Maybe I missed it but it seems the average Joe voted for people that are responsible for what’s going on right now instead of trying to change direction drastically right?

The difference is that we can’t do so for political information in a democracy

I think I see where I failed to communicate. The laws that germany enacted are not about information. They are for (or rather against) instigating hate and violence against groups of people. Which I wouldn’t classify as ‘political information’. I do get that that is a slippery slope and that this tool needs to be used with a lot of caution and oversight. But I think it is a necessary tool especially because of this:

It is, however, reasonable for the majority to enact advertising protections that would benefit the dumb/manipulable minority.

A manipulable minority that acts on these calls to violence is enough to deeply damage a democracy.

Once again, the question is, “Are the majority of people too dumb or easily manipulated to be trusted with the system?” If so, then we should do away with the system altogether and have a government of philosopher-kings decide how resources should be distributed.

An important thing to remember is that a large enough minority can really disturb a democratic system. We are seeing this right now in germanies eastern states where the AfD has won about 30% of the votes making any coalition between the other parties very unfavourable. No-one currently knows what the coalition talks will resolve to. The majority did vote for democratic parties but that isn’t enough, it has to be an overhelming majority that votes for democratic parties.

Also: I’d argue that representative democracies are a lot more susceptible to this kind of flaw where parties have to resort to manipulation to get the votes of people. Other forms of democracy do not have that flaw as extensively. We do not necessarily have to get rid of democracy to fix or at least improve that flaw.

I have a question for you. Do you think advertising works not just as an informative medium but as a manipulative medium as well? Do people have free will while shopping or are they completely following whatever ad is in front of their faces? Or is it maybe a middle ground between the two extremes that’s actually the truth?

This isn’t about ideas it is about calling for violence towards people. This isn’t how you get Nazis this is the “you already have Nazis and need to do something about it”

Also, funnily enough, the proletariat or what’s left of it, are the ones currently flocking to the right-wing extremist party here in Germany.

That’s an opinion one can have, but it’s different from calling everyone that might want a more restrictive policy a nationalist fascist

I think I can say that I am living in germany, currently a country not under the government of national fascists, that has a law against so called “Volksverhetzung” which has been introduced quite literally to prevent some speech of the nationalist fascists, to prevent them from spreading their hateful ideology. Maybe you wanna think about that for awhile.

At some point speech becomes hate speech that actually hurts people. In Germany there are laws against that, I’m sure the US has too.

There’s a difference between wanting to feel pleasure at the result of killing someone and wanting to feel pleasure over the result of killing them?

I’m not sure what the difference between those two options is. But those aren’t the two options I was talking about. There are people that enjoy the process of killing things. There are people that like to eat dead animals but do not enjoy the process of killing the animal. Those are two different things in my mind.

There is a difference between wanting food you think is delicious and killing something for that reason and taking pleasure in the process of killing something. In one scenario the killing is a necessary evil in the other it’s the whole point of the process.

Aside from that the fact that so many people do pay “hitmen” should tell you that they do not enjoy the killing part, because otherwise they’d do it themselves.

Uhm, what 96% of the population actually kills stuff themselves?

The long term strategy is to destabilise the CDU by forcing them into unfavorable coalitions. Which they have probably achieved this time. If the CDU looks bad enough in 5 years the AfD might get enough votes so that no government can be built without them

Sometimes though a judge has decided that it is factually correct to call the leader of a party a fascist because he is one

I think the point is that there should be as little remembrance of the change itself. To anyone, even the government, that doesn’t need to know it should look like you had that gender all along

Haja wenn’s so isch will I di ned uffhalde

I mean that’s completely wrong as far as laws go. Socially that’s pretty much true

The problem with this specific law is that it isn’t practically enforceable. You’d need to regularly search people entering this zone, which we will certainly not do.

Law’s only matter if you can expect them to be enforced. Raising prices is easily enforced (because it would be done via taxes which are checked for correctness already).

Ey, hasch du au a Lizens für des Messerle?

Yeah that “will single out meat prices” got my eyes rolling so hard I might have a knot in my nerves now.

Meat production is one of the main contributors to the climate crisis. We need to produce less of it. I get that campaigning with that message would probably not be popular, but just focussing on groceries would have been enough right?

That’s still suggesting they are worth less than other humans based on their opinions

I’m just going to point out that you are the one even bringing communism on the table and I am happy to discuss it. You brought that up as a response to my comment:

I get that being on the winner side is convenient. I am too. I just see that constantly winning seems to lead the world into a pretty bad state overall where, suddenly, noone is a winner anymore.

And all it would take to not get into the disaster scenario would be some redistribution. Doesn’t even mean you can’t be a winner anymore. Just means you get to win less hard.

To which you responded:

I am still not gonna vote for communism and neither socialism. Good luck with that stuff. It’s isolated to niche internet communities for good reasons.

I wasn’t arguing that we just use the magic communism bullet to solve our problems. You just think that I am arguing that. I was and am of the opinion that we can improve the situation massively by increasing redistribution of wealth.

Edit: And I like the idea of communism in a theoretical way because I think it can be helpful to think about stuff that probably won’t be implemented to get ideas on how the current system could be improved. The idea of distributing economical power more evenly is at core of socialism but it doing that in a moderate way doesnt require a revolution, it can be implemented in our current system. /Edit

Any westoids that never knew communism and think it is amazing can go and remove themselves from the gene pool in my book.

Thinking of people as less valuable to “the genepool” because their opinions differ is the kind of thinking that explains why liberals and fascists are so often political friends.