It’s not that the entire mainstream media is in on it, only the billionaires that own it. The editors and journalists go against their best interests because they have no one else who will pay them. The liberal press isn’t profitable, so the billionaires are trying to make them accomplices in their own destruction.

Rotate the compass 45° clockwise, name the new vertical axis to state economy vs private economy, and name the new horizontal axis to left and right. At the far left(green) you have total destruction of hierarchy and flattening of power inequality, while at the far right(blue) you have absolute hierarchy and centralized power.

State centralized economies(red) lead to increased hierarchy by empowering government officials to become powerful lords. Privatized economies(purple/yellow) lead to increased hierarchy by empowering capitalists to become powerful lords. Trying to reach either the top or bottom tip of the diamond leads you the right tip.

Horseshoe theory kind of applies to Marxist-Leninists like its pro-capitalists creators imagined, but they didn’t realize that they were the other end of the horseshoe. This is because both capitalism and the state are the dangers. The problem with both stems from allowing the unrestricted accumulation of power.

Government officials use political capital, while capitalists use economic capital. They can feed off of each other, with the rich helping politicians and the politicians helping the rich. My preferred solution to both is to redistribute capital from the rich directly to the poor, growing the middle class by putting a ceiling and floor on the rich and the poor.

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The most foundational concept to America is economic exploitation and cut throat entrepreneurship. Selfishness is more foundational to American conservatives than the church or the state. Trump was openly a selfish asshole. One would think that open disregard for others would disqualify someone from the highest elected office, but the right thought otherwise. Being a bully meant that Trump was strong. A lack of empathy isn’t a vice, but a virtue.

You could buy it in GTA Online.

Obesity itself is probably too vague and non specific to be usefully called a disease. The basic measurement for obesity, BMI, would classify bodybuilders or strengthen based athletes as obese. Bodybuilders and strong people can often be unhealthy, but it’s not quite the same as someone with high body fat.

Even then, people who are obese because of high body fat might have their lives shortened through multiple mechanisms. It could be heart disease that kills them, skeletal problems due to weight, immune issues, digestive issues, practically every organ can be affected. Any or all of these things could occur in a chronically obese person, so even if pathologized, obesity is less useful as a diagnosis.

Excess weight is bad, but you can calculate weight/height without a doctor. Focusing on better nutrition, eating habits, and exercise is the solution, even if you’re young and have a high metabolism. That sugar in our food needs to be taxed or regulated, as economic incentives drive obesity rather than people being uniquely stupid or culturally degenerate.

That’s honestly kind of insulting to say that, and it shows a lack of awareness on your own part. You’re making one hell of an assumption that people aren’t informed and that they’re making a diagnosis without putting any thought behind it.

I’m not out of line in thinking that people can’t diagnose Joe Biden of being mentally unfit. People couldn’t definitively diagnose Trump with narcissistic personality disorder, and he didn’t have a known disorder that could interfere in a diagnosis. Biden has a well documented stutter, making it hard for any observer to parse his communication disorder from cognitive impairment.

People who are informed would recognize this, and even those willing to diagnose politicians from TV appearances would need solid examples of abnormal behavior that could only be explained by cognitive impairment. I don’t take armchair diagnosis seriously because I have some expertise in psychology. People want a reason to have someone other than Biden, so they assume mental disability can be determined by the public. I don’t think we can with the info available. Gut feelings will just reinforce your biases.

I get the physical part of Biden being unfit, but not the mental part. I’ve not seen any evidence of his age making him less intelligent or mentally. He’s not physically well, but whenever someone says he’s senile, I automatically assume they don’t know what they’re talking about. “Senile” is not synonymous with “out of touch.”

With the recall, concern wasn’t just coming from some rando or only Democratic partisans. I heard it from respected political scientists. They thought Newsom was likely to win, but there was still great risk of a Republican governor getting elected without popular support. It’s how Arnold Schwarzenegger, a moderate Republican, managed to get elected. The Governator never could have won a Republican primary, and didn’t even win the popular vote. If it weren’t for serious campaigning in the last few months, the recall could have been close.

Newsom always had majority approval, but the concern about the recall came because people were only lukewarm on him. He isn’t an exciting candidate, which is what the left claims to want. Like I said before, Biden seems more genuine about his morals and principles than Newsom. Newsom is more of what the left hates than Biden.

Newsom hate isn’t new. There was genuine worry he was going to lose his recall election, replaced by a radical Republican with a plurality of support from only those that voted for his removal. Left wing Democrats who were critical of Newsom united and organized to prevent a fascist rising to power. We put aside our gripes with corpocrats to prevent someone even worse from winning.

California is guaranteed for the Democrats in the modern era, so we usually sit on the sidelines of the fight for the presidency and hope other states make the right call. However, the recall race showed that we were also willing to hold our nose and vote for the lesser of two evils.

That’s part of why I get so frustrated by the anti voting shit. Biden is more of a genuine human being than Newsom, yet people fall for accelerationist propaganda. They delude themselves into thinking that not voting will strengthen the left when the opposite is true. The unreliability of young, left wing voters reinforces the establishment bias of not appealing to them. If they won’t even turn out for Bernie in the 2020 primary, why rely on them?

