Prelude to the Apocalypse

[Sima Tuna]

Time limit for babies (because we don't like losing them) and allow procedures for mothers (because we don't like losing them).

Putting a time limit on it is a compromise that makes young girls make a decision before the baby develops too far. The troublesome debate here is the fact that there's a thing inside a woman that cannot survive on its own and taking resources from the mother against her will. In that state, the moral argument becomes splitered and entirely subjective. There's no agreement and there never will be.

The compromise was already established and it wasn't "extremism".

Allowing the procedures protects women with unwanted pregnancies from having a baby, but that's not by biggest concern. My worry is young girls going to dangerous unlicensed quacks for dangerous procedures that lead to extreme harm or death. Girls will seek out dangerous providers and get hurt if we don't have an outlet.

This is my opinion as well and why I support abortion, even though I would hardly say I LIKE it. I don't think anyone except twitter attention whores "like" the idea of aborting something that could eventually become a sentient human being.

There are a lot of legal decisions we make, not because we think they are fucking awesome, but because the consequences of not doing so are much worse. Legalizing liquor doesn't mean drunkenness, including drunken driving, are FUCKIN' SWEET BRO. It's a compromise. Same as cigs. Same as weed, now. Drunken driving kills. Cigs cause lung cancer. Weed turns people into hippies. All quite unpleasant. But outlawing these things creates a thriving criminal underground which provides the same products to the same customers, but without any safety measures, regulation or legal oversight.

People who want to have abortions will have them. Abortion, by which I mean "I don't want to have a kid, so fuck it I'm not going to," has existed in some form for as long as humans have. There are historical examples everywhere. You cannot ban abortion. Bans don't work. People who can't afford to have kids or do not want them are going to find a way to not have them. There are also legitimate medical scenarios where the mother's life is in jeopardy, or the child was created through traumatic criminal activity. It's unjust to subject victims to repeated violations, just because they had the misfortune to be victimized. And I do value the life of a fully-grown woman above that of a fetus, so a choice between the mother and child is a choice I will always make for the mother, if life is at stake.

The big problem with banning abortion is it's a moral high horse that accomplishes nothing. Banning abortions doesn't actually ban abortions. It just drives law-abiding citizens to underground, criminal establishments. Christocrats need to understand this. Your ban on abortion ultimately does nothing. It creates a lot of suffering and misery while not changing meaningfully anything about our country or people. Whatever point you think is being made is not.

If signing an abortion ban into law meant that the finger of god would come flying down from heaven to poke someone in the eye whenever they thought about aborting, until their eyes were so red and swollen they had no choice but to capitulate and have the child? Then maybe you'd have an argument. Even then, inflation is still sky-high and the working class is poorer than ever. Do you really want homeless people forced to pop out huge families? That's where we'd be. IF a ban could even work.

[BulletMagnet]

I’m not going to give up my energy debating an issue I believe will light itself on fire when the bigger issue is reckless spending in our current economy.

For one thing, I and numerous others have already responded to you on how government spending actually works (i.e. it's not the same as "families budgeting around the kitchen table", and never will be). For another, believing one issue is a more immediate priority than another doesn't preclude you from possessing or expressing a viewpoint on the latter, especially in a situation like this, where health care spending is an absolutely gigantic money hole, and implementing a system along the lines of what the rest of the world has would save us an absolutely huge amount of money. Remember: we spend two to three times as much per person on health care than everyone else, don't cover everybody, and our results are worse.

Even if you don't particularly care about the enormous suffering your fellow citizens are enduring every minute we remain under the current system, on a purely practical front you should be clamoring for change in that area at least as loudly as the rest of us. Instead you seem to prefer, as usual, tying yourself into knots to avoid giving anyone a straight answer once we're beyond the bumper sticker slogan part of the discussion.

It creates a lot of suffering and misery while not changing meaningfully anything about our country or people. Whatever point you think is being made is not.

This argument will simply not land with the religious right, because the "point" is never about what their actions accomplish in the real world, it's about them being able to mark off another box on their personal morality bingo board; literally nothing else matters. Heck, just look at how we got here in the first place; millions of "values voters" cast their ballots for Donald Trump, the most openly, proudly amoral President we've ever had, and lined up in lock step behind Mitch McConnell and the rest of the GOP, who outright stole a Supreme Court seat and dealt an enormous, permanent blow to the democratic process, and precisely zero of them have a single regret about it, because they could cross off "fought abortion" off their list, and the carnage and chaos they left in their wake just doesn't register. For what Jesus called second in importance only to devotion to God itself, "love thy neighbor" gets shafted real quick.

[BryanM]

On the one thing I'll agree with that guy on: with this current crop of Democrats, they could indeed only continue to implement capitalist healthcare plans. They'll never dissolve the insurance industry and crack down on price gouging. Manchin's daughter makes Scrooge McDuck money off of ripping people off with insulin.

Ah.

I kind of envy the dimmer partisan GOP voters, honestly.

Like, take the game Candyland. It's not an actual game. It's more a way to teach small children the basics of a board game. One contrary opinion on it is "if you think it's a game, then it is a game."

So being able to feel HATE for of all people, the Washington Generals, and feeling like you've actually accomplished something when they fold for the millionth time... it must be amazing, getting all those free unearned dopamine hits.

But of course, "winning" when your opponent isn't even playing the game, and always resigns right away... You have to be dumb as shit to feel like it was anything you did to earn a win. Goombas in Mario games do more to oppose you than these allies of capital.

