I agree. Nevertheless, people here prefer arbitrary decisions based on rules that are so broad that they only encourage arbitrary decisions by the moderators. From this, I can only conclude that even the people here would rather be entertained than face the adversities of reality.

For me, that is unacceptable - so I’m moving on.

I’ve tried so many comms by now that I’ve lost interest. From now on, I’m just not going to post anything anymore. I’ve said this to myself many times before for the very same reason, but the downvotes on this post confirm it unequivocally. I obviously have no business being here.

Feel free to take a look at my profile to decide whether I really am such an unpleasant person that I shouldn’t be allowed to express my views in any community with some viewability.

This struggle is simply not worth it to me. I’ve also cancel my financial support - I’m sure you’ll manage well without me.

Here’s an example: I posted on /c/unpopularopinion that it can’t be right that even a well-known actor like James Van Der Beek is becoming impoverished because he can’t afford the cost of his cancer treatment. I posted there because I know from experience that this would not be allowed in other communities because it is supposedly a political post - even at unpopularopinion, the post was removed by the moderators.

Therefore, I believe that this arbitrary rule is completely absurd.

Go back to reddit please.

I’ve been here for more than two and a half years, trying to contribute something because I thought it was important. I’m starting to think more and more that it was a wasted effort. Thank you for pointing that out so clearly once again.

So get a decent block list…

You can already hide such posts without any problem by excluding the relevant terms. As this post here suggests, it should also not be too difficult technically to let users decide which content they want to hide using tags.

However, hiding posts in the most popular communities for everyone by moderators is nothing less than plain censorship - and you even like that, because you can’t be bothered with reality…

And so I’m supposed to leave it up to some random person to decide whether to allow me to speak?

How absurd is it that /c/unpopularopinion has “no politics” as its first community rule - as do most of the Lemmy communities with the widest reach? This achieves nothing but opening the floodgates to arbitrary censorship. And why is that? For the simple reason that people would rather be entertained…

Why, it’s the truth. The US is ruled by a third-rate TV personality who could only become president because his father was a billionaire. That’s a fact.

The man was a megastar in the 90s… With a hit TV series that ran for six seasons during the heyday of the medium. He also starred in various Hollywood films. I really don’t know what else there is to relativize.

Edit: But hey, maybe you still have to sugarcoat it somehow because the US president is a third-rate television personality, just like most of his cabinet. These people are actually forgettable, but because they have rich parents, they are the government, rape children under state protection, and get away with it completely unpunished because the US population lets it slide.

Don’t forget Clarence Thomas. He was also heavily involved at the time, in fact he played a decisive role, and he is just as obviously corrupt today as he was then. No consequences, no accountability whatsoever.

As I said, that’s true, of course, but the question is how long it will remain that way. I can hardly see any difference already, and I don’t see how things in the US are going to get better.

The only possibility, in my opinion, is for the people to rise up and overthrow this blatantly corrupt system. They still have the chance to do so at the moment, as the authoritarian regime with its secret police loyal to no one but the organge godfather (in the form of ICE with a budget that compares to the military spendings of a medium sized country) is still in the process of being fully established.

To be honest, however, I have little hope that the American people will do this - yes, there are massive protests, but there are no signs of a nationwide, organized general strike that could bring the regime to its knees. I don’t think these ruthless criminals will be impressed by anything else, because they hold all the cards.

Yes, that may be true for now, but the US regime is currently obviously working to change that - and fast.

I mean, masked fascist thugs are randomly kidnapping and even murdering people in broad daylight, and the highest law enforcement authorities are not only protecting pedophiles, but are also clearly enabling their decades of monstrous deeds in the first place. This has nothing to do with even a halfway functioning system, especially since the US government is trampling on the law as if it was beneath them - they just don’t care anymore because no one is stopping them. This is evident in the fact that even the most heinous crimes do not result in any consequences for those responsible - and this has been the case for quite some time in the US as well.

None of this is even remotely compatible with a democratic constitution.

I would say that mafia state and oligarchy are roughly synonymous.

The difference lies more in the perception of a given country: Russia is an oligarchy because all power is in the hands of a few. It is seen as a mafia state because Russia has a horrible reputation on the world stage, which is why those in power have a reputation for enriching themselves out of pure greed. Of course they do, but so do despots in other oligarchic countries - only here it is sometimes still considered legitimate state action, even if it, in fact, only benefits a powerful elite.

In contrast, a plutocracy is also an oligarchy, but a special case of it, since wealth is the main source of power for the elite who control the country.

However, now that the US elite is apparently replacing it’s sham democracy with autocratic tyranny, as in Russia, the US is also increasingly becoming an oligarchy in the sense of a dictatorship.

I think it is undisputed that both Russia and the US are led by serious criminals, by a mafia, which, however, has so far only been referred to as such in Russia.

But since the US regime apparently no longer has any scruples about openly committing the most depraved crimes and - like Putin’s crew - shamelessly enriching itself, the US’s international reputation will also rapidly deteriorate, as is already the case.

Today, you will hardly find many people in any country of the world who still believe anything the White House says, given the obvious lies coming out of there.

In short, both countries are mafia states, but the US is so powerful that the oligarchs here are much more dangerous because of their disproportionately greater influence on other countries.

Yes, Russia is an oligarchy, no question, but the country is nowhere near as powerful as the US with its excessively inflated military apparatus … hence the question: Should the US be called a super-oligarchy, now that the country’s elite, who are actually its most degenerate citizens, is obviously no longer satisfied with the plutocracy that has long been the norm there?

It’s truly open mob rule in the States … a superpower under the control of serious criminals. What do you call that, actually?

I mean, organized crime probably hasn’t existed in at least fifty years with such blatant, unpunished audacity and probably not with such an outrageous level of twisted depravity either. I’m not sure if the monsters of the world have ever been so powerful since the end of World War II.

So what would be a fitting term for today’s US?

Super-oligarchy? Orange Mega-MAGA-Mafia-Nation?

Yes, absolutely. The astronomical budget of this “agency” led to the conclusion, from the moment it was approved, that it would serve to establish a secret police force loyal exclusively to the regime. Why else would funds equivalent to the military budget of a medium-sized country be needed?

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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.