Lurker > LoZguy709

Tanthalas posted...

Yet this doesn't change the fact that only Biden is expected to work for their vote, and if he doesn't, they threaten to "vote" for the candidate that for sure won't do anything for them.

Yeah, this is for sure a stretch. The only ones threatening that other are moderate/centrist voters somehow torn between Trump/Biden and people who are straight up wonky as shit. Most people are just threatening to not vote or vote third party, which is just effectively half the damage of voting for Trump instead of Biden (which the moderates would likely do, which unfortunately means they have bigger say in the candidates' positions this election).

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


I see people extending the message to not supporting Biden at all because doing so is just tacitly supporting genocide. It doesn't help when it's only after millions have heard your message that you clarify "actually we just meant for the primaries," which will inevitably not be heard by many, fall on deaf ears, or simply not be understood due to lack of political sophistication.

I remember Beto supported protesting through not voting and now I see he went back and clarified his message, but somehow I missed that whole part of what he was really meaning to say when he was actually getting attention.

Kai_Laguna posted...

Oh there are good candidates, but whever third parties are brought up everyone treats it the same as not voting, so I see no reason to dedicate the energy to arguing in support of it.

Third parties as they exist right now in US politics are a means by which the more oppressive, less popular party can manipulate the vote so that they win even if the majority of Americans don't want them in power. The situation of having three parties competing where two parties are acting more in the interests of Americans and one party is corrupt is inherently problematic because of the high risk the corrupt party could take power. In other words, the two party system exists for a reason, given how our political structure is set up. Could ranked choice be better? Sure, but we don't have that now and sure as fuck won't have it if Republicans continue to manipulate voter turnout.

Kai_Laguna posted...

I don't live in a swing state and it'll take a whole hell of a lot of people not voting here to change the fact Biden is getting all 55 of our votes.

The problem isn't you not voting in a swing state for the presidential election. You're right that your vote is essentially futile, even if it would give Biden's hopeful victory more credibility.

The problem is you're acting like this is a good way of thinking for the general population. When swing voters see stuff like this and decide they agree with you for some dumbass reason like many people are prone to doing right now, that greatly increases us having 4 more years of Trump, an even more fucked Supreme Court, and the likelihood that fair elections are taken off the table for anytime in this country's near future.

So please stop saying there are no good candidates and that there is therefore no point in voting. That message is absolute trash.

As long as the force of taking that huge plane off the ground wouldn't break the treadmill?

Woah, how has no one thought of that before?

Great to see the government as a whole actually responding to these concerns, even though it seems like we had to have enough disinterested old people to die for there to be a significant enough percentage of the population actually demanding action. Bills like these are what need to be emphasized to people falling for the rhetoric that both sides are going to give us the same result and that there's no value in voting for the viable party that best represents your interests. In fact, with Democrats having so much support, Republicans are forced out of the position of simply ignoring climate change as an issue, and now must either work with Democrats or have some kind of solution of their own (which they don't seem to have) if they want to remain strong political contenders. I honestly do believe that supporting Democrats can lead to good bi-partisan results such a way. Still no reason to be complacent with the status quo, but don't take the status quo and make it all worse because the change is still taking time to snowball.

BlueBoy675 posted...

Well at least that gives us 4 more years to deal with it

Not to mention that Republicans don't have another celebrity figure lined up to get untraditional voters from rural areas turning out enthusiastically, so it will be a harder push.

On the other hand, another 4 years could mean US voters are due for another pendulum shift, which is even more reason why Project 2025 or whatever iteration of it needs to be public knowledge.

divot1338 posted...

Only because he got handed a multibillion dollar real estate empire to start with.

Right, you just have to be one of the really lucky people for it to work. That's why its a fantasy, but not everyone sees at as such a distant reality. At least it's more feasible to them than being successful because they're actually smart or useful for something.

Antiyonder posted...

Even then, the more Trump loses, the more people might realize that aspiring to be a real life Saturday morning cartoon villain isn't a means to real life success.

I think the "fake it till you make it" mentality will live on because it really does work for a lot of people. Trump got to be successful through other peoples' work to the point he got to be president, and could have just rode it out with all its fame and glory if he had kept his mouth shut and not done shit like starting a riot for losing or picking a fight with the FBI.

VGAddict90 posted...

If Trump loses, Project 2025 just becomes Project 2029.

Which will be vital to remember in 2028. One reassurance is Trump is not likely to run a third time so Republicans would need to push it through with some new cult of personality figure.

Edit: Fourth* Damn it's too early in the day to be losing my mind like this.