Even if you don't particularly care about the enormous suffering your fellow citizens are enduring every minute we remain under the current system

Oh, he cares. He enjoys it quite a lot. That's the point.

who outright stole a Supreme Court seat

Proper tautology is important here. It wasn't stolen, it was given to them. As a present.

Obama could have seated someone, it he wanted to. They might have been kicked out later, but he could have tried. But just like Ruth Ginsburg, he didn't give a shit about the country falling further into fascism.

List of things Obama cares about:

* Obama
* Making sure nothing bad to capitalists happens

Fascism would be pretty rockin' for the capitalists.

[Sengoku Strider]

I'm predicting the next wave of US conservatism will shift toward support for it, as conservatives do in most every developed country. Blue collar, rural & working class Republican voters suffer terribly from the current system, and they know it. Someone will make a play for that pile of votes.

As ever, you're a lot more optimistic than I am.

Every time someone says "maybe something good will happen" I always wonder... why? Why would something good happen?

I'm going to have to disagree with you on the trend-line on this one. None of the terminally online conservative spaces are remotely open to the idea of cost controls and "free" healthcare. My interactions with conservatives in meatspace concurs. Outright disgust at the idea of helping other people or helping themselves. The ones who claim to support it don't have it as an actual priority, as a thing to actively advocate or vote for.

The next wave of their thought will be the same as the last: "Who can we hurt next?"

I'd love to base this assumption on a belief in sunshine, kittens and an emerging newfound sense of community and universal recognition of human worth, but that part of me died when Peter Moore murdered the Dreamcast.

When I mentioned the next wave of conservatism, it's already been swelling for a few years now. National Conservatism is an organized international movement developing concrete ideologies around countering what they see as a failed (economically) liberal order.



They recognize that the pushes for transnationalism, global migration, womens' rights and racial diversity have been greatly bolstered by corporate forces since the 1980s in the name of greater access to skilled workers, leverage in avoiding taxation and enlarging the worker pool to reduce employee salary negotiation capacity.

Trump's populist appeal was founded on the illusion he created that he represented wealth and power outside of this hierarchy. That he had enough resources that he couldn't be swayed by their influence, and his openly rough character was proof that he not only wasn't playing by their rules, but was openly disdainful of them.

What gets lost in the endless debates around fascism is how openly anti-capitalist it was. They weren't actual socialists like some talking heads want to claim, in practice the Nazis sold state resources off to capitalists they saw as loyal to the cause, but by and large the movement was a drive toward state centralization under what was effectively a technocratic cryptomonarchy. They recognized that capitalists by definition as owners of the means of production represented a competing power bloc to the state, one which invariably came to control it through greater personal access to liquid resource and lack of public accountability. This threat is greatly amplified in a trans-national world, as an Apple or Amazon can just tell an American state either they pay zero taxes, or they move their HQ to a tax haven like Ireland and the politicians who wouldn't play ball lose their next election along with the jobs and economic revenue. Not being able to effectively collect taxes from your largest corporations really cuts into your hunter-killer robot dog budget. Worse, it theoretically boosts theirs.

We've already seen a concerted shift over the past 15-20 years toward authoritarianism globally as a reaction to emerging transnationalism and its threat to the state. Tied in with that, of course, is a threat to nationalism, an ersatz public relations assemblage of the 18th & 19th centuries justifying state power through identification with dominant culture groups. Which is why the reactionary countermovements to "globalism" are couched in appeals to those groups first and foremost.

All of which is to say that I think that next wave on the right is going to be that National Conservatism, framed in terms of combatting corporate regulatory capture in the name of the people and culture. The neoconservative 'corporations will save the world' ethos died in 2008; the tepid response to Mitt Romney on the right in 2012 showed that early on. An anti-elite discourse built on painting corporations as hives of cultural liberalism has been mainstream in conservative circles for years now, intensifying as mainstream social media services clamp down on them while every bank and movie studio flies a pride flag under their logo online.

So, if that's the general pitch the next set of would-be power brokers are going to make, what's the softest sell you can make to the crucial 45-64 & 65+ voter demographics, the only ones that matter? Only 57% of people 65 & under have employment based health insurance in the US. In the 65+ demo, 40% are paying private insurance out of pocket, 45% on medicare or medicare advantage. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr169.pdf

Telling people that new Steel Eagle Plus+ Freedom USA Care Edge is the way to defeat globalism and control access to abortion while not having to bankrupt themselves for a gall bladder operation like those corporate liberals want, will be the easiest 180 they ever did. If they can convince people to drink bleach, live with explosive diarrhea from chugging horse paste and call covid a commie Black Lives Matter hoax even as they lay in the hospital on a ventilator dying from it, all in the cause of supporting the Holy Name of the God Emperor, this'll be a piece of cake.

[BryanM]

Hm...

Obviously there were some who thought Trump was a racist version of Bernie Sanders and wanted that. And dropped him or entered hardcore denial when he proved he was just their version of Obama. A big fat phony.

It will indeed be used once again as one of many ways of standing out of the pack during their Mortal Kombat primaries... and with enough success, it'll become a hollow platitude everyone makes sure to sound like they support it, while actively opposing it, in order for their careers to remain viable. Just like how it is with Democrats now.

