Why do Americans have such a hard time feeding their kids?
Because empathy is socialism apparently.
Unironically, it is. No other political framework actively suggest loving, caring for and helping the anonymous fellow. Conservatism is almost always exacerbated individualism. They band together because they hate the same thing, not because they love each other.
Socialism is an economic model, not a political framework. You’re being lied to when you’re told government programs are socialism.
Is there a middle ground between individualism and communitarianism? I am looking for perspectives in earnest (i.e., this isn’t a “gotcha” question). I agree that “rugged individualism” ends up trampling people.
Social democracy, maybe. At least they acknowledge social justice as a core political value. Plenty of socialism political stances are emphatic about social justice without going full on accelerationist authoritarian communism.
Thanks.
Basing the collective mentality and the legal framework upon ubiquitous and mutual sovereignty. That is, an individual is sovereign, an organization is sovereign, etc - and thus, none have rights over another, except as agreed to by ongoing mutual agreement. Anyone can withdraw, and no other has the right to deny that. Disputes are resolved through finding the path of least incursion.
Implicit in this is the notion of ‘innocent until proven guilty’, that abortion is a right, that forcing medical choices (including vaccination) has no moral standing, that one can arm oneself, and one can also, by contract, participate in a community which disarms itself. Government bodies are ultimately services, in this model, which people, at some point, contractually agree to - or don’t.
The right to withdraw is a necessary one, as any contract one cannot deny or reject when one wants to is, at its root, compulsion or slavery.
Of course there is. Are you looking for an -ism name for it?
Is there a middle ground between individualism and communitarianism
Socialism…
The middle ground between capitalism and communism is socialism.
Everyone gets enough, and if you work hard you get more.
The Overton window has just shifted so far right that “middle ground” has started being treated as extreme.
That seems an overly simplistic a view point to me
You are free to refute it.
Sure I’ll bite.
Your economic framework has nothing to do with social policy and vice versa. Russia was a socialist national and they let Ukraine starve to get rid of dissidents. Norway is a capitalist country with very strong social welfare programs. The two are not related whatsoever.
Socialism as an economic model is not based on empathy at all, but rather where power lies. Capitalism is not opposed to government social programs and in fact only flourishes when government can mitigate externalities.
OPs view is simplistic and OP does not seem to understand the difference between socialism and social programs.
No other political framework actively suggest loving, caring for and helping the anonymous fellow.
What? Levant, 2000 years ago, Bible “1 John 3:17”
They even number each sentence in the book to make it easy to find.
Your Bible also says something along the lines of “chop off your hands if you jerk off.” There’s so much shit in Leviticus I could pull up which aren’t exactly “loving.”
Edit: Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT
“However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way.”
From: https://www.evilbible.com/evil-bible-home-page/slavery/
Well the Bible is mythology, so putting any value into the words is just like putting value into the words of a fictional book.
Words in fictional books have value.
Maybe some, but the Bible isn’t one of the ones with value.
Don’t kill each other seems like ok advice.
Apparently it didn’t do the job, as the Jesus fandom in the US are literally the ones killing social services.
Because they elect Republicans which are the Nazi party
It’s not that we can’t feed our children, it’s that we don’t want to. Jesus loves you* so that the government doesn’t have to.
*Offer not valid for gays, nonwhites, trans people, women, non-Christians, or kids who talk back.
Rich people > children
Ahh yes rich people eat children
People get extra free money from the government when they have kids.
Nothing says “we care about kids” quite like using AI images of kids for your articles so you don’t have to pay them.
This is totes an actually super real picture, but I do feel bad for this kid. He’s lost a finger on one hand and regrown it on the other.
The wrong number of limbs seems like a very common AI mistake. Is that really hard to program/teach an AI system?
Yes, because we’re no longer at the point of “programming” by writing in instructions (in the context of AI models). We are legitimately moving towards training AI the way a child learns. These AI image generators are given millions upon millions of images with descriptions, then they learn the general features. So once it’s done and you give it a command, it does its best to create something from what it learned. And right now these AI’s don’t differentiate between the number of hands. Mainly because a good majority of images are showing clear views of hands. Most hands will be at an angle or even sideways. It also has no concept of how many fingers a person has. It’s actually an incredibly good image.
