Yea, I read this as a biomed and was like “We’re definitely not getting this.”

How to fix: Bloody revolution, that’s about it.

I disagree with this. It’ll take some revolution, but can be avoided bloody.

On revolution I do say vote. The 2022 election was a turnout of 52% of the voting age population. Just barely over half, and that’s the second highest turnout to a nonpresidential election year since 2000. All the oxygen always goes to the Presidency but what OP is dealing with comes up in local elections, and the local and state shit deals far more with your day to day than the national. Hell, when national laws even come up, weed is still schedule 1 “more dangerous than cocaine” to the federal government but just about every state has legalized it.

It’s not a quick solution, and it’s not as simple anymore as “go out and vote” but gotta kick everyone up who hasn’t given a shit (if they’re not voting, think they’ll back you in a revolution?). It’s a fucking slow ass slog that takes daily fighting, like I’ve got a group that I’m the one who posts the ballots, the dates, the links, honestly do everything but bang on their doors and drag them to the polls but it’s a little bit that helps. As I saw “A vote is not a valentine. You’re not professing your love for the candidate. It’s a chess move for the world you want to live in.”

The Republicans have been doing that for years, they’ve never let a single dem run even for superintendent across the country uncontested. They worked slow and methodically to get the supreme court. Their revolution can be argued to have started as far back as Nixon. We’re arguably at their end game, but it seems like they’ve overreached this time, it’s time to start clawing back territory.

The reason though I’m against a bloody revolution is, yes it’s useful as a last resort, but it honestly is at that in the chess analogy above picking up the table, throwing it in the room and starting a riot. You hope you come out okay but at that point it’s really up in the air who comes out on top. Guillotines come up a lot, and France is doing pretty well right now. But remember between modern France and the guillotines was a messy time post revolution that was stabilized by someone who declared himself Emperor and attempted to conquer all of Europe.

Remember 2016 when the media gave Trump an absurd amount of free publicity by covering every stupid thing he said and did then he won? It wasn’t the only reason, but it clearly didn’t help.

2016? Shit the press gave him all the free press when he was doing the birther shit with Obama.

I have one for those that worked at Disney World. “What time is the 3 o’clock parade?”

Pretty much post Roe v Wade she’s been out at the very forefront on the abortion debate because Biden being a catholic and male was about the worst possible person to put on this, vs Harris’s main job was to show the White House’s position on it.

Oh, not been in the news… right. Same news that’ll talk Biden’s age all day, not Trump’s age or his lies.

Left leaning here, dunno about you, but run channels with other left leaning progressives. I’m on a border between two states, I make it a point that my state when state/local stuff comes up, I get the news out, I get the word out, I try to drum up voting. Anyone in the other state, a massive collective ‘meh’. Same comes with the local votes.

“But Bernie” is the cry.

Voting isn’t just about the damn presidency. It’s a shit slog from the lowest levels all the way up and all the crowd I know in the left leaning can’t be faffed to show up for anything local so of course it’s going to be centrist on the top. The reason the right wing has so much power is they’ve made it a point since the Reagan era that anyone without an ® after their name WILL NOT run uncontested even it if it’s a superintendent to a school.

Yes, the Democrats are run by centrists because that’s who shows up to all the elections no matter how small or petty, but the lefts show up at Presidential elections and whinge about how nothing changes.

I hope I’m preaching to the choir when it comes to voting on the small elections, but unless you’re in a very different place than I am, if you did you’d pretty quickly notice you’re the rare leftist there.

Hillary in her campaign was focused on removing Citizens United.

After she lost, hasn’t been brought back up again.

I realize I’m late to the response but the Democrat campaign in Missouri is captured by the DNC which is walking in step with Biden. Last senate campaign we had a choice on the democrats side between a left leaning former marine and pushed major antitrust policies or… an heiress to the biggest beer company in the country.

I’ll let you guess who the DNC and the campaigns assigned to our state backed. I’ll not even count the first two guesses.

I’m going to assume this isn’t “lottery” ultra-wealthy where you can spend it all and suddenly be back to destitute. So you say you wouldn’t live that differently, and immediately begin with “quitting work.” That’s the first step, because being wildly wealthy does change you incrementally because in this situation you’ve just bought yourself a commodity that once spent can’t be bought back, time.

You now have 40 hours a week that you were giving to someone else. Add on 5-10 hours for commute time (.5 to hour commute) that can get up to 50 hours for whatever the hell you want to do.

Buying a new car just a quick glance at Carmax and you’re looking at around $13,000 for a standard sedan. Not many have that pocket change going around, much less to buy the house that at low end houses cost $100,000 so you’re done, no worries, no muss, no fuss and you didn’t give some company your money in interest because you bought for cash. And on buying houses, as competitive as the market is, buying with cash right now at least in my region is about the only way to do it.

So lets assume you’re working from home right now, you gained back 40 hours. Hey, I want to have a party/trip/etc! Well, your buddies are all working, possibly can’t afford to go on trip, night out to eat. Offer to pay, but it’s still the getting the time off. They’ve got bills to worry about, the ones you’re not even thinking about. Sometimes they’ll show up, other times, not so much. So either you’re out fishing and working on your hobbies during that 40, or working to a new project job wise which really by this point is how the wealthy keep getting more and more money because build up a new thing, hire someone else to run it, passive income. But you don’t have your friends to hang out with, travel and the like, you’ll run into the others that don’t have those concerns because you can buy your way around inconveniences (airport seats are uncomfortable, but those lounges are nice. Why have to take connecting flights? etc) those are also going to be the ultra wealthy. And they have a standard of living that will look more and more “normal” to you. Little bit of peer pressure, little bit of “take a ride in my Lambo” and finding it fun, it’s a frog in the pot situation, you’ll go back to your roots and go “How did I live like this?”