But as anything more than a lie to get elected from the unified support of ~30% of the base, I don't see it within our lifetimes. The other factions they still have to appease to form a coalition to beat the Washington Generals' fall-guy are diametrically opposed to it ever being implemented.

... hah, this just managed to depress me, since it reminded me that I'm literally the only person on the planet who bothers to check who owns a politician over on OpenSecrets. Takes two seconds, and tells you 100% of everything you need to know about them. All these dummies past and future wondering why the capitalists they keep electing won't ever do anything anti-capitalist... hah...

On the topic of weird factions, Thought Slime did a video on a fake communist party some months back. I'm not sure if there's an even smaller, more esoteric fringe group than this, somewhere out there, but they sure feel like they're in the running.

In the end, it, too serves the same purpose as supporting better healthcare in conservative circles does: just another way to cast a wider net to gather more people. Like with everything in their recruiting pipeline: If you like Mexicans, there's a conservative group for that. If you don't, oh boy you've got your pick to choose from. And so on, on every single issue. You can join a niche group and pretend to support "gay rights" or whatever it is you care about because it effects you personally, while getting to vote for the red capitalist. It's nice our conservative friends get to embrace liberalism just as hard as the social liberals do. "Conservatives can have a little liberalism, as a treat."

These recruitment efforts to grab these broad groups of people, seem far more proactive than the Democrats' nihilistic strategy of "Hey, at least we're not the other guy, right?"

[Sengoku Strider]

It will indeed be used once again as one of many ways of standing out of the pack during their Mortal Kombat primaries... and with enough success, it'll become a hollow platitude everyone makes sure to sound like they support it, while actively opposing it, in order for their careers to remain viable.

The fundamental calculus is that politicians certainly need money for career viability, but there's no reason it needs to be health vampire money any more than it needed to be the coal industry's, or people heavily invested in fossil fuels and the combustion engine. If you read that Salon article I linked, NatCon's not a fringe thing. The anti-corporate movement on the right is at the centre of things:

...the list of signatories is much longer, and also far broader, ranging from right-wing mega-donor Peter Thiel to former Trump administration staffers Mark Meadows and Ken Cuccinelli, Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, anti-critical race theory activist Christopher Rufo, multiple officials from Hillsdale College — a nerve center of contemporary right-wing politics — and numerous other think tank staffers and writers from across the spectrum of conservative media.

Trumpism is not long for this world, it was never built to last. The right wing establishment always knew they were hitching themselves to an impulsive gambler, who they were only going to stick with as long as he kept improbably rolling 7s.

In the background the authoritarian wing of the Republican party was pitching their tent, and got a lot of traction out of the past 6-7 years. Like, think about how insane it is that the senator for Utah of all places - a state founded by Mormons actively trying to found a territory separate from the US government, who they literally had a war with - tweeted this and got 31 000+ likes:





The replies were eye-opening as well:



Yeah, that's real up-is-down thinking, but "the founding fathers hated it!" shows you how easy that switch will be to flip. The libertarian wing of the Republican party is not the majority, and never has been. The despair and fatalism you express over corporate capture in US politics is exactly the same frustration that's driving this on the right, only supercharged by a deep sense that they've lost the culture wars if they keep trying to fight them on purely discursive terms. It started as the Tea Party, borne of resentment over Bush jr. era policy and Obama paying off the banks for fucking everybody over, and grew into Trumpism as small town and blue collar economies evaporated while identity politics made those same people cultural punching bags for a decade as the demographic needle shifted ever closer toward white minority. Now it threatens to blossom into full-fledged neo-fascism as the freight train of coming crises - fresh water shortages, climate change setting the US south on fire, wealth inequality, mass job automation, you know the list - bears down, and people look toward someone to blame, and someone strong to take the reigns and make it all stop. Health care in an age of ever-widening wealth inequality is an easy carrot to tie to that stick, which will play to both sides of the electorate - especially as millennials age into their 40s.

The most heartening thing that's happened has been the global response to the Ukraine invasion. For all Biden's generic neoliberal faults, I do give him credit for leading that charge, wisely letting Zelensky have the spotlight to avoid it looking like a US thing abroad, while also immediately pushing back on China when they prodded him over Taiwan, and getting Japan to stick their neck out militarily there. That's really the first bloody nose authoritarianism has taken in a couple of decades; a disorganized and apathetic global West looking like they were just going to lay there and let the autocrats roll on was what had emboldened Putin in the first place. It gives me hope that the political will to push back against the coming storm might really be there.

It's what famous Chinese leader Mikhail Gorbachev would have wanted.

[BulletMagnet]

Proper tautology is important here. It wasn't stolen, it was given to them. As a present.

You've said this multiple times before, though I can't help but wonder what you believe the "correct" response to the GOP's refusal to do its job was; and no, "no alternative plan could exist, losing was their goal from the beginning, lol" doesn't count.

It started as the Tea Party, borne of resentment over Bush jr. era policy and Obama paying off the banks for fucking everybody over

You said this a little ways back and I never got an opportunity to respond, but that was not even remotely what the "tea party" was/is about. While its Wikipedia page notes that it's loosely organized and its stated stances and goals can vary, several over-arching items stick out, boldface mine:

The Tea Party movement was an American fiscally conservative political movement within the Republican Party. Members of the movement called for lower taxes and for a reduction of the national debt and federal budget deficit through decreased government spending. The movement supported small-government principles and opposed government-sponsored universal healthcare.

