Prelude to the Apocalypse

[orange808]

Liberatian? Go to El Salvador.
https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-ameri ... l-salvador

You belong there, libertarian. Bring your gun; you'll need it. Good luck.

You're free. Everyone else is, too. Remember that last part.

[vol.2]

Juggling is really one of the greatest low effort - high reward skills someone can learn. Anyone can learn to juggle three things at a time in an afternoon. It's the exact opposite of learning a language.

... juggling five or more things though, that's gonna take some work and commitment.

My dad's HS friend taught me how to juggle at a family party when I was like 12. My BFF was hanging with me and the guy taught us by having me and my buddy throw the balls to each other in the juggling pattern from across the room. We did that until we got the rhythm down perfectly, and then it felt a lot easier to do it solo. Four was learning to juggle 2 in each hand separately, and then start crossing them over. I never learned 5 and I'm sure I'd fumble 4 for a good week or two before getting back up to speed because it was hard.



About learning jP. It's pretty difficult for me. I had a very good reason to learn it at one point, but I never got fluent, even after taking multiple classes (both college and private) over several years. Over covid, I finally started getting better, and it was online learning tools that helped me the most and seem to match my learning style. I have less of a reason to know it now, but I still like manga and I think it would be a kick to read some things in the original. We also frequently work with Japanese people at my company (automotive related), so it would be genuinely helpful if we didn't have to wait for someone who can speak English for even simple communications.

I like this online service. There are some great things on the forum like book clubs where you can buy a book (or ebook), and read along with everyone else and it gets translated little by little. I found it super encouraging to actually get directly into reading and getting through a (very simple) book, because it gives you sentence structure, which is very hard to get just doing sentences in workbooks (for me).

[Sengoku Strider]

it still reminds me of Maddox's rant about science.

Wow, I Fucking Love Science, I completely forgot about those days. I can't believe that was only 2012. I wonder how many of the Neil DeGrasse Tyson superfans could name a single academic thing he ever published. I completely forgot he and Dawkins were co-popes of the early 2010s meme-atheist boom.

Existential Comics saw through the guy.

I get your point of view of having an authority figure guide people and a social environment to keep them motivated, especially for normies, but I've always looked at learning new things as a very internal thing. And external interactions can be a hindrance.

The thing is that there is no better cognitive load bearer for modelling and internalizing action than another human being. The increase in semantic memory associations you get from a human doing something vs. a piece of paper doing something are pretty significant. You never get away from the book thing either way, serious courses will want you to do 5-10 hours of self-study a week.

... since we're off topic on Japan

There is no way Japan will not be at the centre of the apocalypse in some fashion or another.

[BryanM]

Trump Visits The Libertarian Convention sounds like an Always Sunny episode title. His antics brings up a couple more libertarian classics.

Not satisfied with that "let's make it legal for people to sell their kidneys, everyone's got two anyways!" article, here's a throwback from 1979: Let's Legalize Baby-selling!

"If the argument is difficult to endorse, the reason may lie in our emotions—our feeling, perhaps, that money and babies don’t mix. Consider, then, what would happen if a zero price control were imposed on another commodity, one which does not engage any of our deep emotions. Take apples, for example. What would happen if a zero price control were imposed on them? Obviously the incentive to bring apples to market would be eroded. Farmers, forbidden to charge for their product on the legal market, would sell them elsewhere—or not at all. And no one would think the ensuing shortages of apples mysterious. No one would be surprised at the long lists of unsatisfied customers waiting for the few apples that were available. Or at the “unscrupulous” black market sellers who would violate the price control law and sell apples at high prices in the dead of night. Few people would blame the disturbance on greed, or profiteering. It would be clear to all that the cause was the law itself. So it is with babies, and with “black market” adoptions."

I see no problem with this plan.

