abraxas @ abraxas @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

Valve can't really stop it. The Deck's just linux under the hood. That's a big part of why I bought it.

But the way people have to bend over backwards to get Game Pass running on it kinda sucks. I'm a sub, and when I open the Deck I'm already dreading how much of a headache it'll be.

Here in New England they're really struggling from what I've seen. Parking lots and drive-thrus empty despite having this crazy 2-lane designed drive-thru. I think different regions have different guilty pleasures.

The same Berniecrats who could have had a progressive in the General in 2020 if they'd been willing to go for Warren (who was outpolling Bernie in the Primaries AND comparable in the General until the shitshow that cost them both the primary)

The thing with Primaries is that they're like RCV. The most votes wins the Primary. If your second choice isn't "whoever won the Dem primary", then you're the problem, whether your first was Biden, Bernie, or Elmo.

That's a solid point. The GOP couldn't get together to wipe out the ACA because many Republicans actually realized it would fuck them to do so. It was an absolute comical disaster.

They half-gutted it, but we still have enough of it to be far better off than pre-ACA days.

And why the alternative voting systems that do pass are things like RCV that have the lowest likelihood of electing a third party and can still be gamed to spoil the Dems

IRV-RCV is the easiest to understand, but the one we know almost certainly will never make a third party relevant in the US. But it's the only alternative anyone is willing to talk about. Then the GOP makes it illegal anyway.

Something actually effective will simply never pass.

Why is it always progressives who have to hold their nose and “vote blue no matter who”? Centrist Democrats have been driving the car for decades

Because we're a minority and the options are the party that now gives us significant representation for our demographic (103 members of the House, and 1 (sadface) senator) or the party that thinks anyone left of "moderate-right" should be thrown out of a helecopter over the ocean.

The US is designed to change slowly, and even fixing that is designed to take time.

What you keep asking us to do isn’t compromise, it’s to stay in an abusive relationship where you get to make all the rules and we deal with it in silence

No. What we're asking you to do is pick the loveless relationship where your party buys you supermarket flowers once a year over Jeffery Dahmer. The Dems don't abuse us. We just don't have the votes and constitutents to do something worthwhile. You do realize that if a moderate compromises too progressive, they get replaced with a Republican, right?

So why don't we fight in-party for more representation and educate voters that we're not the boogey man, instead of threatening to murder the whole country to get our way like the bloody Repubs do?

Already seen it. I don't love Biden, but he's done "okayish" at most things. Every time the economy comes up, people start missing Trump despite the fact he was the one that destroyed it

I dunno. If we're talking crazy-long-lashes, that's definitely the desire to be distinctive (something I highly respect). If we're just talking merely "classic lash extensions", then good question.

I'm sure some aspect of longer lashes is traditional and inscribed. It's not like any style trends are truly original these days. "Look at me, I'm edgy. I got a tattoo. Only had to get in line behind all the other edgy people who got tattoos".

I think stepping further, there's an aspect of systemic sexism that our first knee-jerk reaction to a woman's style decision is "men want, or wanted, them to look that way", but a men's style decision is more "to be yourself". I mean, if I'm being myself tossing on a pair of jeans with a polo, she can be herself getting an eyelash extension.

I think girls who get long eyelashes do it because they like how they look.

And thank god if they do because I would hate a woman who only cares about what other people think of her looks.

With all due respect, when your opinion is "your argument AND the supermajority is wrong because I said so", you don't leave an opening for anything more constructive.

I don't make a good Soyjak

This looks like a feature-by-feature clone of The Movies. Which was a good name, but I'm a bit shocked at how precisely identical it is, down to assigning people to named rooms inside your buildings.

But “get the incumbent president primaried by someone who goes on to still win the election” is not a fantastic option for a potential voter is it?

Short of something Trump-level, Biden is going to win the Primary. There's no maybe on that. The incumbency advantage might be beatable in the General, but it's monumental. Quite certainly him representing the **majority ** Democratic take on the Israel war is not going to lose him the Primary.

It is shit. The best solution is for Biden to take action before the number of dead mounts even more

Israel was attacked by Palestine. They were attacked by Hamas, but Hamas rules Palestine. Based on internationally agreed-upon rules of engagement, they get to bloody Hamas back. We both know the problem isn't Israel hitting back, it's them not really caring about civilian damage and their desire to simply take over the West Bank. Anything we do strongly against Israel is going to be against most of our allied countries and cost us the Israel alliance. Interestingly, the running trend in the US has been isolationism, something both parties have started to agree on, and everyone's favorite Bernie Sanders as well when he ran in 2016 and 2020. But now we're mad Biden took a fairly Isolationist "but please don't wipe them out" point of view?