If you’re trying to be funny, you’ve taken it too far. You should be yeeted into a Texas prison where you claim immature assholes belong, because this situation isn’t a fucking joke.

As a Cali native, Newsom would be worse than Biden. If he ran in a Democratic primary, he might lose California because Democrats here don’t like him that much. If the primary was between him and Biden, I would vote for Biden because he’s less elitist and has a better moral compass. Newsom honestly doesn’t seem to have serious principles beyond political success. He’s a distilled version of what people hate about Democrats.

America isn’t that free of a country. Democrats were always going to run their incumbent. The time to choose a left wing candidate was the 2020 primary, which is why I was devastated when Biden won. I knew we would be stuck with him for 8 fucking years. The left didn’t turn out enough in that primary, and the establishment went with one of the worst choices.

The fact that there isn’t some popular Democratic alternative at this point means it will not happen. Biden has been the most left wing president in over half a century, and none of his shitty decisions have been due to his age. Organize with the DSA or promote left wing Democrats if you’re fed up with the establishment. Recognize that becoming cynically apathetic makes you a pathetic asshole, not a person who’s better than those that try.

Zionism has always had multiple different meanings, so this isn’t a new phenomenon. Humans made up every word in existence. There is no single definition for any word and there is no universal dictionary handed down by some higher power. We make up everything and write the rules ourselves. Pretending that isn’t how language works on a fundamental level is simply wrong.

Appreciate how good you have it. In America, child sex abuse material is only illegal when children were abused in making it, or if it’s considered obscene by a community. If someone edits adult actors to look like children as they perform sex acts, it’s not illegal under federal law. If someone generates child nudity using ai models trained on nude adults and only clothed kids, it’s not illegal at the national level.

Fake porn of real people could be banned for being obscene, usually at a local level, but almost any porn could be banned by lawmakers this way. Harmless stuff like gay or trans porn could be banned by bigoted lawmakers, because obscenity is a fairly subjective mechanism. However, because of our near absolute freedom of speech, obscenity is basically all we have to regulate malicious porn.

I don’t even find it justifiable to not “like” transition. For many trans people, transitioning is less of a choice and more of a required action. I personally didn’t choose to be trans and didn’t have the luxury of staying in the closet. I thought I could delay coming out, but I couldn’t. Many trans people would become suicidally depressed if forced to detransition or prevented from transitioning. Some trans people could live the rest of their lives as cis, but a ton can’t. Not liking transition is like not liking giving an antidote to someone that got poisoned. You can wish that people never get poisoned in the first place, but can’t hate the antidote itself.

It’s a fantasy to believe that we have total conscious control of our actions and desires. Anyone who’s become attracted to someone they don’t want to be attracted to should know this. “Why must I fall for such a shitty person?”

It isn’t. We should stop that too.

Trans women certainly care. We didn’t ask for a lot of things, but circumcision still adds insult to injury.

The awful truth is that few people want to address fucked up shit. Almost everyone suffers from something forced upon us for no good reason, so if anything we need to support one another and work to end this crap.

Sealioning, harassment where a person asks questions, demands debate, or requests evidence while feigning ignorance and pretending to be civil. Elon and fascists like him don’t care about finding the truth or having an informed opinion. They want to confirm their view of “trans bad” by focusing on misrepresented half truths or outright lies. They ask questions and don’t care for a response, because they want to promote the idea that woke adults are transing kids. It’s bad faith bullshit.

They did answer the question, but the transphobes didn’t listen to it. A 4 year old visited the clinic. Nothing was said about treatment. The 4 year old could have been sent away for all we know. The most that would have happened would be discussions about the kid’s future when they do reach puberty, letting the parents know what that care would look like. Plus, the kid having documented trans identification so young will make a stronger case for them getting approved for care in the future.

The worst part about this nonsense is that allowing trans youth to have their preferred puberty would address the sports issue. If a trans girl experiences female puberty and not male puberty, she’ll have no physical advantage over cis girls in sports. The permanent increases in height and bone structure that might affect performance in some sports wouldn’t happen to her. However, it is crystal clear based on literal statements made by anti-trans activists that they don’t care about sports integrity or protecting kids. They want trans people gone, and they will use state violence to keep us from living our lives

It’s the fine line of not saying people are correct in their specific criticisms, while still validating their lived experience. I don’t expect most conservative liberals to do this, but Democratic politicians must to win elections.

It’s the subjective experience of not seeing the wage growth themselves, combined with things not being acceptable for a longer time than Biden or Trump’s presidency. Things are improving right now, but haven’t caught up to people having economic security. When you’ve sunk deep enough, it takes a longer period of rising to finally catch a breath. Basically, the current growth must sustain for longer to get more people into a good position. If things continue on their current path, people will calm down.

It’s also true that necessities like housing have inflated in price far faster than other goods, again, for longer than a decade. Unnecessary goods might be cheaper than ever, but you NEED things like shelter and there are NO alternatives. Despite good competition, the demand is inelastic, so limited excess supply translates to soaring prices, plus, other factors are at play.

It also isn’t a good idea ignore subjective experiences in general. Not only are people almost always right to be unhappy on some level, invalidating their lived experiences isn’t a good idea. Democrats will not be successful if they don’t listen to people’s displeasure. Basic economic measures are essential, but not sufficient to make voters happier.