I really don’t want Trump to get shot and killed.

I really really want Trump to live the rest of his life in constant fear and paranoia, never able to enjoy the things that he loves, isolated from the world and starving for the adulation of the people who will quickly forget him in the prison of his own making as he taps away at his phone on his own little social media bubble, grasping at being relevant again until the day he dies of natural causes and the nation lets out a wet fart of false sympathy and lowers the flags to half staff for the day while the news media puffs him up one last time before they, too, stop giving a shit and we close this chapter of our lives and our nation.

That requires Harris to beat Trump in November, so I need the fucker to stay alive until then.

The culture war has been going on for a lot longer than a decade, it’s just only in the last decade or so that it’s been amped up to 11 in terms of how aggressive it’s being fought. Conservatives are almost always on the losing side of social issues that require a culture shift. Women’s suffrage, civil rights, seatbelt laws, anti-smoking laws, gay rights… the list goes on, and the fight is never quite done for some, but they always lose in the end.

The very fact that conservatives are very pro for things like coal mining that liberals are trying to legislate away create strong reasons for some people to hold their noses and vote Republican regardless of how noxious the candidate is. When their livelihoods are literally at stake and the liberal response is “Well you should have gone to college to learn a new skill or trade” it makes sense that they are corralled right into the arms of conservatives. Economic drivers are the most powerful force behind the conservative movement right now, not culture bullshit that deep down they don’t really care about. It doesn’t help that very few people understand the relationship between “the economy” as outlined by experts and “the economy” as experienced when paying for groceries or filling up their car at the pump. It doesn’t matter that conservatives almost never deliver on their promises to fix the economy and often end up sending the nation into a recession, if bad decisions on a national scale lead to temporary relief on a local scale for some, that’s what they will remember when voting next time.

Liberals need to be doing more to bring disenfranchised voters into the fold. Educating them without being condescending or dismissive would be an excellent start. Turning down the temperature in politics is not possible without also lowering the stakes, backing off of hardline positions in the short term might be the most effective way of undermining support for terrible conservative candidates.

The one thing that just about anybody inside or outside the U.S. can agree on is that we have the best national parks, and the most unspoiled natural beauty across entire swathes of land. This doesn’t happen by accident. A love of nature transcends political affiliations. If anything I would say despite the social stigma of Democrats being “tree-huggers”, it’s actually conservatives and Republicans who have a vested interest in preserving and maintaining national parks and nature conservatories. Hunting and fishing in particular are big pass times in red states, so it makes sense that Republicans care deeply about the environment.

Climate change denialism only takes root in conservative circles because it’s abstract enough to not be directly observable and is at direct odds with things like fossil fuels production that are major economic drivers in predominantly Republican controlled states. Although I think conservatives are finally waking up to that fact and are refusing to be spoon fed bullshit anymore. Hopefully not too late to reverse course.

If Trump wants to debate, he can show up to the one he already agreed to go to.

Based wizardposting.

Trump using the language of a tyrant is not an accident. When people say that democracy is on the line this election, we’re not being hyperbolic, we’re saying that because of statements like this. Please get out there and vote this November.

Oh boy, I can’t wait for armchair pundits who were calling for Joe to step down to now turn around and start to nitpick Harris as if that wasn’t going to be the obvious successor.

I’m 100% behind Harris or anyone who gets the Dem nom. Trump must be stopped.

This is still a battle for America’s soul. Are we going to accept the first female president or the first convicted felon president? I sure hope the left turns out for this one, even if they aren’t super stoked about it, because we might never recover from another Trump disaster.

“We need 7 million migrants!”

“Sorry, best I can do is a border wall made out of shipping containers. Promises made, promises kept.”

Conquer half the world for spices.

Use absolutely none of them in authentic British cuisine.

Just the way His Majesty intended.

It doesn’t matter to anybody who has already made up their mind to vote/not vote for him.

It matters that justice is done and that the system holds him accountable.

Dunkey hasn’t released a funny video in years. His new material is just so flat.

Well, we survived him once, we can do it again.

I’d still prefer to not get set back another decade by having him in office, and the danger of him never leaving office by way of dismantling all of the safeguards that prevented his coup in 2021 can’t be ignored.

If there are ways I can resist, I will. If there are people I can help just by reaching out, I will extend my hand to them. I won’t let Trump’s hateful rhetoric poison my humanity or turn me against my fellow man.

If things get bad enough, my girlfriend and I have a “bug-out” plan that we discussed and agreed upon that basically amounts to - withdraw everything from our financial accounts, sell everything that isn’t nailed down if we can or abandon everything in place, round up the family and buy plane/boat tickets to head somewhere that has low requirements for citizenship or will accept American petitions for political asylum if things get desperate enough. This is in the worst-case scenario where the U.S. descends into a full fascist/totalitarian state and there is a clear and present danger of us getting killed just for being political dissidents.

Ideally, we’d like to stay here and hope that things get better, but every year things seem to get worse and worse. The American Dream is dead and rotting, and we can just barely see a pinhole of light at the end of the tunnel for us to be able to achieve a life, but we’re both left wondering if we’re even going to be able to hold on to that if we do manage to seize it given how much the economy is backsliding each year.

tl;dr: the plan is to keep our heads down, but our spirits as high as possible, and always know where the closest exit is in case of an emergency.

Yes, this is also true. I see things like UBI as an inevitable necessity, because AI and automation in general will eliminate the need for most companies to employ humans. Our capitalistic system is set up in a way such that a person can sell their ability to work and provide value to the owner class, but if that dynamic is ever challenged on a fundamental level, it will violently collapse when people who can’t get jobs because a robot replaced them either reject automation to preserve the status quo or embrace a new dynamic that provides for the population’s basic needs without requiring them to be productive.

But the way that managers talk about AI makes it sound like the techbros have convinced everybody that AI is far more powerful than it currently is, which is a glorified chatbot with access to unfiltered Google search results.

People down vote me when I point this out in response to “AI will take our jobs” doomerism.

If it makes you feel any vindication, the fact that this was reported by news outlets here means nothing. This cop will never see punishment beyond a slap on the wrist or some paid administrative leave at best. Police violence has already been institutionalized in America too.

People who say they are only good because of the threat of eternal damnation are literal psychopaths.

Again, what laws are you referring to? I want to hear you explain it.

It’s been two years, mate. If Russia hasn’t won yet, that means they can’t.

Meta is not the government. Something being government funded does not make it an apparatus of the government. There has been no curtailing of 1st amendment rights here.

Okay sure, but there’s nothing on the books that says that meta has to allow people to use their platform. You are not entitled to unlimited access to a private service.

Ever single person from RFK and Donald Trump to you and me all sign the exact same fucking EULA and TOS when you register for an account. Stop holding these people above the law by pretending that the rules shouldn’t apply to them.