• mydude@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    “When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labelled ‘made in Germany’; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, ‘Americanism‘“ - NY Times (1938)

  • hark@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    If you really want to stop fascism, you have to stop it from taking root. The problem is that people think the root is “random bad guy appears out of nowhere and brings about fascism”. To truly prevent fascism from taking root, you need to starve it of supporters. Those supporters start with the obscenely wealthy afraid of losing their wealth who fund fascists who then promise the desperate masses relief from whatever ails them. A huge component of that is inequity, largely driven by economic warfare waged by the obscenely wealthy.

    • Furbag@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      This right here is a message that often gets lost in the culture war. It’s a mistake to assume that people, especially rural white southerners, support Trump because they sat down one day and thought logically about it and reasoned themselves into supporting Trump. No, if they had done that, they would have ultimately come to the conclusion that Trump is one of the people responsible for the massive inequality that is the root cause of all the problems that American society is facing today.

      The wealthy do not care about the man himself, or his ideology, only that he is a convenient puppet who can be controlled with campaign funds to protect their own wealth in the long term. To them, Trump is the most convenient and effective scapegoat ever - he takes all the heat, and they reap the benefits of having regulations peeled away, workers rights erode, and wages stagnate. To that end, they must convince the public that Trump is Jesus and Joe Biden is the Devil

      The common folk who are suffering get tricked into supporting him when the propaganda machine funded by the wealthy paints the fascist hero as an everyman who you’d love to share a beer with. Someone who is an simultaneously an underdog whose struggle one might find endearing and relatable, but also a shrewd tactician and a threat to the ephemeral “other” keeping the little man down. Then Trump gets up on stage and says, “These people are your enemies, they are the cause of all of your woes and suffering, and only I can stop them!”.

      When put into perspective, it’s not hard to see why people flocked to him in droves. The only message they were ever allowed to hear, by design, was “Trump’s the man, he’ll fix everything.”.

  • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Hate to tell you, with our military in their hands, it would be a fascist reign of darkness only guerilla insurgency could address over a long course of time if at all. We spend more on our military industrial death machine than the next 9 nations combined. It would be slaughter. As an example, there are 12 nuclear powered aircraft carriers on Earth, 11 of which are ours.

    The rest of the world vs. Fascist US would be the end of civilization, because fascists would have no qualms using every apocalyptic tool in our arsenal, preferring the world end to losing control of it.

    • PugJesus@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Hate to tell you, with our military in their hands, it would be a fascist reign of darkness only guerilla insurgency could address over a long course of time if at all. We spend more on our military industrial death machine than the next 9 nations combined. It would be slaughter. As an example, there are 12 nuclear powered aircraft carriers on Earth, 11 of which are ours.

      The rest of the world vs. Fascist US would be the end of civilization, because fascists would have no qualms using every apocalyptic tool in our arsenal, preferring the world end to losing control of it.

      Nuclear weapons are the only relevant one. The reason for our massive military (or, at least, one of the reasons) is the presupposition that it might be necessary to fight wars on two fronts at some point (Pacific/European Theatre in WW2 style). Our conventional military is overwhelmingly powerful compared to other countries, but the process of an invasion, of taking and holding ground, is generally difficult unless the opposition is completely devoid of reason to resist.

      The rest of the world could kick our ass in a protracted conflict, if they all unanimously agreed that the US had gone insane and had to be taken down as a matter of existential survival.

      Problem is, authoritarian forces are on the rise in Europe and India already, and already in power in Russia and China. If the US goes, that could be a tipping point for global politics.

      • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.

        Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.

        Fascism is our One Ring, we can destroy it. Nothing says ideals are immortal. Nothing says fascism is a hydra and can only be abated. It knows that this is its last chance, people are beginning to change their democratic systems to better reflect the majority beliefs. That’s why misinformation is rampant and yet people still produce tech that makes it easier to create and spread. Worldwide, one election at a time, we can all topple fascism this year, but only together.

    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      Hitler has only got one ball!

      Goering has two but they’re real small!

