Listen, I wasn’t queer before, but $17 is $17.

I would take this guy more seriously if he had any amount of engagement.

We need a higher quality of critic. Is there any chance we can convince one of the Krassensteins to complain about this place?

He added, “Let us remember empathy and simple kindness are essential, powerful tools of national recovery. Even at an appropriate social distance, we can find the way to be present in the lives of others. … In the final analysis, we are not partisan combatants. We’re human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God.”

It really is a throw back to the “Compassionate Conservative” version of George Bush Jr we got back when he was running for governor. If you’re wondering why folks in 2000 looked at Bush and Gore and just kinda shrugged because they seemed like the same guy, tell me you couldn’t hear a Dixiecrat from the 1990s saying exactly this.

GWB is the spitting image of a Southern Democrat, from his mushy Jesus talk to his Aw Shucks Let’s Execute’m Nicely folksy settler charm.

Its an elite invite-only boarding school, so you’re unlikely to know anybody when you arrive. But also, it tends to clump people together by family cough bloodline cough and common interests, so the theory is you’ll make friends more quickly when you’re coughWEAZEcough segregated into like-minded groups gaspGAGchoke fuck me its really bad the more I think about it, isn’t it?

A bit more seriously, its not crazy unusual for schools and unis to organize people into fraternities and clubs and houses and other social units early on in your college career. Then you tend to just end up with these people as your friends by virtue of proximity. By applying a certain degree of blind randomness, or by sorting via interest and passion rather than letting people congeal based on their own historical biases, you get a better mix of students than you would if everyone just clumped by who they knew or thought they’d like.

The system doesn’t have to be modern phrenology.

Imagine a fucking Westoid complaining about Kim Jung Il’s love of cinema. All you mayo do is watch movie, pay rent, eat hot chip, and lie.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but it’s so obvious this isn’t about fairness in sports…

Conservatives in 2004: “These fucking spoiled Millennials just want participation trophies for everything!”

Conservatives in 2024: “These fucking hyper-competitive Zoomers won’t even give me my participation trophy!”

I hope the students cause a ruckus

For shit like this, the best thing that can happen is that nobody shows and the TPUSA crowd has to go trolling around campus trying to pick fights with randos.

I swear that was just a fucking incredible album that happened to come with a game attached.

The author as in the critic blasting the 2 losers?

The opening complaint is that the International Committee didn’t follow up on the trip properly. This seems to be an indictment of the entire visit, as if the author is trying to dismiss it as a vacation for spoiled rich kids.

No word on who else attended or what they accompolished or how they planned to continue outreach to Cuba. Just some wishy-washy “We should be fighting imperialism at home” with no other plan of action.

Christ, it hurts that you’re just now making me realize this.

This was literally just a joke short Nick Mullen made on the TAFS.

Okay but 16 is less than half of 35

More seriously, they do have F-16s with robot brains. They’re called Predators and they’re terrifying, particularly when employed inside a defensive perimeter.

But they’re not great at power projection. F-22s/35s are built for extended range.

None of the goals are mentioned, none of the organizations leaders are named, and there’s no mention of when or how the author plans to

materially intervene against our government’s imperialist aggression by dismantling the embargo

I might be ignorant on this, but did DSA call these people out or apologize for their behavior?

Impossible to tell from this article

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to not focus on the drop-in-the-bucket level of material support

Then why fixate on the two members of a two dozen person delegation you’ve got beef with?

I don’t see anything in this article about the next step in extending relief to Cuba. I don’t even see a “follow my link to learn how to help us do X”.

The impression I get from this article is that the visit was a mistake, the DSA International Committee won’t be following up or doing anything like it again, and members should feel bad about even making this much of an effort.

Removed by mod

Damn, you think buildings in Dubai carry insurance? I thought this was supposed to be the land of infinite off-loading negative externalities onto marks and suckers while turning everything into a purely financialized revenue stream freedom.

ancient history

It does, but I’m reading it as an outcropping of the fractured state of the returning committee membership.

I can’t speak to what the International Committee facilitated, but I can say I’ve seen some off-shot of the delegation’s visit via Noah Pasarán regarding the history of the embargo and its long term and most recent economic consequences. This is some of the most real and informative coverage of the Cuban Embargo I’ve had the opportunity to access, and I would consider this kind of outreach invaluable when attempting to shift views on our foreign policy.

To dismiss the efforts of the DSA participants as a whole seems shortsighted, as it appears more radicalized members of the delegation such as Noah continued to advocate for and send support to the country.

The article also seems to completely neglect that the DSA delegation brought 500 lbs of medical supplies to the island. Which seems like a bigger thing to crow about than two naysayers with shitty attitudes.

There’s inevitably a take that amounts to “There’s a secret shadowy organization behind the news article telling you the F-35 is bad, and its intentions are even worse!”

But the end result is a pedantic argument over some functionally unknowable question of which overpriced, badly engineered Pentagon vanity project is the biggest waste of money. Less MIC leg-humping and more “Um, aktuly, you’ve fallen for Pentagon 11D chess!” contrarianness.

I mean, singling these losers out is cool, but it seems weird to call out all of DSA for the ugly behavior of these two bad actors. After all, this is a statement coming from within DSA. Its not coming from the Cubans themselves. The fucking President took time to meet with them, which would seem to suggest Cuban organizers are largely supportive of these outreach efforts.

Giving these two tickets was a mistake. But organizing the trip, getting Americans to visit the island, and putting them face-to-face with a bonafide AES state leader should be a huge mark in DSA’s favor.