It looks far too realistic to be of anyone’s comfort. The fact that people are just shrugging their shoulders at a near-photorealistic AI image being used for blatant political propaganda is beyond a serious problem.
What’s going to happen when some smartass uses the AIs to generate pictures of a police murder of a Black man that never actually happened? Will anyone question the photo or what they’re doing when they rise up exactly when and where whoever made the deepfake wanted them to? Will they care about the truth then, or only when they are getting run over by tanks because they were too stupid, emotional and shortsighted to see they were falling into an obvious trap?
What goes next to a finger? Another finger. So they offer fingers next to fingers and don’t always stop at the right one.
Best comment in thread
this isn’t an article it’s a forum post on the interweb
As an avid republican myself, I don’t know what this is about. We don’t even have 7 million children in this country. But Australia should not be ruled by the monarchy.
You had me in the first half, not gonna lie
“7 million pregnant people, mothers and children, including more than half of all newborns in the United States.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/27/food-stamps-wic-snap-government-shutdown/
Whoosh
The world needs more fact checkers and information finders like you, but in this case you missed that you’re responding to someone from Australia who was making a joke. “Haha, the Americans think everything revolves around them. Let’s write an intentionally vague opening sentence and see how long it takes 'em to notice the instance I’m commenting from or figure out that I’m Australian from context”
deleted by creator
I never understood the party of life snd their disregard for… life.
George Carlin said they need live babies so they can turn them into dead soldiers.
Can’t turn them into dead soldiers if they starve before they turn 18.
Easy - just lower the age requirement to join the military :D /j
It’s pretty simple, they’re just assholes
Welcome to the GOP, where they only give a shit about you before you’re born and if you become wealthy.
If neither of those apply to you they actively despise you and want you to die…while also still wanting your vote.
The upper echelons of the party couldn’t possibly care less about “unborn children.” They care about maintaining power, and being anti-abortion is the single-greateat advantage they have.
The GOP absolutely depends on people voting against their own self-interest. They have 3 major strategies to achieve this - making voting more difficult, spreading disinformation, and targeting single-issue voters.
Pro lifers are by far the most-powerful single-issue voting group in the county - followed by pro-gun voters.
Tens of millions of people literally believe abortion is murdering a child. To them, there is no combination of issues that outweighs stopping abortion. While they may be a minority of Americans, they base 100% of their vote on abortion. I know people who are hard-left liberal on every other issue who vote straight-ticket Republican because to them NOTHING else matters.
If you think the pro-choice crowd is a powerful voice in a general election, imagine Trump and Biden having opposite positions on abortion, but otherwise being the same in every way.
How many pro-choice historically-Democratic voters would have voted for Trump instead of Biden? Pretty much zero.
How many pro-life historically-Republican voters would have voted for Biden instead of Trump? Tens of millions.
Kinda crazy being someone who lives outside of America seeing TV ads asking for donations to feed America’s starving children…
Are you from one of those socialisms that I was told about growing up? I’m so glad you managed to find enough food to survive to adulthood.
WIC and SNAP benefits will remain in effect despite the shutdown.
Source? I want to believe this but the first page of my search results is all articles saying that WIC will shut down within days and SNAP is unlikely to last much more than a month.
I heard on the news today WIC won’t be accessible
OP: Next time you make a meme about a political issue, don’t use a blatant AI-generated photo. There are plenty of real photos you could have used.
Everyone, look at that kid’s hands: there are three fingers on the left hand and five on the right, not counting thumbs respectively. And look at the weird creamy way the kid’s skin looks: no evidence of pores or extremely fine hairs everywhere. That’s AI where it does not belong, friends.
Who cares? It’s not like they were about to pay an artist for this meme in the first place.
You should care if you care about the future of this country. That’s blatant propaganda. There’s nothing stopping someone from generating AI images of police murdering an innocent Black person, or of a politician groping somebody, or all kinds of nefarious shit.
But you know, who cares about the truth as long as the meme tells you something you want to hear, right? Who cares if they can be used to spread dangerous misinformation that could swing an election in a fascist’s favor or convince Americans to use violence at an inappropriate time? Who cares, right?