What do progressives want? Do we want isolationism or do we just want to pick and choose our wars based on personal opinion? I don't like Israel, but we're supposed to be committing to getting less involved in international politics. For some, that just seems like it means "let's support our enemies and not our allies". Why can't we just support NEITHER side, like everyone has been demanding Democrats do?

I'm assuming you don't actively support Hamas, right?

I’m not American, but if I was obviously I would still vote for Biden

Ahhhh... I should've read before I started replying. You're missing something. One of the few things Trump and Bernie agreed on in 2016 was the desire for the US to stop trying to police the damn world. Our progressive wing, until very recently, wanted us to stay out of the Middle East until we no longer have a choice. We thought that meant not supporting Israel, but if we're being honest it means also not condemning them until they go well past "following the rules of engagement".

I just don’t like to see the demonization of this quite understandable (imo) position.

The position of letting Trump win in protest for Biden doing what a majority of his voters want? He very much admonished Israel not to occupy Palestine and not to take action with excess civilian casualties. He's insisting Israel hold to a stricter set of rules of engagement than most countries would if another country led an unprovoked attack against civilians. We cannot forget that Hamas is the ruling party of Palestine. At the very least, Israel is entitled to try to step in and replace Palestine's leadership with someone who won't attack Israel. Except we don't trust Israel, and Biden doesn't trust Israel, to do that in good faith.

Apologies for the length

I don't think I could criticize the length of your reply considering my own :)

Curious who made Viking Hippie the sole arbiter of truth. How many experts disagreeing with you makes it less "we're all objectively enabling genocide"?

What if I think Viking Hippie is "objectively enabling genocide"? It's a fact (ok, it's just a thought experiment). That means I get to say anyone that agrees with you is "objectively enabling genocide", right?

Fair enough. Perhaps my take was slightly hyperbolic.

Gun control is a great example of something Democrats can't agree on. We have gun-grabbers, background-checkers, and even a few NRA-hawks. Details on Healthcare. Reparations are a 50/50, too. The thing in all of those, I think, is that we're willing to compromise.

Actually, looking at some of your bullet points, I see them as party compromise points. Prior to Dobbs, there was a LARGE percent of Democrats who supported what they called "reasonable restrictions" on Abortion, and many still do if tapered by seeing how slippery the slope really was. And going back 10-15 years made it even more of a mixed bag. Pew couldn't get more than 63% of Democrats to agree abortion should be legal "in most cases". Back when Roe was precedent. The thing was, we could all compromise on which cases, and agree that "in no cases" should never be the law of the land. The more anti-choice Democrats were willing to compromise on some propaganda, parental shame forms for underage, etc.

Ditto with healthcare. It's a sad truth, but most Democrats didn't want to see a Public Option in the ACA. It looks like the trend of "Public Option" being fringe flipped in 2020. Probably not a coincidence. I can't find party-split polls pre-2020 right now, but a 2019 poll showed fewer than 25% of Americans wanted a Public option. Even if it was mostly Democrat-leaning voters that said that, we're still looking at less than half. Now, admittedly, we're approaching 70% of all voters who want some sort of public option.

I honestly can’t think of any other topic that Democrats disagree with each other as strongly about.

FPTP Voting, details of abortion rights/restrictions, details of how to handle healthcare. Lots of Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Speech disagreements that just don't rise to the level of "headliner issue". I'd say any copyright/dmca question is "it's complicated" to Democrats who are informed enough to even speak of it. I can't find numbers on the wealth tax, but they seemed mixed back when Warren was pushing it. Topical to the above discussions, military isolationism vs "world police" attitudes. These are all fairly contentious issues within the United States. Biden seems to represent the plurality view on most of them, which I give him credit for despite my having very different opinions.

EDIT: To clarify, it's a bigger gap for a bigger reason. Almost exactly half of Democrats are neoliberals. And our progressive caucus, almost as big as the neoliberal wing, is diversified between capitalist-progressives, socialists, and other incompatible but good-faith groups. On the big issues, we're either all in compromise or in agreement on a few large bullet points. But on the less-highlit issues, there are fundamental foundational differences of theory of government within our party. The biggest families of issues on that are:

1. The nature of money and which economic attitude to hold on things like supply and demand
2. The type and amount of regulations, or workers rights, that should be enforced vs limitations on businesses (or neither/both).
3. How much power a president should be able to hold, and in what domains

The list goes on. For object example, I'm a passively-anti-union progressive. I think Unions are band-aids. I think they should have all the rights and protections they have, but they are a sign of capitalism remaining dominant with regards to worker laws, and our goal should be to make them useless by making them unnecessary. There's a lot of Democrats that would vote anti-union, but despite my position, I'd vote pro-union as a compromise for my real wants. However, given the option between writing a union protection or a worker protection into a bill, I would fight tooth-and-nail for the worker protection. Many Democrats would fight for the union protection instead.