      Himler is somewhat simlar,

      But poor old Goebbels has no balls at all.

      (To the tune of “Colonel Bogey March”)

      • YTG123@sopuli.xyz
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        7 months ago

        Hitler has only got one ball!
        The other is in the Albert hall,
        His mother, the dirty bugger,
        Cut it off when he was small.

  • Asafum@feddit.nl
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    Unfortunately I don’t think we’ll ever learn from history in this way ESPECIALLY when propaganda is so rampant. There not only is no consensus on what our reality actually is, there’s no extreme moment where people are compelled to take action until after it’s too late. Everything else is just viewed as “politics as usual.”

    Everything has a veneer of legitimacy, there’s just enough wiggle room to paint anything as “not worth rioting over” and so we’ll all be agitated until the moment comes when we can use hindsight to say “yep, we were on the road to fascism and now it’s actually here.” There weren’t any bodies before they took over, but there sure as hell will be after.

    If we can all sit here while “Judge” Cannon literally acts as a member of Trumps legal defense team, then there isn’t anything else short of actually murdering people that will get us off our seats. We all watched Jan 6th happen and as far as I know NO ONE from the general public went to go try to stop it or fight them. We had plenty of warnings as they were all talking about it on Facebook and whatever. That’s them literally trying to take over the government and we (me included) just sat here.

    • Sanctus@lemmy.world
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      It doesn’t happen because we are all caught up in our lives like we should be. Nobody is going to go stop the rioters when their children are safely at home and fed. Nobody with their roots down wants to cut them and risk it all for an uncertainty. It sucks, and I’m in the same boat, but maybe we need to realize that it hurts us to not exorcize our power as citizens. It makes the lives of our descendants worse when we don’t stand up for them at every point. We could be the biggest pain in the side of the elites if we just organized 1/3rd of us.

  • Linkerbaan@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    The Genocide thing is literally happening right now. With the concentration camp. And the starved bodies. And the burned children. And the Genocidal cartoon villains

    Do you mean to say that we should call the Blue MAGA democrats Nazis?

  • masquenox@lemmy.world
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    I hate to break it to you, but the US military has never been antifascist. The US didn’t oppose Nazi Germany and Kokutai Japan because they were fascist - the US opposed them because they were colonialist rivals.

    Here’s the thing about antifascists - antifascists don’t have to be ordered to take up arms against fascists.

    • 33550336@lemmy.world
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      I hate to break it to you, but the US military has never been antifascist.

      And from this reason American soldiers killed shittons of nazi scums and sacrificed their lives?

      the US opposed them because they were colonialist rivals.

      Strangely, you do not suspect USSR the same way.

      Fuck off tankie.

      • jaybone@lemmy.world
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        I think what’s happened here is, since .world blocked hexbear and lg, the teenkies don’t get enough attention from their edgelord bullshit, so they sign up at .world and then all of their comments sit at the bottom of the threads and they blow their load into their Chairman Mao underoos.

      • volodya_ilich@lemm.ee
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        Strangely, you do not suspect USSR the same way

        No, because the USSR was trying to align with France and England as soon as the Nazis came to power in a policy known as “Collective Security” which, as someone interested in the fight against fascism, I’m sure you’ll be very interested to read about. If you want concrete, easy evidence, here you have a Telegraph (not suspicious of being Tankie I hope, although you guys use that term so lightly you may be convinced they’re Tankies too) showing how Stalin offered to send 1 million troops together with aviation and artillery to England and France on the condition that a mutual defense agreement could be reached. Why England and France rejected, two countries which unpromptedly sent tens of thousands of soldiers to the Tsar loyalists when the civil war between them and the Bolsheviks began, is up to anyone to guess.

        My utmost respect for all brave people who fought against nazism, including US soldiers, but comparing the USSR’s policy against Nazism to that of the US and putting them on the same plane is just ridiculous.

        • 33550336@lemmy.world
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          Is this USSR “anti”-nazi, “anti”-imperialist policy behind the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, aimed to divide Poland between USSR and nazi 3rd Reich?

          Try to tell these fairytales in some Baltic countries or middle Europe in public.