Also Gary Johnson got boo'd by the audience for saying he supports people needing to hold a license to drive. Not as hard as Trump got boo'd, but ya'know.

commercializing space

One of possibly the biggest errors of all scifi is it has a heavy emphasis on humanity still mattering. If space exploitation is going to be a thing, it's going to be accomplished through heavily autonomous machines. (My head canon for Alien is that humans were used instead of robots because the meat bags are dirt cheap in-universe. I really liked the '80's style sleazy cocaine and hookers style capitalism. I think that's core to Alien - as soon as you start in with the 00's "progressive" capitalism it just falls apart. The cocaine and hookers are still their sole motivation, but now they wear a teletubby mask over themselves. Like we're children who don't know.... and sadly, many of us are.) If AI really works out, we'll eventually be a post-human civilization.

Free Guy might be a better documentary of the common human being's actual day to day living experience than anything else. That's if we enter a good timeline where technology works out and we're all living in a utopia, for some reason.

... Free Guy is seriously like the only Hollywood movie post-childhood I've watched and really enjoyed.... Just very joyful, no cynicism from me, srs.

The increase in semantic memory associations you get from a human doing something vs. a piece of paper doing something are pretty significant. You never get away from the book thing either way, serious courses will want you to do 5-10 hours of self-study a week.

And neither can really compare to the stimulation of TV or gamified software. ("[TV] talks to him more than you ever could.")

I have come to appreciate some of the materials we use on children as basically SCP objects. Cognito-hazards.

For those who haven't looked at it, have a watch and listen to Baby Shark. This franchise has many... many hours of content.

Jincan isn't just for super horny gacha game art... it applies to utterly everything. Gotta keep turning that dial up....

even if your hobby is war crimes....

[Sengoku Strider]

libertarian classics.

Honest to God, booing Trump might be the first thing I've ever respected them for. Yeah, his entire neo-pharaonic ideology inasmuch as he has one flies in the face of everything they purport to believe, I still didn't expect them to do it. So many of them are there precisely because they want to be exactly what he is.



Yes, that's the exact resolution this anime-Joker-sniper-Dude ancap meme was uploaded to DeviantArt with. It's perfect.

And neither can really compare to the stimulation of TV or gamified software. ("[TV] talks to him more than you ever could.")

On a gestalt level I don't think that's true. A real person in front of you, interacting with you in a small space is more salient to more parts of you than a screen is going to be. It engages with embodied co-identification as well as social equipment that's related to survival equipment, both in positive terms of communitas and concomitant threat of marginalization from it. Much of the appeal of digitally-induced flow states is how passive and low-stakes they are, but salience ramps up in the other direction.

Note that's not me saying a person is automatically going to be the thing to get the most information into you; they're hard to rewind if you space out, that same social equipment might induce counter-productive anxiety, and the person might just suck at explaining. I'm shifting gears here away from classroom stuff to personal domain, but when I think of all the toughest concepts I had to learn, it definitely wasn't a book or video or Anki or anything that finally got me through them, it was because I had a girlfriend I could go back & forth with, and who was much more salient than some anime drawing posing as a digital teacher.

[BryanM]

Kind of the entire reason the libertarian party exists is because they don't give a shit if the republican wins or loses. Much how the green party feels about dems. They're bombarded constantly by "you gotta fight the greater evil" checks constantly, throwing another one at them would never work.

Andrew released a boomer skit recently. I figure orange at least might enjoy it.

[orange808]

What gets me about the libertarian crowd is their passionate pleas for ideas they don't really believe in. They will line up for government assistance in Texas after tornadoes and storms. They could have saved all their money just in case of a problem, but they didn't. Who will they blame? Not themselves. They love a fucking social safety when they need it.

They love law and order when it protects them. They love property rights when it's theirs. They definitely love the benefits of law and order, because none of them are moving to El Salvador. There's plenty of freedom there. They love a safety net when they have a disaster. They love licence plates when they help catch a person that committed a crime that directly affects them. We can go on and on. Many of them will chirp about gun laws if their kid gets popped at the movies.

Libertarian is just another way to say "I'm a dim thick selfish fucking cunt". They just want to get their way. Well, congratulations. We all feel that way sometimes, but the world cannot function that way.

Andrew released a boomer skit recently. I figure orange at least might enjoy it.

That's perfect.