I imagine there are going to be many people in the future that will conveniently forget to mention to their children/grandchildren that they voted for Trump because they were in it for the lols.

Edit: Or maybe make that their nieces / nephews / second cousins. Don't know what got me thinking these kinds of people would have kids they still talk to.

Unlike most politicians, Trump just tells it like it is and lets his voters know straight up he doesn't give a shit about them personally. Now that's a man we really need in office (again)!

People not voting is one thing, but what crosses the line for me is acting like there's a good justification for not voting and attempting to dissuade others, inevitably including swing state voters and those in states with important congressional races, from supporting Democrats. If you want to be worthless to people beyond your small social sphere, fine, but please keep it to yourself.

More related to the topic, I'm glad Republicans are ramping up efforts to win over minority support because they do an even worse job at it than Democrats, so if there is a necessary evil at all right now, it might just be dumbass FOX reporters.

We've really fucked up hard as a global civilization when energy and resources are used for creating artificial currency instead of making for a more efficient distribution of the world's limited, depleting resources and combatting infrastructural instability in the long term. This is not the kind of capitalism we were expecting would keep society happy and thriving.

Fuck no. Thanks to inflation, Republicans will have a crazy economic advantage over every other person and continue to shit on young people for their lack of achievement, like "oh well what did you do with that 900k you did nothing to earn?"

For some reason, I feel more comfortable than them saying he has a 30-40% chance. People who are feeling ambivalent about Biden don't need to start feeling like they are excused from voting because he's got a comfortable win already. A lot of the left's usual voter base needs to let the reality sink in that their inaction is likely to directly result in generations down the line being fucked over by climate change, lack of protection for democratic institutions, and a right-wing hacked Supreme Court. One of the last things we need right now is a reason for left-leaning people to think they don't really need to vote, especially those in swing states or in states with hotly contested congressional races.

The having no kids thing is going too far. I say have less kids and at a later age (just not so late that a parent is at a significant higher risk of passing down a disorder at birth). We need the kind of people who take climate change seriously being a part of society's future or else it will be controlled even more so by the ignorant masses. Those values are strongest when passed down from parent to child, though parents are obviously not the only influential figures that children have. There's also adoption though, which mitigates a big part of this issue. But not everyone wants to adopt, and there's less certainty about what future medical problems your kids might run into.

Without having read this entire topic, the most impactful thing people can do in the United States is to vote for Democrats (not the Green Party unless there's some local candidate that has actual notable support because they will not be winning any election any time soon, especially if Republicans get any success with Project 2025) down ballot and continue to talk about climate change openly and publicly (including to your shit-for-brains alt-right uncles) as a scientifically undeniable issue that needs to be addressed. As long as people can normalize this issue by painting such rhetoric as "alarmist," the average American will continue to treat it as just another political issue that gets zealously overblown by those advocating to do something about it. The more people that acknowledge it and consistently talk about it to the extent the most important issue our generation and younger faces would warrant, the harder it will be for deniers to spew their bullshit and undermine half a century of scientific research.

That said, yeah, you should still make reasonable individual efforts to reduce your carbon footprint and encourage others to do the same because it is important to lead by example and practice what you preach if you want other people to take it seriously. The normalization of such habits has to start somewhere after all. Rather than just be like "yeah it's a big issue, but I expect other people in society to take care of rather than me doing something personally."

Oh, so he's basically admitting a personal/political motive in any future charges he may have a part in bringing, thus weakening the credibility of the underlying charges.

The court dismissing the case due to double jeopardy in a state notorious for leniency on criminals totally signifies a huge Republican victory...

How else am I supposed to let other posters know not to take me too seriously after 4 or 5 when I find myself emerged in the heat of political conversations that are no longer quite so easy to follow and now I just want everyone to get along?

CrimsonGear80 posted...

why would that only help trump and not Biden?

Trump has more shit Republicans would like voters to forget. Biden just mainly has Israel/Palestine and an inequitable economy hurting him now and those problems are likely to still be issues in November.

Edit: Not agreeing that his chances are better than in 2020. I just don't even know how much faith to put in Americans to be rational voters anymore.

Ivany2008 posted...

My point when mentioning Kanye had nothing to do with what party he was on. I genuinely couldn't remember when he was trying to run, as again, I'm not American, and barely have enough time to give a damn about my own countries prime minister let alone a foreign president.

He wasn't running as part of either major party. The entire point is that he was a (very weak) spoiler candidate, and you know which major party actually likes spoiler candidates? I'll give you hint. It's the major party that can't win the popular vote of the United States through any fair means. That's the party that was doing a lot of Kanye's leg work behind the scenes for him to ensure he could be on the states' ballots and take away from the other leading candidate's votes.

