meep_launcher @ meep_launcher @lemm.ee

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30

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434

Joined

2 yr. ago

Oh absolutely. We need an inspiring queer leader to mark a new era, where young LGBT children can grow up knowing they have a future in our country, let alone a future at all.

His response to Pence was amazing.

✅ Military experience. We may need a leader who knows first hand the danger they are putting our young men and women in.

✅ Governing experience (if you can be a community organizer, peanut farmer, or reality TV star, being a mayor is absolutely legitimate experience)

✅ Federal experience

✅ I'm gonna say it- in hindsight he managed the rail union strike amazingly well. He avoided a supply chain catastrophy, then a few months later got the union the sick time they need. He had his cake and ate it too.

✅ Medicare for those who want it is a realistic plan. It's it perfect? No. But it's better and more importantly can pass through Congress.

I fully expect comments to fully support this take without any criticism for a center left candidate who doesn't plan on tearing down capitalism brick by brick./s

Yep.

Bad things are gonna happen regardless. Good things are going to happen regardless. There's the things in the news, the things in your community, the things in your friend and family groups, and the things that happen to you on your day to day.

While it's important to focus on the problems we face and the changes we can make, we also need to focus on the wins no matter how small. Mere pessimism isn't enough. Mere optimism isn't enough. Mere anything isn't enough because life isn't that simple.

Take time to mourn, but fight against the waves of despair that want to drown you.

"Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

It songs the tune without the words

And never stops at all"

I'll be real I expected an absolutely mangled hand

I'm in this photo and I don't like it

Idk, meeting an absolute stranger that you texted with for a day or so with the pressure and expectation of romance just sounds like a recipe for failure.

Starting a romance with someone you already have some history with or share a community with seems more plausible. I used to click with someone and then immediately run home to find out if they were available or not so I could find out if it was safe to develop a crush.

How was eHarmony different that tinder or bumble? I never used it.

It was a result of the 3rd party app collapse that triggered the migration of reasonable people out of reddit. I was the mod of r/mapporncirclejerk and saw my mod queue explode with the most hateful shit that went unchecked by other commenters.

Then my friend told me about where everyone went, glad to see all of you!

I'm now mod of !cartographyanarchy@lemm.ee so stop on by!

I'm so tired of people shitting on Bernie for condemning the violence. This is what decency looks like, and I have no idea why people think goading on more violence will make anything better.

Sometimes all you can do is hope

¯⁠\⁠_⁠༼⁠ ⁠ಥ⁠ ⁠‿⁠ ⁠ಥ⁠ ⁠༽⁠_⁠/⁠¯

What I'd like to do? Play Pente with friends and family in the morning in a cafe. It's an easy going game that you can have conversations over and it is a family favorite of mine.

Realistically? Forage for mushrooms and be successful at hunting in a post apocalyptic nuclear wasteland.

The twelfth of July, year of our Lord twelve thousand and twenty four.

Twisted a vertebrae and broke a collarbone here.

I get that cramping feeling you get in your neck when you run in crisp cold air and are filling your lungs completely and quickly because you are so out of breath but you are pushing yourself to just get up the hill and down the driveway so you can get home and slam the door behind you, lock the top dead bolt, lock the door knob, drag your prized armoire to block the door, it needs to be firm. Then take all your other furniture to baracade the back door, garage door, and the door to the garden. You desperately begin taking apart chairs and taking cubbards and doors off their hinges. You need any extra piece of wood to hammer into the wall to block the windows. You are panting and heaving, feeling nauseous from exhaustion, but you know stopping is not an option. You cannot slow down, you need to make the most of every second, he who hesitates is lost, but he who rests is dead. You keep thinking "10% faster, 10% faster, please God not like this, 10% faster". It's at that moment, when you feel that aching and pulling of your collarbone that you realize you were too late. The pit in your stomach filling like a water balloon, your throat tightening and eyes beginning to water. You were no longer keeping him out, you were now keeping him in. You knew he was faster, stronger, and more cleverer than you, but you had to at least try. Any glimpse of survival is extinguished, your fate was all but sealed long ago. It was always going to be this way, it was always going to be Shia LaBeouf.