[BryanM]

Labour expelling a lady for liking an old clip of known anti-semite Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz is just another of those things. Always nice being reassured we're not the only country with two right wing parties. We can all be doomed, together. Don't you find that cozy?

Some feller claimed current polling uses "pre-2020 census figures".... I dunno about that. Maybe Covid did have an impact on the electorate enough to push pass this thin line, lord knows the margin is small enough for it. But it also smells little like unskewing the polls, 2012 style. Romney team seriously thought they were gonna win.

So I guess this is a good time to repost some 2012 content.

Spoiler

... I really do feel like team Biden's trying to get the young people turnout rate as close to 0% as possible. It's hard to imagine the party ever being removed from the hands of capital interests in our lifetimes.

[Sengoku Strider]

34x guilty, y'all got to feel me.

I assume from here on out he gets 6-7 years of appeals before anything happens?

It's hard to imagine the party ever being removed from the hands of capital interests in our lifetimes.

They've been running and building your country half of the time since 1828, they are the capital interests. Taking that out would just Rumpelstiltskin them out of existence.

[BulletMagnet]

I assume from here on out he gets 6-7 years of appeals before anything happens?

I wouldn't mind this part so much if I had any faith whatsoever that this result - or literally anything else - will exert one iota of influence on the millions of insufferable people who continue to insist that they're only thinking about handing the executive branch back to unrepentant dyed-in-the-wool authoritarians, but totally haven't decided yet, just trying to be open-minded.

[BryanM]

I assume from here on out he gets 6-7 years of appeals before anything happens?

It's gonna be a lot, lot shorter than that.

"Can the president pardon himself? One side says 'yes' and the other says 'maybe'. Perhaps the truth... is somewhere in the middle!"



...But what's really fucking stupid about all of this, are the people acting like they're nailing him to a cross or something. What's his punishment gonna be in the absolute worst case scenario?

"as a first-time, white-collar offender, no jail time is necessary, and he could receive probation instead."

............ yeah. That's what I thought.

if I had any faith whatsoever that this result - or literally anything else - will exert one iota of influence

Same words could be spoken re: Biden re: genocide.

The Trump people can swat any moralizing aside with a simple "all wealthy people do the same thing" and go about doing what their group decided they were gonna do anyway. Lord knows the Hillary people used the same kind of reasoning about that server in her mansion's basement meant to avoid Freedom of Information Act requests.. They need him to be their guy, just like they needed her to be their gal.

Looks like it's war with Iran and if Israel really has some nukes they might detonate a couple or three. Fun times ahead, boys.

[BulletMagnet]

Same words could be spoken re: Biden re: genocide.

Just going by the amount of pushback they're getting from within their own parties and voter bases - and yes, it should be a lot more in both cases - Biden is certain to lose significantly more votes, both base and "swing", over Gaza than Trump will from this trial or any other. Just how much remains to be seen, but I can guarantee you significantly more people will abandon him than will ever abandon Trump.

Hell, weren't you the one insisting that Gaza is the latest "proof" that the Dems are paid to lose and nothing matters? If Biden's voters were as immovably cultish as Trump's how does that make sense?

[BryanM]

Hell, weren't you the one insisting that Gaza is the latest "proof" that the Dems are paid to lose and nothing matters?

Why are you using quotation marks about a known fact? Do you also do the same thing about "rayleigh scattering" when someone "says" the sky is "blue"?

Quotation marks take a lot of effort to type. Don't think that I don't know what a pain it is to squiggle your hand to press the shift key with your pinky.

If Biden voters were as immovably cultish as Trump's how does that make sense?

I was obviously talking about the subset of diehard supporters who won't be moved, and are in fact hardcore pro-genocide. Why pretend Biden doesn't have his own hardcore fans? Not all the Dark Brandon memes are ironic. You keep doing this thing where you flatten and simplify entire groups of people into one blob.

George Bush 2 killed his party and opened us up for a path toward socialism. Obama was elected to be the next FDR, and wasn't. So here we are again now, Joe Biden killed his party and opened us up for a path toward fascism. Trump will be elected to be the next Goldwater/Reagan/Hitler. (Different people have a different preference of which of the three they'd prefer.) He'll either be one of those, or he won't. Whether he kicks off the Iran war or not will decide.