Tactical Republicans like when third parties get involved as they tend to, with the exception of libertarians, take away only votes from one major party.

DrizztLink posted...

"but her emails"

"barry what the fuck is an email"

Funny how technology was once used to fight Republican corruption, but now they've found a way to use it a means of confusing the masses.

bigblu89 posted...

It's absolutely wild to me as well, but I literally work with people that are SO far down the Trump rabbit hole that I seriously think they may resort to violence if Biden wins in November.

I know some people that are Republican-leaning that show up to music events I'll be a part of, but I'm too out there with distaste for Trump and pretty much anyone currently in the Republican Party for them to share with me what they'd really like to see happen. If anyone wants to resort to violence over this, I'd like to see them try so we can cleanse society of their influence by taking them to court, further exposing Trump's supporters for the kind of people they are, and depending what they're convicted of, taking way their ability to vote.

ScazarMeltex posted...

This was the point of creating the right wing media sphere. Nixon fell because the media coverage told everyone exactly what he had done. Right wingers have been pissed ever since and thus created an entirely separate media apparatus to create an entirely alternate reality for conservatives to believe in.

Hahaha now I just have to imagine how FOX would have gone on giving their spin on Watergate.

In a less fucked up society, something like multiple felony convictions would have a much greater impact. But clearly Republicans today have no real respect for rule of law, just like how they showed in 2016 that they have no respect for traditional Christian values. I'm actually afraid of how much this gap could shrink in the next 5 months as this becomes a more distant memory in our goldfish lives.

bobbycorwin posted...

Rich old people vote because they know if certain people get into power they will lose privileges.

Young people dont vote because they know they wont get privileges no matter who wins.

Yes, plenty of rich people vote Republican for that reason and they successfully convince other people with minimal political awareness outside their family and small social sphere to do so as well for the duration of their lives. It's easier to get sheep-like mentalities in line, especially when those sheep have one common enemy, which is the supposed political elite that they are indoctrinated to believe are the true source of this country's problems (which would have a lot of truth, but it's the for the most part the same political elite they're supporting). Meanwhile, young people are more impressionable, and Republicans use that to their advantage sewing as much dissent among the left as possible.

Ivany2008 posted...

Not my viable option. I'm Canadian, so I'm looking at it through an outsiders eyes. Biden doesn't know where he is 99% of the time, and Trumps a moron. Both US and Canada have 3rd party options, but campaign dollars typically rules the roost and none of them ever become viable. As for the Kanye bit. I was busy, focusing on my own life rather than giving a shit about politics. I only just heard about it through the grapevine.

Oh ok, didn't realize you were a Canadian giving your 2 cents about US politics. Third parties have never been a long term viable option in this country and it certainly won't be changing this next election. Any suggestion that one might have a fighting chance is just helping Republicans pass Project 2025's initiatives so that we'll never have a real election again. And I don't blame you for not focusing on Kanye West, but maybe don't use him as a talking point if you're not aware of the Republican-pushed initiative to get him on the ballot in 2020 as an effort made specifically to take voters out of Biden's voting pool.

CrimsonGear80 posted...

old and rich people can do many things for fun besides vote

I find it hard to believe people think Biden will lose votes for *insert reason here* but think republicans who think voting is rigged would still bother voting...

Older people in general are a much more reliable voter base, regardless how much they complain. Once you reach a certain age, there are just certain things you do out of principle. When you're young, you're easier to influence, at least into a state of apathy due to an abundance of misinformation.

Ivany2008 posted...

Of course Trump is going to win the election. No sane person wants him to win, but its not like you have any viable options. Wasn't this the election Kanye said he was going to run in, you know.... before he went full devils reject?

What nonsense is this? Biden is your viable option. There are no other alternatives to an incumbent president that you're going to magically get in the picture 5 months before the election.

Then as to the Kanye bit... did you sleep through all of 2020 or something?

I think left-leaning media is taking a good approach when they treat it as a real possibility, unlike 2016 where so many thought he didn't have a chance in the primaries. I think we are better off for having a healthy sense that this could really happen again. On the other hand, there is an obnoxious part of the left that wants to act like Biden is screwed because he's not ruling in the way they're trying to manipulate him to rule. The latter group is saying all kinds of stupid shit, like that both parties have failed us and that we should vote for Big Bird instead (legit overheard this at a restaurant/bar the other week from a young woman who hates how Roe v. Wade was overturned, but somehow doesn't understand how her messaging is part of the same problem that lead to that outcome, to the point I couldn't help but look in such a way that I made myself part of the conversation she was having with her right-leaning friend).

