Okay, I’m trying to be as nice as I can about this, but most of the world legitimately doesn’t give a shit about anything you just said. Why would someone from Africa or South Asia or South America care what America or China allow to happen in their own borders? Do you seriously think the “freedoms” afforded to Americans but American law mean anything to an Iraqi whose life was and remains defined by the fallout from American imperialism? That’s not how modern empires work; neither China nor America are going to treat a third party anything like they treat their own citizens, and in a comparison of how they treat others’ citizens China has nothing that can top this. Your appeals to tiny steps and corruption aren’t just meaningless; they’re outright insulting to the hundreds of millions of lives that were ruined by America around the world.

So, Iran can now get their narrative out to all the other countries nearby, and the US has no way of correcting / countering the Iranian propaganda.

Fortunately in this case, since Iranian propaganda is more or less just the truth in this case. Can’t get much more fucked up than bombing a girls’ school on day one.

I’d love it if Europe stepped into the vacuum left by the US. They’re doing a lot of good things when it comes to environmental laws, privacy, anti-monopoly, etc. If it’s China that steps forward, I’m less confident it will be an improvement on the US.

Europe is part of the same imperialist apparatus as America, and fortunately for everyone involved it won’t be able to replace the US. Pretty much every US imperialist action gets European support, even if it comes with denial or condemnation. For example Europe was deeply involved in turning Iran into a pariah state, making the current war possible. And that’s before we get into Europe’s own neocolonialism (see: France). China has plenty of skeletons in its own closet, but they don’t have a habit of overthrowing regimes they don’t like halfway across the world.

I have absolutely zero faith that Obama would do anything to meaningfully help Mamdani, but let’s watch and see I guess.

Phew.

… Wow. I’m going to hope for the sake of everyone you’ll ever meet that you’re just 14 or something.

GJ Iran!

I hope you have the same opinion regarding philosophy, pure math and string theory, but also: Then don’t fucking answer the question. Clearly some people, including the OP, see value in discussing beings whose existence cannot be verified in reality.

Don’t forget to report antisemitism, y’all.

For either Mandarin or French to supplant English as the world’s most widely spoken language we would need not just a large and wealthy segment of the world that natively speaks it, but a mechanism that encourages people who know neither French nor Mandarin nor English to learn one of the former and not the latter.

The latter usually follows from the former. Wealthy people buy things, sell things, create things and go to places, all of which requires those on the other end of the deal to be able to talk to them. China is also investing in its global image, and in a few decades they’ll be forced to import immigrants to make up the shortfall in their labor force.

Similarly, Mandarin is the second language of a bunch of non-native speakers who live or work in China, most of which are presumably Chinese natives whose first language was a different dialect like Cantonese.

Chinese is also gaining steam in Russia and Africa, though admittedly it’s probably going to be at least a generation before it becomes an actually popular language to learn.

Being widely spoken in one particular region (or even a few regions) doesn’t automatically connect to being a global lingua franca. If that was the standard we’d be speaking Hindi or Mandarin here. Francophone Africa is projected to experience a popular boom, but even in the best case scenario (i.e. one where francophone Africa experiences better economic growth than other parts) that’d only make it more widespread in Africa. Globally there’s no way it can compete with the rising utility of Mandarin.

Because nobody actually answers the question. “Because it’s bullshit” is the least interesting, least informative answer you can give to a question like this, and it does nothing except make the commenter feel clever. It gets especially annoying when legitimate answers are buried under dozens of “because God doesn’t exist I’m so smart.” Now an answer could reject the premise that a creator exists and still be interesting, but it’d have to do better than the armchair anthropology everyone here seems so fond of.

This makes me very happy.

So first, asking religious questions on the Fediverse is a fool’s errand, but that aside: Why not? Hell, if anything it’d be the other way around: An all-powerful being without emotion wouldn’t create anything, because they wouldn’t gain anything from doing so. Any creation by an omnipotent being would have to be an emotional affair.

Anyone who fights for Trump in particular and US imperialism in general is a sucker who deserves anything bad coming their way. No /s.

“Helped propel Trump” is absolute copium. Only 40% of Arab Americans voted for Trump, not enough to overturn any swing state.

Rhetoric is one thing; actions are another. Trump 1’s actions weren’t significantly worse than those of past American presidents. Now many people absolutely knew Trump 2 would be much, much worse than Trump 1 (not on Gaza though, to be clear), but most didn’t know/denied that before he took office in January. IIRC the mayor of Dearborn said something like “Trump targeted us once and he’ll do it again, but we were able to stop him once and we’ll do it again.”

“Harris hasn’t distanced herself sufficiently from Israel”

Gencoide is never a weird hell to die on.

Sorry man/woman/person dem are da rules. It’s what the Founding Fathers intended.

Infinite sunspot theorem moment.

Progressives are acting in the spirit of those values which saw the American revolution take place by acting perfectly in line with what the Declaration of Independence clearly states is our right.

Eh, acting in line with the Declaration of Independence would require most of Congress to be hanged from the nearest tree or put on a boat to England.

Just like the divine right of kings was the foundation of most if not all medieval monarchies. You’re really not defending your case here.