I don't see any moral or ethical issue with celebrating someone's death.
Objectively, if the guy was a bad person, then he was a bad person. Literally, the whole world celebrated when Hitler died, and nobody seems to have an issue with that. Now, all of a sudden, we're supposed to be better than that?
I think if you're the kind of person, or public figure in this case, whose death people celebrate, that's more of a reflection on that person than on the people doing the celebrating.
I'll start with Alvin Jackson, Emmanuel Jean Joseph, and Xavier Veal. That case did, in fact, involve racial discrimination by the airline, and it was ultimately settled out of court. Those three men were initially removed from the plane over alleged offensive body odor, but after the situation was reviewed by airline personnel, they were allowed back on board. They were not screaming, yelling, or causing a disturbance. So while that case is real, it has nothing to do with the situation you're describing. More importantly, the people who were removed complied with the crew's instructions. It doesn't lend much support to your argument.
The woman in this case, Whitney Lynn, was banned from flying on all airlines owned by that airline group, which I believe includes three or four carriers. She also wasn't forcibly removed because she complied with the order to leave the aircraft. She may have been loud and belligerent, but she did not physically resist.
As for the executive order, it was not legally considered a blanket ban on Muslims. You're applying that label based on your own interpretation rather than how it was ultimately treated in law.
You're falling into the trap of steering the conversation toward a conclusion you already want to reach, in this case, condemning the Trump administration and portraying the United States as uniquely terrible. That's not what we're discussing here. Racial profiling exists. Not just in the United States, but virtually everywhere. Racist incidents happen in every country. Some receive extensive media coverage; many do not.
I'm well aware of my country's shortcomings. However, the claim that people are generally afraid to walk the streets for their own safety is simply not an accurate description of everyday life in the United States. If believing that helps reinforce your view of America, that's your prerogative. But it doesn't make it true.
That "$300 billion" number is just completely made up. The math doesn't even remotely work.
The entire US grocery industry does somewhere around $1 trillion in revenue per year. For self-checkout to save $300 billion, that would mean roughly a third of every dollar spent on groceries was going directly to cashier wages. That is obviously not how grocery stores operate. Total labor costs for a store are only a fraction of their expenses.
And the idea that self-checkout was some massive money-saving miracle ignores the other side of the equation. Those systems cost a lot upfront, require maintenance, and they increase losses from theft, missed scans, and mistakes. A machine replacing a cashier doesn't magically eliminate costs; it just moves them somewhere else.
There is a reason companies like Walmart, Target, and Dollar General have started putting limits on self-checkout or bringing back more staffed lanes. If self-checkout was saving them hundreds of billions, they wouldn't be walking it back. They would be installing them everywhere they could.
This is the kind of post that hurts any community built around open discussion and critical thinking. A sensational claim gets repeated because it supports a certain viewpoint, while nobody stops to ask if it is actually true. The truth should matter regardless of whether it supports corporations, consumers, or anyone else. Being intellectually honest means checking the facts first, not just accepting information because it confirms what we already believe.
On a side note, totally support the bill in every way.
I'll concede my original point. I was wrong about her race, nationality, and accent. Looking back, that was my own unchecked prejudice. I made an assumption based on how she looked and spoke, and I shouldn't have. That's on me.
That said, I think you're doing something very similar when you confidently assert that she was treated differently because she was white and Christian. The video doesn't establish that. It's an inference about the motives of the airline staff, not evidence. You're presenting speculation as though it's a proven fact.
As for Executive Order 13769, that isn't really relevant here. It was an executive order signed by Donald Trump restricting entry into the United States from several Muslim-majority countries. It was enormously controversial, challenged in court, and widely criticized as discriminatory. But it was an immigration policy, not a policy directing airlines to remove Muslims from domestic flights. Pointing to an unpopular executive order from an administration that many people already viewed as racially insensitive doesn't demonstrate that race or religion were the deciding factors in this completely separate incident.
If your argument is simply that she should have been removed from the plane sooner because she was causing a disturbance, I can understand that position. But claiming she received preferential treatment because she was white and Christian requires evidence specific to this incident, not assumptions about the motivations of the people involved.