Why do you think of these things in terms of scoring points in a soccer game? (Please stop watching TV news immediately if that's something you've been doing. There's healthier alternatives. Like meth.) People's feelings are determined by the environment they're currently living in. The genocide is one thing. The price-gouging on groceries, everything being shit, and nobody having hope for the future are others. Different people have different opinions on different things.

There isn't some kind of point system where one guy will gaffe too much, and a -1 value will be applied to a voter's brain and suddenly they have a sudden existence failure like in an RPG.

Hillary or Trump being convicted of a slap on the wrist is the least of what anyone cares about. As would icky personal life details like Biden smooching his great granddaughter on the lips at a campaign event (why do I have to have this image burned into my brain), Hunter snorting cocaine off a hooker's sausage, or Trump lusting after his daughter.

[BIL]

Quotation marks take a lot of effort to type. Don't think that I don't know what a pain it is to squiggle your hand to press the shift key with your pinky.

Wait, don't people just use their right index finger on the right shift key?

EDIT: oh. Right pinky, rather.

Never mind me. Both hands are 98% crab after three years of FromSofts. And god knows what other DNA-rewriting bodyhorror done on N64. That's real crab, not that "crab-flavoured" shit!

[Sima Tuna]

34x guilty, y'all got to feel me.

I assume from here on out he gets 6-7 years of appeals before anything happens?

He's unlikely to see any jail time. I saw optimistic fuckers trying to say he could get 4 years with the charges against him. Bro, a first-time offender with his level of fame and money facing down a four-year stretch? He ain't gonna do a single motherfucking day. And that's not even counting what happens if he becomes President.

The real case against him is that confidential documents one, and I don't think it'll reach any conclusion before the final election results are in. The judge in that case is highly... Let's say "sympathetic" to Trump.

As always with Trump, it's win big or lose everything. His future and legacy are completely tied up in this second presidential run. He gets in, pardons himself and is bulletproof. Or else he loses and everyone abandons him + big dick federal government oils up his hind end for stealing state secrets.

[BryanM]

Or else he loses and everyone abandons him + big dick federal government oils up his hind end for stealing state secrets.

That "reverse Eugene Debs" scenario for 2028 would probably be the best scenario.

For the record, I'll make it clear to those who don't understand humans that I think Biden winning would be the lesser evil for this cycle. But I don't have strong confidence in that and won't fall into pieces when he loses. Like always, it's bigger than one old man or another.

That article going around really sums it up. "A dying empire led by bad people."

If I was a billionaire class traitor, I'd create a propaganda cable channel that appealed to rural americans. Guys like Beau are basically invisible to MSNBC. And I feel like a lot of that loud, fast, petty "soccer goal point" ("Benghaziiiiiii!!") chatter does turn off a lot of normies from politics. Which is of course what it's designed to do....

Like I said before, you've gotta be a masochist freak. Oddly a personality trait that really helps aid one in the mastery of shoot'em uppin'. Neat overlap, there.

[vol.2]

That article going around really sums it up. "A dying empire led by bad people."

Idk. I really think there's a pretty big difference in the person that Biden is and the person that Trump is. Also, it would make me more stressed out to have to listen to more of the Trump crap for another 4 years, and whatever else he's going to do (resume gutting the EPA , NOAA and the IRS comes to mind immediately).

[BryanM]

Idk. I really think there's a pretty big difference in the person that Biden is and the person that Trump is.

They're both fundamentally gangsters on a pirate ship whose personal motivations in life are driven solely by how much loot they can acquire for their themselves, their families, and fellow gang members. Their wealth comes at the cost of everyone outside of that clubhouse. Trump set up the situation for the current genocide to be inevitable, and Biden keeps feeding it all while making condescending "I'm so saddened by this thing I have no power to stop" noises.

Spergs who actually know the career history of Segregation Joe feel this with all the sincerity of Elliot Spitzer's frowny face.