The Tea Party movement was popularly launched following a February 19, 2009, call by CNBC reporter Rick Santelli on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for a "tea party". [...] A major force behind it was Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a conservative political advocacy group founded by businessman and political activist David Koch. It is unclear exactly how much money is donated to AFP by David and his brother Charles Koch.

Fox News Channel commentator Juan Williams has said that the Tea Party movement emerged from the "ashes" of Ron Paul's 2008 presidential primary campaign. Indeed, Ron Paul has stated that its origin was on December 16, 2007, when supporters held a 24-hour record breaking, "moneybomb" fundraising event on the Boston Tea Party's 234th anniversary, but that others, including Republicans, took over and changed some of the movement's core beliefs.

Al Gore cited the study and said that the connections between "market fundamentalists", the tobacco industry and the Tea Party could be traced to a 1971 memo from tobacco lawyer Lewis F. Powell, Jr. who advocated more political power for corporations. Gore said that the Tea Party is an extension of this political strategy "to promote corporate profit at the expense of the public good."

The "libertarian wing" might not be the majority, but it's clearly pulling the strings, has been for a very long time, and almost nobody on the right is actually complaining about it.

[BryanM]

The tea party being co-opted is like Corbyn being ratfucked by the establishment. How easily people are programmed what to think top down is the primary reason I don't think healthcare can ever be more than an empty symbol to these people, like Jesus and the flag are.

This talk of democracy and republic is traumatic to me considering how much I've had to copy pasta the definitions of these words. Democracy means some people can vote on some stuff. A republic is when you don't have a designated king. They're not mutually exclusive things, we are nominally a democratic republic.

Some really Democratic People's Republic of Korea type thing we got going on, with democrats who don't care about democracy and republicans who really hate not having a king.

For all Biden's generic neoliberal faults, I do give him credit for leading that charge, wisely letting Zelensky have the spotlight to avoid it looking like a US thing abroad

Ah, that's true. So I have three things to defend Biden with.

* Ended the occupation of Afghanistan's cities.

* Gave us those tiny Biden bux.

* Wasn't a complete idiot with Ukraine-related diplomacy.

You've said this multiple times before, though I can't help but wonder what you believe the "correct" response to the GOP's refusal to do its job was

The correct response to fascists forcefully taking over the country is to fight back. In this particular case, he could have just sat the guy, and let them kick him out afterward.

Oh jesus oh fuck. I had forgotten Obama tried to GIVE THEM THE SEAT OUTRIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING. Merrick Garland was a republican. Look at all this outrageous fuckery; there's so much of it I forget about a bunch of old fuckery. In MM's alternate universe, Hillary puts Merrick Garland on the court (I vaguely remember her vowing to do so as a concession to the Obama bloc) and he gets the honor of being one of the five or six people who overthrew Roe vs Wade. That would have been pretty goddamned bleak - good thing we're at least not living in THAT particular version of hellworld. Silver linings~

Anyway, there were attempts to justify "just seat the guy when the Senate is out of session" on legal grounds. Teddy did this historically; this Washington Post argues the appointment wouldn't have been allowed to stick, but would have cost Obama nothing but mild embarrassment and improved his reputation in the eyes of his base. The so-called "Hey, our guy isn't a traitor or a cuckold" status, which is very coveted I hear.

I don't have to even advocate for that to answer your question, however. The answer is the same as with the current crisis and every other: ANYTHING. DO FUCKING ANYTHING. Campaign for the seat. Point out what obstinate fuckheads the republicans are being. Make a case to the electorate, at the absolute smallest minimum.

Make a show that you at least fucking care to your own voters. Christ, the man couldn't even be bothered to pretend to care. Pretending, Magnet. The least the Washington Generals can do, is pretend to be playing the game. If they can't even do that, what good are they?

Look at AoC's response to the supreme court. Compare it to Nancy's. Compare it to Biden's. Obama didn't need to be such a turd sandwich. The democrats don't have to be such turd sandwiches.

I agree partially with Matt's assessment of the democrats. They're allowed to obstinately stick around because they give people the illusion of hope. If they ever actually fought for the working class, they would be wiped off the face of the earth.

Anyway, additionally apparently the republicans had the right to do what they did according to the Washington Post Guy, and "the rules". Therefore they did not in fact "steal" anything, if we're gonna play the "well technically" game for a bit. Ergo, the bare minimum you should be demanding of your democrats is to meet them with the same treatment: if they have control of the senate, deny the republican president any seats.

That's incredibly hard to imagine, isn't it? Both the idea of them actually being willing to do that, and the idea of them ever winning the 51 to 53 seats needed. Ah, even if they had 53 seats, they'd get someone else to vote with Manchin and Sinema.. Villain rotation is such a wonderful tool for the party.

It's gonna be even harder to imagine once we don't have pesky elections anymore. That day seems closer than ever this week.

the rules

Are of course obviously another kind of bullshit. Supreme court ruled on a case, and gave Mississippi way more than it was asking for. You can just do stuff. If you actually have the desire to. Intent leads to actions, and actions reflect intent.

Obama sure did a whole lot of politics, when Sanders was going to win the 2020 primary. But with the supreme court seat, he just seemed bummed out his fellow republicans didn't want to be seen working with him. Would've killed the kayfabe their side had going on..

[BulletMagnet]

On the point of intensity, I've agreed with you before on that; if something like what happened to Garland - or, for that matter, Bush v. Gore - had its roles reversed then there would not have been a single moment of silence from the right from that day to this. Imagine the reaction upon telling them to "move on and get over it".

