I don’t have any evidence for this but purely speculation on my part: racism can explain a good amount of that. Biden has in the 90s voted for “tough on crime bills”, he is the definition of political establishment, and is a white man from Wilmington. Obama definitely is not textbook underpriveleged but he doesn’t have those points that biden does

Its not idiotic, because democrats have had numerous opportunities to enshrine abortion and contraception into law, while controlling both the legislative and executive branch. Republicans are perfectly able to pass their abhorrent laws, but democrats seem to not be able to pass good legislation even when they control the government. Until Roe was overturned, this state of affairs was actually very beneficial to democratic politicians, because they could recycle abortion as a rallying point every single election.

I am not talking about individual choices but rather the social factors influencing those choices, please read a history book

But their countries are only poor because of the imperialism of rich countries for centuries. You’re saying they should be grateful for rich economies helping them develop, when those rich economies are the reason they are poorer to begin with.

Not sure if this is directly applicable but there’s the concept of dual power, where you can organize a bottom up power structure that takes some power from the regular government without needing to either submit to it or outright overthrow it. With that said it has only ever been successful in cases where the government is incredibly unstable to begin with.

I’m somewhat undecided here, because ultimately I don’t care for federated services to become dominant at all costs, nor do I care if they shrink slightly. I want the users of these services to voluntarily choose them based on the principles that federated social media stands for right now. My personal opinion right now is let them federate, but defederate the minute the “extend” starts. But we’ll see.

A lot of things that US courts have recently done(this included) is making making me wonder about how judicial review should work. Because what I keep seeing is that US courts will strike down shitty band aid solutions(which AA was, it was an attempt at a quick and easy solution for a very long list of social issues) without offering better alternatives. I do think that affirmative action should not have to exist, but the better choice is full scale education reform, addressing systemic racism, an understanding of how privilege affects educational outcomes, and greater availability and lower cost of the highest quality tertiary education. As it is today I am observing courts not choosing perfect over good, but rather destroying half baked solutions because they oppose the intended outcomes of those solutions.

It definitely is upper middle income and I’m not trying to imply otherwise. It’s just crazy to me that millionaires are so much closer to the average American than billionaires and corporations as far as income goes.

Millionaires are definitely still well off but just to make a point: the average value of a US house is $450k. Add to this a $250k retirement fund and you’re already up to 0.7M in net worth.

“leftists” nowadays who defend Russia seem extremely pathetic to me. The only thing Russia has in common with leftism is a general dislike for the activities of the United States. But there are many other groups who opposed the US, such as Nazi Germany, which doesn’t necessarily make them your ally. As a Russian-american I can say that a lot of media and discourse on Russia in the west has incredibly poor overall quality, but it’s not a CIA psyop, it’s a combination of American exceptionalism, genuine issues, and zero cultural awareness.

Not informed on this particular instance but 90% of illegal immigration to western countries happens because the US, UK, France, or etc, fucked up the migrants’ origin country one way or another. A perfect example of this is the US: most immigrants are from places fucked up by either the US overthrowing any left-wing Latin American government, or by awful US drug policy. Most nations not only have a moral responsibility to migrants as fellow humans, but they are usually directly responsible for those migrants wanting to leave their homelands to begin with.