting this person, wants them to do.

It really couldn’t be any more stupid.

Why don’t you just focus on the president and his organized crime operation? Why do you allow yourselves to get distracted by his bullshit? Why do you even help with this orange child molester out by doing his very bidding!

Just do the world a favor and participate in the nationwide strike planned for tomorrow.

Rule of law, huh?

It’s almost like something straight out of the Nazis’ playbook back in Germany: seizing power by abusing the law. Hitler first made use of the so‑called “Reichstag Fire Decree” to undermine fundamental rights and launch a campaign of terror - using violence, mass arrests and intimidation to eliminate political opponents; at least formally, these measures were covered by law.

Subsequently, these and all other heinous crimes committed by the Nazis were rapidly enshrined in legal form, backed by police force and intimidation - for example the “Enabling Act,” which stripped parliament of its powers and allowed the cabinet (in practice controlled by Hitler) to enact laws, even contrary to the constitution.

Overall, it was a takeover that used and even created the appearance of constitutionality, in which the Nazis interpreted and applied the law at their own discretion and enforced it with violence and intimidation. The rest is history.

When I look at the US news since January last year, it all seems very familiar - with a rather insignificant difference being that instead of the Reichstag fire, another staged “emergency,” namely illegal immigration, is being used as a pretext to undermine civil rights…

The thing is: it is no longer necessary to burn fossil fuels for transportation or energy production. The idea that this is still necessary is a narrative fueled by the money of a few unscrupulous people, which is what this random post is about. It is a lie that will lead us all to ruin.

We simply cannot continue the status quo. This conclusion is not just my opinion, but a proven fact that, to my knowledge, no reputable scientist would dispute.

Unfortunately, the Eppstein case proves that not even this is their downfall.

That’s a really good analogy. Thank you very much for that.

Oh, I enjoy studying history. And I find it terrible that apparently no one learns from history, because otherwise fascism would not be back in vogue.

Was it already the case before MAGA that it was completely normal for the highest law enforcement authorities in the US to blatantly lie and completely disregard the law, even breaking it themselves on a regular basis, even in high-profile cases?

As a European, I am now so used to the fact that absolutely nothing the White House communicates is even remotely true that it seems like the normal state of affairs in the US.

Is it just particularly extreme with this criminal mafia regime, or was it already common practice before?

Great, great, so once again there will be a nice investigation, after which absolutely nothing will be done. It would save a lot of time and money not to investigate at all, but hey, the whole point seems to be that you can hide under the cosy cloak of the rule of law before letting the worst of the worst get away with all their crimes.

In some Nazi concentration camps, the steps that forced laborers had to climb while heavily laden were deliberately made of different heights to make the ordeal even worse. This is the same disgusting and abysmal malice. Pure evil for which there can be no excuse.

I find the AI audio translation on YouTube, which Google now seems to be imposing as standard, to be the most absurd thing of 'em all: even the intros are so poorly translated that it couldn’t be more ridiculous.

I’m sure many users don’t realize that this is supposed to be a “feature” and mistakenly believe that the foreign-language video they deliberately clicked on is obviously AI-generated because the audio track is so horribly bad.

Well, another reason for PeerTube…

This development will certainly not end with books - countless other creative and intellectual achievements have long been affected. That is precisely the problem with generative models, whether they involve text, code, video, images, or whatever else. All of this boils down to the fact that the already precarious situation for everyone who creates value by themselves is continuing to deteriorate. Professional work in all these areas will undoubtedly become even more precarious in the future, with artists, designers, and writers, who were already in a difficult position, now being joined by industries such as software development and administrative work.

Please don’t get me wrong: I am anything but a technology pessimist, but the business model of the so-called AI companies is so exploitative and their owners so unscrupulous that, given the status quo (cloud models), I can hardly imagine that this will lead to even halfway fair working conditions or remuneration models for people who create value in the form of intellectual achievements. I mean, this post is a vivid example.

So we can assume that in the future, only slob written by LLMs will be available. I mean, who would be willing to spend hundreds of hours writing a book when even huge corporations that earn billions from it won’t pay the author a single dime?

The purpose of business school MBAs is nothing more than networking. These degrees cost a fortune, and that’s exactly the point: to bring opportunists together. I’m almost sure it’s next to impossible to fail this degree, because it’s not about knowledge at all, but merely about gaining entry into senior management.

Yes, I’m from Germany, and that’s the same attitude that our grandparents can rightly be accused of.

Fascism is only possible because of the inaction of the population, their reluctance to act even in the face of the worst atrocities.

The difference to my grandparents, however, is that the internet makes everything public right from the get-go, which was absolutely not the case in Nazi Germany.

Unfortunately, the result is still the same: apathy toward a terrorist regime that could be overthrown, for which there are numerous examples in completely different power situations.

Iran currently provides the most impressive example of how resistance is possible even in a truly repressive system, which the US is by no means. I mean, measured by what US citizens understand as repression - how much more courage does it take to rise up against a long-established autocratic regime? And then the US president also announces that he is on the side of the demonstrators in order to sweep his own, naturally much milder repressive measures in his own country under the carpet.

It’s just sad and entirely preventable that the US is succumbing to autocracy, but that is what will happen—and the inactive US citizens are to blame, even if they do not want to hear it.

The fact that the US is going downhill can be seen even in the attitude of US Lemmy users. Even those who are in no way comparable to the average US citizen still have a very strange sense of national pride that clouds their view of reality.

Yes, you could also put it this way: the reason is that the US has not been a constitutional state for decades and that US citizens have allowed this to happen. Now the system is turning even against those who stood by and watched. The most absurd thing about all this is that there is still no repression like in a dictatorship, which is what it will ultimately lead to, and yet there is no significant civil resistance, even though injustice is already clearly prevailing. On the contrary, people still believe that they live in a constitutional state and that the rule of law, which is so obviously non-existent, will sort things out.

It must have been a spontaneous case of diarrhea when he realized that he might even be held responsible for the murder he had just committed. Perhaps in his panic, he briefly imagined that the US was a constitutional state and that his employers, with their plan to establish a dictatorship, were not yet far enough along to protect him – or that he was just a dispensable accomplice to his masters.

Why was Trump’s former personal lawyer and a top Justice Department official meeting with a sex offender whom the US government had previously assailed for her “willingness to lie brazenly under oath about her conduct”?

This question answers itself.