Spoiler

Cosmetic preferences and feels are as good as any reason to prefer one over the other. As our emperor said, the culture war is the only thing we're allowed to fight over..

[vol.2]

Cosmetic preferences and feels are as good as any reason to prefer one over the other. As our emperor said, the culture war is the only thing we're allowed to fight over..

I think there's a whole lot more than "feels" at stake. I'm not under any illusions about the damage the neolibs have done and will do, but I'd still prefer them and keep the little bit of social safety nets we still have. I have friends at NOAA and the FDA, and things got really bleak there during those 4 years. Make not mistake that he's immediately gunning for every public agency that is trying to keep our air clean and keep poison out of our food and anything else that costs money for corporations to worry about.

Maybe it's just a matter of time before we lose all that crap anyway. It's a freaking miracle the NEA still even exists, or the NSF, but I'd like to live in a world were they do for as long as possible

[BulletMagnet]

I'm not under any illusions about the damage the neolibs have done and will do, but I'd still prefer them and keep the little bit of social safety nets we still have.

We've already been through this: cancelling medical and student debt, increasing IRS enforcement of high-income tax cheats, bringing back net neutrality, outlawing non-compete clauses, keep right on going down the list: none of that is allowed to count. As he acknowledged himself some pages back, just as nothing Trump does will ever change his supporters' minds, there is literally nothing the Dems can do to change the en vogue "they're not really any better than their opposition and anyone who thinks so is lol" narrative.

A doomer is what happens when an "enlightened centrist" trips and falls into a goth teen's laundry hamper. Moreover, unless I imagined it, in a recent video concerning the campus protests the aforementioned Beau had some rather harsh words for that particular mindset.

[Sengoku Strider]

The AI that Bezos has directing the Washington Post has Trump's name on the front page 40 times today.

Spoiler

I'm idly wondering if the Borg media will try to find a way to replace him with another similarly load-bearing name. You can't manufacture a Trump, he's a unicorn, but they've got to try, right?

[BryanM]

I'm idly wondering if the Borg media will try to find a way to replace him with another similarly load-bearing name. You can't manufacture a Trump, he's a unicorn, but they've got to try, right?

The man built his own brand over decades.

Greene doesn't have buildings with her name on them, but I think she can build up a presence in people's brains with her antics. At this point I don't think anyone could win a GOP primary without antics.

Can you even imagine them nominating a Romney or Rubio? Big lol at the vision of these empty suits having to serve an unhinged lunatic for the rest of all time. Textbook dog-catching-the-car.

Listening to five seconds of Trump after the conviction yesterday was exhausting. Like a reverse Sanders, every conversation is bent toward hordes of trillions of criminals flooding our borders. Like the jet fuel can't melt steel beams thing, schtick gets exhausting when it's repeated so much.

there is literally nothing the Dems can do to change the en vogue "they're not really any better than their opposition and anyone who thinks so is lol" narrative.

You keep using "literally" when you mean "practically". Literally they could stop pushing us towards fascism and stop being the servants of capital.

Do you not give a shit about the ratchet effect even a little, tiny bit?

How did you feel about the 2020 ratfuck voltran? Did you lol? Did you nod your head and say that's democracy? Did you say "it's their party and that's their right?" Did you think it was fucked up? Did you think it might lead to some problems later on?

Did you think to yourself "huh, nominating the guy who's seventh place in the primary might lead to difficult general elections?"

And who picked Biden as the nominee, again? Whose fault was that? Who thought that the current situation we're in was not only acceptable, but the best, most optimal of all possible worlds?

Party bosses. Nobody else is to blame.

"enlightened centrist"

... I've always wondered this when you jumped down Jon's throat many years back, but you really don't see people as people.

.... and I thought **I** was an apocalypse aficionado. It must be exhausting living in a 24/7 fight or flight mode, with seeing everyone with a differing model of reality or values an enemy, with every single election being an existential threat to humanity.

Despite your efforts, I still think Biden is the lesser evil.

[BulletMagnet]

You keep using "literally" when you mean "practically".

