But if someone just votes for the other main party to the one I do, who cares?
People who will get hurt by that other party gaining the presidency, or people who care about people getting hurt. Or just people with an ounce of empathy.
None of which seem to apply to you.
Fuck that, and fuck you. They made their bed. Lying in it is the natural consequence.
For me, it’s super easy. My “normal” relationship with Trumpers is one of intense scorn and derision because they’re terrible people that I want nothing to do with. So nothing’s going to change for me.
It’s pretty simple: they willingly sacrificed every last ounce of humanity for a grifter / bully. They’re not coming back. Chasing after the relationship you used to have with them before they decided to embrace virulent hatred is a losing proposition. Sure, you can mourn that lost relationship, but hoping that they’re going to magically see the light and stop being the human equivalent of anal warts is only going to cause you further disappointment and pain.
When there were three TV stations, did any of them highlight police brutality? Overincarceration? The military industrial complex?
This is a very fair point. True, having very limited news options didn’t allow for a lot of deviation in agreement on observable reality, but to your point, it could also easily paper over a lot of very ugly parts of the actual reality. Chomsky writes quite a lot about this in his book “Manufacturing Consent”, which basically is a dive into how media organizations can be used as the propaganda arm of the government. Everything from choosing what you show to choosing how you talk about things goes towards bolstering an underlying narrative that you want to project.
I’m not sure what a solution would look like, if one is even possible. But solution or no, the narrative divergence in this country has primed us to detest each other, which is the first crucial step towards mass violence.
I’m less worried about that, not because there aren’t evil people among the Democrats, but because the Democrats are positioning themselves as the anti-fascist party at the moment. Starting up a fascist movement of their own at the moment would be bad business.
Long term, though? 100% agree. Can’t trust none of these fucks. Hopefully, the Interstate Popular Vote Compact kicks off before that happens, and we can do away with the EC. Won’t completely solve the problem, but it will help.
True, but have you looked at the “intelligentsia” of the Republican party? They’ve got nobody. Just grifters and sycophants. It’s one more small mercy. Obviously, this situation can’t be counted on to continue indefinitely, but once Trump is gone, the only thing ready to take his place is Trump-based nostalgia, and people looking to profit off same.
I think that the US is primed to have a civil war. Ever since Reagan fucked the fairness doctrine in 1987, we’ve been getting more and more divided. Gonna sound like an old fogey here, but it used to be that everybody tuned into the same news, and watched the same anchors deliver the same updates about the same world events. We had differing opinions on world events, but we all agreed on what was and what was not reality.
We don’t have that now. It’s like two completely separate universes occupy the same physical space. In one universe, climate change is fueled by anthropogenic forces and is causing more and more catastrophic damage, viruses are real and vaccines are effective tools to combat them, and thousands of traitors tried to overthrow the government because their cult leader lost an election. In the other? Climate change isn’t real, and also the Democrats have secret hurricane machines that they are using to punish Florida for being a red state, COVID isn’t real, and also it’s a super virus concocted in a lab in Wuhan at the request of Hillary Clinton, vaccines don’t work, and also vaccines are secretly a government tool to kill people, and Jan 6th was a peaceful protest of patriots, and also it was a violent insurrection by Antifa.
We don’t share the same reality with each other. In one reality, Democrats are basically similar to milquetoast conservatives from any other first world nation, and they care much more about maintaining the status quo than they do about making progress. In the other reality? Democrats are evil incarnate, and they’re waging an active campaign to round up all of the patriots and send them to concentration camps, and they’re also pedophiles and Marxists. In that reality, it’s far more preferable to vote for a dead pimp than it is to vote for a standard, run-of-the-mill Democrat.
And it’s not just the whole two-realities thing. Ever since Obama became president, the brains of a huge chunk of people in this country just broke. Some of the nicest-seeming people you’d ever met instantly turned into vile, hate-spewing racists, and started mass subscribing to every single conspiracy theory feed out there. That was 16 years ago. Their rhetoric has been getting more violent every year since. That’s to say nothing of the huge increase in terrorist incidents since then - according to the CSIS:
The number of domestic terrorist attacks and plots against government targets motivated by partisan political beliefs in the past five years is nearly triple the number of such incidents in the previous 25 years combined
So yeah. I think that this country is primed for organized, mass violence. At this point, all that it’s lacking is the organization. Thankfully, Donald Trump is an incredibly stupid man. I don’t think he’d be capable of organizing people to that level. He can stoke their hatred, for sure. He can inspire the craziest among them to firebomb a mosque or shoot up a Democrat’s office… but he ain’t built to lead people. If someone who had even 1/10th of his prowess as a cult leader, but who was actually intelligent and had a tactical mind came along… hoo boy.