          • volodya_ilich@lemm.ee
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            7 months ago

            aimed to divide Poland between USSR and nazi 3rd Reich?

            That’s literally a revisionist talking point. As I’ve shown, the USSR was the first country in Europe to try and pursue a policy of collective security and mutual defense against fascism, which was rejected for years by England and France. The fact is that the newly born USSR wasn’t industrialised enough to fight fascism alone, as proven by the 20+ million soviet peoples who died in the war against Nazism, so they tried mutual defense with England and France in the first place, and when they rejected, they made appeasement pacts with the Nazis (just as many other European countries did). Or are we so quick to forget that the then Polish Empire also got territorial gains from peace agreements with Hitler?

            Try to tell these fairytales in some Baltic countries

            You mean the same Baltic countries that achieved independence because the Bolsheviks literally allowed them to? You should read upon how, for example Finland but many other countries in Eastern Europe, got their independence from the russian empire. Finland, as an example, was part of the Russian Empire for centuries. After the Bolshevik revolution in 1917, in a historically unprecedented and extremely progressive constitution, the Bolsheviks allowed for the self-determination of all peoples of the former Russian Empire. The Finns voted out, and they were out. Please, I beg you to come up with any historical precedent of a democratic secession before that one. How is that not anti-imperialism?

            The fact that the soviet union invaded certain eastern-european countries in preparation for a war against the Nazis isn’t “Russian imperialism”, it’s preparation against Nazism. In fact, as soon as the USSR retreated from Finland after its invasion, Finland was quick to ally with the Nazis, to the point that Finnish soldiers were fighting in the siege of Leningrad. Again, how quick are we to forgive and forget a literal alliance with the Nazis when we want to, huh? Nobody in their right mind would accuse the Finnish of being imperialists and “as bad as the Nazis” nowadays, and rightfully so, because their decision to help Germany was probably motivated by the recent past. The same applies to the USSR reaching a peace agreement to prevent the 20+ million deaths that ended up happening as a consequence of the war.

            I seriously suggest that you revise where this reactionary reinterpretation of history is coming from. In France in 1950, 70+% of people polled answered that France was saved because of the USSR. If you ask nowadays, it’s less than 20%. History is being rewritten by reactionaries, and by saying shit like “USSR was imperialist and allied with the Nazis to invade Poland!!!”, the only thing we’re doing is being unfaithful to history, and propagating fascist talking points.

            • 33550336@lemmy.world
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              7 months ago

              That’s literally a revisionist talking point.

              Thank you for marking at start that reading of all the rest is waste of time.

              • volodya_ilich@lemm.ee
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                As expected, when you bring up actually historical points to the table, the anti-communists run away. Have a good one mate.

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        7 months ago

        Oh, look… a liberal crying crocodile tears because one of their favorite fairy tales got debunked.

        Yawn.

        And from this reason American soldiers killed shittons of nazi scums

        How many of them volunteered to fight fascists, genius? Here… I’ll give you an example of actual US antifascists so that you can tell tell the difference.

        Strangely, you do not suspect USSR the same way.

        Suspect the USSR of what, liberal?

        Fuck off tankie.

        Oh, look… yet another liberal throwing terms around they don’t know the meaning off.

        Do they churn you out in a factory somewhere, perhaps? You sure all do seem to come preprogrammed to spout the same gibberish.

        • mydude@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          It was nice to read about Lincoln Battalion. I did not know this. Imagine Spain, Soviet, USA, Canada on the side of communism, fighting against the Nazi Nationalist Faction. Whoa… I could watch that movie.

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    7 months ago

    Don’t try to suggest that the anti fascists of today even remotely resemble the men that landed on those beaches, my grandad being one of them.

    Some of them may have only been teenagers but they certainly weren’t slacktivists too scared to show their fucking faces.

    Edit: Okay, apparently not praising antifa as war heroes makes me a fascist. Thanks for the enlightening arguments, everyone.

    • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      yeah suck it.