Edit: One more important point, because I think a lot of people get this confused:
The United States is not the Donald Trump administration. There are tens of millions of Americans who do not support what his administration is doing and actively oppose many of its policies, including me.
Please don't take the actions of one administration and attribute them to the American people as a whole. The United States is a nation of over 330 million people with a wide range of political beliefs, and no single administration speaks for every American.
This is absolutely completely untrue. Especially since the woman was latino with a Spanish accent.
You know what. People probably don't tell you this enough, but shut the fuck up.
Edit: I fully concede my point on my assumptions concerning her race and accent. That was my own prejudice working against me and I was unable to filter it in this comment. I apologize for my racial sensitivity.
However, I will not concede my point on how absolutely untrue comments statements are about Brown and Muslim people being treated differently in this particular scenario. And I will once again reiterate for that person to shut the fuck up.
On one hand, there's a minimum price at which a product can be sold while still generating enough profit for a company to remain viable, pay its employees, and continue operating.
On the other hand, there's the American business practice of maximizing every possible fraction of a cent in pursuit of higher quarterly profits. As we all know from game theory, pure min-maxing doesn't always produce the best long-term outcome. There has to be a balance. Nevertheless, many American companies are driven primarily by maximizing shareholder returns. In doing so, they can end up shooting themselves in the foot, making decisions that inflate short-term financial results while ultimately reducing their long-term profitability.
China, by contrast, has a quasi-socialist market economy under a single-party government. It has invested heavily in developing strategic industries, including electric vehicles. The government sets national priorities and can exert enormous influence over companies. If corporate leadership fails to meet those objectives, it can be replaced far more easily than in Western economies.
In the United States, corporations instead spend enormous sums lobbying politicians to pass laws favorable to their interests. But, as discussed above, relentlessly optimizing for short-term gains doesn't always produce the best long-term results.
That's one reason Chinese cars are so inexpensive. Or rather, they're arguably priced closer to what cars should cost. The real question may be why cars in the United States have become so expensive. Automakers cite rising costs, regulations, technology, and financing practices, but prices seem to ratchet upward far more readily than they ever come back down.
Thank the Lord in heaven! I'd buy a BYD right now if I could.
Let's take stock for a moment. A freaking Toyota Corolla is pushing $30,000. A Corolla.
A regular F-150 is $60,000+. The average new car sells for around $40,000, and the average monthly payment is close to $1,000.
And guess what? They're not selling. They're just too expensive. A Ford Raptor is over $100,000. Over $100,000. Dealerships are flooded with them, and they still aren't making meaningful deals.
From a purely economic perspective, we need competition from China to force this market back toward affordable vehicles, because there are no genuinely cheap, affordable new cars in this country anymore.
You keep dancing around this idea that there is some definition of communism contained in a manifesto.
I provided you with the official dictionary definition of communism, and you dismissed it as "the back of a cereal box."
You still have not engaged with anything I have actually said or provided any meaningful response to the points I raised. Instead, you continue to act as though the answer must exist somewhere in a document that you have not actually identified.
My question was mostly rhetorical because idiots generally do not know they are idiots. There is no way for someone to answer a question about their own inability to recognize their mistakes. And since you immediately assumed I was simply calling you a name, that reaction seems to confirm the very point I was making.
Okay, so I'll say this: if you don't indicate exactly which manifesto you're talking about in a way that's clear, I will not continue this conversation.
As for your second point, I've already addressed it. None of the manifestos actually define the term communism, not one of them, including what I can only assume you mean by "the big one," which I assume is The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.
Are you intentionally being facetious, or are you simply unwilling to specify which manifesto you're referring to?
Sir, you're not the only person who's read it. I've read it too. In fact, after looking up the other manifestos last night, I read portions of those as well.
Reading something and comprehending it are two very different things.
And yes, I am in fact implying exactly what you're thinking.
I'm not relying on academic jargon in my responses. I'm simply correcting statements that are objectively incorrect.
A very common trend on this platform is that people attribute everything good a government does to socialism and everything bad to capitalism. They use these terms colloquially, often repeating misconceptions they've picked up here or elsewhere, even when those claims are objectively wrong.
