As a lawyer who has had meetings about our clients case hitting the news—they’re probably thinking about getting a narrative out there before the DA or some other agency does. There might not be an option to negotiate not talking to the media. This isn’t normal everywhere though.

As they say: If the facts aren’t on your side, pound the law. If the law isn’t on your side, pound the table.

I think the lawyer is pounding the table. It’s ok to hate lawyers for this. We will still defend you if you get in trouble even if you deservedly hate us haha

It follows the same line of thought when you apply it economically: all people are selfish so we can’t do X.

You know that experiment where a teacher ran a thought demonstration with their class in the 50’s? Each student is supposed to run a fake company and sell fake widgets on their fake class market. In the 1950’s the students quickly realized it was a competition to race to the bottom to sell as many widgets as possible for the least amount of cost.

It’s supposed to teach supply and demand of capitalism but also teach that humans will undercut each other in competition.

A teacher ran this in a post-bachelor accounting class I was in—and my teacher got really angry because none of us were doing the behavior he was expecting.

Instead of undercutting each other, we started to work together in a group to get the work done while keeping our independence as “separate businesses.” We each built different model companies to compete but didn’t do so in a way that harmed each other.

Instead of the teacher realizing that maybe our class didn’t naturally have a selfish competitive mindset—that maybe this was also a perfectly valid reaction to the experiment—we just got told we were “doing economics wrong.”

I don’t think it’s surprising that anecdotally we find many people who insist on brimstone religion to keep people in check also believe “people won’t work” and “people are selfish and bad” when it comes to shaping economic and welfare policy. Bowling balls full of horseshit.

Ain’t that the sorry truth? On one hand, I hope you’re right and that we have an after soon where we can enjoy forgetting haha

But — I remember protesting the Iraq war and I told my parent that this war didn’t make sense at all and I couldn’t stand for it. My parent was appalled. They literally cried and said that they were sorry to have a traitor for a child. Haha they hate the Iraq war now! Amazing!

Remember when Michael Moore got booed at his acceptance speech for some Hollywood award because he had the audacity to be like—yo this Iraq war shit is wrong and does not look like it’s based on anything? And even Hollywood BOOED him. Yanked him off stage!

Remember the little American car flags. On everyone’s stupid car windows?

You had to vocally support the troops if you were in public too. People who had become devoted to the Bush admin forced this in every conversation with strangers angling for a fight.

And we found out the Weapons of Mass Destruction were not real. They weren’t real. The have New York Times journalists that testified to admitted falsifying articles for the Bush Admin.

Looking back the atmosphere Then was a primer for Now.

The whole world stood with America and it was for a lie. When I was in Italy after 9/11, an entire restaurant stopped service because we were American and the restaurant expressed that they were with us and they felt deep grief for our country. Europe cried with us. Only to be betrayed 25 years later.

How do people who lived through these times forget these aggravating and tender moments? They don’t seem to remember and connect the dots.

I can only assume those who don’t make choices on principles stand for nothing. They base all their current attitudes on social hierarchy and nothing else. Mein Herz ist krank.

Dude something very weird is going on on Reddit. I’ve been through it with them for 12 years and this is like nothing I’ve ever seen.

I finally deleted the terrible Reddit app when my feed was blasted with repeated comments that “Reddit is far left and the left are domestic terrorists.” Sorry what?

These very weird not based in reality comments are posted almost verbatim in every thread. These people usually never respond to conversation.

It’s very very weird

I think your prediction is probably spot on. Reddit already feels like incel 9gag with a bunch of Russians pretending to be American college students.

Edit: oh if that’s your optimistic take then oh wow haha I am staying here on Lemmy I’ll start posting too

I have no idea what you’re about but just based on this alone I’d let you share my tire barricade

I never understood WorldNews. I said back in November pretty plainly that Trump won and so I fear that America would eventually leave or attack NATO. I said I was afraid that Trump would side with Russia outright. That we would abandon our allies in the Pacific, too. That our inaction would create a gap for China to fill. That the gap might be big enough to embolden China who then might make moves on Taiwan.

And I was downvoted (which is fine) but the comments I got were kind of bewildering. The people who engaged with me were trying to convince me that Trump would never side with Russia and there is no evidence ever of this.

And of course here we are now. And all of these things are happening.

The whole Gaza thing you mention—I understand the outrage—but I wonder how much of it online was manufactured in places like Pics because of the election.

Seeing the conversations here on Lemmy makes me think…there’s something very weird going on on Reddit. I’ve rode out Reddit drama over the past 12 years. This is not the narwhal at midnight website. This is something very dark.

