I think a big part of how Cuba has survived is how well it has penetrated the US intelligence apparatus with double agents

The CIA is the most dangerous entity in the room, but because of that they think anything they do will work out because who the fuck is gonna stop them

You've got a bunch of guys who think they're civilized geniuses fighting against brainless barbarians, tricking them wouldn't be hard with enough study

It seems too dumb for reality, but the fact of the matter is that the best and brightest of the imperial core got outplayed by the Viet Cong, said "never again," then got outplayed by the Taliban the same way, and all they can do is blame the Afghan people for not worshiping America enough

If you can get away with declaring war over fake WMDs, at that point, you've deluded yourself into believing you control reality. You control American reality, but the rest of the world will push back; you see this with China already

I don’t think free speech should cover things like rape, statutory rape, and pedophilia. I don’t think certain topics are or should be allowed to exist within the protection of free speech or corporate endorsement (your refusal to ban or delete bad topics is in itself a tacit endorsement).

Completely reasonable

... Except that these fanfictions are just that, fiction

So yeah, my default is "ostracize anyone who makes that shit" because otaku shit is what comes to mind... but it's not as if everyone making stuff with that content is doing it out of enjoyment or endorsement

If someone wanted to write a story about comfort women, should it be banned for realistically and unflinchingly depicting the rape of minors by Japanese soldiers? (Damn, Shinzo Abe would love that)

If a woman is writing a "rape fantasy" or "ravishment fantasy" or whatever word they're using, should that be banned for romanticizing sexual assault?

If a man is writing a memoir about a relationship he had with a 40 year old at age 20, should we ban that for glorifying age gaps?

What if someone is writing a story about rape in order to process their own sexual trauma at the hands of an adult they once trusted?

Point here is that it's easy to look at the worst of the worst and think "ban this sick filth" when the reality of it is that mainstream society is pushing this shit (child beauty pageants, Roy Moore apologism, targeted hypersexualization of teenage celebrities, ordinary romance novels, etc.), and sending moderators to comb through millions of works to figure out who's getting off on it and who isn't is impossible, and if anything, will make people just stop putting warnings on their fanfics

At the end of the day, it's easy to get mad about made up stuff on the Internet because it's easy, but there's brutality right in front of your face in the real world that's better of being faced down instead

Fraternizing with the enemy army is kind of hard once they're the enemy army