That's where I come in. I find myself correcting the same errors over and over again.
Then someone like you comes along and immediately starts throwing around terms like authoritarianism, dictatorship, capitalism, socialism, and communism, as though they settle the issue. But that has nothing to do with the point I'm making. I'm simply saying that universal healthcare is not inherently a feature of a socialist economy. Any government, regardless of its economic system, can establish a public healthcare program. Providing public services is one of the basic functions of government.
It seems like you're trying to have a very particular kind of conversation, one where both participants already agree about how terrible capitalism is or how much they dislike the United States, and the discussion becomes little more than mutual validation disguised as debate.
I'm doing something different. I'm telling you that you're wrong. Even when some of the individual facts you mention are true, you're using them sophistically to push a broader narrative. And when I say "you," I mean that in the royal sense, not necessarily you personally, although some of what you've written does fit that pattern.
I don't know if that's simply your comfort zone or what you're ultimately hope to achieve. The United States is objectively doing many things badly; that's not what we're debating. My goal isn't to defend capitalism. It's to inform people about what socialism actually is, rather than allowing the term to be used as a catch-all label for any government program or policy.
You're going to have to be more specific. Are you talking about The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels? There isn't just one "manifesto." There are numerous political manifestos written by communist parties and movements throughout history.
And even if you are referring to Marx's The Communist Manifesto, why would you expect it to explicitly define the word "communism"? Marx and Engels largely assumed their audience already understood the term. The pamphlet's purpose was to advocate for and describe the philosophy, goals, and program of the communist movement, not to serve as a dictionary.
There are countless other manifestos as well: manifestos from the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of Great Britain, the Communist Party of China, and many others. Beyond those, there are works like the Futurist Manifesto, the Fascist Manifesto, the SCUM Manifesto, and the Cluetrain Manifesto. Many of these discuss communism, socialism, or related political ideas.
So when you keep saying "the manifesto," which one are you actually talking about?
This is a very typical style of response I get whenever I make statements concerning socialism and communism. The conversation immediately veers into a condemnation of capitalism without actually addressing the point that was being made.
The issue is that people constantly conflate different economic and political concepts. Criticizing problems within modern capitalism does not somehow prove that socialism or communism are the solution, nor does it address the historical record of governments that have implemented those systems. Additionally, the United States today is not a pure free-market capitalist system; it is a mixed economy with significant government involvement, and many would argue that increasing corporate influence has created elements of a corporatocracy. Critiquing that reality is a separate discussion from whether socialism or communism has historically produced the outcomes its proponents claim.
The Soviet Union under Stalin resulted in forced collectivization, political purges, labor camps, and millions of deaths. Mao's China implemented policies like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which led to widespread famine, persecution, and the deaths of tens of millions. Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge attempted to create an agrarian communist society and carried out a genocide against its own population. North Korea developed into one of the most authoritarian states in modern history under a communist government. Venezuela's economic collapse occurred under a government that described itself as socialist, though the causes and degree of responsibility are debated. Cuba's communist government has maintained political repression and restricted political freedoms for decades.
None of this means capitalism is perfect or immune from corruption, inequality, or abuses of power. Every system requires competent institutions, accountability, and safeguards against the concentration of power. But pointing out flaws in capitalism does not erase the historical outcomes of socialist and communist governments.
The original point remains: healthcare and other public services are not inherently socialist. A government providing a service does not automatically change the underlying economic system. Socialism and capitalism primarily refer to ownership and control of economic resources, not simply whether a government funds or provides certain programs.
A capitalist democracy can have universal healthcare. A socialist state can be authoritarian. These are separate concepts, and confusing them prevents any meaningful discussion about economics or political systems.
I wonder what the prompt for this was: me with a serious expression, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington sitting at a table together.
I don't see any moral or ethical issue with celebrating someone's death.
Objectively, if the guy was a bad person, then he was a bad person. Literally, the whole world celebrated when Hitler died, and nobody seems to have an issue with that. Now, all of a sudden, we're supposed to be better than that?
I think if you're the kind of person, or public figure in this case, whose death people celebrate, that's more of a reflection on that person than on the people doing the celebrating.