You’re blabbering about nothing
Not the content of the meme or the message, your upset that it’d an AI generated kid instead of a real one and clearly that’s gonna lead to the downfall of America.
Your post is blatant anti AI propaganda! You just want to exploit children for memes! See how stupid that is? That’s you.
I think what bucketofpuppies is trying to say is memes aren’t based on real shit. It’s just some AI image of a random-ass kid…shrugging. It doesn’t matter if it’s real or not, because it’s a “person”, shrugging, with text put on top.
No one here has generated a picture of cops shooting people, or people shooting cops, or mothers eating babies…it’s just a shrugging kid. It’s a meme. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It doesn’t matter. It’s a politically charged meme telling people to express a certain opinion passing off a fake AI-generated photo of a kid as a real one to convince people to accept its message, and it’s working.
Even when you’re being told the truth about the meme, you’re rejecting it.
The reason memes work is because they use either real photos that people collectively decide are suitable representations of certain emotions, situations or opinions, or obvious artwork. Not hyper-realistic fakes passed off as real photos.
And people listen to and are influenced by memes. That means people shouldn’t be using AI-generated fake bullshit in them. It’s too easy to lie to everyone and convince most people to believe it.
It’s too dangerous and people need to reject it now, before it’s too late and people are passing off even more politically charged shit.
I can tell you care, but counterpoint: what if a genuine image of a sad, shrugging minority child was used instead? And this exact text was put over that? Genuine child, used to make a meme…does that really change anything, anything at all? This is, as you say, artwork but kicked up a few levels. A lot of levels, as you say, hyper-realistic.
Memes are not messages from the meme format to the viewer; it is merely a picture. Artwork. I can make angry & happy faces, and you can put text all over them. “I love Biden!”. “Birds aren’t real 😡” True subject material (my face), false message. My face being used doesn’t make the message any more or less real.
Now if I were to AI render Trump having buttsex with Biden, hyper realistic, and I were to lie to you & tell you this totally happened & it’s real. Okay, now I am actively engaging in a lie. I am using AI to destroy the truth, like cops shooting black kids or something. That’s an entirely different matter, man.
Then it wouldn’t have any of the propaganda baggage along with it because it wouldn’t be a really transparent attempt to normalize the use of AI-generated images in propaganda, closing an avenue for unscrupulous evildoers to use to lie to the American people.
It’s not just about this one meme. It’s part of a bigger picture.
Memes are not messages from the meme format to the viewer;
Yes they are, stop lying. Stop downplaying the extremely powerful effects memes have on popular culture and stop handwaving away the very real dangers of people being allowed to use AI-generated images in them with no pushback.
Now if I were to AI render Trump having buttsex with Biden, hyper realistic, and I were to lie to you & tell you this totally happened & it’s real.
Guess what you’re helping to incrementally normalize.
Just because you personally don’t see a problem doesn’t mean it’s not there. Just because you personally think it’s okay to use false AI-generated images in connection with anything political doesn’t make it okay. And just because you feel like the use of memes is under attack doesn’t make it okay either.
Think, man, think
You can’t unexist it. You have to adapt.
What’s your endgame? Make AI images illegal and uncommon?
That would make them more powerful, because people wouldn’t expect them, but the creation of AI images is still totally possible. It’s better to just call out its usage as lame, and aside from that, to adjust your thinking to acknowledge the lack of certainty you (and we all) now have about digital visual data.
Is this satire?
It’s a copypasta
Wtf are you talking about? The use of AI image generation in this meme has absolutely nothing to do with the “truth” you are blubbering on about.
the fuck are you on? And why do Americans always assume everybody on the internet is American?
You talk about gruesome AI generated images when the photo here is just a kid, get a grip on yourself.
😂
This is a thread addressing an issue unique to Americans. The government shutdown is a U.S. problem.
The AI thing will largely affect American politics too because guess which country people will want to unduly influence the most?
Denmark
Ohh, so close. The correct answer was San Marino.
🙄
😝
The hair and buttons are also give aways.
If anyone out there has the means, please donate directly to your local food bank in the form of cash money or whole cases of shelf-stable foods. Individual cans are fine to give, but individual cans require many times more work to distribute than whole cases because each can needs to be checked for damage, expiration date and label completeness (type of food and nutrition info have to be legible).
