They’re doing exactly what they want while blaming the Democrats for all the negative effects, as is tradition

They’re doing it because it works, alarmingly well. Sure, many Americans recognize that it’s all just a dishonest tactic, but not enough of us. Many Americans fall for the con, hook, line and sinker.

Like the current administration gives a shit about what “experts” have to say. As far as Trumpers are concerned, they’re their own experts, and their expertise comes from the fact that they believe they are smarter than everyone else. Or, more accurately, they’re extremely insecure and they try to compensate by pretending - by faking it until they make it - at being smart. They do this by simply acting confident in their positions (even if their positions are complete nonsense and verifiably false) and refusing to back down.

I won’t be watching either of them.

We lost because we never should’ve been in either of those countries in the first place.

The US has put or helped keep more kings in power than they have taken out of power. Also, I would like to point out that King George III did not die in the American revolutionary war.

I know, but I think Cuomo is much more representative of the Democratic establishment that has been in place for several decades now. Mamdani comes from outside that establishment. In any other democracy, the two candidates would not be in the same political party, since they are not ideologically aligned, but, because the US is a de facto two party system, they are both technically “Democrats.”

I feel that establishment Democrats have often used Republicans as a threat in many elections, to basically extort their voters. Specifically, they have used the Republican threat as a way to keep the establishment Democrats in power. “If you nominate a progressive or leftist, you’ll split the party and the Republicans will win, so best just to play it safe and fall in line behind the establishment.” They’re not necessarily wrong, but it nonetheless feels like extortion.

That’s why I’ve often said the Democrats (remember, I’m talking about establishment, neoliberal Democrats) and the Republicans have been engaged in a kind of good cop/bad cop routine for many years. The Republicans being a party of violent lunatics has been useful to the Democrats. Whenever Democratic voters try to deviate too much from the neoliberal establishment, the Democrats have been able to say, “hey, if you’re not willing to cooperate with us, we’ll just send in the Republicans again, and you know those guys aren’t as nice as us,” kind of a thing.

Time to pull this old gem out:

I’m not a Gen Z voter, so I certainly can’t speak for them, but I hate our country. I hate that so many Americans are being left behind. I hate that we are falling so far behind other democracies. I hate that our democracy is so flawed and corrupted, that I’m not sure it’s accurate to even call it a democracy anymore. I hate that so many Americans believe that being greedy, selfish, and indifferent to human suffering is not only acceptable, but somehow “rational.” I hate the manipulation and the misinformation that is very intentionally disseminated to the American people. I hate the violence, I hate the war mongering and war profiteering. I hate a lot of what IS right now, because I DEMAND better for myself and ALL other Americans.

This isn’t the traditional “big corporation buys something and then makes changes” situation. For 25 years Unilever has been fine with B&J doing their thing.

Yeah, well, they’re making changes now. So Ben and Jerry didn’t lose their autonomy right away, but they lost it nonetheless.

In the acquisition agreement, Unilever agreed to carry on the company’s tradition of engaging “in these critical, global economic and social missions”.

Well, obviously Jerry has reached the limits of what Unilever is willing to tolerate. Or, Unilever has just reneged. Those kinds of things can happen when you sell away your independence and autonomy.

Isn’t a child acting sexually often a sign they were sexually abused? Maybe the problem isn’t gen alpha watching porn, but either more sexual abuse by their parents

The two things are not mutually exclusive. One of the ways a parent can sexually abuse a child is showing them porn. Porn is often involved in child sexual abuse.

I never said that the health professionals didn’t consider the possibility that these children were themselves sexually abused. Of course they did. I never said that the health professionals asked only about porn consumption but not about past sexual abuse. They make both inquiries. I wasn’t even necessarily making a causal argument, only pointing out the strong correlation. I can’t tell you, because I don’t know, how many of the children who consume pornography have also been sexually abused. I don’t have access to that information, I don’t work there. All I do know is that significant porn consumption (including kids being caught watching porn in school) is very common among these kids.

It’s not fake, I’m telling you what I know, you can choose to believe it or not, I don’t give a shit.

Edit: I would also like to point out that sexual abuse often involves porn. A sexual abuser will often use porn as a way to groom a child for sexual abuse. The two things are not mutually exclusive, the porn consumption can very much be a part of the sexual abuse.

I’m not sure about gen z, but I worry about gen alpha. My wife works in a hospital for behavioral health and she sees an alarming number of kids (as young as 6 or 7) who are acting out sexually, and most of them consume a considerable amount of online porn. Many of them are there because they’ve sexually abused a sibling.

