There’s something to be said about how interconnected a lot of major issues in the world are. Many solutions to specific issues don’t solve the underlying reason why that issue came about in the first place, laying the groundwork for the same issue to pop up again in a few years, which is why people push to fix systemic things. (Though I do think for the sake of accuracy and humor, the last line of the comic should be “No, that is too big of an issue to possibly change”).

We just have to accept that some people are “give a man a fish” people and others are “teach a man to fish” people. I think the world needs both for things to actually get better. Then there’s another group of people who just don’t like hearing the cries of the less privileged when they themselves are perfectly comfortable with how things are (shown in the comic) and who often wears a mask imitating the “teach a man to fish” person. The “teach a man to fish” people and “please stop complaining” people might both target their complaints towards the “give a man a fish” people, but that doesn’t mean that those two groups are the same or have the same goals. Pay no attention to bad actors who will find any excuse to justify their own disdain toward people trying to make the world better.

Some people’s lives are so bad they would rather focus on personal survival than electing the good cop over the bad cop, both of whom would likely make their lives either a little or a lot worse every single year. “Our country is at stake” only really matters if you have systemic benefits from this country- otherwise, it just seems like it’s a plea for victims of this country to take your comfort into consideration above anything else. Sure, we’re on the precipice of a fascist takeover where even the white people in gated neighborhoods could start feeling even fractionally as bad as people of color currently do, but it might be worth considering this perspective isn’t just some petty or ignorant thing- it’s a rotten system created by racist white men that might not be worth participating in because even if the system is perfectly fixed, there will always be people on top and people on the bottom. At least with Kamala, there is a hope of traveling farther away from that “racist white man who begs me for votes and never delivers on promises” trope, so it doesn’t surprise me one bit.

God I love Derry Girls. It’s about time for a rewatch

Santa’s the one buying all the personal information because he has to update the naughty list

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How about, instead of arguing definitions of words that are constantly misused by people who want liberalism to mean anything stretching from neoliberalism to communism (which is weird how you’d take conservative’s definition of liberal at face value), you talk about how much your individual ideas have ratcheted to the right instead? I’m also not the original person who blamed your position on your liberalism.

Insular, America-centric, “we must have the most firepower to protect us from the evil people”, is absolutely the rhetoric used by republicans in 2008. Maybe if you traveled back in time, you’d be voting for Mitt Romney regardless of how safe his dog was. It’s entirely a fear-based position to have, and that’s been the republican MO for a while. Our military industrial complex makes us less safe because it constantly creates situations that guarantees its own existence. Protecting your comfort through global threat of violence is a cowardly position to uphold.

Ah yes, if you’re the biggest and most violent bully in the school yard, you don’t have to worry about being beat up. Just say “they hate us for our freedom” in the mirror 3 times while ignoring any sort of actions we do as a country that might make other people or countries want to attack us. I swear, your exact message could’ve been said by the average republican in 2008.

It’s not like they’re arming queer people.

Yikes. I’d rather get arrested than hold that banner

And when you finally find some helpful forum with content from 15 years ago, you’ll have someone be like “GUYS I FIGURED IT OUT! Here’s a [broken] link to someone else who solved it” with a dozen or so “Thanks, that solved the issue immediately for me!” Comments after it.

I was more of a Zork Nemesis kid, but I’ll definitely be getting this.

Finally, I can pop this bottle of Veuve I bought in 2018!

Not that it matters because the point comes across fine, and being hyper fixated on grammar is a form of gatekeeping, but “badly” seems weird here. It might just be an American English or regional American thing to me, but in school, the whole good/well & bad/poor thing was made pretty distinct. Good and bad were descriptors of action where well and poor were descriptors of feeling. I can do good (things) or do bad (things), but things can go well or go poorly.

Grammar stackexchange seems to disagree with me though

Your vote isn’t the entirety of your voice though. If you telegraph that you will vote for Biden this far out, Biden’s campaign advisors probably won’t tell him that reversing course is the best decision for his reelection. If you say you will not vote for him due to Gaza, even if you secretly plan on voting for him, you have more power to change their policy and help Palestinians as a whole. This doesn’t have to be a discussion on trump vs Biden. This can be about trying to strategically pivot Biden in a way that avoids getting arrested because trump sure as hell isn’t going to fix things.

I’m referring to Jimmy Carr who had articles written about how him saying the Roma people being killed in the holocaust was a good thing. But also, almost every time I have seen him in a show, he’s punching down towards the Roma people specifically.

Though, maybe he should be dialing back the “let’s murder all Roma people” jokes.

Gotta go buy some gender fluid to top off my continuously variable trans mission.

I had to return my bone conduction headphones because it tickled my ears too much when I turned it up so loud that I could hear it over my bike machine. My wired headphones kept dying from my sweat, so I just ended up getting some waterproof-ish JBL in-ear headphones so I don’t have to worry about destroying any of my wireless headphones.

Don’t have compete with BYD if you don’t allow them to be competition in the US.

Whoops. I was signed out and just now realized I had this notification. I do think a lot of our differences is just perspective that have led on to very different outcomes. I do appreciate the discussion, sincerely, because as someone who was in the liberal camp for the longest time, it’s weird to feel such ire all the time from those same kinds of people online.

Here’s some of the perspective differences we have:

You have a kid, where me and my partner have decided that the world is probably too fucked to ever want to bring a kid into this world. I can see how that would make you more protective of a status quo that keeps you and your family relatively safe where I see how so many people are struggling and me and my partner are willing to fight to make it right. I don’t think either of us are wrong for these perspectives and I’d likely be where you are if I had children (and thought well enough about the future to want children).

