Ha, I should've mentioned that you definitely won't. It seems to paint this damned if we do damned if we don't picture. But it at least paints a picture, versus what can at times feel like this great big unknown. It may also shed some light on some of the motivations for what's happening. I dunno.
My brother sent this to me the other day and I gave it a watch. It feels pretty unbiased (although I'm uneducated), and seems to have a more macro, zoomed-out view of America and just nations on the whole. I thought it was pretty interesting and it helped to put some things in perspective.
When I was in the Marines, and before I was in, and after I got out, we regularly trained in Norway, (oddly enough in an effort to dispel any notion of Russia coming west, funny) in the coldest parts of Norway. It wasn't fun, but it's silly to think the most well equipped and active military in the world somehow doesn't train to fight in the cold.
I'm out now, but when I was in, I'd say the majority, a vast majority, would not be interested in fighting Canada. I can't see America and Canada entering a war. I can see Canada capitulating to America's demands. I see it creating a lot of bad will between Canadians and Americans, and I see the ultimate conclusion being one we could've worked toward together, instead of what is ostensibly bullying.
Us regular people down here are still your friends.
Yeah, anytime I find myself nodding along I try to head over to Allsides and expand my view. I'm sure someone here has something to say about Allsides, I admittedly didn't dig too deeply into the site itself, but it is essentially an aggregator that tells you whether a site is right left or center.
I removed my old white grease-laden range hood and replaced with a stainless steel one. My range is in the middle of my home, so unfortunately I haven't been able to vent it outdoors, but the hood is convertible for when I decide to adventure a little more.
Old range hood was hard wired through a hole in the wall, no box obviously. Put a box in the cabinets above for the new hood. My cabinets are not designed to accept a range hood apparently either, so it made it all the more interesting.
Credit to my 7 year old daughter, who helped me install it, couldn't have done it without her.
I think MAGA represents to Republicans what progressives like Bernie and AOC represent to Democrats. Republicans were able to reimagine their party into a form that isn't just going to follow the status quo that, like you said, has led to a stagnant existence for average Americans over the last 50+ years. And stagnant is probably a nice way of putting it, since buying power has essentially disappeared, on top of wages barely moving.
So Trump comes in, he says drain the swamp, and you hear that to mean the whole machine, everyone who, for the last 50 years (and some folks have been involved in that government for a good chunk of that 50 years, just perpetuating that status quo) has allowed the rich to get richer at the expense of the working middle class.
And so you toss on your blinders. You're not necessarily a bigot, but you believe social issues are a distraction from actual problems (i.e., ones that affect you directly), and you vote in a way that you hope will better your life. It's hard to blame someone, especially someone just exhausted from grinding through their shitty life, for thinking about themselves. It's not the right way to think, but I get it.
Shit, Democrats don't even give us a chance to primary, they just pick whoever they want.
In NJ, they had what was referred to as the county line, which would basically put the Democratic party's candidate first on a ballot. It was abolished this year, but the idea was that the positioning on the ballot made it easier for people to just vote down the line, but the result was that you didn't necessarily have a fair vote.
This whole way of life we have here has been by design. We work constantly. If you miss work to protest you may not be able to afford the medical bills you get when police brutalize you at the protest.
Ha, I should've mentioned that you definitely won't. It seems to paint this damned if we do damned if we don't picture. But it at least paints a picture, versus what can at times feel like this great big unknown. It may also shed some light on some of the motivations for what's happening. I dunno.