      Like me, a former service member, Antifa today doesn’t need to be drafted to do the right thing. You don’t get to stand on the back of a family member who did to pretend you have some moral high ground.

      • Distant_Foreground@lemm.ee
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        I’m standing on nobody’s back or claiming to have any kind of moral high ground. Merely stating that antifa haven’t done enough so far towards their goal and thinking that maybe comparing them to people who died (or could have died) in combat is quite insulting.

        • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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          I’m standing on nobody’s back or claiming to have any kind of moral high ground.

          You sure af are. You cited a family members service to add credence to your statement.

          Merely stating that antifa haven’t done enough so far towards their goal

          Bruh you don’t know up from down in terms of what you are talking about. You should just stop.

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            I’ve heard numerous firsthand accounts of what it was like on those beaches, I’ve been to protests and I’ve been pepper sprayed before. They’re far from the same thing. I’m just working with the information that I personally have. If you think that the two are in fact comparable, I’d like to hear your reasoning.

            If I “don’t know up from down” in terms of what I’m talking about would you like to elaborate instead of just telling me to stop?

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                I never said I didn’t serve and how would that matter exactly? Have you actually served fighting against fascism? Did you serve in WW2? You may have seen some shit but surely you wouldn’t like protesters being awarded with the same kind of reverence a soldier gets?

                If some of these protesters haven’t served maybe they should shut up too because they don’t seem to know anything. You’re just using your service to lend credence to your non-argument.

                I don’t think it’s proper to equate protestors with war heroes and I’m wrong because you’ve served. Okay, I’m convinced.

    • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      You do realize stealth ops and misdirection were significant parts of operation overlord right?

      IE, “not showing their faces”

      • Distant_Foreground@lemm.ee
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        Don’t be ridiculous. Pointing out that current efforts at stamping out facism by antifa are obviously not working and resenting the comparison between them and men who risked their lives and died fighting it does not make me a fascist sympathiser.

        Fuck me for having the wrong opinion and seeing room for improvement.

        • masquenox@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          Pointing out that current efforts at stamping out facism by antifa

          So far, antifa is the only thing that has had any effect on the fascists, genius - you and your liberal brethren, on the other hand, have done nothing but vote Wall Street liberals into power that “reaches across the aisle” to the fascists before you’re even done celebrating their wins.

          men who risked their lives and died fighting it

          Oh yeah? What about the ones who died propping up fascist regimes in Korea and Vietnam? Were they (supposedly) “antifascists,” too? Or where they just men who, like their counterparts in WW2, were ordered to “defend 'Murica” before being sicced on whoever posed an obstacle to “manifest destiny”?

          But don’t worry about any of this, liberal… you’ll soon get your chance to show antifa how you can fight fascism so much better than they can soon enough - that is, if you haven’t decided to put your head down and co-operate with the fascists like most of your liberal fellow-travellers inevitably will.

          • Distant_Foreground@lemm.ee
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            I like how you instantly assume I’m an American just how you instantly assume I’m some kind of fascist because I think equating antifa with war heroes is distasteful.

            “Oh yeah? What about the ones who died propping up fascist regimes in Korea and Vietnam?”

            I was talking about those who were landing on the beaches and by extension the allies of WW2 in general, as was the OP image. You can’t just try to expand the scope of what I said to try to make it sound like I praise all dead soldiers regardless of the cause. We were talking about fighting against fascism.

            • masquenox@lemmy.world
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              I like how you instantly assume I’m an American

              I don’t give a fuck where you’re from.

              I think equating antifa with war heroes is distasteful.

              Yeah, I agree… equating people who voluntary stand up to fascists with those who has to be ordered to do so is extremely distasteful.

              You can’t just try to expand the scope

              Oh but I can, and I did - you want to pretend that the US military that particpated in WW2 is (somehow) completely unrelated to the US military that waged dirty mass-murder campaigns on the 3rd world both before and after WW2.

              Yeah… no. I don’t think so.

              We were talking about fighting against fascism.

              You mean that thing you haven’t done a shred of so far?

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                Not everyone was drafted, you bell end. Plenty were there because they signed up.