I'm not arguing my own dissertation here. And I'm definitely not doing an MLA format on a Lemmy comment.
But feel free to actually verify the information on your own if you want to take up your time doing that.
For the record, I did actual research for the information stated above but you don't have to take my word for it.
You're not allowed to celebrate death in c/politics. Apparently.
But I will say this when he kicks the bucket. I won't lose a wink of sleep.
I'll start with Alvin Jackson, Emmanuel Jean Joseph, and Xavier Veal. That case did, in fact, involve racial discrimination by the airline, and it was ultimately settled out of court. Those three men were initially removed from the plane over alleged offensive body odor, but after the situation was reviewed by airline personnel, they were allowed back on board. They were not screaming, yelling, or causing a disturbance. So while that case is real, it has nothing to do with the situation you're describing. More importantly, the people who were removed complied with the crew's instructions. It doesn't lend much support to your argument.
The woman in this case, Whitney Lynn, was banned from flying on all airlines owned by that airline group, which I believe includes three or four carriers. She also wasn't forcibly removed because she complied with the order to leave the aircraft. She may have been loud and belligerent, but she did not physically resist.
As for the executive order, it was not legally considered a blanket ban on Muslims. You're applying that label based on your own interpretation rather than how it was ultimately treated in law.
You're falling into the trap of steering the conversation toward a conclusion you already want to reach, in this case, condemning the Trump administration and portraying the United States as uniquely terrible. That's not what we're discussing here. Racial profiling exists. Not just in the United States, but virtually everywhere. Racist incidents happen in every country. Some receive extensive media coverage; many do not.
I'm well aware of my country's shortcomings. However, the claim that people are generally afraid to walk the streets for their own safety is simply not an accurate description of everyday life in the United States. If believing that helps reinforce your view of America, that's your prerogative. But it doesn't make it true.
That "$300 billion" number is just completely made up. The math doesn't even remotely work.
The entire US grocery industry does somewhere around $1 trillion in revenue per year. For self-checkout to save $300 billion, that would mean roughly a third of every dollar spent on groceries was going directly to cashier wages. That is obviously not how grocery stores operate. Total labor costs for a store are only a fraction of their expenses.
And the idea that self-checkout was some massive money-saving miracle ignores the other side of the equation. Those systems cost a lot upfront, require maintenance, and they increase losses from theft, missed scans, and mistakes. A machine replacing a cashier doesn't magically eliminate costs; it just moves them somewhere else.
There is a reason companies like Walmart, Target, and Dollar General have started putting limits on self-checkout or bringing back more staffed lanes. If self-checkout was saving them hundreds of billions, they wouldn't be walking it back. They would be installing them everywhere they could.
This is the kind of post that hurts any community built around open discussion and critical thinking. A sensational claim gets repeated because it supports a certain viewpoint, while nobody stops to ask if it is actually true. The truth should matter regardless of whether it supports corporations, consumers, or anyone else. Being intellectually honest means checking the facts first, not just accepting information because it confirms what we already believe.
On a side note, totally support the bill in every way.
I'll concede my original point. I was wrong about her race, nationality, and accent. Looking back, that was my own unchecked prejudice. I made an assumption based on how she looked and spoke, and I shouldn't have. That's on me.
That said, I think you're doing something very similar when you confidently assert that she was treated differently because she was white and Christian. The video doesn't establish that. It's an inference about the motives of the airline staff, not evidence. You're presenting speculation as though it's a proven fact.
As for Executive Order 13769, that isn't really relevant here. It was an executive order signed by Donald Trump restricting entry into the United States from several Muslim-majority countries. It was enormously controversial, challenged in court, and widely criticized as discriminatory. But it was an immigration policy, not a policy directing airlines to remove Muslims from domestic flights. Pointing to an unpopular executive order from an administration that many people already viewed as racially insensitive doesn't demonstrate that race or religion were the deciding factors in this completely separate incident.
If your argument is simply that she should have been removed from the plane sooner because she was causing a disturbance, I can understand that position. But claiming she received preferential treatment because she was white and Christian requires evidence specific to this incident, not assumptions about the motivations of the people involved.