"...but there's no way they'll ever do even one of those things and they'll never be persuaded to no matter how much pressure we apply, and anyone who thinks otherwise is in a self-induced coma."

Despite your efforts, I still think Biden is the lesser evil.

"...but still not worth actually supporting, and anyone who does is also a fascist."

[BryanM]

Worried about Jamaal Bowman. As one of the nine human beings in the House, the guy's got a target on his back. The money's trying to bury him this cycle.

Really hoped he might have been able to move up, in around 12 years or so...

"...but still not worth actually supporting, and anyone who does is also a fascist."

I googled these words but they don't seem to exist anywhere outside of your personal mind palace.

See, this is what I'm talking about. Right here. You dehumanize and create conflict where you don't have to. Look at what normal people above do: they admit democrats are fairly shit, but the alternative is worse. And we all nod our heads and say "that's fair" and move on with our lives.

This thread is nine years old. If you cared even the tiniest bit of my point of view on the world, you know that the thing I care about the most when it comes to politics are the primaries. About what the future will look like.

I ask you how you feel about the 2020 ratfuck voltran. You dodge. You deflect. One of the most important events in human history, and you have absolutely nothing at all to say about it.

Why? What are you trying to accomplish here?

Are you doing that thing where you make people hate you so you can feel good about your hate of them? Is this what this is?

If you want to make stuff up and be toxic, that's fine, but it's getting us off topic about replacing everybody with robots and fascist clowns and other assorted symptoms of cannibalistic late stage capitalism.



I know the ratfuck voltran gnaws at you deeply. Like how zealots bring up stuff they don't care about as a shield to waste other people's time and energy getting them to punch a bag that doesn't matter. All the while the underlying things they care about (in the case of Trumpers, their status in society, what they were told to believe in their childhood being disparaged as "bad", their fear of their upcoming death both personally and culturally) goes protected.

What you pretend to ignore gives it all away. I know all these tricks, they won't work on me. I'll never hate you. In fact, I worry about you a lot. Reflect on why the ratfuck voltran makes you feel like it does, and try to adjust your world model.

[Sengoku Strider]

You guys. Everyone has grumpy internet days. And everyone's mood determines cognition, just think how different the world looks when you're hangry. Actually maintaining a consistent set of views takes writing out a manifesto you can refer back to and sticking to it instead of writing from the moment. Humans aren't built to do it naturally even though we maintain the illusion of internal consistency.

I mean, just look at this woman. One minute she's in rapturous joy because God's told her everyone's about to win the divine lottery with an imaginary financial system that makes no sense...



...then the next she's directing people on Facebook to blow up Stonehenge, the Pentagon, the Vatican and the Hoover Dam for excessive Satanism:



And the Three Gorges Dam for some reason that I can't parse. That thing already did its evil damage. Even for them, QAnon is not dealing with the verdict in any kind of a healthy way. (105 shares!)

[BulletMagnet]

I ask you how you feel about the 2020 ratfuck voltran. You dodge. You deflect. One of the most important events in human history, and you have absolutely nothing at all to say about it.

I'm pretty damn sure I've expressed considerable dismay at the lengths Dems have gone to ensure the most corporatist entities among them wind up at the top of their ticket, 2020 included, and the results that this MO has wrought - if this has seriously somehow eluded you all this time, consider this my definitive effort to make you not hate me for my own psychological indulgence.

I am also incredibly confident, however, in asserting that I have been exceedingly clear as far as declaring, in absolutely no uncertain terms, that, even factoring Ratfuck Voltron into the equation, "one side is bad, but the other is much worse," and moreover arguing that the "less bad" side is worth attempting to build something off of, as opposed to you, who insists that even that portion is too far gone for any rational person to bother with. As you rather memorably put it, as far as you're concerned the plane is in flames and going down, and while the rest of us idiots are vainly trying to do something about it you're content to sit back and roast some marshmallows (i.e. "move on with my life").

If I've missed something here, then feel free to clue me in: if nothing else, now that the primaries are all but done and the nominees are set unless someone dies, do you plan on participating in the political process any further until the next primary - assuming there is one - or just glance out the airplane window occasionally to scoff as you watch the mindless ants scurry to no avail?