                I’m not bothered about what the US military has or hasn’t done, frankly. I wasn’t talking about the whole history of war, just that particular war and the alies, specifically.

                And how do you know I’ve done nothing to fight fascism, anyway?

                Stop being a sourpuss.

                • masquenox@lemmy.world
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                  And how do you know I’ve done nothing to fight fascism, anyway?

                  Your vapid ideology gave me a clue, liberal.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      The big difference between modern anti fascists and latter day anti fascists was Roosevelt’s reimagined Democratic party.

      If Prescott Bush or Hoover still held the White House in 1941, there’s a good chance America would have been an Axis Power.

      they certainly weren’t slacktivists too scared to show their fucking faces

      Slacktivism is when you’re doing the yeoman’s work of community organizing behind the scenes.

      Activism is when you’ve got a heavily corporate sponsored YouTube channel, you’re doing cable news speaking circuits, and you’re telling college grads to get back in the kitchen during commencement ceremonies.

    • hakase@lemm.ee
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      Hey now, pointing out the false equivalence between “antifa” and real anti-fascists makes you a fascist, doncha know.

          • NovaPrime@lemmy.ml
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            You do know that antifa means anti fascist, right? It’s not just a modern political organization with a funny name. And you also realize that the ww2 soldiers were literally fighting fascism of their day - thus anti fascist. Yes?

            • Distant_Foreground@lemm.ee
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              Yeah, the name makes it quite self evident. What’s not the same is what they’ve managed to do about fascism, particularly in Europe.

          • VerticaGG@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            Im not gonna engage w the fashbot arguing with you, so ill instrad reply here to affirm that trumps use of “blood poisoning” is still justvas dehumanizing and fascist no matter what way they try to deny or obfuscate it.

          • PeteBauxigeg@lemm.ee
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            I can’t see anything that backs up that ‘blood’ claim about, project 2025 except a claim by a critic of the project

            If enforcing immigration laws is fascist I guess almost every nation on earth has been fascist for decades

            • cybersin@lemm.ee
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              Trump is quoting and agreeing with part of Hitler’s autobiography Mein Kampf, a book entirely dedicated to fascism.

              If you read the NBC article I linked above, you can compare the original from the text with Trump’s quote and see how similar they are.

              Systematically discriminating against and causing harm to people based on their identity or race is fascism. You would be correct in saying that around the globe, many of the laws and actions around immigration today can be called fascistic.

              Criminalizing the rescue of drowning migrants so they die before reaching land is one such policy.

              • PeteBauxigeg@lemm.ee
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                The term “blood poisoning” was used by Hitler in his manifesto “Mein Kampf,” in which he criticized immigration and the mixing of races. “All great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning,” Hitler wrote.

                Vs:

                “They let — I think the real number is 15, 16 million people into our country. When they do that, we got a lot of work to do. They’re poisoning the blood of our country,” Trump told the crowd at a rally in New Hampshire. “That’s what they’ve done. They poison mental institutions and prisons all over the world, not just in South America, not just to three or four countries that we think about, but all over the world. They’re coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world.”

                Trump then repeated the use of “poisoning” in a post on his social media website Truth Social, saying overnight in an all-caps post, that “illegal immigration is poisoning the blood of our nation. They’re coming from prisons, from mental institutions — from all over the world.”

                These are literally completely dissimilar apart from the shared use of the term “blood poisoning”, which would be a translation from a german term for Mein Kampf surely?

                I’m not defending either here, but “xyz is hitler/nazi” is literally said by everyone

        • draneceusrex@lemmy.world
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          If it looks like a fascist, swims like a fascist, and quacks like a fascist, it’s probably a fascist.

            • PeteBauxigeg@lemm.ee
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              Use of violence against political opponents is actually part of many definitions of the term fascism, but it also is present in non fascist countries.

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                I would so thoroughly enjoy debunking the paradox of tolerance all over your face and body with some sort of heavy blunt object.

    • OpenStars@discuss.online
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      This is disingenuous b/c while it is sometimes true, it is not always thus. (I did not downvote you btw.)