It could also be interpreted as a criticism of Libertarianism. The first two pigs didn’t go by any building codes, and instead decided that they wanted to build their shelters out of inferior materials with substandard protections against high winds. The third pig made sure that his dwelling met hurricane standards, and was saved. The story doesn’t go into the reasons why pigs #1 and #2 chose inferior building materials, so it could be interpreted in a number of different ways. It doesn’t HAVE to be about economics. It could just be that pigs #1 and #2 were big fans of Ayn Rand and reaped the whirlwind as a result.
Here’s a good write-up of it. It’s pretty hilarious.
God, imagine living in a retirement community that has a Hot Topic.
Socially awkward slaving, raping immigrants.
Huh. I wonder if he was also socially awkward when he was raping Sally Hemings (starting from when she was 14 years old, younger than his daughter Abigail, whom Hemings was sent to care for), or when he convinced her to leave the relative safety of France by telling her that he’d emancipate her children, or when he was like: “lol u thought” and kept them enslaved for the rest of his life. So socially awkward. Such a quirky guy.
I think you’ve got some very mistaken ideas about who Democrats are if you think that a supermajority of them would be totally up for implementing a slew of progressive policies. They’re way more progressive than the Republican party is, for sure. But that’s such an incredibly low bar that it’s laughable. Democrats will do things like make Cesar Chavez day a holiday, or fly BLM and LGBTQI flags, but expecting them to actually pass legislation that addresses the root inequities in a meaningful way is an uphill battle.
I love SIGBOVIK - truly some insane projects are presented there. Like Tom Murphy’s projects of creating a hard drive from pings, or using AI to create uppest and lowest case letters. Or reverse emulating a Nintendo (which is a particular favorite of mine).
One other project that I really love was presented at the 2021 Sigbovik: Fontemon, created by Michael Mulet. It’s a full-blown choose-your-own-adventure game in a font. Truly insane. Here’s a short video showing the basics of how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY1hDQMeU3A
Jesus; I had to nope out of that trailer after like 10 seconds. It’s just too god damned creepy. Some uncanny valley lookin shit right there. It’s even creepier than “The Polar Express”. They actually paid money to produce this bullshit?
I think it’s not so much about the genders of the shoppers, but rather their approach to shopping that is most telling. I take after my mother: I’m a Combat Shopper. When I enter a store, I have a specific plan of action, and my goal is to execute it as swiftly and efficiently as possible and get out. My father, on the other hand, was very much a lookie-loo shopper. He would spend hours at the store slowly walking up and down every aisle trying to think if anybody he knew would want whatever bit of tat was on the shelves in front of him. Drove me fucking nuts to shop with him.
I think that combat shoppers can shop with other combat shoppers, and lookie-loo shoppers with others of their ilk, but pairing one with the other is a recipe for hurt feelings.
People think they’re cute and cuddly, but that’s just how they reel you in. Sneaky little fuckers. Here’s a selfie one of its victims snapped in the moment before his brutally painful demise:
It took me way too long to realize that “AU” was short for “Alternate Universe”, and not Australia. Though, I suppose “Australia” works, too. Everything there is actively trying to kill you, after all.
Yeah, man. The thing is, almost nobody has any fucking idea what they’re doing with their life. Most people are just winging it. And as you grow and learn about yourself, often times your priorities will change. It sounds very much like you just outgrew several of your friends, and that’s 100% completely normal. It also sounds like you’re learning about the wacky, wonderful world of construction delays, and that also, sadly, is 100% completely normal.
Life’s going to shit on you from time to time. Calling it now - their estimate of May is going to be way off. There’s even a good chance that you’re still not going to be able to move in by your wedding date. I mean, obviously I hope that’s not the case, that they actually make good on their estimate, and that you can move in and get that bit of hot stress out of your life. But from experience? Make a plan B.
There are two points of advice that I can give from my own life. The main thing, as some of the other users here have said, is to hold on tightly to those people in your life that you don’t want to lose. If someone is worth your effort, make sure you’re putting the effort in. Great people will drift apart from you just as surely as meh people if you don’t make a constant effort to keep them in your orbit. It’s just part of life.
The second bit of advice? Go easy on yourself. You’re probably not going to wake up tomorrow with some burning passion or sense of purpose and direction. You might never get it. Most people don’t. A good way to find happiness is to become ok with not making some huge impact on the world, and instead just focus on the things that bring you joy. And if it takes you a long time to come around to that mindset, I at least hope that you’ll be gentle with yourself along the way.
Hard disagree.