Edit: One more important point, because I think a lot of people get this confused:
The United States is not the Donald Trump administration. There are tens of millions of Americans who do not support what his administration is doing and actively oppose many of its policies, including me.
Please don't take the actions of one administration and attribute them to the American people as a whole. The United States is a nation of over 330 million people with a wide range of political beliefs, and no single administration speaks for every American.
Let her finish then I'd stand up and start preaching the other side from Satan's point of view.
This is absolutely completely untrue. Especially since the woman was latino with a Spanish accent.
You know what. People probably don't tell you this enough, but shut the fuck up.
Edit: I fully concede my point on my assumptions concerning her race and accent. That was my own prejudice working against me and I was unable to filter it in this comment. I apologize for my racial sensitivity.
However, I will not concede my point on how absolutely untrue comments statements are about Brown and Muslim people being treated differently in this particular scenario. And I will once again reiterate for that person to shut the fuck up.
That's a very difficult question to answer.
On one hand, there's a minimum price at which a product can be sold while still generating enough profit for a company to remain viable, pay its employees, and continue operating.
On the other hand, there's the American business practice of maximizing every possible fraction of a cent in pursuit of higher quarterly profits. As we all know from game theory, pure min-maxing doesn't always produce the best long-term outcome. There has to be a balance. Nevertheless, many American companies are driven primarily by maximizing shareholder returns. In doing so, they can end up shooting themselves in the foot, making decisions that inflate short-term financial results while ultimately reducing their long-term profitability.
China, by contrast, has a quasi-socialist market economy under a single-party government. It has invested heavily in developing strategic industries, including electric vehicles. The government sets national priorities and can exert enormous influence over companies. If corporate leadership fails to meet those objectives, it can be replaced far more easily than in Western economies.
In the United States, corporations instead spend enormous sums lobbying politicians to pass laws favorable to their interests. But, as discussed above, relentlessly optimizing for short-term gains doesn't always produce the best long-term results.
That's one reason Chinese cars are so inexpensive. Or rather, they're arguably priced closer to what cars should cost. The real question may be why cars in the United States have become so expensive. Automakers cite rising costs, regulations, technology, and financing practices, but prices seem to ratchet upward far more readily than they ever come back down.
Thank the Lord in heaven! I'd buy a BYD right now if I could.
Let's take stock for a moment. A freaking Toyota Corolla is pushing $30,000. A Corolla.
A regular F-150 is $60,000+. The average new car sells for around $40,000, and the average monthly payment is close to $1,000.
And guess what? They're not selling. They're just too expensive. A Ford Raptor is over $100,000. Over $100,000. Dealerships are flooded with them, and they still aren't making meaningful deals.
From a purely economic perspective, we need competition from China to force this market back toward affordable vehicles, because there are no genuinely cheap, affordable new cars in this country anymore.
Back in '22 I bought 64gb of ram because I wanted to have all my slots populated. For aesthetic purposes.
You keep dancing around this idea that there is some definition of communism contained in a manifesto.
I provided you with the official dictionary definition of communism, and you dismissed it as "the back of a cereal box."
You still have not engaged with anything I have actually said or provided any meaningful response to the points I raised. Instead, you continue to act as though the answer must exist somewhere in a document that you have not actually identified.
My question was mostly rhetorical because idiots generally do not know they are idiots. There is no way for someone to answer a question about their own inability to recognize their mistakes. And since you immediately assumed I was simply calling you a name, that reaction seems to confirm the very point I was making.
It was the Marian Webster dictionary. I provided you a link to it.
Let me ask you a question. Are you some kind of idiot?
Okay, so I'll say this: if you don't indicate exactly which manifesto you're talking about in a way that's clear, I will not continue this conversation.
As for your second point, I've already addressed it. None of the manifestos actually define the term communism, not one of them, including what I can only assume you mean by "the big one," which I assume is The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.
Are you intentionally being facetious, or are you simply unwilling to specify which manifesto you're referring to?
Sir, you're not the only person who's read it. I've read it too. In fact, after looking up the other manifestos last night, I read portions of those as well.
Reading something and comprehending it are two very different things.
And yes, I am in fact implying exactly what you're thinking.
