Eh. Mostly right. Given that pedophilia is, by definition, sexual attraction to prepubescent children, and given that any sexual contact with a prepubescent child is sexual assault, a pedophile sexually assaulting a child is probably about sexual attraction. But not necessarily.

But yeah, most child molesters aren’t pedophiles per se, but are assaulting children because they’re vulnerable. I don’t think that we can make any absolute claims about most pedos not assaulting children, simply because we don’t have a good grasp on how many people are pedos. I’ve heard that up to 25% of men (!!!) might have some level of sexual attraction to children, which is disturbing as fuck. (And no, I couldn’t give you a citation for that, I’m sorry. Just a weird claim that stuck in my head.)

TBH, I’m not sure I would have recognized that as a Nazi symbol prior to a group of people I knew arguing about Death In June. Some were arguing that the band was fine, some were arguing that the band was pro-fash. The second group was using the band’s iconography–including a totenkopf–as part of their evidence. The first group was claiming that it was satirical. (FWIW, Death In June had a long history of collaboration with Boyd Rice, who is an out-and-proud fascist, which is pretty strong evidence all on its own.) That was around 2010 or so.

If I hadn’t been part of that, I can’t say when it would have broken my threshold of consciousness.

You know that he covered up the tattoo within a day of revealing it, right? And that he was the one that revealed it first? The ‘scoop’ from large news outlets came after he spoke about it–and released videos and photos–on Pod Save America.

So he’s not a dude with a Nazi tattoo. He’s a dude that had a tattoo that he may or may not have known was a Nazi tattoo at some time in the past.

I would very strongly suggest that you reconsider your stance on guns. You may not want to hurt other people to protect yourself, but there are surely other people in your community that need someone to stand with and for them. I think we all hope that the day never comes that it’s necessary, but I think that the quote I heard was, “si vis pacem, para bellum.”

I know a few people in the north Georgia area that are quite welcoming to new people. I can suggest at least one trainer out in Rome. There are a few gun stores that don’t seem to be full of Trump shit. Unfortunately, I didn’t ever get south of Atlanta, so if you’re in e.g. Macon or Savannah, I don’t know anyone directly.

BTW - I’ve heard him speak in person. I’ve seen how Platner dealt with MAGA hecklers. I think that his solutions are simplistic, because the system is wildly complex, but I think he’s got the right ideas. If he’s undercover as a Nazi, he sure as shit as me fooled.

The tattoo dates to roughly 2009, IIRC. The Daily Wire and a few other far-right shitrags have published hysterical pieces about him–via his Reddit account–talking about training the Maine chapter of the Socialist Rifle Club in firearms use and safety in 2020. Or, as they said, “antifa”. And the SRA IS notably anti-fascist in their ideology (I’m sure that some percentage of them are tankies, but the org as a whole doesn’t seem to be authoritarian), and very pro-LGBTQ+. The turned up photos of one of the events that these publications are saying he’s in. (I can’t tell, TBH; the photos aren’t that good. He could be, but I can’t say for certain.)

So the problem you run headlong into here is, if he secretly has/had Nazi beliefs at one time, sufficient to get a tattoo signifying such, why would be be training SRA members?

In addition to that, everything he was posting on Reddit appears to say he’s not a Nazi. Some of the stuff is questionable (slurs, for instance, although those are probably still commonly used in the military), but most people that are fascists don’t hide that shit when they’re posting “anonymously”. And the account was deleted in 2021, four years before he declared for a Senate run. If he was planning a con, that’s a looooooooong time to be building an anti-fascist online persona before it gets any kind of payoff.

Probably something like, “found dead in his bedroom when the nurse went to check in on him in the morning”. My MiL died in hospice, at home; she wasn’t hooked up to a ton of machines, so we don’t know exactly when she died. She was dead when my spouse woke up from napping.

I know, right? How many of the people shitting on everyone right of Emma Goldman and Mikhail Bakunin ever did any real community organizing, volunteering, or political canvassing? How many have actively worked to push the Democratic party farther left, rather than just shitposting online about how awful Dems are? Sure, we all want (well, a lot of the people here, I suspect) want socialist candidates that are smart and tough on the ballot. But are we doing to work at a local level to get there? This shit doesn’t happen overnight; you start work locally, work up to a state level, and then go national, once you’ve got that base of support.

Yeah, it’s def. fed posting. Because you sure as fuck don’t do that kind of organizing online.

Here’s the thing: if you’re going to be a real revolutionary militia, you really don’t have a great way of organizing. Everything is going to have big risks. But encouraging people to commit crimes in a public forum, where every user name can be pretty easily traced back to a real person? Oh yeah, that’s absolutely fed posting, whether they know it or not.

The only way it wouldn’t be fed posting would be if this was a .onion site, and there was absolutely no verification of users. But then you’re just kicking the can down the road; sure, it’s safe to post stuff online then, but eventually you have to meet people IRL if you plan to do more than just talk, and that’s when the feds are gonna getcha.

I never had a chance to try Earthdawn, but it looked like a lot of fun.

I’m a fan of old-school Shadowrun (2nd ed.); it didn’t matter how bad-ass your character was, you could get killed by a lucky shot from a punk with a zipgun. It kept the grime of Cyperpunk, and added fantastical elements to it. IMO, it required more role-playing than is strictly necessary in a lot of D&D games, because going in guns blazing all the time was almost certain to lead to death; properly played (IMO), the GM should be brutal in how they handle stupid players.

The downside was so many six sided dice.

The tragedy can often be avoided by everyone agreeing that destroying the commons is bad

Right, but you’re also creating a prisoner’s dilemma. That is, if everyone agrees to work one way, and you have one person that breaks rules in a way that gets them ahead–and lets say that, in a purely communist society, that ‘getting ahead’ in this instance means that they need to put in less work to have the same result as everyone else, and thus have more time available for themselves–then it creates a strong incentive for everyone to follow suit. You need those outside regulatory bodies with enforcement powers in order to create the disincentive to breaking rules and agreements.

Perversely, farmers often know that what they’re doing is deeply harmful for the environment, but there are strong financial disincentives preventing them from changing. Without both a regulatory structure forcing change on everyone, combined with incentives that make changing affordable to them (such as giving them cash to buy updated equipment to farm in new ways, and ensuring revenue levels), they’re kinda fucked.

Uh, no?

Riots in France over unpopular political policies are so common that they’re a meme. Saudi Arabia overthrew it’s dictator via political violence. China, Russia, many others have had political violence on a massive scale.

Political violence is common. The only real difference is that–in theory–Americans have the tools to enforce regime change at home, should the citizenry choose to assert that ability. There are literally more guns than people (by a lot!) in the US, so our civil wars end up being some of the most bloody and brutal on the planet. (Roughly 2% of the entire US population died in battle in the US Civil War; US Civil War 2 would almost certainly be worse, since it wouldn’t be limited solely to direct military engagements.)