The main caveat I'd dollop on top of that, however, is that if such things had happened to the right, its leaders, elected and otherwise, would have absolutely made open calls for violence, and many of its followers would absolutely have followed through on them; should the left be willing to respond in kind, at least to a greater degree than it historically has been? As the saying goes, there's no faster way to lose democracy than through violence...hence why the right is so down on the former and giddily eager for the latter. How willing should we be to emulate that?

[BryanM]

I do wonder what line has to be crossed before violence and war is justified. There has to be some threshold, some limit where sitting down and waiting to be killed is not rational. There's talk that the supreme court is going to rule that a state will be able to overturn any election outcome it doesn't like later this year in Moore v. Harper. (It's bad enough the two parties can do that outright already with their own internal elections.) Which would be a pretty big hallmark we're living in an early stage fascist dictatorship, when we've thrown out having even the pretense of democratic processes. Though it's hard for me to believe a civil war would happen even as they throw gay people into gulags and chop up people's family members in their homes. Generations of grooming for this day, we're the perfect cattle for it.

It feels like gaslighting to say one person in one election could have saved us from all this. Wishing for a James Comey or Merrick Garland to be our savior... that's just obvious desperate bargaining with God.

God ain't on our side. I don't wanna live in this version of hellworld, either..

should the left be willing to respond in kind, at least to a greater degree than it historically has been?

The thing is, that the government has forcefully suppressed leftist enthusiasm and aggression in every way that they could. Did the black panthers strike you as particularly wussified, or were they big proponents of the 2nd amendment themselves?

We've seen the difference in treatment: leftist militias are disrupted, infiltrated, killed and arrested. While the Cliven Bundy goons could literally point guns at officers and have nothing happen to them. Go ahead and read the outcome of the trials they held after, it'll be good for your psychological health I promise.

You might recall me mentioning the Chapo reddit was banned because people there remarked that they thought John Brown was a hero. From suppressing speech and gatherings, to purging political groups off the map, to the FBI making MLK's life a lot worse than it had to be...

We've already lost. There's no fighting back. Assume the victory position everyone, it's over.

Big announcement from the Biden administration today: it will give Steve Jobs and John McCain posthumous presidential medals of freedom.

[cave hermit]

Eh, no point in worrying about the state of the world. Not gonna matter when you die and your consciousness ceases to exist. Who cares if you cure cancer or stay a NEET your whole life? Either way your consciousness will cease to exist so in the end there is no functional difference to you. Yeah you might feel good if you cure cancer and make a positive impact on the world, but when you're dead you will feel nothing forever, that memory of making a positive impact will cease to exist, and the whole thing will functionally be pointless.

[BryanM]

That's a very optimistic way of looking at things.

Counterpoint: You might have no choice but to continue to exist indefinitely in your personal subjective universe. Better root for Boltzmann brain isekai, looping, or oblivion 'cause quantum immortality sticks you here for a long, long time.

All of those seem pretty far-fetched sans oblivion or looping, but so is existence itself. Full of impossible primordial Harry Potter nonsense poo-poo, like hydrogen and jellyfish sex.

... and hermits are as dependent as anyone on the outside world not becoming a blood bath. : (

[BulletMagnet]

There has to be some threshold, some limit where sitting down and waiting to be killed is not rational.

I really really, really hate talking in these terms, for the same reason I'm so opposed to the proliferation of guns on the grounds of "it makes me feel free and safe" - speaking for myself, knowing that so many people, including quite a few people unlikely to use them responsibly, are walking around with the ability to end me or anyone else with a twitch of their index finger frankly makes me feel a great deal less free and safe.

To take it a level deeper than that and more directly relate it to the current conversation, when people say they need a gun to "feel safe", in my view if they're speaking honestly (how many actually are is another matter entirely) that signals a massive failure of society at large, because in what universe does constantly looking over your shoulder to determine whether or not you need to use deadly force constitute "living freely" in any remotely meaningful sense? As such, if we're truly living in a country where we need to be legitimately fearful of violence from people who disagree with us - and not only that, people who have not been "backed into a corner", but have been getting exactly what they voted for for decades on end and still aren't satisfied - even if I was innately willing to meet violence with violence, I have a hard time getting terribly excited about what kind of outcome awaits on the other side.

The thing is, that the government has forcefully suppressed leftist enthusiasm and aggression in every way that they could.

That all being said, while we're talking about inexcusable societal failures it's an utter travesty that, say, the Coal Wars are so seldom even touched upon in American education. In part because we're busy dealing with shit like this.

Yeah you might feel good if you cure cancer and make a positive impact on the world, but when you're dead you will feel nothing forever, that memory of making a positive impact will cease to exist, and the whole thing will functionally be pointless.

The over-arching question, I would posit, is how you honestly answer the question "is my ability to feel good about myself the primary driver for everything I do".

[cave hermit]

My ability (or lack thereof) to feel good about myself is a nonfactor. I don't eat because I appreciate some intrinsic value in my life and wish to maintain it, I eat because either I need a quick dopamine rush or because it is a basic necessity to maintain a state of relative physical comfort and maintain my existence. At best I am on par with a semi-trained monkey, taught through carrot and whip to perform arbitrary tasks semi-reluctantly in exchange for grapes. Having a master's degree just means that I am better at Simon Says than most, and can thus play it at a higher difficulty level in exchange for more Good Boy Points than my peers. What about this justifies feeling any value in my life? All this means is that I am able to better meet my capricious whims in an effort to find novel means of stimulation that happen to suit me. That, and I can be physically comfortable and maintain my bodily functions.

