It’s the structure of our “first past the post” system. Basically, each party gets one representative on the presidential ticket. The two major parties have primaries where the top candidates compete in a vote within themselves, and the winner gets put on the presidential ticket for that party.

The obvious problem with that is that the party convention picks the candidate, not the voters. So it’s possible to buy a party’s candidate or for the conventions to snub popular choice in favor of not shaking things up too much in the status quo.

The latter point, the democratic party picking lukewarm candidates that are moderate at best because the establishment doesn’t want to disturb the status quo, has been a problem for a long time and is a major reason democrat voters don’t go to the polls.

News used to be 60 minutes just after prime time. Now they have whole channels with news 24/7/365. Have to fill all that air time with something

Or Woefully ignorant. I know some of those

There is a voice I consciously control, and there is one that I don’t. They kind of intermingle into a single monologue, but I can still hear the one I don’t control when I consciously turn off my monologue. It’s still a quiet presence almost in the back of my mind.

One way I’ve rationalized it, it’s like when you meditate and your thoughts still flow over you. You don’t actively control those thoughts, that’s kind of the point. I’m finding that those thoughts have a coherent voice for me. They speak through my monologue, but they are still there when I shut my monologue off. Under the surface, quieter, with the rest of the thoughts I don’t control.

One of the “constantly” group here. It’s a bit more like having someone to talk to all the time who is also me. I can turn it off, but it has to be a concentrated effort and as soon as I’m not concentrated on keeping it silent it comes back.

I’ve spent many years wondering at the nature of the little voice, especially after I learned that not everyone has it. It’s not controlling or contradictory, it’s a bit more like a narrator for my feelings and a driving point for logic.

I’ve come to the conclusion that what it actually is is my subconscious manifesting as a conversational partner. Kind of like an avatar that represents the part of me that isn’t the literal point of consciousness inside my head. Make of that what you will.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think in pictures and non-verbal inclinations. That doesn’t really go away either. But it’s like having a narrator alongside it that also speaks in the first person.

As a fellow Louisianian, I’m here for it too. But I have strong doubts about it going anywhere.

Infrastructure expansion like trains

We’ll see. Congress doesn’t like the president spending money without their explicit approval. At this stage of planning, it’s little more than grandstanding by the president.

investing in education

See above. Congress undid Biden’s first attempt at debt relief. It’s still unclear if the second attempt will pan out. Cool if it does though. Still an if.

healthcare plans

The ACA really only pays out for people far enough below the poverty line that they basically don’t have income. My wife and I make $50k/year. Not even enough to own a house here. I still shell out $600/month for basic healthcare for two, with a $1000 deductible we each have to pay before the insurance even starts covering costs. And that’s considered a good plan. Deductibles can legally be as high as $10,000 per person before insurance starts paying anything.

The ACA isn’t exactly a shining achievement for democrats.

environmental programs

I’ll give you that one. My state is building and opening the largest carbon capture facility in the world so far, because of democratic policy.

etc

Etcetera is what people say when they run out of examples. By my count you’ve got 1 (one) example of good that democrats have done that has actually materialized and isn’t in jeopardy of failing as soon as someone actually has to approve the funding. Most democratic policies die in congress.

But of course you already know of all these so why do you need to ask the question?

No need to be an asshole, I’m just here demonstrating for you that the broad strokes you’re painting are not even close to the actual situation.

(I’m not even from USA myself, but your Republicans have such deranged policies that it spills over to us in impacts on trade, etc)

I’m with you on this one. Republicans are deranged in general. But it’s abundantly clear that you do not live here. Democrats had 3 years to do something constructive, and they mostly haven’t even managed to undo the damage Trump has done, let alone enact policies that benefit the majority of Americans.

In fact, democrats lost a major civil rights battle during their tenure (Roe v Wade) without even putting up a fight. I absolutely cannot blame democrat voters for being disappointed.

Bro, you dodged his question. He answered yours.

So how about instead of brushing him off with an insult, you actually pony up some good things you think democrats are doing that doesn’t just boil down to “well republicans would have done it worse”

Frankly, I’m on the side of voting democrats with the exact reasoning that Republicans will steer us into fascism. But I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they’re doing good, they just aren’t doing as much bad.

I can’t blame people who are disappointed with democrats as a whole, and I think it’s a reach to unironically take your position of voting for them because you think they have good policies.

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Let’s go a step further and analyze exactly what this graph is saying:

There’s only about a 20% distribution difference in the “never” sections between Christians and atheists. So on average, 4/5 atheists would answer the exact same as Christians. All this graph says is that Christians are barely more tolerant than people who identify as atheist. Barely is the key word. If anything, this graph proves that tolerance levels don’t fluctuate that much for the individual between differing religions.

But Bible thumpers need any win they can get, so they don’t read the data for what it is, they just see one bar longer than the other and declare victory.

You’re a housing provider, not a landlord. If you aren’t making anything off of the houses you lease then you aren’t the subject of the ire of renters.

Ignore those goons saying you’re a bad investor. It’s noble of you to not leech off of the people who you rent to, and at the end of the day, the equity of the house is still yours.

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It’s psyops, nothing more. They perceive it as “playing the west’s game” in a double bid to stoke their own citizens and trip up NATO counterparts by using “western” language against them.

The right in this context is invented: A projection of hard power through the lip service of soft power.

This is a form of slippery slope fallacy. Rich in this context refers to portion of society contributing to pollution on a massively higher scale than even an upper middle class American. How many ‘rich’ Americans regularly fly private jets or take yachts? How many average joes own and operate a cruise line or a refinery?

I think with regards to poorer people in other countries, they’d be on the same page with 99.99% of Americans about who’s considered so rich that they alone pose a threat to global health.

You’re not wrong, but consider that people who justified sticking around for some reason or another might leave because the brand change (to a name that is so brain dead even a little offensive) finally hits home for them that it isn’t going to be the same.

A brand name change is about the single most overt thing you can do to send the message that a product isn’t going to be the same. And when that happens, people tend to look at the recent trends for that product to get an idea of what to expect. The recent trends for Twitter happen to be right-wing echo chamber.

So yeah, the people who were going to leave have largely already left. But this brand change is going to be effective at galvanizing those who are left.

What if you knew it was shit, like you watched something defacate it. It still tastes like chocolate. Would you still eat that over a candy bar that you know is definitely factory produced and sanitary, but still tastes like shit?

Politicians in America have people on both sides hypnotized to equate socialism with bolshevik communism. That’s a major reason why we can’t move any meaningful distance left as a country, but we can move right at the blink of an eye. Socialism is a dirty word here, for no other reason than the fact that big corporations pay politicians to demonize it.

That’s the dumbest part. There’s no guarantee that this ipo bid is going to pan out. Huffman is betting big, it’s just too bad he’s so full of himself that he doesn’t realize his actions will probably be what causes this ipo to fail.

He wanted to fly under the radar and make changes that look good on paper while keeping the community relatively the same. Instead he made a splash so big that major news outlets are still talking about it months later, and now he’s actively alienating the volunteer work that holds the whole site together.

“Become profitable” is just their stated goal.

I think that their actual goal is to look profitable for the upcoming ipo so that the CEOs can cash a fat check and leave. They likely don’t care about what happens after that.

So the “become profitable while simultaneously destroying everything that made it valuable” platitude is more like “they’re cutting down the tree for the wood without thinking about the squirrels”