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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 6th, 2023

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  • Basically, pre-2008.

    Wars in the middle east were the norm, but they were always elsewhere, and the govt sold us that they were fighting the bad guys, that everything was under control, and that home would continue to be safe and prosperous. There basically weren’t any other militaries that could reasonably rival the US World Police. Yeah, it was seen as problematic, but in a way that seemed TOO safe, never unsafe. Random acts of terrorism was sold to us as the only real threat (even though it realistically wasn’t).

    As kids, millennials were told that the American dream was real, that if you go to college you will get a good job and be able to provide for your family. It wasn’t until around the time of the 2008 recession that people really started noticing how worthless a lot of their college degrees were, and how much debt they had been saddled with.

    Similarly, climate change was being successfully sold as “maybe a complete hoax” in the media. Even if you did believe it was real, it wasn’t crazy to feel optimistic that there was still time for the science to settle, and voters/politicians to make the right decisions before things got too bad.

    Putin, Trump, and Covid were all solidly during Millennial adulthood, not representative of their youth.















  • FWIW, this breaks from the Two Santas Strategy. This Santa is suppose to be funding things conservatives want, while at the same time reducing taxes (on the rich), thereby driving the deficit up without making their voters mad. If you actually cut funding for a bunch of stuff people rely on, you will earn the ire of the voters, that’s why no one ever does it.

    Yeah, there will be a core of people who will defend Trump and Musk to their self-inflicted death, but those people are in the minority. Most Americans (and most people in the world) voted against the incumbent this year because they were unfortunately there during a time of inevitable inflation. And they’ll do it again if their lives continue to get materially worse over the next few years.

    I can’t help but wonder how we would be sitting right now if Trump had won in 2020. But we’re due for a generational crisis, and I don’t think that wouldn’t have been nearly as exciting.





  • We’re still not on the same page. The intention of the analogy is that he’s doing the same thing in public as he is out his window. Waving a flag and yelling are both first amendment protected actions, so I wasn’t drawing a distinction between the two, but apparently it’s causing confusion, so for the sake of the discussion, let’s say he’s flying a swastika out his window vs flying it in front of a theater.

    So now my question is: is there a difference between you punching him in the face in public vs breaking into his house and punching him there?

    Because the answer is no, in either case (for better or worse) you are violating his autonomy.

    But my original point that got us here is: you shouldn’t want to punch him OR break into his house, because if whatever he’s doing is actually encouraging violence, you should want to have a functioning police and justice system to handle the situation in a fair and consistent manner. To do anything less is to admit you do not live in a functioning society. Which, sure, maybe that’s the case, but as long as we agree on what “ideal” is, my hope us we can agree to work towards that. Punching a nazi is treating a symptom, it’s not a solution to any problem.