I mean, what does Means-testing look like WRT welfare in the Democratic party? We're all over the place. People like me say it should be available to everyone regardless of means, where some Labor-friendly neoliberals are happy to leave in "employed" clauses, but want to loosen the income restrictions so that hard-working Americans get the greater benefit. Obviously I am sympathetic to that position as much as I disagree with it.

But Biden’s situation is unique to him and his campaign. A Bernie incumbent wouldn’t be needing to defend his progressive alignments and policies, but Biden is very much fighting an optics battle. He is pitching himself as “the most progressive president in a generation” because his survival depends on that demographic

Is he though? This feels like everyone expected Obama to be a progressive despite years of media calling him a Moderate. Even Trump accused him of being a "radical moderate".

Biden agreed to give Progressives a small seat at the table, which is the best we've gotten since at least Clinton, if not Carter.

Whatever your opinion is on what he’s actually done, his polling numbers clearly indicate that the progressive base does not believe he is sufficiently progressive

I've learned from Trump that "how you poll" and "how well you're doing" are two very different things. Trump should've polled a 0%, and yet he hit almost 50% on multiple occasions. And his highest approval was throughout 2020.

I'm not speaking to whether Biden is winning progressive votes, only to whether he's doing his part. I don't think Bernie would be doing better than him on any of these things, but as you say, progressives would give him more lenience because he didn't come in as a moderate.

This conflict fucks his messaging, and the progressive caucus seems fairly animated by this issue particularly.

Well yeah. Welcome to the president problem. You're always making a lot of people mad, no matter what you do.

Again, it would be pretty hard for him to loose reelection (though I would strongly caution against assuming so), but that doesn’t mean he can’t still be put way on his back foot for his second term.

I never expected anything more than 4-8 years of back-leg after Trump, from any president. But we still have to support him if we don't want Trump.

As a theist, I agree. Pascal's Wager is a terrible argument for God. It doesn't even address the variety of religions that contradict Christianity with contradicting moral imperatives. It only works if the outcomes are "My Variant of Christian God Exists" or "No God Exists".

I'm not sure a progressive president would have done much better in this. Ultimately, we hope the President does what's best for the United States first, then the world second. A large number of progressives aren't isolationists, and Israel is a large part of our displomatic positioning in and around the Middle East. Not because they're "the good guys", but they're the ones that don't actively hate us. I'd like to see that change, and I think it could, but we're not there yet.

Agreeing that Israel is justified in attacking Hamas. Insisting diplomatically that Israel should limit its actions to enemy combatants. It's a complicated situation. And ironically, if someone is isolationist enough to throw out our alliance with Israel, they woudl also be isolationist enough not to care about the Israel/Palestine conflict. It's sorta lose/lose for us due to past decisions and actions.

That’s a self-contradiction since what you guys think is the “best choice” is objectively enabling genocide

I think objectively doesn't mean what you think it means. But more importantly, even if you're right about there being a better response than Biden's (and you might be; it's a complicated issue), that doesn't mean people who support Biden's position agree that you're right. Which means, NO, objectively, they do not "approve of enabling genocide". Just look at literally the other reply to me that agreed with me at length. And if there are at least two people who support Biden's decisions in this thread alone that do not "approve of enabling genocide", then I bet you any money there's at least 2 more out in the US. "Perhaps more than that!"

I called you on your bad-faith accusation that Democratic voters "approve of enabling genocide", and nothing in your reply to me reduces the accuracy of what I called you on. You're just getting into the weeds arguing politics now.

If you want, I'd be happy to join that conversation as well. As soon as you concede that the "approve of enabling genocide" thing was excessive and bad faith.

Or they could have been brutally honest and said “more than half of democrats approve of enabling genocide”.

Actually, if they were being genuinely honest, it would be more like "more than half of democrats think Biden's making the best choice in an all-round shitty situation". None of us approve of enabling genocide.

Some people actually think "pushing Israel to set rules of engagement" is some of the best we're going to get if we can't get the entire world on-board. Nobody wants to invade Israel to stop this (do they), and Israel is out for blood right now. Trying to focus them towards Hamas and not "destroying Palastine" might be the only win we can have 7,000 miles away.

I'm a fence-sitter on this issue, but I think the majority that supports Biden's plan do so for reasons that have nothing to do with "enabling genocide".

I get that you want us to condemn Israel. And I'm sure it's been considered. I also undersetand there are ramifications to the US of doing that, and it won't necessarily save a single Palestinian life.

Voters are shortsighted. I still think Biden has an edge in 24, but people have quickly forgotten exactly what a disaster Trump was and have started saying "at least he did something".

All because the press finds most of Biden's successful-but-moderate presidency to be too boring to headline. Trump was in the headlines 5 days a week during his presidency. And for some people no press is bad press.