JubilantJaguar

I'm European who votes green. I want the Democrats to win because that is better for the world. If only you did too.

Your theory is just a theory, and a weak one. The evidence suggests that the election was mainly just a backlash against inflation and immigration, as has happened across the world to parties of all stripes. Not much could have been done to avert the outcome. But it is also clear that a bunch of voters were pissed off by what they perceived as Democrat excesses on cultural issues, and apparently many of those people were in swing states.

More generally: "just turn out the base" is usually a losing strategy in democratic politics. For a simple reason: the cost of turning out your own base is that you will fire up the opposing base and turn them out too. To be sure of winning an election in democracy, you will need to get your hands dirty and persuade people. In practice that will mean tacking towards the center and making compromises.

So we're running out of reasons to use it. Personally I find the "planting trees" USP to be a potentially risky gimmick for the reason outlined above, but that is just my perspective.

Personally, I feel worse for the each and every one of the 7.7 billion people who didn't have a vote in this election but will now reap its consequences.

Terrible, no-good take. It's because of this attitude, totally ungrounded in the political science, that outside the USA we now have to put up with your bad decisions, once again.

Sorry to be so crude but this really p*sses me off. Your side is now losing in almost every single demographic group, the trend is as clear as day. If it were to follow your terrible advice (which fortunately it won't) the Democrats would be permanently out of power and the USA would become a de-facto one-party state. You can't pretend that these people don't exist or that they're subhuman. You have to sully your virtue and talk to them and find some compromises. If not for yourself then for the sake of the rest of us.

Apparently they are legit. But it's important to remember that this is the tiniest of tiny good deeds if you're really concerned about the environment.

Yes, that's obvious. But the cognitive fallacy of small gestures is a real issue, i.e. the problem of people changing their lightbulbs and calling it a day. Especially since there are things we can do that really do make a difference. For example, cutting down on red meat, dairy, and flying. Any one of those will have more impact than decades of using Ecosia.

Privacy is a better reason to use Ecosia.

I must admit that I never get this recourse to the "bad faith" argument. I'm telling you how I see things. Why would I bother inventing something that I don't even believe? Mystifying. If you see things differently, fine. I don't believe I've said anything factually incorrect (again: why would I bother playing games?). None of this is hard science anyway, so others can judge the arguments on their merits through the prism of their own values.

And now I see that you've been downvoting my comments systematically. Personally I consider that to be the virtual equivalent of shouting someone down in a debate. So that's enough for today. Good night.

To invoke a deity, or bodily fluids, or sexual impropriety, was to sully oneself and society as a whole.

The idea that words are somehow as dangerous as physical weapons is peculiarly modern. As is the idea that it is worse to denigrate a group than an individual.

Just the idea that words, alone, can cause harm is a modern notion.

To pursue my point, something is definitely happening on the disgust front. A few decades ago, it was normal in the West to eat offal. Now plenty of Westerners are grossed out when they find bits of bone in their chicken broth at an Asian restaurant. For meat to be widely palatable these days, it has be only the best cuts, if possible in a sealed packet with no indication that it comes from an animal. Part of the explanation is surely a subconscious awareness of the horrors of factory farming. But I think something more fundamental's going on. Something about disconnection from nature, ironically.

Absolutely agree that legislation must bring transparency to factory farming.