[orange808]

As you rather memorably put it, as far as you're concerned the plane is in flames and going down, and while the rest of us idiots are vainly trying to do something about it you're content to sit back and roast some marshmallows (i.e. "move on with my life").

I'm curious what you're doing that's moving the needle. I am virtually certain it's not doing anything about Trump.

The president isn't chosen by popular vote. Even if you could find a unicorn swing voter in one of the isolated geographical locations that matters, you couldn't possibly persuade them.

They have already heard the message. "Not Trump." We both know it's not a strong argument or campaign. Looks like you're going to hit on one out of three with that shit. That's lousy.

If you cared, you would have been demanding change in the party from the moment Biden got elected. What were you doing in 2020? Celebrating, kicking back, and hoping something might change?

Hey, no worries, mate. If they say something about doing something and then decide not to do anything, that's good enough for you, right?

You realize that other people are intelligent and strategic, right? You realize they have you figured out and they're going to string you along as much as possible, right?

And, at what point am I allowed to check out of a silly bullshit game that is completely rigged? What exactly are you doing that's going to do any good? Knocking on doors doesn't matter. You're not going to change a Trump fucker's mind. Increasing turnout brings out more Trump voters, too. Are you functioning under the idea that only your kind of voter stays home? I also wonder if you've come to terms with the fact that your generation is full of Trumpers and your entire age group will move right with every passing year.

Remember when your demographics were destiny? Guess again?

[BulletMagnet]

So according to the local "people who vote (outside of primaries ) are clueless cogs" contingent, in heaven knows how many years of posting I've managed to simultaneously not highlight the "one side is bad, but still much preferable to the other" perspective enough and also devote myself to it excessively. FML, I guess.

Speaking of people who will never change their minds no matter what, orange, it's become apparent to me that in your mind, for whatever unfathomable reason, I'll seemingly never be anything else but a financially-secure semi-retired conventional boomer (every last word of said description is as laughably wrong as it ever was, btw ), and attempting to convince you otherwise brings back memories of the depressing amount of hours I wasted on the likes of Rob and quash, so you'll have to forgive me for sparing myself the keystrokes.

All I'll add - another thing I've said on numerous occasions before, to predictably be completely ignored, but what the hell, one more for the road - is that if you want to take the "even the 'better' side isn't worth supporting" perspective, go right ahead, but keep two things in mind:

- In insisting that incomplete half-measures are not, in fact, better than nothing, you're employing the exact same "argument" that the right uses to refuse to get behind the most baseline, common-sense initiatives, i.e. "This gun control legislation won't prevent all shootings, so I refuse to support it". Or, for that matter, Trump's own infamous insistence that the GOP refuse to support any border bill "unless it's perfect".

- For all your insistence that people like me who try to get something small enacted - through conventional means, even - are more concerned with our own comfort than anything else, remember that when those like you turn up your noses at very imperfect but inarguably positive efforts to make the country more broadly live up to its potential, the ones who end up suffering the most are the most marginalized groups whose rights and property are the first and most intensely targeted when services are summarily gutted and freshly-appointed judges legalize discrimination against them. So feel free to refuse to support anything or anyone that "feels icky" to you even if it would objectively improve the lives of people who desperately need it (or at the very least prevent them from getting worse), but also acknowledge who, exactly, is declaring their own personal comfort paramount in the process.

[orange808]

Speaking of people who will never change their minds no matter what, orange, it's become apparent to me that in your mind, for whatever unfathomable reason, I'll seemingly never be anything else but a financially-secure semi-retired conventional boomer

Nope, I assume you're younger and you overestimate your support and future support in your age group. You have this unwavering faith in human beings that isn't supported by history. Human beings are awful and they don't usually get any better with age.

- In insisting that incomplete half-measures are not, in fact, better than nothing

What half measures? What accomplishments? Nothing. The last thing that got done was a health care package that guaranteed that rich boomers would have bankruptcy protection from health care bills. That's the only thing that got done and it was over a decade ago.