Why do I play video games? For stimulation and dopamine release. Why do I have cats? Why do I seek attention and engage in parasocial relationships with influencers online? The human brain is wired to seek social stimulation in exchange for the release of dopamine.

I do not feel good about myself. I will never feel good about myself no matter what I allegedly accomplish, what I own, what I do, what friendships I hold, instead I may or may not feel good. Not about myself, I will just... feel good when dopamine releases. Maybe. Equally likely I will not release dopamine, and I will feel nothing but emptiness.

The primary driver of my life is the pursuit of a mixture of physical comfort and dopamine release. Oftentimes I find myself in a battle between desire for physical comfort (lying for hours in bed or on the couch), desire for novel stimulation and subsequent dopamine release (playing a video game), and obligations (work) that would allow me to continue pursuing the first two.

Ultimately this is what I believe drives the continued desire to live, a neurotransmitter arbitrarily set up to trigger electric signals in the brain in a feedback loop in order to motivate actions which maintain one's own life and the continuation of the human species. No different from a single cell organism ultimately in that it is built as an organic machine for the purpose of existing and producing more of itself. Nothing more. I have no "purpose", nor does anyone else.

[BulletMagnet]

No different from a single cell organism ultimately in that it is built as an organic machine for the purpose of existing and producing more of itself. Nothing more. I have no "purpose", nor does anyone else.

I'm frankly not enough of a philosopher to delve terribly deep into this sort of thing, but I do like to think that, even if the raw chemicals involved are the same, there's a difference between the feeling you get from a good meal and the one you get from helping somebody else; as the saying goes, a civilization is only truly great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they will never sit.

Is the distinction merely a product of my own imagination? Perhaps, but it still means that I'm not entirely at the mercy of chasing the next dopamine rush no matter where it comes from; I can choose what kind of stimulation I seek, and moreover choose to bestow upon someone else their own "rush" in the process, even if I'll never witness it myself; at the risk of being over-dramatic, it's tempting to posit that how many of us choose to spread the dopamine around, so to speak, will be a crucial determining factor in how long we last as a species.

[cave hermit]

Yeah, perhaps it's just because I'm both prone to bouts of depression and spent most of my time on this planet studying biology that I think of everything in such a reductionist way.

And I believe it was Nietzsche himself who postulated that this type of nihilism would inevitably lead to the collapse of society and potentially the human race.

I don't know, in the end I just want to be happy. I have trouble with that.

[BulletMagnet]

I don't know, in the end I just want to be happy. I have trouble with that.

In otherwords, you're human. In addition to the whole dopamine thing, I would suggest that this is another reason we eventually seek each other out in some capacity no matter how down on life and each other we get; somewhere in the back of our minds we all know that to figure out these sorts of dilemmas we need to search for and rely on more than our own limited individual experience and perspective. As in replay sharing, so in life.

[orange808]

Getting older helps. Having a family helps, too. I don't know if it happens overnight, but it felt like "comfortable in my skin" dropped out of nowhere. We aren't pretending or lying to you, though. Many of us are actually quite content to be "us".

I can even feel strongly about things and have things that frustrate me (we all have that) without it affecting my day to day. I easily get lost in whatever I'm doing.

Although, I'm a fortunate bloke. I never had trouble sleeping or concentrating. I never understood why people need to get drunk or high, either. I like being in my head; it's great in here.

Stopped worrying about the things I am not a long time ago. I have a hundred year old grandparent that's been telling me this stuff the entire time. It's all true. I only hope I can enjoy knowing what I know for as long. Being "here" is pretty great.

Another cool thing, I grew up with a lot of better looking and richer people. A lot of them are still the same miserable people they always were. World on a stick and it wasn't enough. Ha.

The best? When someone that's a mess gives me life advice. How to figuratively sweep my life garage for the neighbors to see. I don't smile and nod in agreement; I nod in sympathy. They don't understand.

[BryanM]

Not even a week has passed and Biden appoints another lifetime judge for McConnell >_<

How can anyone pretend they're on different sides of anything >_<

To take it a level deeper than that and more directly relate it to the current conversation, when people say they need a gun to "feel safe", in my view if they're speaking honestly (how many actually are is another matter entirely) that signals a massive failure of society at large, because in what universe does constantly looking over your shoulder to determine whether or not you need to use deadly force constitute "living freely" in any remotely meaningful sense? As such, if we're truly living in a country where we need to be legitimately fearful of violence from people who disagree with us - and not only that, people who have not been "backed into a corner", but have been getting exactly what they voted for for decades on end and still aren't satisfied - even if I was innately willing to meet violence with violence, I have a hard time getting terribly excited about what kind of outcome awaits on the other side.

Well, welcome to a society built on genocide and slavery, that continues to run on slavery. Try not to be too surprised as it decides to cannibalize itself for sustenance.

As George Carlin said, bullshit is the glue that holds society together. A world without bullshit, it's at least a lot more intellectually honest. At the cost of everything unraveling sure... but I personally really hate bullshit.