But really, money. A lot of the food that goes to food banks is near expiration. Money lets the food bank buy things like fresh produce, butter (food banks always need butter and never have it) and eggs that would otherwise be very hard to get.
If you’re hungry, look up your local food bank. They will give you food and if for some reason they can’t they will be able to point you to someone who can.
Those kids don’t matter… they’ve already been born
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIC for anybody else who had never heard that before.
Time to boil your bootstraps kid
I’m no way am I excusing the Republican behavior here but most state agencies have organization been preparing for this such that they can weather a short shutdown. Anyone on WIC or other support should continue requesting and using it. These programs won’t necessarily shut down just because the gov’t does.
I keep wondering if it is possible to get a class-action lawsuit together
deleted by creator
Oh no. What will he do without a block of cheese and milk.
7 million children benefit from WIC, including getting formula to newborns. So what will he do without formula? Die, I suppose.
Think of the children… Will somebody please think of the children
Why do you types all sound the same?
Sarcastic, egocentric, emotionally bankrupt and morally repugnant and fucking proud of it like having a low IQ/EQ is some sort of accomplishment.
You mad?
No.
You literate?
Yes
That’s a pretty appropriate thing to think about when children will literally die because of this. Again- infants depend on formula through WIC. You don’t think that’s serious? Really?
Parents ahould be responsible for feeding their kids, not the government.
🤡
in your perfect world, what happens when parents can’t feed their kids (Due to job loss or something similar)? Take them away and make the gov pay a bigger fee lol?
You’re not entirely wrong, but you’re quite misguided. Personal accountability has to matter, but a society that lets its children starve isn’t a society worth preservation.
I’m saying this as one of those people who would vote Republican if they had opted for Mitt Romney back in the day.
Kids deserve to be fed. There’s no condition to that, ever. If a kid is going hungry and I have a way to fix that I’ll do it. Do I think government is the right way, or even one that’s effective? They’re clearly not. But if it’ll feed those kids one more day I’ll gladly devote our entire war budget to do it, and I’d even eat a tax increase as long as I know that’s where it’s going.
How about we just get rid of the extra tax cuts to corporations that trumpy boi handed out a few years ago instead.
Kids shouldn’t suffer for their parent’s behavior or circumstances. To say otherwise is heartless and cruel.
To say otherwise is heartless and cruel.
Well yes, that’s kind of the official party policy now.
It’s amazing to me that I have to point this out to people.
Ok, so we just leave the kids with parents unable/unwilling to work to starve?
Sweet summer child, no.
I agree with you, but if I have a problem with handouts and welfare I’m not going to start with feeding kids. We’ve got much bigger fish to fry. Like subsidized industries.
Yeah, fuck kids! I’d rather my tax dollars go to bailing out Elon Musk and other Billionaires while kids starve!
Free School lunches were first offered to ensure a healthy young adult population fit for the military
If 1st world govements and their rich friends in large corporations haven’t been spending the last 100 years destroying the average person’s ability to be independent human beings then you might have a point.
I mean, you wouldn’t, but let’s not get into that right now.
ideally, but unfortunately there are kids out there who wouldnt get enough food otherwise. theyre kids, we need to look out for their wellbeing
Yeah, and if your parents are dead, disabled, or impoverished then you should just fucking starve to death instead of being a whining entitled leech!
Your solution?
Mandate abstinence only sex-ed, shame “sluts,” ban contraceptives, ban abortion, shackle parents with medical debt from giving birth, shut down the government, blame parents when they can’t feed their kids.
/s
Ngl you had me in the first bit. There are too many people who think abstinence only sex-ed works.
From the party who brought you Just say no! ^TM
Parents are also responsible for paying the government to exist (see taxes). It would sure be nice if the government did something with all those parents’ tax dollars that benefitted the parent’s and their children.
This isn’t fucking socialism, it’s ‘getting your moneys worth’ and is totally fair.
How many kids do you have?
Maybe the government should be responsible for feeding the parents. How do you like those apples Mr. Bootstraps?
At least the idiots out themselves. Marking your user note as republicunt
Yeah, we don’t have enough dead kids. We definitely need more.
