I've heard people who get tattoos often enough begin to enjoy the feel of the needle on their skin. So who are you to say tattooing bar codes on everyone's necks is a bad thing? Don't yuck my yum!
What if they're just getting caught up in the oppressive frenzy of hype culture, getting bombarded with ad-induced anxiety, or simply trying to fit in with whatever they're told is "normal"? What if the emperor has no clothes but we're all told its rude to point?
Am I allowed to make fun of Morbius? Or is that
under the Let People Enjoy Things rubric?
If they get enjoyment out of these products, does that really negatively affect you?
If its getting injected into every webpage, spamming up my email, blaring across the radio, on billboards along every mile of road, and natively included in every other media venue I visit?
Isn't the whole gripe with Pumpkin Spiced whatever the same with Christmas decorations popping up in mid-October? Like, its not fucking special if you're putting nutmeg in my coffee in June.
Same with the D&D / Marvel / Roblox / Whatever fandom of choice. It was fine twenty years ago when it was the New Thing. Now we're pushing 100+ hours of Disneyfied extended universe content on Marvel alone. Half my "recommended" podcast feed is six C-list celebrities making the soy face in front of a pair of crossed battle axes. And my street is lined with shitty faux-bakery corporate cafeterias trying to sell a piece of rye bread covered in guacamole for $15/slice.
Who actually enjoys this shit anymore? It feels like I'm being sealed into Disneyland, like a Pharaoh buried alive in his pyramid. It stopped being fun ages ago. Now I'm torn between boredom and horror.
You're only allowed to comment on Russian wartime media practices in exclusion. You can't view it through a holistic lense of state sponsored manufacturing of consent.
Nobody died during the Dust Bowl. John Steinbeck is a fucking liar. Actually, if anything, the population boomed and everything was even more awesome. FDR was the one that killed everybody. Things under Coolidge and Hoover were going great. You've just been fooled by all those insidious college Marxists who never took a simple Econ 101 class in their lives.
Idk how much of that was Big Evil Mao telling people to kill the Four Pests and how much of that was the lingering consequences of a 40 year long Japanese genocidal occupation, brutal civil war, and attendant refugee crises. But if you're really interested in what farm life during the era of Chinese Revolution looked like, there's an excellent historical documentary called "Fanshen" that details the day-to-day life in Long Bow Village from '45 to '48 during the land-reform campaign.
Kuikanmäki told Yle that it is still unclear to him why this connection to China has prevented him from taking up the role as Minister Purra's advisor.
Can't believe the Finnish security leopards would eat my face.
There is a party whose population will gladly accept no Medicaid expansion in their state and lose out on public option benefits, because “black man bad”.
I remember when Kentucky got enough blue dogs in office to put the Medicaid expansion into effect. They called their program "Kynect" and did a reasonably decent job of administering it. The program became so popular that Republicans pivoted to "defend Kynect from the federal government!" mode. Its been delivering services for over a decade and is a vast improvement over the deplorable state healthcare system.
Plans to defund or kill Kynect have largely failed and GOP efforts to cut the program have backfired on politicians that tried it, but Democrats struggle to take credit because the savvier Republicans aren't shy about voicing their support.
So they may be good at saying "No" to proposed legislation, but the GOP is awful at saying "No" to any broad based existing program. Its the same reason they've had such a hard time privatizing education even in blood red states.
It will be more insidious and the American people have proven over and over that so long as harming them is packaged with a temporary tax cut or sandwiched between a outrage social topic of someone else to hate; they will keep on voting the assholes back in.
Bush Jr ran on privatizing SS and got absolutely washed in 2006.
Obama ran on scaling back entitlements and got washed in 2010.
Trump beat Hillary in part by cleaving to SS/Medicare and attacking her on her plans to gut it.
Biden is almost a fluke in so far as he's got an anti-SS/Medi history but finally landed a successful Presidential bid. Even then, without a House willing to do deals, he can't really touch entitlements either.
The AARP rivals only AIPAC in terms of its influence. Its a classic "do not fuck with the money" situation that also shields the Pentagon and the Financial Sector.
Not to say entitlements are bulletproof, but its been a nut both parties have been trying to crack since at least Clinton without success. Reagan was only able to land a blow by "saving" it with higher taxes and some very lukewarm meddling with retirement ages. Even then, it wasn't a trick any other President managed to pull again.
Every President promises to reform SS/Medi and none of them do more than tinkering with the margins.
![zifnab25 [he/him, any]](https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/16834d2e-60b9-423e-8882-6552cb49486b.webp?format=webp&thumbnail=128)
Right. Yes. This is what I'm mad at.