• 0 Posts
  • 228 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 14th, 2023

help-circle
  • 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.




  • Furbag@lemmy.worldtoFacepalm@lemmy.worldAmerica's #1 Cult
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    36
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    5 days ago

    I don’t normally pick at the physical appearances of people just for the sake of it, but I’ve noticed that Trump attracts a certain type of follower. Take a look at the people in the background of the next Trump rally and tell me what you see.

    Those people and these people are the same. Just a bunch of trashy hillbillies. These klansmen are not the fringe supporters of Trump’s cult, they’re the ones down in the front. Like wax statues melting in the sun, their eyes glazed over enraptured as word salad pours out of Donald Trump’s mouth.

    And don’t say “well that guy wearing the klan outfit is just a troll, the other people there are not associated with that!”. If you’ve got one Nazi in a bar full of people, you’re in a Nazi bar. If you’ve got one klansman at a Trump rally, you’re at a klan rally.


  • We should’ve held a goddamn primary. If the Democrats were so convinced that the incumbency effect was worth skipping on a primary, they should’ve put it to the test and asked the American voters if they thought Biden was still the best guy for the job. Not a choice between Biden and Trump, but a choice between Biden and a number of other qualified candidates.

    If we’re being honest, pre-debate I would have still chosen Biden. I still think he’s capable of doing the job of President despite the poor showing, because I know that’s not Biden 100% of the time, that’s him 1% of the time when not on top of his game.

    Couldn’t be happier with the Harris replacement, though. It brought the energy we were sorely lacking. I’m just crossing my fingers and praying that people show up in November. Please, god, don’t let that fucking crook back in.


  • 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.


  • Mine is Magic: The Gathering, except I fully realize that I am pulling away from it and why.

    The game sparked an immense amount of joy when I picked it up in high school. Now I barely recognize the game anymore. It doesn’t truly have an identity of its own and exists in this permanent state of limbo where 3rd party IPs are taking over the demand for new product and the rules are becoming so bloated that they can’t fit them on cards anymore.

    This is such an “old man yelling at clouds” moment for me, because I heard just about every reason under the sun for why people quit the game when I was playing from power creep to changing art styles to just getting priced out of the hobby in general. I realize now that those people were not wrong, they were just not the target audience anymore. I am no longer a profitable demographic to pander to. I never buy packs anymore, and I’ve even stopped buying singles and I don’t attend tournaments or collect anymore, so why would Hasbro/WotC make products for me? Especially when there are deep pocketed whales out there who will pay top dollar for their favorite crossover set, no matter how silly or out of place it might seem.

    I wish I could enjoy the game the way I used to, but I just can’t be bothered to hop back in when it doesn’t feel the same anymore.


  • If his team were actually smart they’d realize that lightning won’t strike twice and keep Trump’s mouth shut and keep him far away from the debate stage. Kamala will rip him apart in September, no doubt in my mind.

    The only reason he didn’t get a ton of criticism for his insanity at the last debate is because Biden was somehow worse and distracted everybody from Trump’s failing mental health and complete lack of a plan of action to fix the problems he rants and raves about all day and night.





  • When I first signed up for reddit, the upvotes and downvotes were not only separately tallied, but also showed the usernames of the most recent people who did them if you hovered over the button. Then very shortly after that they changed it so that it made votes private by default, and you could override it in the settings, but almost nobody went to check that box back on. Eventually, they completely removed that feature around the time upvotes and downvotes were combined into one. which along with vote fuzzing was one of the worst changes to reddit comments, imo.

    Lemmy feels like old reddit right now, which is a great spot to be in. I don’t think you necessarily need public vote info, but maybe it could be enabled on a per-community basis? I can see some communities like politics not wanting to add additional drama to the equation while other more content driven communities might enjoy knowing who was giving the feedback.


  • Furbag@lemmy.worldto196@lemmy.blahaj.zoneat least rule
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    50
    ·
    edit-2
    1 month ago

    Off the top of my head - male, female and nonbinary meet the criteria of “at least three” and are probably the most well known. But I imagine a straightforward answer like that would not have satisfied some right wing mouthpiece and they would then intentionally try to conflate sex with gender to make Biden look bad when they take it out of context on the evening news (not that proper context would have mattered to the people watching it anyway).


  • If something is locked behind plexiglass at a store, I simply won’t buy it. The few times I have because I was desperate for it and didn’t want/couldn’t wait for the online shipping, I always had to stand there in the aisle awkwardly waiting for an overworked employee who probably wasn’t getting paid enough to come unlock it for me. Feels bad and just makes me want to buy online every time rather than waste a trip to CVS or Home Depot or wherever they’re locking shit up now.


  • Oh yeah, I hated the answer he gave too, but it was pretty clear he wasn’t expecting the question either. It was a bad answer and a mistake, but definitely one of the less egregious mistakes his campaign had been making in the weeks leading up to his departure from the campaign trail. At it’s core, being satisfied with doing your best is a sentiment most people can agree with, but one that falls short of what we actually needed. It did not resonate with the people who were upset with him at the time. We needed Biden to be ruthless after his debate disaster, but he was still playing softball at the major leagues.


  • I give him a pass for that statement. Biden was running on the platform of election trust and legitimacy. How else does he answer the question? “No, and I’ll fight tooth and nail to dispute the results if Trump wins?”. Maybe the democratic base would have loved to hear that, but it’s mixed messaging that would have been used as ammunition against him. He’s the President of the United States. He has to project confidence in the system, which means trying hard to win, but stopping right on the dot at “doing your best” and accepting the will of the people, even if it’s a distasteful outcome for everyone involved.





  • Jan 6th only happened because Trump let it happen.

    If Trump wins, Biden will transfer power. Of that, I have 100% confidence.

    If Trump loses, he has no authority to command government personnel, so him riling up people to storm the capitol this time will almost certainly be met with resistance.

    I’m actually much more confident that nothing as bad as J6 will happen again, at least not this election cycle. I do think he needs to spend some time putting safeguards into place to prevent the abuse of the clear weakspots in our election system, namely the certification process itself being flawed if controlled by partisan sycophants.