Developer and refugee from Reddit
You’re playing chess. But every time you glance away, your opponent steals one of your pieces off the board. Your options are:
That’s the situation we’re in at this point.
There’s no evidence of that here, but I’m fine with right-wing conspiracy crazies freaking out over the possibility.
Nah, he was old and sick, so it’s probably natural causes, but it certainly won’t help the conspiracy theorists on the right who’ve been flailing around over Epstein.
Dude, read the room. Yeah, your road probably needs to be repaired, but not with that money.
That’s how it begins. Gradually, you’ll see things you’re used to always having in stock disappear, while other things become steadily less affordable. It’s nothing that happens all at once, just a slow boiling of the frog until supermarket shelves are a wasteland.
We’re in a war of attrition with his cult. Every time something like this happens, a few of them reach the point where they can’t stand the cognitive dissonance anymore and start coming out of the fugue he’s kept them in.
I know a lot of them will shove everything they thought about Trump and the Epstein files down the memory hole. But a few won’t. Hopefully enough.
So now departments of the government that were created by Acts of Congress are just… null and void if King Trump says so?
Yep. But it’s important to remember that Republicans are utterly incapable of feeling shame. They can’t do it. They know they’re hypocrites of the highest order and do not care. For them, the ends justify literally any means, even if that includes utter betrayal of every moral precept they claim to hold dear.
Yes, the Bible says explicitly not to bear false witness. No, it’s not effective to point that out to supposed conservative Christians who happily lie and flip-flop on every single damn topic if they think it’ll give Republicans more power.
The fact that he ever had an approval rating with Gen Z is mind-boggling.
The leopards started feasting, and he decided they weren’t eating his face fast enough.
Les lacs d’Ardres sont très beaux. La ville est très conviviale.
Je parle français parce que j’aimerais retourner en France un de ces jours. Si je pratique chaque jour.
France. Specifically, a little town called Ardres. J’ai passé des vacances là-bas. C’était incroyable. Nous avons loué un gîte à la campagne. Je retournerais si je pouvais.
J’adore la France.
And how large is the disenfranchised bloc at this point?
Not large enough to make a difference, if by “disenfranchised” you mean “doesn’t vote for either major party.”
Here’s the thing: In order for a third-party candidate to make any difference at all beyond acting as a spoiler, that candidate needs to WIN. Not just have a good showing. Not just have a great showing where they come in just barely behind. In a FPTP system, there’s only the winner… and everyone else.
Until we have a third-party candidate who can actually win, a vote for a third party is not quite the same as voting for the candidate you’re most ideologically opposed to, but it’s not very different, either.
And don’t get me wrong, I fucking hate that that’s the situation we’re in. But it is. I wish I could argue against the mathematics of it, but they’re unavoidable.
(queue up the two-party-system reply guys here)
I mean, that is the root of the problem. That and FPTP elections. It’s just a mathematical reality that those combined guarantee third parties cause a spoiler effect.
Say you’ve got three parties. One wants to snuggle puppies, one wants to snuggle kittens, and the last wants to use both for target practice. If 66.6% divide their votes between the puppy and kitten snugglers, and 33.4% vote for target practice, the target practice party wins in our current system. That’s just the mathematical reality.
We don’t have to like it. Hell, we definitely shouldn’t, and should push for ranked choice voting and similar changes. But it’s a mistake to just ignore that that’s the system we’re currently stuck in.
It’s almost understandable until you realize it’s not just change for themselves they fear, it’s change for anyone else. Somehow, in their twisted minds, an increase in rights and humane treatment for others hurts them.
Kind of a weird one, but the beginning theme to the original Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex has stuck with me.
The song is called “Inner Universe,” but the lyrics are Russian.
Those are the only interests he has.
I’m waiting for the results of the lawsuits. I said “I’m not so sure,” but that doesn’t mean I think the election was stolen, either. It means I’m not certain either way.
But it doesn’t really matter either way. Say ironclad evidence comes out that he stole the election; we have no means to walk it back.
I’m not so sure, but sadly our constitution doesn’t have a mechanism to rewind anyway. All we could do is impeach and remove him, and then just keep impeaching and removing successors until we get someone sane.
Personally, I’m for a constitutional amendment to fix this, but it’ll never happen.
Beginning of Stray: “Oh, this cat game is so cute!”
End of Stray: [Hey, come see this big, grown-ass adult guy start ugly-crying!]