THE HEIGHT OF FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY CUTTING PROGRAMS THAT BANK A NET GAIN OVER TIME

It kind of feels like tacking on the defund the police thing is so that headlines like this can be run. And Republicans then can be like “ohhh democrats DONT want to defund the police? Would you look at that! 😏”

When really, any resistance will be over the cuts to social entitlements and welfare as you helpfully pointed out.

I feel like I’m trapped in the SAW House and a bunch of people with me keep insisting it’s a normal house and we are waiting for the dinner party to start. And I keep screaming, The invitation said DONNER PARTY

Either way— thanks for writing that out for everyone it’s kind of you to take the time :)

Awesome. This is really helpful and it gives me a good jumping off point. Thanks for all your help and for taking the time to give your knowledge to others

Sorry but you seem knowledgeable. Is crown royal safe? If you don’t know don’t worry I’ll do research later. Thanks in advance

Exactly. When it’s a loss of profit to the top it’s “boo hoo think of the workers.” And when it’s profit in surplus it’s “money for the top no money for the workers sry :)”

Thankfully many Americans are starting to see the pattern. The programming is insane and it’s a lot for most to break free from.

Like, you’re exactly right. If you’re worried about labor rights lobby to government for labor rights. Oh what’s that you don’t want that? You just want to guilt Canadians for protecting themselves?

It’s abuse tactics on an international scale. Fuck these assholes. Leck mich im Arsch.

I think you’re right. The statement from the Kentucky Distillers Association is absolutely meant to make you feel bad. It’s apologist slop that shifts the blame to potential foreign consumers.

It should be known that Kentucky’s largest city is deep blue and voraciously in favor of civil liberties and representative democracy. The Louisville subreddit had a thread on this and most people talking called the Association out for this terrible letter.

The general consensus in blue Kentucky is that: Feeling bad just enables the assholes like the Distillers Association. It’s unfortunate that those who tried to stop all this from happening will be hurt by the few who made it happen.

But as someone who will be personally be hurt and impacted by the loss of bourbon sales—give us hell. Don’t buy Bourbon. Don’t buy American. Thank you for not enable this bullshit.

“The officer then proceeded to say ‘We are with the police, you have to come with us.’ The officer told Mahmoud to give me the apartment keys and that I could go upstairs. When I refused, afraid to leave my husband, the officer stated ‘I will arrest you, too.’ The officers later barricaded Mahmoud from me.”

Mahmoud’s wife said they were not shown any warrant “and the Ice officers hung up the phone on our lawyer”. She said they cooperated fully and her husband remained calm, even though it was terrifying and traumatizing.

“Within minutes, they had handcuffed Mahmoud, took him out into the street and forced him into an unmarked car,” she said.

This should chill the spine of anyone reading. A president ordering the black bagging of anyone based on a social media post or association with university clubs is unconstitutional and unconscionable.

Worse—he’s set to appear in New York but they purposefully flew him to New Jersey and then a detention center in Louisiana. So that any lawyer retained would struggle to find or meet him.

Here we go. Wish us luck. We are going to need it.

It’s a self made recession by the corporations themselves. A thousand employees don’t matter to their bottom line.

If preparing for a recession is to blame here, then why at the same time are the Starbucks board giving the CEO $96 million buckadoos?

Again: we do not have to allow this. We do not have to allow “shit-work” companies to compete in our markets, where they drive reasonable, responsible employers out of business.

Well put and logical. Taking this thanks.

I trust you know this person well and that your experience is accurate.

However, you might find it useful to look up coping mechanisms in dealing with someone with OCPD. OCPD is extremely common and people with this personality disorder usually are extremely miserly and controlling. I’m not saying your person has this disorder. But from your story, the issues with money align closely enough that the tools people use in dealing with OCPD miserliness might help you. Or at the very least it might help you feel less alone in that experience.

I’m really sorry you are having to manage that and deal with this person. You sound like a very reasonable and empathetic person yourself. Please do something small and kind for yourself tomorrow. ❤️

How the fuck isn’t this stuff against business laws. How does this not break the fiduciary duty by self-dealing?

If what you’re saying is accurate then he’s a pro at creating parallel evidence.

Who am I kidding? Anyone who could bring a suit against the CEO probably doesn’t care.

wasteful hubristic meatballs

I never thought I’d miss Dick this much 🥹

Well, to be fair, it is still a conspiracy. It becomes a known criminal conspiracy. Criminal Conspiracy is still a crime. :)

but you’re right, it’s no longer a conspiracy theory.

