• PointyFluff@lemmy.ml
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    5 days ago

    Na. I’m good. Fuck them nazis. It’s ALWAYS been obvious what maga was about.

      • betterdeadthanreddit@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Exactly, look at how well things went after our first civil war when we reintegrated the confederate traitors. Didn’t shoot ourselves in the foot for the next couple hundred years at all with that one.

        Okay, bad example. There’s probably a good one somewhere though.

        • ORbituary@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 days ago

          What do you propose? Turn them away? Alienate them? Refuse to help? We can come up with a million reasons why we shouldn’t be open. But if someone is truly contrite, shouldn’t they have a chance?

          • turdburglar@piefed.social
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            4 days ago

            sure. a chance to make a new life for themselves in another country. what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

        • Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org
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          5 days ago

          And your suggestion is instead… what? Exactly what the worst of them want to do to others? And you’ll tar the people who aren’t 100% evil bastards with the same brush?

          No. Forgiveness, support, and education are the only way forward. It’s not about what we did when we ‘reintegrated’. It’s about the fact that when we did, we still denied them federal funds, no one set out to build industries or safe jobs for the average people, and no one made any effort toward education in the south. And, might I add, no one actually gave a damn about the racial tensions, except in those rare cases where they were affected. Instead of trusting that churches will handle it, acknowledge that they’ll turn into cults - look at how many literal cult groups there are in the southern USA when they were the only community support or education. Instead of saying “eh, you’ll figure it out”, realize that no, the average people will not. They’ll continue to be screwed over like they’ve always been.

          Educate. Integrate. Yes, demand better of them, but give them the tools to become better.

          The American Empire is in a weak state right now because of who’s in charge. We have only two ways of getting it back - an incredibly massive investment into global soft power, or a disturbing investment into forcing our hard power. Since that’s the problem we face, we’re even more in need of each other. We need to integrate for real, to acknowledge, defuse, and support. Because I’ll tell you something. I live in NJ. I love cities, and I get unnerved outside of a city on the scale of NY/NJ. My needs and my lifestyle are totally different from those of a person in a rural community. But we need leaders who want to support both - and not people who want to hurt either fellow Americans or foreign people.

          • ecvanalog@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            If you openly and gleefully supported a bigot for a decade, the rest of civilized society has NO obligation to forgive you.

        • Windex007@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          I think one of the most telling things about the quality of a man is what they dream of when there is a boot on thier neck. Some dream of abolishing boots, others dream of being the righteous applicator of the boot.

        • humanamerican@lemmy.zip
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          5 days ago

          The issue wasn’t that the North made amends with the repentant people of the South. The issue was that the North welcomed the unrepentant back into the fold without any real consequences, and even let them hold positions of power.

          People who genuinely leave behind their horrible worldview deserve a chance at redemption.

    • stemy@lemmy.mlOP
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      5 days ago

      There are some reasons why you can have an incomplete picture of maga.

      -If you live in an information bubble where the only thing you see are from bootlickers.

      -If you have been raised by a politically charged family, if not in a -literal or not- cult.

      -If the cognitive dissonance makes you ignore some things unconsciously.

      And among the testimonies on the site, there are people who were supportive to MAGA while being aware of what they are, then did an heel-face turn.

      It’s pretty courageous to change our mind about politics and admit we were wrong or blindfolded. Instead of being stubbornly mad at them, we should support them.

      • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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        5 days ago

        So uh… check the store out. Starts to look a whole fucking lot like grift when you do. And considering that, I would absolutely not be shocked if they just threw a bunch of ChatGPT output in as “testimonials”.

        • HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth
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          5 days ago

          I saw one testimonial of a J6er from my home state and something in his biography threw me off. I wasn’t sure what it was until you mentioned AI.

          https://leavingmaga.org/they-left-maga/jason-riddle/

          and then enrolled at the University of Southern Connecticut.

          Nobody here calls it University of Southern Connecticut. Nobody.

          I became a big MAGA follower, along with a veteran I befriended at USC.

          And ESPECIALLY nobody abbreviates his alma mater as USC. Not a single fucking soul, no matter how much of a drunkard they are.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Connecticut_State_University

          So clearly what they did was take the guy’s actual Wikipedia article and fed it into ChatGpt with the prompt: “have this guy write an apology letter.”

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Riddle

          • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works
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            4 days ago

            Yeah. As a UCLA alumni, USC is University of Southern California. That’s it. That’s who the acronym is for. I feel like anyone trying to appropriate that would simply be laughed out of the room.

            So, yeah, my vibe on this is “scam”

          • trashcan@sh.itjust.works
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            4 days ago

            That’s disappointing. At least on bright side maybe this means there’s enough people leaving MAGA that they think it’s a viable market to grift? But then to what end?

            • HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth
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              4 days ago

              Money is in fact an end.

              And there’s really two kinds of people to fleece with this one scheme: 1) people who want to leave MAGA but like most MAGA are addicted to buying worthless trash, and 2) people who are desperately trying to get their family out of MAGA so they send them this link to convince them. The human desire for catharsis is strong and therefore exploitable.