- For all your insistence that people like me who try to get something small enacted - through conventional means, even - are more concerned with our own comfort than anything else, remember that when those like you turn up your noses at very imperfect but inarguably positive efforts to make the country more broadly live up to its potential, the ones who end up suffering the most are the most marginalized groups whose rights and property are the first and most intensely targeted when services are summarily gutted and freshly-appointed judges legalize discrimination against them. So feel free to refuse to support anything or anyone that "feels icky" to you even if it would objectively improve the lives of people who desperately need it (or at the very least prevent them from getting worse), but also acknowledge who, exactly, is declaring their own personal comfort paramount in the process.

That speech would carry some weight if Biden had any accomplishments to hang his hat on. And, the lack of support for change in the legislature is a symptom of the Democratic retreat into neoliberal right wing politics.

There's only two parties. Stop worrying about donors. You're guaranteed to get on the ticket. And, if one party dominates everything, you become the underdog. You're gunning against the establishment. That would have stripped Trump of his "outsider" status and hit rich media moguls with a nasty ultimatum: support Trump 100% or allow change. Obviously, they would take Trump--and it might have burned them.

Didn't need donations. Just needed a backbone. The Dems are guaranteed a spot at the table. They're on the ballot--even if they are pennyless underdogs.

But, your milquetoast idea is better? I don't think so. I'm done with the cowardice. Even billionaires would struggle to erect a true complete third party from the dust in a few years. They couldn't have countered a Dem revolt fast enough.

I'm also tired of campaigning on left wing fantasies. We can't open the border. We can't save the world. We need a standing army and we need police. We need to strike some kind of balance, but it will always be imperfect. Stop selling utopian bullshit. And, tell people that aren't being realistic to shut up. I don't need the left wing bizarro version of unrealistic libertarians messing things up--and I know the difference between Bernie's brand of realistic and Hillary's neoliberal lies about what's "realistic".

Campaign on domestic issues and don't tell people fairy tales. Also, stop the virtue signaling and all this "nice guy" shit. Nobody cares. The center right Democrats choose to lose, because they don't really want to win. It's true. The extreme right actually wants to win.

And, when some cunt says the voters need a say in Supreme Court justices, you play that card in return. You filibuster until the Republicans get rid of it. (That's what we want, anyway.) You demand the voters have a say until you win enough seats to get your guy. You make up excuses and obstruct every step of the way. Nobody cares if you're an adult. I'd refuse to confirm a GOP justice until we've had a presidential election and votes for every seat in the legislature. If I don't have a majority, point out that the presidential election is just around the corner. Stop being a doormat. The right isn't going to change and people don't care; people don't choose Dems because they are "adults". You're not impressing anyone with that act.

Know why the Dems don't fight back? They don't care.

[BulletMagnet]

That speech would carry some weight if Biden had any accomplishments to hang his hat on.

*sigh* ...I literally listed a handful of them just a few posts up, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch more - heck, just the other day the IRS announced it was planning to expand its pilot program to allow taxpayers to directly file for free like most countries do, as opposed to trusting Intuit and H+R Block to voluntarily forego profits (spoiler: they didn't). Maybe none of these things qualifies as an "accomplishment" in your book, but every last one of them is a step in the right direction, and sorry, but not only will you never see anything close to this with the GOP in power, but if they retake it they will roll every last one of them back. Full stop.

I'll say it for approximately the millionth time, though I'm no more confident that you'll actually internalize it this time either: no, the parties aren't nearly as far apart on a lot of things as they should be, but they aren't the same. No, the Dems haven't fought nearly as hard on a lot of things as they should have, but they have made things happen. The former parts of those statements are opinions, on which you and I agree - the latter parts are facts, which one of us acknowledges and the other does not.

Again, if you want to claim that what the Dems have done "doesn't count" for whatever reason and write them off as "just as bad as the GOP" go right ahead, but again, realize that in the process you're telling the people who are benefiting from the efforts that have been made, seemingly in pursuit of making your "humans are selfish bastards" mantra a self-fulfilling prophecy, that their welfare just doesn't particularly matter to you.