Ultimately this is what I believe drives the continued desire to live, a neurotransmitter arbitrarily set up to trigger electric signals in the brain in a feedback loop in order to motivate actions which maintain one's own life and the continuation of the human species. No different from a single cell organism ultimately in that it is built as an organic machine for the purpose of existing and producing more of itself. Nothing more. I have no "purpose", nor does anyone else.

I actually agree with you a great deal. Activity rotation is such a necessity to keep the dopamine flowing, as the diminishing returns on doing the same thing all the time are a bitch. (I definitely wouldn't be into doomwatching if it didn't bring me such joy. I'd probably be like one of those denial birds, otherwise.)

The social animal part of us is the most annoying thing - having such a chunk of our happiness being dependent and under the power of other people. Needing a tribe to connect to to remain sane.

As I've said before, I envy these people who are like robots.

[BulletMagnet]

Off to the side, a writeup from a few years back that I hadn't happened upon before which some of our more... "creative" types would do well to keep in mind: once you posit that objective facts aren't important and can always be massaged into something more convenient, you don't gain the ability to dissent from prevailing narratives, you surrender it.

[orange808]

Bezos strikes again. Fundamental misunderstanding of markets, he claims.

Let's look into it, shall we?

Here's the truth: Oil doesn't cost more to pump. So, you're relying on market price alone as a rationing mechanism on a core economic commodity. Huge profits roll in and low income people experience de-facto pay cuts. Obviously, that can't go on forever.

So.. What's more efficient? Implementation of policy at the corporate level to lower prices at the pump or all the extra (hated) "bureaucracy" of government windfall taxes and consumer subsidies? Obviously, you can't allow core commodity prices to spike too high and stay there. At some point, some pragmatic policy may become necessary. Only a person with a fundamental misunderstanding of economies and the real world would think high gas prices are a good idea. (Looking at you, Macron, you rube.)

So, in effect, cutting out the middleman (in this case the government) is a "misunderstanding of economies"???

Or, is asking the polite thing to do before moving on to taxes?

lmao! Bezos comes off as a dim thick rube. As usual.

Doesn't cost more to pump the oil and the windfall tax mechanism will arrive eventually. That's why asking for a degree of self-regulation (however unrealistic) is a good place to start before you move to other measures.

[Sengoku Strider]

It started as the Tea Party, borne of resentment over Bush jr. era policy and Obama paying off the banks for fucking everybody over

You said this a little ways back and I never got an opportunity to respond, but that was not even remotely what the "tea party" was/is about. While its Wikipedia page notes that it's loosely organized and its stated stances and goals can vary, several over-arching items stick out, boldface mine

Reading it, that Wikipedia page says the same thing I did, though:

Early local protest events

Some of the protests were partially in response to several federal laws: the Bush administration's Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008,[95] and the Obama administration's economic stimulus package the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009[96][97] and healthcare reform legislation.[98]

Sure, it built off the head of steam Ron Paul had garnered, but that in itself was in no small part a product of right wing animus toward W. I think the truth is the Tea Party flourished as a locus for general anti-Obama "ZOMG HE'S BLACK AGGHH" sentiment and frustration with the erosion of the middle class, rural & blue collar communities and the widening wealth gap. I don't think there are actually that many people willing to get out in the streets and spend their Sunday afternoon screaming about the deficit and administrative budget policy. The Koch money came in when it was clear they had something with loud populist energy worth boosting.

If I gave the impression that I thought the Tea Party was about healthcare, that wasn't my intention. Only that it was the beginning of a right wing populist movement that with time warped into something very different, and ultimately will again. For instance the Freedom Caucus presented themselves as the elected face of the Tea Party movement, yet became ardent Trumpists despite the fact that he can't even spell fiscal responsibility. Politicians are either opportunists, or unemployed.

[BryanM]

"Right wing" + "populist" is such a cartoonishly ridiculous non-sequitur, isn't it? No wonder the only thing they end up ever doing ends up as fascism. It's like anarcho capitalists. Or liberals, and their denial of all the genocide, violence and slavery everything runs on.

People are weird.

All these people have one common fundamental drive: "Fuck you, gimme lewt." Who says it's not like sports teams.

Ron Paul

He always amazed me, whenever he'd run for president and garner only 8 to 10% of the GOP voting base.

They're not voting on policies, they're voting on charisma and cruelty. The cruelty is the point. Ron presenting the policy minus the cruelty was like watching Data try to appeal to humans, just missing the point completely. A bloodless robot is not what they want; they'd be democrats if they weren't into blood-soaked vampires.

Democrats: The vampires who take a shower once in a while.

[BulletMagnet]

If I gave the impression that I thought the Tea Party was about healthcare, that wasn't my intention.

Not health care, but "fiscal responsibility", particularly in terms of "bailing out the rich", which is also exceedingly hard to swallow, considering, as you note, that these "fiscal hawks" - both elected officials and rank-and-file voters - overwhelmingly supported a guy whose original tax cut proposal would have cost a trillion a year, and still march behind him in lock step after his signature achievement in office was - say it with me - an immense tax cut almost exclusively aimed at the wealthy.

Again, you semi-allude to this yourself, but it's quite telling that they had little to no problems with Bush Jr.'s own profligate spending (or Bush Sr.'s...or Reagan's) in real time, but only bothered to lump him in with The Establishment - remember, he was, just like Trump, The Manliest of Men, Standing Tall Against the Leftist Conspiracy when he was gallivanting around Iraq - once Obama kept spending after Bush was gone. It was never about fiscal responsibility or even where the spending was going - it was exclusively about who was doing it, same as it has been for a century or more, and always will be.

