• 4 Posts
  • 482 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 11th, 2023

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  • Edit: The comment I replied to was removed, so my sarcasm seems out of place without context. I have removed that reply.

    I will instead say this: before the election I complained that there was no viable anti-genocide voting option, and before I got downvoted into oblivion I was told “well, you can’t get everything you want in politics”. I held my nose and voted Harris, thinking maybe the democrats could be pressured.

    Well here we are. The whole fuckin thing makes me want to cry.




  • You can absolutely make rhe case that the origin of the current homelessness crisis goes further back, but it is undeniable that Reagan accelerated the process beyond any other set of post war policies.

    You can also point to some short term benefits from that administration but you don’t mention that Reagan (and the party of fiscal responsibility) increased the federal debt from $738 billion to $2.1 trillion, thus transforming the USA from the worlds largest creditor to the worlds largest debtor.

    Since Reagan, many people who called themselves conservatives and those who called themselves liberals both embraced neoliberal policies, and some benefited a lot. The long term consequences we see are dissapearing middle class, ever increasing income inequality and record levels of homelessness.

    It also seems like no particular person or party is really to blame, these are just the natural results of late stage capitalism, invisible hand of the market and all that.






  • I mostly posted my rant just to be contrary, but I still feel like there is something erroneous to this argument, even tho you do make it seem clear and sensible.

    I offer Japan as an example: the whole country is very neat, tidy and orderly. People know that if you see garbage, or something out of place, you put it where it belongs. People take the personal responsibility to clean up after themselves very seriously, and willingly clean up after eachother. As it was explained to me, 'If you’re the first person to see it, then you are the person to take care of it."

    So you would expect this baseline indication of ethical behavior to translate into other domains. Surprisingly, people who as a group score very well on this test of self-regulation and ethical behavior seem to have a systemic problem with violence, sexual abuse and sexual harassment against women. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/3/8/sexual-assault-in-japan-every-girl-was-a-victim

    It could be that individuals not putting things away is a sign of a deeper societal issue, but group/individual fastidiousness doesn’t seem to generalize to broader ethical adherence.

    Maybe there is a mistake somewhere in my thinking.


  • Nope, I don’t buy it.

    • An estimated one out of every 500 Americans is homeless
    • Unarmed noncombatant civilian women and children are being bombed, shot, and starved to death.
    • There has been a nearly 70% reduction in wild vertebrates worldwide since 1970
    • The leading cause of death among children and teens in america is firearms

    Privileged westerners could do something about these things, but they are sipping their pumpkin spice lattes and congratulating each other for putting their shopping carts back because, you know, it’s the ultimate test of moral righteousness. Ugh.





  • I would accuse you of playing dumb but I don’t think you are playing.

    You should understand that aside from the big cities, most of the state leans right. You should also be able to grasp that local officials have some influence over local political issues, like the implementation of various ballot measures. But you’re so hot to blame them dang ole democrats for ever bad thing, you want to act like you don’t know this?

    I wont argue against the fact that democrats are largely useless, but how is going back to the war on drugs a better solution?