i think i mentioned giving a talk recently. an audience member asked a very aggressive question about why my examples of bad behavior were all republicans. “why didn’t i present any democrats?” well, this is why! there is nothing comparable!
Millions of people will ALWAYS opt out of voting. And their reasons will be varied and illegible to you. If you think that voting is in fact important than work to persuade the persuadable to your position.
Like, I understand criticism of Harris over her mealy mouthed response to Gaza, her complicity with neo-liberalism, but do you honestly believe that Trump would me MORE receptive to these criticisms? Do you honestly believe your third party candidate stands a chance?
Yeah, Trump is a fucking fascist, and if he wins everything will go to hell, he must not be allowed to win. But don't turn blind eye on shitty stuff done by your own side either.
That part. Elon Musk is actually having a big impact on the billionaire class. Showing them how far they can go in breaking norms without experiencing as many consequences as they feared. It's definitely about to get worse.
That isn’t a question; it’s a statement. America does not have a strong norm against ethnic cleansing because we’ve done it so many times that it’s fairly foundational.
But I think it says so much that JD Vance was like “my housing plan, my health care plan, my child care plan? The same plan: massive wide scale ethnic cleansing.” And we DON’T have a strong norm against that.
Nice. I like to call this the "siren song of statistical significance", after the episode of the Sirens in the Oddysey (jepusto.com/posts/Siren-...)
I tend to see it as the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydice. He is not allowed to cast his gaze on her and when he does, he loses her forever. We are all Orpheus. We will always be. Curiosity drives us, after all. To be Orpheus is to care.
But he still needs to get righteously angry. People are tired of candidates talking about these issues as if policy is largely a matter of academic disagreement