You’d think it would be a win, but honestly Trump is a clown. More “centrists” who detest Trump might rally around someone like DeSantis, that’s what I’m afraid of.

I like the “formally” vs “formerly” suggesting Elon is never going to get away from Twitter in favor of X

Hey man, nice tittles

Wow, I don’t think I’ve seen an edgier comment on the whole of lemmy.

You sound like you’ve got a lot to lose.

Telling me I’d like to watch it all burn, and then calling me a political pacifist in the next breath?

Yeah. You’re actively expressing both of those views at the same time by thinking yourself higher than the society you live in.

Anyway, the debt isn’t a tangible thing like you seem to think. And you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about, and I won’t take on the responsibility of teaching you how to use a search engine, so I guess this is where the edgy comment chain ends.

Have fun in your cabin in the woods, brother. The rest of us understand what it means to live in a functional society. It’s not worth engaging any further with someone as far gone as you are ✌️

Aiding the less fortunate in society benefits everyone, same as maintaining roads or building libraries.

For decades republicans have artificially raised the bar for that aid and lowered the aid actually received, for no reason than to appeal to the crowd that thinks taxation is theft but uses modern public amenities anyway.

The rampant cutting of those benefits and handing the rights over to corporations is one of the major reasons we have a nationwide health care crisis, just for one example of how those cuts end up hurting everyone.

Being self righteous about doing nothing is worse.

Despite your own brand of defeatism in insisting the outcome is the same no matter what, one side actually is better. Even if the metric of “better” pales on the grand scheme of what we deserve or should be doing.

I’m not trying to project self-righteousness by recognizing that there are only two real choices. I’m asserting that advocating non-action or pointless action is such a tired trope that what you’re doing is circlejerking for dopamine instead of applying what little influence you have as an individual to work toward the avoiding the actual worst outcome.

When the American populace as a whole is brainwashed into believing the only choices are red and blue, you have to accept that whining about it and voting green (or not voting) is going to accomplish nothing.

So make your colorful allegory and feel good about yourself on the internet. In the end, you are accomplishing less than the people you look down on who recognize the shitty reality of our situation.

The debt will never come calling if calling on the debt means destabilizing the world economy. I’m sure you’d like to see that, but virtually every single player in that debt doesn’t.

So take your cryptic misinformation and go hide in a cabin in the woods. Meanwhile, the adults who understand that shit doesn’t get done by itself will be picking up the mess that political pacifists like you leave when you cower behind the notion that both sides are the same.

🙄 “Both sides”

Vote 3rd party and shut up then. I’m tired of hearing about how both parties are “equally bad”

The fact is that things tend to change for the better under democrats, albeit slowly. Republican judges just today gutted a long standing regulatory precedent that’s going to pave the way for capitalists to bleed Americans dry.

One party is luke warm. The other one is actively and progressively destroying our nation. I won’t entertain the idea that they are even close to the same.

I think it’s a fair thought that any form of life doesn’t perfectly recycle their resources and all forms of life give off waste for other life to utilize. That said, a reasonably advanced civilization might just inevitably grow to the size where the waste they put off makes their planet unlivable for them before they can take action to control it.

For us, it’s carbon dioxide.

Get out of here with your “both sides” garbage.

I’ve never had someone left of center tell me a whole group of people deserve to be locked up or killed. I had a right wing nut tell me just yesterday that all lgbtq folk are complicit in rape and pedophilia and deserve to be hanged. Sadly, that’s not even close to the only time someone has said that to me.

Both sides might be part of the problem here, but only one side is off their fucking rockers.

I like the idea of an infinitely exponentially growing base of users seeking help from some poor call center

Antarctica is technically not a country

Obligatory “Sounds like Nightvale” post

That vapes cause popcorn lung. Only specific vape juice that isn’t sold anymore or hard cbd oil in a vape caused popcorn lung.

That isn’t to say vaping is good for you. It just doesn’t cause popcorn lung

Something like that happened in my town. A husband and wife owned two Chinese buffets across town from one another both called Hong Kong. They divorced and each kept one, but the husband renamed his Blue Fin. Blue Fin shut down about a year later but that other Hong Kong is going strong.