Same *from Missouri.

I expected nothing and I was still disappointed.

I remember a time when I thought Captain Planet villains were hyperbole.

Immigration? Come on in, we’ll worry about it later!

So many takes but the legislative branch built together an immigration plan, one that involved quite a lot of money to the border to help enforce it and crack down. Both Dems and GOP worked together on that one. Then Trump said to bail on it, that immigration was a winning ticket for Presidency and congress Republicans sank the bill.

So… legit the thing you’re bitching about is a political tool by the Republicans.

I keep saying it. Hamas knew what it was doing, and literally the whole world danced to the song they put on, and I’d be legit shocked if the ones in charge that came up with the attack are actually in the strip.

Hamas attacked Israel in one of the most aggressive and heinous methods that has been seen in a long while, the Israel that has a history of retaliating with absolute and overwhelming force with zero chill, at a time when the leadership of Israel was looking for an opportunity to invade. So Israel is gonna Israel, and now the Palestinians in Gaza who would go against Hamas, as you said that would be happy to subjugate the Palestinians, are going to be more supportive of Hamas where the two-state solution isn’t even being as supported as it once was because the calls for revenge are coming.

Regionally, Israel gained it’s zero-chill attitude because it was surrounded by countries that want to exterminate it, it’s required western backing to keep there. But Egypt and Israel haven’t been quite at each others throats as much anymore, and Saudi Arabia and Israel were working out a deal. This put Israel back at square one in terms of local diplomacy.

Western countries have had to be the supporters to Israel, it kinda exists in that sort of meddling. When Israel attacked the strip, there were multiple countries ready to throw in and escalate it from a small war to a full all out multi-national war. That much rattling sabers means the west continues its support, even when they hand the weapons to Israel to say ‘don’t use it over here.’ and watches Israel do just that.

The west supporting Israel has only helped fan the flames of anti-semetic rhetoric with the feeling of Israel pulling an excess of political power upon itself. The right wing hawks are willing to help keep escalating the war because, well they’ve never had a problem starting wars in the Middle East. The political left is tearing itself apart because it typically is a coalition of differing beliefs, the US is having a problem that the not-ultra-right wing party of the Democrats got where they are because depending on the state it was coalitions of Muslim and Jewish voters, both of whom are mad and are threatening to stay home despite the other runner is someone who will make things worse, which could be the sort of thing to rally the religiously held Muslim countries together.

What angers me is how much of this I predicted when Hamas attacked. I’m just a guy who works on equipment, one would hope the world leaders would see this exact same train of thought and turn off the music instead of getting in line and waltzing to the beat.

I’ll say it once, I’ll say it again, Hamas played the whole damn world like fucking puppets with one attack.

I’d be absolutely shocked if the actual leaders that planned the attack are in the strip. Now any Palestenians that might have been against Hamas in the strip are stuck fighting a nuclear power in full “us vs them” mentality, Israel reacted exactly how Israel does any time it has been attacked, which is with overwhelming and vicious force now putting the country doing monstrous actions against civilians going for what looks like a full genocide, your exact point on a rival religion suddenly now giving a lot of voice to the conspiracy theories, it has created an even bigger divide in the US (but then again what doesn’t anymore) and Saudi Arabia who was working on deals with Israel has backed all the fucking way off and NATO is sitting there awkwardly trying to decide exactly where on the line it wants to walk seeing as the US can’t bring itself to go against Israel while Russia is rather uppity at the moment.

Taking away any conversation on ethics, which is nearly impossible… I just can’t believe these leaders are this fucking short sighted.

The trouble with every “vote” argument on the left is always about the POTUS. The Republicans had a mission for decades that not a single non-Republican would run unopposed across the entire damn country no matter how small the vote was. Is it a sheriff for some backwater town? Yup, better make sure a Republican is there. How about a superintendent?

From the ground they have worked absolutely hard to make sure they had control of as much of the government to control every vote.

To use your analogy of fighting a war. As you said they’re celebrating taking a hill in an attempt in every four years. But that’s because one group is only doing the charge every four years and wondering “Why are we losing?” when the other side is digging the trenches advancing every year. Yes, this is the Democrats fuckup because they certainly aren’t investing in them like the Republicans but then among a supply of left wing friends I’m the one informing “Here’s the important fucking local vote about abortion/taxes/who’s running for x seat” and finding out often that I’m the only one who was faffed to vote.

I agree Biden is 100% fucking this up. I agree that I’m worried that the Democrats will somehow snatch defeat from the jaws of victory by losing to an opponent beaten once before because of how truly awful Trump is.

But I’m absolutely amazed at the free Palestine folks who are threatening that they’re the vote between Biden, who’s wagging a finger at Israel going “don’t” and fuck all else… and the guy who calls Netanyahu by his first name, buddied up to Israel, moved the embassy to Jerusalem, wanted to ban Muslims from the US, and is cozied up to the evangelicals who want to support Israel starting a holy war just so they can have Revalations go off.

Like both parties are bad, but there’s bad… and there’s “lets throw styrofoam containers of gasoline on the fire, that’ll surely put it out.”

But I guess sometimes you need your house to burn down before you realize why we need a publicly funded fire department.

Question… were you bringing up the house out in Tennessee that burned down because the county didn’t have a publicly funded fire department? Because if so, that’s a hell of a deep cut.

Honest answer, should’ve been investing in canned food yesterday. Today is the next best day to start.

Can’t be added on with multiple “Once in a generation” natural disasters happening on a yearly basis with temp records breaking yearly, nations with the power to demolish the world rattling sabers over a fight that’s been going before we were born, zero chance of moving upwards in the crushing capitalism, all the while the leadership is fighting over identity politics instead of acknowledging any of the problems. Surely none of those are add on factors.