This is anecdotal, and of course in a behavioral health hospital my wife is going to see only the children who are acting out the most, and those children are by no means representative of the average child. It is also likely that some children have always acted out sexually, for various reasons, long before Internet porn. But the number of children they see for sexual predation is very concerning.

That’s just it, I don’t think they see themselves as “good guys” or “bad guys” because that implies some kind of moral dynamic, and they see themselves as above such things. They’re technocrats, I think they see themselves as scientists, in a way. I don’t think they care so much whether or not a course of action is “moral” only that it achieves the desired results.

I think people misunderstand nihilism. It isn’t the total absence of belief, it’s a rejection of meaning and morality. It’s not that the liberals don’t believe in anything, they believe in free markets, they believe in the fully atomized, wholly self-interested, utility maximizing individual. They believe in those things, they just don’t care if that individual, or, god forbid, a group of people, hold any moral positions, unless or until those moral positions start interfering with the functioning of "free markets.’

They don’t want to admit that their precious rule of law is dead and buried. They want to keep a semblance of normalcy alive, in part because it helps their financial backers

It’s because they’re nihilists. They don’t have a moral ethos. These are the same people who installed a ruthless dictator in Chile to protect liberalism from the Chilean people. They believe that the ends justify the means, the ends in that case being to bring neoliberalism to Chile. Remember what Friedrich Hayek, one of the architects of neoliberalism, said:

At times it is necessary for a country to have, for a time, some form or other of dictatorial power. As you will understand, it is possible for a dictator to govern in a liberal way. And it is also possible for a democracy to govern with a total lack of liberalism. Personally I prefer a liberal dictator to democratic government lacking liberalism.

Except these are states that explicitly signed on to this constitution

When most of the states “signed on,” women couldn’t vote and black slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person.

It’s not problematic at all to collectively enforce what they’re constantly trying to weasel out of.

Until the people you consider “weasels” decide they’re tired of a government forcing them to comply with policies they don’t agree with and so they take over said government and start using it to enforce their ideas on the populace.

Let’s absolutely have armed poll watchers ensuring the voting rights of minorities.

A strong central government that can be used to enforce the voting rights of minorities can also be used to oppress said minorities. A strong state is only as good as the people who control it.

race and ethnicity are unscientific social constructs

Race and ethnicity are not the same thing. Ethnicity is very real and it’s defined by shared culture, shared history, shared beliefs, shared language, etc. Outward physical characteristics, like eye, hair, and skin color, can also be a part of ethnicity, but only a part and I think those things are less important than all of the other characteristics that define an ethnic group. It’s socially constructed, sure, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t real.

Race, on the other hand, is the idea that you can take those outward physical characteristics, group together arbitrarily all the people who share some or all them, and define these groups as racial subspecies of human. It’s nonsense, with absolutely no basis in what we understand about human genetics and taxonomy today. Humans are a very genetically homogeneous species. Despite our different outward appearances, we are all relatively genetically similar.

But that doesn’t mean our ethnic differences don’t matter. They do, inspite of our general genetic similarities. They matter because humans are very tribal, by our nature. We evolved to live in tightly bonded communities of like people.

You say that civic nationalism is ok but ethnic nationalism is not, but you can’t separate them. No civic system can be entirely culturally or ethnically impartial, and where there is ethnic diversity, the civic sphere will always be controlled by the dominant ethnic group. That’s why I advocate so strongly for ethnic independence, I don’t think any ethnic group should be dominated by another. I believe that every ethnic group, every nation of people deserves their autonomy and their independence.

For me the wisdom is that for all the good a strong federal government could do, it inevitably was going to be used for ill

Absolutely.

But to a point I do think the founding sin was writing in the constitution that all men are created equal and still allowing slavery…all of American history has been the shockwaves of allowing slavery instead of making it illegal from the very beginning, and to this day it is still playing out.

Definitely. So much so that many people today directly associate greater state autonomy with the institution of slavery, as though if states were granted even slightly more autonomy, slavery would inevitably return and that they two things cannot exist without one another.

This country’s best moments imo has been the rare instances we get decent and capable people in the federal government who are able to push progress all the way out into rural backwaters

Listen to yourself, you sound like the European colonizers who justified their takeover of territory that was not theirs by claiming that they were “bringing civilization and enlightenment to backward savages.” “Progress” through force and violence is a concept that needs to be left in the past.

What are you advocating for?

I’m advocating for nations of people to have their autonomy and independence. I think that’s better than a strong, central state forcing integration.

For instance, I would advocate for the indigenous nations of North America to finally have their independence from settler colonialists. But, I suppose you wouldn’t support indigenous independence because that might mean the establishment of an indigenous “ethnostate.” No, it’s much better for a strong central government to force the indigenous people to allow non-indigenous people to move into their territory, become the majority and take over.