[orange808]

If I gave the impression that I thought the Tea Party was about healthcare, that wasn't my intention.

Not health care, but "fiscal responsibility", particularly in terms of "bailing out the rich", which is also exceedingly hard to swallow, considering, as you note, that these "fiscal hawks" - both elected officials and rank-and-file voters - overwhelmingly supported a guy whose original tax cut proposal would have cost a trillion a year, and still march behind him in lock step after his signature achievement in office was - say it with me - an immense tax cut almost exclusively aimed at the wealthy.

Again, you semi-allude to this yourself, but it's quite telling that they had little to no problems with Bush Jr.'s own profligate spending (or Bush Sr.'s...or Reagan's) in real time, but only bothered to lump him in with The Establishment - remember, he was, just like Trump, The Manliest of Men, Standing Tall Against the Leftist Conspiracy when he was gallivanting around Iraq - once Obama kept spending after Bush was gone. It was never about fiscal responsibility or even where the spending was going - it was exclusively about who was doing it, same as it has been for a century or more, and always will be.

Well, sure. The last Republican administration with a balanced budget was Nixon.

Don't forget Trump's other signature accomplishment: that huge unfunded pork military spending program that isn't funded with tax money or offset with any cuts. Pork. Unfunded. Irresponsible.

Instead of tax and spend, it's spend and spend. That's the Republican way: debt.

Obviously, if that wasn't their modus operandi, they would have some example of their responsibility in the last 60 years. Sixty years qualifies as a trend.

So, what do the dumber than dishwater plebs do? Send the "tea party" to Washington to attack some of the lowest taxes since WWII--because (apparently) taxes were keeping their precious innocent GOP from ever keeping a promise. Even when democracy is working, it isn't working. The whole thing is ridiculous and the people voting don't know/care about what's going on. It's all bullshit.

[Sengoku Strider]

It was never about fiscal responsibility or even where the spending was going - it was exclusively about who was doing it, same as it has been for a century or more, and always will be.

Well it's easy to be cavalier about all those minor details when you clearly don't understand the truth about the Deep State and the cosmic battle for the collective souls of humankind at stake.



Hillary would have sold the good sun to communist China or MS-13. Trump saved the free world from certain doom countless times. Was 4 years of outright economic banditry really such a steep price to pay?

[BryanM]

Just imagine being Joe Biden. The man spent his entire life desperately wanting to be president more than anything else. And now that he's there... what was it all for? What was he hoping to get from out of it all?

Apparently: he wanted to gladhand around the fancy dinners, and have his bros pat him on the back. While quietly helping republicans transition us into fascism whenever he can. Have another three or four of nine hundred lifelong judges, guys. As long as you keep being his friend, it's more than a fair trade to him.

This kind of thing always reminds me of the scene in American Psycho where they're comparing the business cards. What absolute empty shells of people.

I can kind of understand the Chapos' love of Hunter. The poor kid grew up in this kind of environment? He'd have to be an absolute soulless sociopath to have been happy playing the role that was decided for him.

Ah, Joe Biden. An example of the free market at work: other politicians could be bought, but not as cheaply as this guy was willing to charge.

Spoiler

[BulletMagnet]

Was 4 years of outright economic banditry really such a steep price to pay?

I know you're trying to lighten the mood some here, but we really need to stop pretending that the right's willingness throughout essentially the entirety of its ranks to instantly abandon the principles and causes it says it stands for to "own" its opponents can be pinned primarily on the lunatic fringe, or even the far greater number who pretend to identify with the fringe. Spite, even (and perhaps especially) self-destructive spite, is literally the only thing holding modern conservatism together, whether expressed loudly and proudly or obediently and quietly.

[Mischief Maker]

Spite, even (and perhaps especially) self-destructive spite, is literally the only thing holding modern conservatism together, whether expressed loudly and proudly or obediently and quietly.

But have you considered the possibility that the left has gone too far?

[Sengoku Strider]

I know you're trying to lighten the mood some here, but we really need to stop pretending that the right's willingness throughout essentially the entirety of its ranks to instantly abandon the principles and causes it says it stands for to "own" its opponents can be pinned primarily on the lunatic fringe, or even the far greater number who pretend to identify with the fringe. Spite, even (and perhaps especially) self-destructive spite, is literally the only thing holding modern conservatism together, whether expressed loudly and proudly or obediently and quietly.

I think you've hit on something else altogether - which is that the whole notion of right and left, especially as constituted in the United States, is a chimera of functional convenience and little more.

The Republican party is a contradictory alliance of neoliberal capitalists, ardent evangelicals, libertarian individualists, authoritarian traditionalists, and people for whom the closest thing they have to an ideology is a vague, ill defined white identitarianism.

These people aren't all under the same tent because they have a shared core ideology per se. They have venn diagram overlaps, or are part of voting blocs who don't get along with rival blocs that wound up getting offered what they want by the other guys. At any given time one of them can swell to the forefront and represent the party through the power of majority or back room politicking. And many of them have learned to mouth each other's platitudes in the name of electioneering and tribal allegiance.

But if they ever actually made all the sissy leftists disappear in their mythical Ten Days of Darkness, day 11 would be the party fracturing along its inherent fissures and turning upon itself as the freedom and individual responsibility crowd went knives out with the God, king and country contingent. And lose badly because the authoritarians were way better organized.