I'm not relying on academic jargon in my responses. I'm simply correcting statements that are objectively incorrect.
A very common trend on this platform is that people attribute everything good a government does to socialism and everything bad to capitalism. They use these terms colloquially, often repeating misconceptions they've picked up here or elsewhere, even when those claims are objectively wrong.
That's where I come in. I find myself correcting the same errors over and over again.
Then someone like you comes along and immediately starts throwing around terms like authoritarianism, dictatorship, capitalism, socialism, and communism, as though they settle the issue. But that has nothing to do with the point I'm making. I'm simply saying that universal healthcare is not inherently a feature of a socialist economy. Any government, regardless of its economic system, can establish a public healthcare program. Providing public services is one of the basic functions of government.
It seems like you're trying to have a very particular kind of conversation, one where both participants already agree about how terrible capitalism is or how much they dislike the United States, and the discussion becomes little more than mutual validation disguised as debate.
I'm doing something different. I'm telling you that you're wrong. Even when some of the individual facts you mention are true, you're using them sophistically to push a broader narrative. And when I say "you," I mean that in the royal sense, not necessarily you personally, although some of what you've written does fit that pattern.
I don't know if that's simply your comfort zone or what you're ultimately hope to achieve. The United States is objectively doing many things badly; that's not what we're debating. My goal isn't to defend capitalism. It's to inform people about what socialism actually is, rather than allowing the term to be used as a catch-all label for any government program or policy.
You're going to have to be more specific. Are you talking about The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels? There isn't just one "manifesto." There are numerous political manifestos written by communist parties and movements throughout history.
And even if you are referring to Marx's The Communist Manifesto, why would you expect it to explicitly define the word "communism"? Marx and Engels largely assumed their audience already understood the term. The pamphlet's purpose was to advocate for and describe the philosophy, goals, and program of the communist movement, not to serve as a dictionary.
There are countless other manifestos as well: manifestos from the Communist Party of India, the Communist Party of Great Britain, the Communist Party of China, and many others. Beyond those, there are works like the Futurist Manifesto, the Fascist Manifesto, the SCUM Manifesto, and the Cluetrain Manifesto. Many of these discuss communism, socialism, or related political ideas.
So when you keep saying "the manifesto," which one are you actually talking about?
Dude. You knew what my comment was, you knew it was an aphorism and you still decided to leave that pointless pedantic obvious comment.
The aktually guy is exactly what you sounded like. So from one asshole to another, once again:
This is a very typical style of response I get whenever I make statements concerning socialism and communism. The conversation immediately veers into a condemnation of capitalism without actually addressing the point that was being made.
The issue is that people constantly conflate different economic and political concepts. Criticizing problems within modern capitalism does not somehow prove that socialism or communism are the solution, nor does it address the historical record of governments that have implemented those systems. Additionally, the United States today is not a pure free-market capitalist system; it is a mixed economy with significant government involvement, and many would argue that increasing corporate influence has created elements of a corporatocracy. Critiquing that reality is a separate discussion from whether socialism or communism has historically produced the outcomes its proponents claim.
The Soviet Union under Stalin resulted in forced collectivization, political purges, labor camps, and millions of deaths. Mao's China implemented policies like the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, which led to widespread famine, persecution, and the deaths of tens of millions. Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge attempted to create an agrarian communist society and carried out a genocide against its own population. North Korea developed into one of the most authoritarian states in modern history under a communist government. Venezuela's economic collapse occurred under a government that described itself as socialist, though the causes and degree of responsibility are debated. Cuba's communist government has maintained political repression and restricted political freedoms for decades.
None of this means capitalism is perfect or immune from corruption, inequality, or abuses of power. Every system requires competent institutions, accountability, and safeguards against the concentration of power. But pointing out flaws in capitalism does not erase the historical outcomes of socialist and communist governments.
The original point remains: healthcare and other public services are not inherently socialist. A government providing a service does not automatically change the underlying economic system. Socialism and capitalism primarily refer to ownership and control of economic resources, not simply whether a government funds or provides certain programs.
A capitalist democracy can have universal healthcare. A socialist state can be authoritarian. These are separate concepts, and confusing them prevents any meaningful discussion about economics or political systems.