Also it feels like someone stabbed me in the back from time to time. Thank God for weed.

Okay, in other words we need to consider our assumptions and definitions of "Free will" and "Determinism" when answering this question?

I really enjoyed this video on Compatibilism, and the view of Patricia Churchland (around 5:50) where she says we should reframe the question away from "what choices we have" to "how much control do we have".

Lol right? That's absurd. Mine's 15" like normal.

Like any proper gentleman.

I think the reason we are seeing two candidates who are unpopular for reasons of mental fitness has to do with several forces at play, and it comes down to how power is gained and distributed in our system.

First, I am defining power as the ability to make people do things they would not do on their own volition.

In any system, the longer you stay there, the more opportunities there are to amass power. This power comes from connections you make. In my teenage years, I didn't have much power for many reasons, but one was that I didn't have powerful connections. All my friends were working retail or fast food or other summer jobs. With age, my connections are more powerful. My best friend works at Oracle and another at Microsoft. As a musician, I've been around the block a bit and now know folks who are producers and have some notariety. This is a big reason we are seeing more and more elderly folks in powerful positions. Not only do they have power, they have connections.

The classic cases of corruption we see from the outside, are people returning favors when viewed from the inside. To them it's common decency. Imagine you were passionate about food and feeding people, and you started a restaurant or maybe a non-profit to feed the homeless. If someone you knew saw your work and believed in what you do, and they could give you a hefty low rate loan or been a donation, the decent thing to do would be to thank them, and if they asked for a favor down the line, you would feel terrible to not return the support they gave you when you were small and starting out.

Throw that in with a first past the post voting system that allows power to consolidate around two parties, and you'll see the natural trend is for those with the most experience and connections to find their way to the top while closing more and more opportunities for younger folks to make their way in. The connections of the youth simply can't compete with the connections of the elderly.

One part of your post that struck me was the "why do we allow". Personally my take is that we shouldn't make strict requirements of who someone is in order to run for office. There are other ways we can vet those unfit to serve. My concern with something like an iQ test or upper age limit is that we will be disenfranchising marginalized groups from taking power. I don't mean to go full slippery slope, but I do think this is a dangerous precedent to set. Should an elderly person be barred from running for president? Should someone who has a mental illness like depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, or schizophrenia be barred from holding office? If project 2025 takes place we may ask the question should trans or homosexual people be allowed to hold office? For the last one, the argument from conservatives would be that they are too "morally deficient" to hold office. Personally I find that repulsive.

By limiting demographics of who can and cannot run for office, we would also allow the possiblity of a rogue president to disqualify opponents if they can manipulate a test required to be eligible to run for president.

I think these are reasonable considerations when trying to answer your question. I hope this was helpful.

If you'd like to learn more on power structures, CGP grey made a great video that is a great tl;Dr to my first year of my polisci undergrad.

If you can reword you initial post, that would be great. I was also having trouble following what you were saying.

First- I actually really like seeing AOC not being one of those "burn the house down" politicians as I knew her when she started. It seems like she's learned what it takes to get a large group of people to do one thing, and outrage politics does not do that. Frankly this is the restraint I would look for in a future presidential nominee.

Second- at a base level I'm very for Biden stepping down and giving us the opportunity to escape this hellhole of an election cycle. John Stewart put it pretty well to the DNC- "Do you understand the opportunity you have here? Do you have any idea how thirsty Americans are for any hint of inspiration or leadership, and a release from this choice of a megalomaniac and a suffocating gerontocracy?"

I always look for reasonable takes from opposing viewpoints, and I did find American Historian Allan Lichtman's argument for why Biden stepping down would not be the best idea. Here's the 6 minute video of his 13 keys to the Whitehouse which has predicted 9 of the past 10 elections.