2001-2003 was a wild time where everyone collectively decided that becoming more of an authoritarian surveillance state was a good thing under the guise of national security. I’m not sure if I’d consider the democrats sliding to agree with republicans on almost everything something that we should have rose tinted glasses on.

Both of us seem to be playing out our own version of “make the right decision, not the easy decision”

AOC and Sanders aren’t, in my opinion, more measurably left than others in government nearly a decade ago. Harry Truman was pushing hard for Universal healthcare. Also In the Revenue act of 1935, there was a progressive tax rate of 75% for the top bracket. (that’s only 37% today, and oftentimes many loopholes and tax havens make this percentage much lower). Bernie, I think, was mainly pushing for wealth, corporate, and estate tax changes, and they seem on par or less strong than the tax plans from ~90 years ago. I love both Sanders and AOC’s views on their civic duty, but it will always feel like it falls short when AOC celebrates “taxing the rich” by instituting a 1% tax on stock buybacks when those shouldn’t even be legal in the first place. And yes, I get that they’re trying their hardest, but the issue is that both of them are fought hard by the rest of the democratic party and seen as antichrists from the republican party. Would republican voters who are struggling hate bernie sanders and AOC if they weren’t being propagandized by every media outlet out there that their proposals were idealistic, unrealistic, and wasteful instead of doing things that would directly help them? It’s a complicated series of cogs that make this machine work, so I can only judge democrats by what they as a group do rather than what a few of them want. I refuse to be swayed by the carrot and the string politics anymore by believing that democrats will all join hands around any policy bernie and AOC has without watering it down to make republicans more happy, only for republicans to water it down further, only for republicans to kill that bill.

These democrats won’t wipe out the republicans without also wiping themselves out since both of them are parties that primarily support the growth of capital, not health/safety of residents, not equitability, not ethics, not the health of the planet. If those other things come, it won’t come at the cost of capital (and to a lesser degree political power). Democrats know they don’t have to sacrifice the capital of corporations to make the lives of citizens better because the only ones fighting for labor/human rights are a tiny minority of representatives and there’ll always be someone there to block it, whether they are republican or democrat. There can always be a sacrificial lamb that can be propped up on the ballot if it helps maintain capital. Even people who ran as progressive democrats can suddenly change their affiliation to republican after winning the election if it benefits capital. Even if Democrats encompass sinema and manchin. This is why the status quo needs to change and the parties need to die. The parties don’t die by continuing to tell them to keep going on like they have been.

“I respectfully object to the notion that the GOP blocking everything will be a constant.”

There will always be people who will be resistant to seeing change in the tangible world whether it’s the GOP or not. And they will continue to be voted on by people who agree with them. I suspect democrats will be this group in the future if they manage to outlive the republicans. Change can be extremely scary, especially when it seems like the entire world is becoming more and more fascist, so I can see why someone with a child would want to protect the status quo at all cost. This fucked up world might give your child a full life at least. If too much changed too quickly, it might be too difficult to think about what impacts it might have on your child’s life. I concede that there’ll likely be nothing I can say that can change the protective nature of a parent, and while I wish I was as optimistic as you, I’ve seen too many bloody limbs that were caused by my comfort to continue in my comfort since the only things I really have to protect are my partner and our dog. Both of us have a lot to lose with a trump presidency and we know a lot of people like us do as well. I’ve voted democrat down ballot my whole life and me and so many of my friends feel entirely betrayed by the democratic party as a whole- so much that our relationship has shifted from odd-bedfellows to a malignant force that keeps a husk of a party (republicans) legitimate by only being a little more popular than them. I don’t believe that the vast majority of voting americans are just to the left of literal fascism. There’s a reason why civic apathy is so high- they don’t see anything they want being proposed or protected. If republicans win this upcoming election, that doesn’t upset the democrats’ main goal of securing capital. I’m sure some of them can even write a few books on their experience during another trump presidency. But if a theoretical party existed that helped out the vast majority of americans by making things easier, cheaper, and more transparent, that would upset both the democrat and republican’s goal of securing capital. This is why leftists say things akin to “both sides”. They aren’t the same. They’ve very different. But they’re both pro-capital and it’s very obvious that’s what they fight for over anything else.

Speaking of biden’s views on Israel, he seems to be more vocally zionist than any other president in my lifetime. Trump might be racist against arabs, but biden’s zionism is colonialism + being racist against arabs (even if not vocally racist like trump). I’m not saying trump would be better for palestine. He likely would ramp up things just to look strong in comparison to biden- not because he has any idea what’s going on. But that also assumes palestine will still be there when trump is sworn in.

The trump vs hitler question wasn’t meant to be trying to compare biden with either of them- I mainly wanted to see how far along you’d believe in and participate in this system even if you know that both choices are actively bad. Would it have to be hitler vs pol pot before you consider rising up instead of believing that voting will help in a meaningful way? I’d like to believe everyone has a line whether they know it or not. A system that allows a trump to run and win is a system not designed for us to succeed. And I’m not even against voting- I think local elections are extremely important. I just really don’t think a single person with unilateral control over our military actions is a good idea. Actions related to war should require unanimous consent so it rarely happens. But it isn’t because securing resources for energy production or land to create capital is easily possible for someone who can be the sacrificial lamb if the populace isn’t sufficiently convinced that the people we’re bombing aren’t evil enough. The capitalistic machine marches forward regardless of the happiness of the populace.

The rematch and choice of these two candidates is inevitable.

This is elder abuse at this point to run them. One or both of them might die during the campaign. And at this point, it might be the best case scenario since I can’t see either of them stepping down.