(Unfortunately for all Americans, social murder by policy isn’t usually a crimey crime. They might be more careful about killing us if they paid the cost personally)

Shit — This week — I have a relative that had to wait 3 days in the ER to be transferred to a bigger hospital. The big hospital didn’t have a bed.

The hospital system in America has been overwhelmed for over a month and a half straight now.

Anymore stress beyond the current quademic (and whatever the unknown illness is — have we figured that out yet?) and we will have to bring back keeping people outside and firing up the refrigerator trucks again.

these damn jackals

You nailed it. I agree completely. This is getting a bit off topic now but it’s worth talking about. Sorry for the novel. It’s how I am.

I don’t know if you remember. In 2021 Spring in America was a time when Americans had a renewed sense of hope (and for the first time in a long time, labor rights). That’s when that sub antiwork took off and it was before they paraded a Reddit mod stooge on Fox to mock the concept of labor rights.

Those short few months— the air changed. People were starting to realize we have collective power. That we were underpaid. People started quitting in droves. They changed jobs. There were many spots opened we had many die or become disabled, after all.

I drove across America twice during that period and people were quitting their shitty jobs in droves—Arizona, Kansas, Ohio—all the same. Sometimes during the shift they’d up and leave. Incredible, I remember thinking.

But. Then—big tech companies started to lay their workers off. Starting with Facebook most loudly. Zuckerberg release a statement that they “over hired” during the pandemic. Many tech companies followed suit laying-off in the same or similar amount. Using the same reasoning. Amazing—they all over hired.

I raise one eyebrow. The atmosphere in the air was still up but it began to mix with a foulness. I wondered then—is tech working together strategically? Maybe.

The tech layoffs were so many that NSA then hired a new public facing woman who started a public campaign to hire the laid off tech workers from the tech companies. The NSA even said smoking wasn’t an issue.

2022-2024. Profits soar. Layoffs continue. Prices increase. Trillion in unsecured PPP loans rock the Real Estate market. Interest rates rise—too little too late. Americans collectively fall back into deep dispair. A constant pressure on all of our chests. We are sensitive—we all feel it.

In 2025–Tech CEOs all congregate in Washington now and rifle through America’s treasury and fire Government Agents.

I raise both eyebrows. They do this for many reasons—but do we see the connection here? Economically they delete the federal safety net as the largest American job provider. Corralling workers and kettling us economically. This is Siege warfare.

Over the preceding few years leading up to the American Presidential election, American news outlets pounded that the economy was “bad.” Prices of goods were out of control because of…the supply chain? But when looking at the numbers, the price of goods were being raised much higher than was needed to cover their losses. It is no longer price gouging but an economic siege, who is there to stop them?

The Biden Administration was better than other Administrations at pursuing Anti-trust cases. In my opinion, it was another too little too late, but still appreciated.

The signal, or so I hoped, was that if Harris got in that the DoJ would continue to pursue anti-trust, criminal conspiracy, and price market manipulation cases that Biden Admin scored on. If anyone isn’t familiar— Biden admin was dunking guilty verdicts on Big Pharma companies to the tune of billions for criminal conspiracy to rig prices with competitors and other unsavory economic criminality.

I’m a criminal defense lawyer in practice but I wanted to switch to prosecuting Anti-Trust.

Now, I don’t know. The air is curdled.

TLDR/My Point:

I believe that the Corporate heads colluded together in mid-2021 to crush the short lived optimism we all felt in America. They manipulated the labor market and worked together to manipulate the consumer market. This effect is felt collectively all over the world but very much so domestically in America.

What we are in now—the globe and domestically as Americans—is an Economic Siege. You feel it. I feel it.

Corporations have become so large they rival the power of Nation States. They move like ghosts through the sphere of International Relations. I call them, Geldgheist or “Money-Ghost.”

We are no longer in a uni-polar world where America is top. But we are also not in a normal multi-polar world where only Nation States hold power.

We are in a new era where these Geldgheist bastards, whom have no nationality or loyalty except to their own individual power, seek to topple all Western Democracy and corrupt our lands. We cannot wage traditional land war on them. They have no land to physically attack. No soldiers to fell.

So, the only option we (the West and our Pacific Allies) have is economic war. Citizens Boycott. Governments freeze assets, break up and dismantle the Techbro Geldgheist Corporations.

Straight from the mouth of Geldgheist Musk himself, “[…] If that [American] pillar falls, the whole roof comes crashing down. There’s no place to hide. There’s no place to run.“

We face this together now or we lose Western and Pacific democracy — there is no other option.