TL;DW:

1. Party mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
2. No primary contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
3. Incumbent seeking re-election: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
4. No third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
5. Strong short-term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
6. Strong long-term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
7. Major policy change: The incumbent administration affects major changes in national policy.
8. No social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
9. No scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
10. No foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
11. Major foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
12. Charismatic incumbent: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
13. Uncharismatic challenger: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.

If 5 or fewer of these statements are False, then it is predicted that the incumbent will win. His take is that replacing Biden will do nothing but make point 2 & 3 turn from True statements to False statements, and increase the chances of Trump winning.

While crystal balls are everywhere and you could point to other political scientists who would say different, I was looking for a decent take on the counterpoint. I would also say that in political science, we like to have tools to help us make predictions so we can make actions. Just going on deep gut feeling won't cut it. Having a tool whose measurements don't always align with how you feel an outcome should be doesn't necessarily mean the tool is bad, it means it works independently from your biases. If you watch the video, I think he puts it well as the election is a thumbs up or thumbs down on the party more than it is the individual leader. It might be a helpful thought exercise to change the words "Trump" to "Republican" and "Biden" to "Democrat" when discussing the race as charisma and celebrity only goes so far in politics, but that's what we get caught up in the most.

I think the reason I don't follow that idea is that it sounds so similar to Neville Chamberlain's "Peace for our Time". The slaughter would just be put on pause, but would last longer and become more dangerous in 2 years time.

I see a difference between that and the handling of Gaza, which Trump would very much continue supporting Israel on. He wouldn't put American troops on the ground, but he's been saying his peace plan is for Israel to "get the job done". This is very much what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we saw how that played out. I understand there is a belief that stopping support for Israel means the death of Israel, but with BB, he is only accelerating this by continued genocide of Palestinians.

There are idealists (and I will fully admit some anti-semites) who would love to see the end of a Jewish state, and there are those who would look for a two state solution. Trump and BB have made it clear that they are not for a two state solution and are pushing for complete annihilation of the Palestinian people. Trump is not a peacemaker.

I can't speak for Elizabeth, or for many other supporters, but I can tell you why I supported her and not Bernie.

While I agree with so much of Bernies platform, I just wasn't convinced he was a pragmatic candidate. When asked how he would handle Mitch McConnell, his response was essentially "Our revolution will take care of that- voters will listen to my message and I won't have to deal with him". That wasn't really the question, and I just didn't see that as a good answer. It solidified my thoughts that he was an idealist who was pushing for great things and was very much needed, but when it came to the cold realities of getting things done, he wasn't someone who I thought could negotiate with republicans.

I also was very wary of populists. Bernie was very much a left wing Trump only in that he built a very deep cult of personality. Everyone who I talked to, every poll I saw, every post I read cemented the idea that it was Bernie or bust. Especially now as I am terrified of a Civil War 2 breaking out, the stance of non-negotiation is not only ineffective, but dangerous.

Idealists play a very important role in any movement. They create the energy needed to push things forward. However in the position of Commander in Chief, the virtue needed is restraint. I wanted to find a balance between progressive policy and pragmatic restraint, and so I saw Warren as the better of the two options. 4 years later I'm not as excited about her as I was then, and much of the details are fuzzy, but I know this is broadly what I thought.

I know in this thread there will be a lot of mud slinging and calling those who disagree with Bernie of 2020 or their supporters as stupid and/or evil, but that stance is exactly what I saw as divisive and dangerous in a time we need to avoid division and violence. Not all of it was Bernie's fault, but I also know Idealists can push other idealists further to extremes. We are in a prisoners dilemma, where if we choose the path of getting everything, we will get nothing.

Edit Just to clarify, most of my friends supported Bernie, and they are not stupid. There are a million reasons why he was the best candidate, and many times he worked with republicans. At the time, I saw Warren as more of a 70/30 progressive and Bernie more 80/20.