Yea I tried to create an account on another instance when I started, and never heard back. Then I went to Lemm.ee and it was quick and easy.

That said I kinda like how each one is run a bit different. It’s nice to not have a top down structure but more of a terrorist cells situation.

Nice try FBI

Oh yea, he never turned off his mic. Pretty sure I heard his mom come down with tang and Oreos and he cussed her out

Honestly, the wildest one was a guy who said “I grew up anti-racist, so I know I’m not racist” and literally dropped an N bomb and then said some stupid race jokes. Dude was white and kept saying he was invited to the cookouts.

Oh don’t worry they’ll let you know they aren’t racist. In fact they will be so helpful in telling you that you are the real racist for calling them racist./s

The big one I’ve been noticing from my dad and conservative speeches is

“Kamala is lazy”

“She’s just there to get a check”

“She doesn’t do anything”

Like… Just say welfare queen. You don’t even have to pronounce the silent N. We know what you mean.

Oh absolutely. We need an inspiring queer leader to mark a new era, where young LGBT children can grow up knowing they have a future in our country, let alone a future at all.

His response to Pence was amazing.

✅ Military experience. We may need a leader who knows first hand the danger they are putting our young men and women in.

✅ Governing experience (if you can be a community organizer, peanut farmer, or reality TV star, being a mayor is absolutely legitimate experience)

✅ Federal experience

✅ I’m gonna say it- in hindsight he managed the rail union strike amazingly well. He avoided a supply chain catastrophy, then a few months later got the union the sick time they need. He had his cake and ate it too.

✅ Medicare for those who want it is a realistic plan. It’s it perfect? No. But it’s better and more importantly can pass through Congress.

I fully expect comments to fully support this take without any criticism for a center left candidate who doesn’t plan on tearing down capitalism brick by brick./s

Yep.

Bad things are gonna happen regardless. Good things are going to happen regardless. There’s the things in the news, the things in your community, the things in your friend and family groups, and the things that happen to you on your day to day.

While it’s important to focus on the problems we face and the changes we can make, we also need to focus on the wins no matter how small. Mere pessimism isn’t enough. Mere optimism isn’t enough. Mere anything isn’t enough because life isn’t that simple.

Take time to mourn, but fight against the waves of despair that want to drown you.

"Hope is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

It songs the tune without the words

And never stops at all"

It was a result of the 3rd party app collapse that triggered the migration of reasonable people out of reddit. I was the mod of r/mapporncirclejerk and saw my mod queue explode with the most hateful shit that went unchecked by other commenters.

Then my friend told me about where everyone went, glad to see all of you!

I’m now mod of !cartographyanarchy@lemm.ee so stop on by!

Sometimes all you can do is hope

¯⁠\⁠_⁠༼⁠ ⁠ಥ⁠ ⁠‿⁠ ⁠ಥ⁠ ⁠༽⁠_⁠/⁠¯

What I’d like to do? Play Pente with friends and family in the morning in a cafe. It’s an easy going game that you can have conversations over and it is a family favorite of mine.

Realistically? Forage for mushrooms and be successful at hunting in a post apocalyptic nuclear wasteland.

Okay, in other words we need to consider our assumptions and definitions of “Free will” and “Determinism” when answering this question?

I really enjoyed this video on Compatibilism, and the view of Patricia Churchland (around 5:50) where she says we should reframe the question away from “what choices we have” to “how much control do we have”.

I think the reason we are seeing two candidates who are unpopular for reasons of mental fitness has to do with several forces at play, and it comes down to how power is gained and distributed in our system.

First, I am defining power as the ability to make people do things they would not do on their own volition.

In any system, the longer you stay there, the more opportunities there are to amass power. This power comes from connections you make. In my teenage years, I didn’t have much power for many reasons, but one was that I didn’t have powerful connections. All my friends were working retail or fast food or other summer jobs. With age, my connections are more powerful. My best friend works at Oracle and another at Microsoft. As a musician, I’ve been around the block a bit and now know folks who are producers and have some notariety. This is a big reason we are seeing more and more elderly folks in powerful positions. Not only do they have power, they have connections.

The classic cases of corruption we see from the outside, are people returning favors when viewed from the inside. To them it’s common decency. Imagine you were passionate about food and feeding people, and you started a restaurant or maybe a non-profit to feed the homeless. If someone you knew saw your work and believed in what you do, and they could give you a hefty low rate loan or been a donation, the decent thing to do would be to thank them, and if they asked for a favor down the line, you would feel terrible to not return the support they gave you when you were small and starting out.

Throw that in with a first past the post voting system that allows power to consolidate around two parties, and you’ll see the natural trend is for those with the most experience and connections to find their way to the top while closing more and more opportunities for younger folks to make their way in. The connections of the youth simply can’t compete with the connections of the elderly.

One part of your post that struck me was the “why do we allow”. Personally my take is that we shouldn’t make strict requirements of who someone is in order to run for office. There are other ways we can vet those unfit to serve. My concern with something like an iQ test or upper age limit is that we will be disenfranchising marginalized groups from taking power. I don’t mean to go full slippery slope, but I do think this is a dangerous precedent to set. Should an elderly person be barred from running for president? Should someone who has a mental illness like depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, or schizophrenia be barred from holding office? If project 2025 takes place we may ask the question should trans or homosexual people be allowed to hold office? For the last one, the argument from conservatives would be that they are too “morally deficient” to hold office. Personally I find that repulsive.

By limiting demographics of who can and cannot run for office, we would also allow the possiblity of a rogue president to disqualify opponents if they can manipulate a test required to be eligible to run for president.

I think these are reasonable considerations when trying to answer your question. I hope this was helpful.

If you’d like to learn more on power structures, CGP grey made a great video that is a great tl;Dr to my first year of my polisci undergrad.

If you can reword you initial post, that would be great. I was also having trouble following what you were saying.

I think the reason I don’t follow that idea is that it sounds so similar to Neville Chamberlain’s “Peace for our Time”. The slaughter would just be put on pause, but would last longer and become more dangerous in 2 years time.

I see a difference between that and the handling of Gaza, which Trump would very much continue supporting Israel on. He wouldn’t put American troops on the ground, but he’s been saying his peace plan is for Israel to “get the job done”. This is very much what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we saw how that played out. I understand there is a belief that stopping support for Israel means the death of Israel, but with BB, he is only accelerating this by continued genocide of Palestinians.

There are idealists (and I will fully admit some anti-semites) who would love to see the end of a Jewish state, and there are those who would look for a two state solution. Trump and BB have made it clear that they are not for a two state solution and are pushing for complete annihilation of the Palestinian people. Trump is not a peacemaker.

Did you click the link? 😰

Did you know it’s illegal to say “I want to kill the president of the United States of America”?

“What did you learn at school?”

“That life begins at contemplation”

I will note that not everyone got through the last Trump presidency. Clinton would have had an actual response to Covid because she wouldn’t have disbanded the NSC unit that would have saved most of the 1.1 million Americans who died of Covid-19.