Democrats need to put greater emphasis on abortion rights, Project 2025, and ugly shit that actually affects all our well-being in this country like nuclear war and the fucking failing state of this planet to sustain civilization for the long term future. Quit being bitches when Republicans bring up inflation or how we're supposedly worse off now than we were under Trump, and instead bring up all the shit Trump did to allow that to happen like letting COVID go out of control and require massive amounts of government spending or how he further enables corporations to fuck over consumers even when the economy is doing well overall. The fact that people can be manipulated only 8 years later by an increasingly corrupt political party makes me think so much less of Americans in general, and that includes so many on the left that are supposed to be helping get out of the multitude of messes Americans, particularly young Americans, are facing.

So yeah, healthy skepticism is a good thing, but doomer posters make me suspicious they secretly want Trump to win, whether it be because they actually like him or because they want to spite mainstream Democrats that much.

Wow, it turns out they're right! It's not just about the guns, but the quality of the people using the guns! Good on them for proving their own point.

TraurigAberWahr posted...

Scientists expecting major disruptions and global warming if governments don't act.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/world-scientists-climate-failure-survey-global-temperature

"Nathalie Hilmi, at the Monaco Scientific Centre, who expects a rise of 3C, agreed: We cannot stay below 1.5C."

"I am convinced that we have all the solutions needed for a 1.5C path and that we will implement them in the coming 20 years, said Henry Neufeldt, at the UNs Copenhagen Climate Centre. But I fear that our actions might come too late and we cross one or several tipping points.

The discrepancy among experts is very concerning and makes me wonder if the least cynical are trying to leave room for optimism. I think the amount of hope we have for avoiding the worst, which we are headed straight toward currently at an accelerating rate, depends on the kind of remedial technology we can come up with in addition to doing the obvious requirements like reducing* unclean energy use around the globe.

Edit: And yeah, by reducing, I mean having an alternative clean source of energy used in mass scale for everything we currently use gas and coal for. And by we, that means the entire industrialized world.

ClayGuida posted...

Nikki Haley endorsed a felon.

And just a reminder, trump needs every single republican vote to have a shot at winning. He can't afford to shed any of them

The strategy seems to be undermining enthusiasm over voting blue, and if enough people buy into political apathy because there are too many people telling them all politicians are corrupt and therefore no one deserves their support, Republicans just have to make sure their usuals show up. And give them shit all you want for being hypocritical to their Christian values, but they make for very reliable voters.

So basically all I'm saying is let's not get to that level of confidence yet.

If you're gonna diss that song, it's closer to the Nickelback/Creed sound that was still dominating rock at the time. Slash's guitar part maybe adds some cheesy arena rock nostalgia, as pretty as it is. Very far from emo though. I could hear Daughtry singing that kind of song and would you call him emo? Still a really good song with all its generic qualities, nonetheless. RIP Scott Weiland.

Obviously things would be looking a hell of a lot better, given all we know currently. The Supreme Court, the state of our climate, the death toll from COVID (assuming it still happens rather than avoided due to extraneous reasons just to be fair), and faith in American democracy would all be faring so much better, it's tragic to think about. It could have been avoided if a small number of people hadn't decided their lack of political involvement was some kind of virtue, which couldn't have been further from the truth as we now see it.

I think it makes a bigger impact than a lot of people give credit. It may not give Biden a boost, but should at least have a noticeable impact on how thick headed moderates and less politically aware citizens regard Trump.

electricbugs2 posted...

Too damn bad. My family lives in Texas and will be absolutely fucked come November. Had enough of the optimism from the shut ins here.

So you want to make sure everyone shares in your misery? Because your messaging lends perfectly to such an outcome.

Hope you and your family can find a way out of that shithole state. I live in Missouri, so while I still have a lot of idiots in my state, at least the fucked up climate as still at a point we can just mostly kind of ride out the tornadoes we have here.

Proto_Spark posted...

The Supreme Court still needs some kind of justification to do something as major as overturning the election. There's a reason the same crooked court as today didn't do the same thing after 2020. If Trump loses the election and takes power anyways, it won't be through the courts. It'll be another Jan 6th-esque event, except it'll work this time.

They'll only give it to Trump in 2024 if the election is narrow enough, like Bush/Gore in 2000. If Biden has a decisive win the court won't have a real leg to stand on, and they'll just continue taking rights away until Trump/another republican wins again.

