jj4211

Pretty much this, and all the focus on the presidential election when they have some shot at winning some districts and such.

Here's the thing, in a sane world, the president wouldn't matter quite so much. If you actually had a more reasonable legislature, they would have the political will to actually hold the president accountable for going beyond his scope.

That is to say for those wanting a more "perfect" president than some moderately inactive centrist, don't expect that out a country like this. It's a singular position and really should be the second choice of people who want a more hardcore candidate, with a failure to build consensus on 'the' hardcore candidate.

When I called them out on it, they said I was absolutely correct and apologized.

You see, this story I could believe until you said a republican actually conceded being wrong, I don't know if I can believe that...

You know what would be just hilarious? A land of peace, wellness, and equality.

They don't have to take it away, they can just set up the backend to blackhole those requests. So presence of the report issue facility does not imply they actually will ever even see the issue.

I think the education is tricky, as you have competing interests and you have people countering education by calling it indoctrination. A huge part of the foundation for the situation today started with the conservative radio shows and fox news stepping up to start undermining education, to eventual great effect.

The engagement I kind of have the opposite view. If you can't be bothered to understand the candidates and the issues, then you shouldn't feel pressure to vote.A lot of engagement efforts say "you should be ashamed if you don't vote, it doesn't matter how you vote but just vote". If you are there to just "mark your team" or fill in the ballot according to whatever person hands you a pre-filled "ballot guide" on the way in the door, maybe don't sweat voting. Voting for an outcome without any effort to understand the consequences of that vote is worse than abstaining from a vote.

I can understand there are a lot of races, and my response is that there would be no shame in voting only for the races you can educate yourself about. A partial ballot is fine.

Assuming he is sincere, then I'd assume that he would say that it's not "their" protests at that point but the participation of others.

Under Harris, they stay isolated without energized allies as most people are relieved with the status quo. They hope that Trump pushes things so far to perhaps even cancel elections and trigger a violent uprising that opens the door for them to ultimately win and that is their opportunity to finally replace the status quo. A very dangerous game where a more likely outcome is a far right authoritarian state with lots of suffering and lives at stake, but that's a risk they are glad for everyone to take.

You see this in their rhetoric, that it's not their fault for failing to support a viable alternative to Trump, it's everyone else's fault for failing to agree with them, and maybe now everyone will learn their lesson and agree with them.

I've had conversations with them and they hold that democracy is the wrong way. Essentially they think the citizenry are too stupid and/or lazy to decide how things should be governed. This is pretty much the horseshoe effect, both the far right and far left want to replace the democratic system with something else. If someone doesn't 100% agree with them, they must be wrong and their perspective must be ignored, and democracy means actually trying to work with such people. So they prefer to take their chances with prodding a violent conflict since they've figured they can never win peacefully. If they can't have the presidency, then who cares. No patience for capturing local and legislative offices.

The far right was more effective strategically, playing the game until they could unleash. They played the game with the republican party according to the rules, and then won.

He is such a good role model for being wealthy.

He is, when it comes down to it, pretty wealthy. But we are talking about the guy who created the kernel that now runs nearly every Internet service, all Android phones, most streaming devices, and a lot of various embedded devices. Anyone else with that much impact would be a billionaire many times over.

But he's got a comfortable amount and has not exercised unreasonable ambition. A man who did someone very valuable and was well rewarded and sees no point in being any better off than he is.

The text instead of talk is pretty situational from what I see. Young people still will gleeflully hang with open mic on discord with their friends. One on one phone calls are certainly more rare, but I know my kid spends more time talking on discord than I ever spent talking on the phone growing up (sharing the house phone). I don't know if anyone is particularly excited about video conferences, certainly in my adult life video-capable meetings are the order of the day, but the cameras are generally off. It's way more convenient than the meeting calls of old.

From what I've seen while they are playing 'music videos', it's frequently just in the background and they aren't watching it, it's just a convenient way of getting the audio since youtube has it all and is the most convenient interface. There were more radio stations than MTV/VH-1, so it wasn't as convenient to just let MTV/VH1 be your audio back then as it is for youtube to be your music.

feels upset at being heartbroken

Here's where the word "upset" having multiple meanings can be a problem.

If he is upset, as in sad and/or confused, ok, that's a reasonably expected reaction.

If he is upset as in angry about being turned down, then he's being pretty entitled and has criticism coming.

In terms of things having gone too far, it's simple enough. We are connected all the time and we can find al sorts of echo chambers and be in contact with that circle 24/7 using online engagement where we can just turn off/ban anyone that we don't feel like dealing with. This fosters a strange mix of overthinking things, contagious pessimism, and isolationist behavior. People need more balance with more real life interaction.

That's not true! That's impossible!

Sadly every major power tends to be the baddies to some extent, it's how they get to be and stay major powers. We just get to grade on a curve. Nazi Germany really set the curve and the US got to be the pretty unambiguous good guys, at least up to the firebombing campaign in Japan, the nuclear bombs, and being complicit after the fact in Japanese atrocities by shielding them from consequences.

While we have an "ambient" level of baddie-ness most of the time, we at least have balanced it out by sometimes defending against unjust violence and providing humanitarian aid.

Now Trump seeks to turn that baddie scale up to the max while simultaneously cutting out all aid efforts.