“Give me all of your money and god will cure your cancer!” obvious scam and a lie.

“Give me all of your money and god will make your credit card debt vanish” is another thing I’ve seen mega-church types say.

Incidentally, there’s a conjecture around Christian circles I’ve seen that says these kinds of actions are what the phrase “thou shalt not take the lord’s name in vain” actually warns against.

Not cursing, as it has become commonly associated with, but the literal act of using the lord for vain purposes. Like saying “Give me your money and god will cure your cancer”

Now and laters used to be actually hard when you first put them in your mouth and softened up as you chewed. I know it was terrible for my teeth, but I miss the ultra chewy texture those had dearly.

Look, I’m not going to sit here and debate the ethics of a precautionary behavior with you because you, like many other men, misinterpret the behavior itself as a slight against men as a whole.

There’s no way I can do that without venturing into the realm of defending that kind of prejudice, which you’ll inevitably take as an invitation to just say is wrong on principle.

I’d probably say they are prejudiced but that might be out of fear rather than malice and rather focus on what to do about that.

Here’s the thing. The kind of person you’ll be responding to will cover their ears and say prejudice of any kind is wrong. You won’t convince anyone that way.

I literally had someone tell me the last time I had this discussion that the act of determining to do something based on the gender of someone is the very same as determining to do something based on their race. So it’s also racism.

There is no winning that. Once someone is bent on being against prejudice on any order, they will make false equivalencies to bludgeon their point.

that might be out of fear rather than malice and rather focus on what to do about that.

Let me ask you something: For a solution short of reeducating the world’s men, how come the onus is on women to be forced to take a chance with someone who they don’t know how they’re going to react?

Why are we looking at a situation where a woman might say “I shouldn’t walk alone from the gym to my car because there was this one guy staring at me and I saw him go out just before me” and saying “That woman is obviously a bigot, what can we do to correct that behavior?”

I honestly don’t think there’s anything to do about this. There’s no way to make women be less prejudiced against men in these situations that doesn’t also inherently raise their risk of being assaulted.

The only thing left is a man who will insist that a woman take the chance of raising her risk so that his feelings don’t get hurt. But here’s the thing. The worst that can happen to that man is his feelings get hurt because a stranger doesn’t trust him. The risk to a woman is an actual, physical thing.

How come?

I directly answered that in the same comment. Unfortunately, people who are offended will find a reason to take exception of the situation. There’s no amount of drawing examples that will satisfy the type who only sees that they personally are being attacked and not that it’s more about mitigating risk.

I try to illustrate the reasoning every time. As I have with the following example I made to you. The usual reaction is “well actually the woman in question is still a bigot for avoiding me on the street because she doesn’t know me”, or a similar sentiment in which the offended person runs head first into the point and still misses it.

I’m not talking about someone switching to another side of the street because of my gender or skin colour or any other reason one might discriminate, but rather the discussion that talks about a group as thing singular thing and makes it seem like it was all of of them. Not to mention going after people who obviously take offense to being labeled in such a way. I find it fucked up and I don’t see any reason to do that.

Well first, I’d like to congratulate you on being the only person I’ve encountered so far who’s interested in the discussion and not the reaction.

But also, I’d like to say that anyone who hears the reasoning “women have to be cautious around men because some men are capable of violence” and jumps immediately to “women think all men including me are violent and that’s wrong” is sorely missing the point.

No one is going after men who take offense at that line of logic so much as those men who are loudly voicing their misunderstanding of a concept which goes on around them all of the time that they have only just noticed. It seems that your concept of “going after those men” is just people who understand the situation trying over and over to explain it.

As someone interested in the discussion side of this issue and not the actual conflict, which you seem to understand, please tell me how you would handle someone strongly asserting to you that women are bigots because they avoid men or treat them differently when they don’t know how they’re going to react.

I’m interested to hear how you might improve an exchange with someone who doesn’t allow the reasoning that women should be allowed to cross the street 100 ft before crossing you in the interest of their safety.