I remember making the same kind of point the other week. Glad to see the idea is getting through, even though it's sad people are using the Supreme Court in the first place as an argument for voting being futile. The only way the Supreme Court decides the election and gets away with it is if we leave enough room in the margin of victory for them to reasonably intervene. So if you're afraid of the Supreme Court getting involved, it's just more reason to get out the vote for Democrats, especially in swing states that will be more likely to be contested.

SauI_Goodman posted...

It's not throwing it away if everyone does it. Whooooooooooosh!

This is basically the latest Republican alternative scheme to suppressing voter turnout. Congratulations on being such a darling model for the GOP.

DrizztLink posted...

We really don't.

Shitty sarcasm on my part there.

-ZIO- posted...

Hold up, Taylor Swift just took a private jet flight to grab some food and is now back home.

That one act has just defeated my three years of not using AC whatsoever.

We also have to remember that since there are phonies out there like Leo and Bono who aren't living up to practicing what they're preaching, we have very telling evidence that it must be a big hoax...

Don't get me wrong though, Taylor Swift, and Leo for all kinds of reasons, shouldn't be immune from criticism.

UnholyMudcrab posted...

We've been flirting with midnight on the doomsday clock for its entire existence. It's just a fearmongering tool.

As long as there are people out there to sew in room for reasonable skepticism, we're going to have a major problem with young people choosing to believe a more comforting alternative reality until it runs its inevitable course.

Nothing will happen until us younger generations quit treating it as just another political issue. It is THE issue that WILL affect our lifestyles MAJORLY if we don't prioritize it above all other issues. This and the threat of nuclear war are why we are flirting with midnight on the doomsday clock.

Young people need to quit being pushovers or we really are fucking ourselves over by trusting that the rest of society will take care of us. We've found out the hard way that there are not nearly enough benevolent older people out there to put society's welfare before their own short-term comfort.

Something happened between Kerplunk and Dookie where they put a halt on writing love songs and instead went for their better known DGAF pop punk vibe. I think it was a positive change for their songwriting, at least while they were young in the 90's and it seemed fairly authentic.

Unfortunately, except for the elderly and those otherwise about to die, we're all collectively fucked under Trump. It's just a matter of how long until the effects of the election take to spill over into the real world. That said, we could still be fucked under Biden at an even later point, but there's a hell a lot more of a fighting chance of curbing the very collapse of society if the majority of people want to do something actually constructive about the bigger problems the world is facing.

People that don't vote against Trump and, even more so, people that discourage others from voting for Biden/Democrats deserve the very worst that a Trump presidency has to offer them.

The country as a whole? No, rational people don't deserve to suffer because everyone else is going batshit crazy and can't do the simplest things to cooperate toward a better solution because it's just more satisfying to keep fighting.

KitKats posted...

We already have 4C+ warming baked into the system by the end of the century by conservative estimates, which that amount of warming alone in such a short time span spells mass extinction for complex life on Earth. There is no way to reverse that without removing massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere with nonexistent or otherwise magical technology.

We cannot maintain the current population without fossil fuels anyway. Our entire civilization and way of life is built upon exploiting energy from fossil fuels along with mass agriculture.

It still seems our best hope to have a system to remove excess carbon or a means of keeping the Earth's temperature ( / generally shitty air quality) somehow artificially lower (though the latter suggestion is admittedly outlandish-seeming and would just be a temporary fix most likely even if it could exist). I don't know the how, but technology does have a way of growing exponentially with enough focus. Maybe we find a way to accelerate plant life growth for species that take in carbon at high rates? A means by which we convert carbon into something else? Point is I don't have any answers, even more so now that I'm smoking, but throwing in the towel and accepting mass extinction seems premature when we don't know what technology we could have to our availability in the future.

Strider102 posted...

This is true to an extent. You're never going to get the primary cause to stop though, because money is more important than a planet we can live on.

Haha right, which is why the hypothetical was in a magical world. But the more awareness among the general population, the better hope we have that we'll vote for the right leaders to make the right key decisions of where to invest. But obviously that still leaves us with the very real problem of slow progress.

Strider102 posted...

It's mainly the fact that people just don't care, but also because some people think it's fake news because Republicans told them it was.

Then you have some people that say "Oh, this person talks about climate change but contributes to it? Yeah imma just ignore you then."

On the other hand, if people were to all magically start caring and want to see governmental and private sector projects invested in to combat the excess carbon in the atmosphere (like through growing abundant plan life known to consume it at high levels but I'm sure that's not the full extent of what we can do), it feels like we could take a lot quicker control of the situation that we're led to believe.

Edit: Along with major infrastructural change like switching away from gas and coal.