Everyone who votes Republican deserves shit like this. But unfortunately we’re all stuck with them, and they seem incapable of learning.

I don’t know if that’s exactly a Venn diagram that’s a circle, but I think if you lose all the conservatives you also lose the capitalists. Whoever you’d have left would be amenable to change.

I took a like journalism 101 course in college as an elective, and we had a couple lessons on this. One of them, the teacher gave us a bunch of websites and was like “Tell me which of these are legitimate.” Some were crackpots, some were satire, some were just weird news. When we went over the assignment in class, we talked about strategies for figuring it out.

I think a lot of people never had that class, or they slept through it.

Sometimes I’m really optimistic about humanity, but sometimes I remember the stupidest kids from school. No attention span. No curiosity. A lot of them are probably out in the world making decisions right now.

Group membership matters to all of us. It’s like one of the primary drivers of belief. We might think we’re rational and cool logical people but that’s a lie. We trust people we see as being in-group, and we trust facts from them.

For some people, like many republicans, it’s also the only thing that really matters.

This may have been a viable strategy in like 3000BCE when you had to stick with your group of idiots, because otherwise you’d be left for dead or worse by the enemy tribe. It’s not really a solid strategy in 2025CE.

But that’s really the whole problem. People (often but not always republicans) put their group membership ahead of everything else. This is happening like deep in the emotional part of their psyche. There’s no easy fix. You’d probably have to get them to join some other group and see that as primary, like maybe appeal to their sense of being American, but it’s going to be hard when there’s a lot of them. It’s like gravity, they all pull each other into the group.

I don’t know how to fix this.

One of the frustrating things is the people responsible for this brain drain, the conservative idiots, will never really suffer for this. Not in a way they understand.

If we get through this, every conservative needs to go up against the wall.

Anyone who says they are a “free speech absolutist” is a liar or a fool.

I don’t believe canada is perfect but the US is really fucking bad, so it would probably be an improvement.

Though enemies of the US would probably be cackling at it dissolving. US conservatives really are a heady cocktail of traitors and absolute fucking idiots.

It might come to that. People should organize and arm now. Even though that’s kind of hard and scary and I don’t know where to begin.

“Why should I care about other people?” is a question that comes up a lot, and I am deeply suspicious of people who don’t care about others.

Feel like we should not make disposable plastic anymore.

It’s not as difficult as people say it is, but it’s harder than the average game that wants you to win.

Games like Skyrim generally aren’t very hard. They might show you scary things like a big troll or dragon, but they’re mostly paper tigers. You can always pause the game and eat 90 cheese wheels to heal, or save scum, or whatever. On top of that, the default numbers are such that you can probably take a beating before you go down.

Elden Ring, and other fromsoft games, don’t generally do that. The big knight with the big axe will probably kill you if he hits you a couple times, and then you go back to the checkpoint to try again.

But there are so many ways to deal with that problem. Just run past the knight. Dodge. Get a big shield and block. Use ranged attacks. Use a spirit ash. Summon a whole other player. Cheese it with poison. Fuck off and come back with more levels/upgrades/trinkets

Players that just repeatedly try one approach over and over and over are going to have a bad time. There’s a field boss right after the tutorial. Some people will see it and spend hours fighting it. That shit is pretty hard when you’re basically naked, have the minimum amount of healing, and no other tools. Just walk away. It’s a really hard game if you insist on playing it in ways that maximize hardness

Everyone is dangerous.

Kind of shitty to oppose systemic changes that would help them and reduce danger

Assuming they’re American: they’re an idiot. Sorry. They don’t understand how things are intertwined, and you can’t have social justice for free. If you let laissez-faire policies be, you don’t get socially liberal outcomes. You get capitalist dystopia.

Any plan that depends on “and then the common person develops discerning taste” is doomed to fail. Especially considering that even people who are usually picky might enjoy something basic from time to time

Why is that valid but “the US should have no qualms about footing the bill and doing it” not?

You don’t want to see them because you want them to be housed, or you want them to be forcibly moved so they’re unhoused out of sight?

The government should be doing more for the housing crisis, but a first step for that is getting people aware of the issue and on board with solutions.

Eradicating infectious diseases (that don’t respect borders) is a net positive for everyone.

Someone could always shoot him. We haven’t reached the level of hell where the rich are immortal yet.

Probably also need to really invest in education. People don’t just magically know political theory, and a lot of bad ideas can sound good at first

Interestingly enough, it’s mostly the right wing that is anti education.

I think a confounding issue is there’s a difference between a landlord that just owns a building and rents it out, and like a property management company that maintains the building.

If I own a building but also tend to the yard, keep the building painted, sweep the lobby, deal with utilities, etc etc, that’s labor and contributing something. It doesn’t give a carte blanc for renting out rooms at sky high prices, but it is in my mind better than someone who does nothing, but happens to legally own the place so they get the money.

Public housing is probably still the way to go, though.