A gun does not defend you from a drone. It defends you from other people who are emboldened to commit crimes against you.

The point later in the comment is about what happens if the government fully turns in the citizens. Protecting yourself is midway to that.

You basically can’t let it get that far or you’re just cooked.

What I was meaning to say is that people who are working class think that they are middle class because they aren’t destitute, yet they have no significant assets, and could not survive an extreme financial event.

I just feel that politicians use middle class as a weapon where when they talk about policies benefitting the middle class they often benefit people far richer than the median but people think they mean them.

You say that, but of white women, which I’m using because it’s an easy demographic to use to illustrate this point, 53% voted for trump.

Its less awful among young voters but the trend has actually been going backwards.

I like the part where you have no details or arguments, just vibes.

We’re clearly at a unproductive point in this conversation where you are slinging accusations and we clearly are at an impasse. I think your position ignores the valid perspective of others, you think it outweighs every other position even from people who try to do better just as you claim to.

That seems to be it. I can’t convince you, and you certainly haven’t convinced me.

???

I certainly include them in my definition.

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This is funny, but in reality douche bags win at dating because most people just are overly willing to give others the benefit of the doubt.

I’m sure Ill get some comments for saying that, but this applies outside of dating too, and applies to women as well.

How do you think strategies like weaponized incompetence work? They rely on a partner believing the other partner is participating in good faith.

How do you think the oil/dairy/meat lobbyists having one guy in a lab coat challenge mountains of scientists in a lab coat works? People just don’t investigate deeply, assume all parties are acting in good faith, see that there is any disagreement between people who seem knowledgeable, call it a draw and walk away.

When people date stealth republicans, it becomes evident later than they would like because people really tend to give others the benefit of the doubt and assume they think like how they themselves think.

This common trend people have of assuming good will makes them very vulnerable to people abusing social norms and expectations. The way most of us think make us incredibly vulnerable.

The alternative is more depressing, cynical and cagey, but I can’t see any other way to stop the worst people in society from winning purely by operating in ways that skirt on the edge of what you are willing to believe is in good faith.

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I don’t think this is wise at all.

Its just people putting into words their wish to be able to punish and appoint blame above their wishes to be pragmatic.

If software is better at something, there is no reason to be mad at that software.

More than that, the idea that the software vendor could not be held liable is farcical. Of course they could be, or the company running said software. In fact, they’d probably get more shit than managers who regularly get away with ridiculous shit.

I mean wage theft is the biggest form of theft for a reason, and none of the wage thieves are machines (or at least most aren’t).

You can see me as braindead, as a troll, as engaging in “double speak”, as being condescending, as being ignorant, and so forth.

Sure can, and thus far you arent beating the charges. Also kinda funny you decided to purposefully twist words there to portray my criticisms of your argument as insults against you. Typical bad faith behaviour. Troll is accurate though, because I don’t believe you even believe what you are arguing.

this conversation has quickly devolved into shit-slinging

You having incoherent responses and this accurately being pointed out doesnt give you a license to pretend that this is errant shit slinging as opposed to you being unable to come up with cogent backing for your stated opinions.

It seems like you are in an incredibly bad headspace - maybe I’m off-base, but I’m not looking down on you by pointing this out and asking you to consider untangling yourself from narratives strung by our media.

The obvious projection here is incredible. I’m supposedly shit slinging while you pretend that not buying your insane opinions with no reasoning to them must mean I am clueless. Most obvious bad faith participation there has ever been.

focusing on the likelihood of a civil war or mass violence perpetrated by MAGA.

You focused on the first rather than the latter because the latter is pretty obviously a likely occurrence. You’ve indicated multiple times in the previous comment you can’t even deny that ICE ramping up isnt disastrous.

There are already plenty of people calling these secret police on their neighbors.

You’re just playing with semantics if you continue to pretend this isnt a real concern.

We are both just as aware of what’s going on as the other one, but I’m attempting to have a cooler head about it.

No. You are attempting to downplay the seriousness of the situation because it makes you feel comfortable or you support it. Not sure which one, but neither is a good faith or objective view.

I live in an area that is overwhelmingly occupied by MAGA voters and I’m not seeing the overflowing hate and violence here as an openly gay person.

The ol “If I don’t see it, it doesnt exist” after the “As a [minority] things are fine”. Your demographic literally is not one of the ones currently on the chopping block yet, but you can clearly see them ramping up for that too with the supreme court rumoured to be looking at what constitutes marriage next. You’re up right after interracial marriage.

More than that, as a white man, who passes social norms, you wouldn’t be seeing this as someone who clearly does not know many if any marginalized people given your responses here.

Further, given that its a very vanishingly small amount of high density areas that are not blue, it likely means you aren’t living where the troubles are happening. Somehow this makes you believe they wont spread.

Trump wouldn’t have been able to run for the highest office in the country and assume office if they did do something concrete.

This isn’t a point that is being debated. Its just something you’ve thrown up as if its at all relevant to the current discussion of whether future violence is likely.

A large portion of these 77 million people are Christians, likely.

The Nazis also ran with a tuned version of Christianity. This is literally not a point of worth in any respect. The fact they have choosen a religion to band around politically is actually a huge red flag.

I’m attempting to point out here are over 250 million people who are not radicalized.

By lying through omission, which I pointed out, and which you still have not addressed in any capacity whatsoever.

Being propagandized is not exactly the same thing as being hateful.

Propaganda is the mechanism, hate is the outcome. You arent making a point here.

Christians are indeed manipulated into hate, but would quickly be shown the light if people assuaged their fears.

No, no they would not. The democratic party tried to do that. They went with racism instead.

That is, unless you mean somehow minorities need to prove to the hateful that they deserve life, which would be an absurd take.

Most Democrats are not as squeaky clean as we are led to believe. Our last president was a Zionist who committed a genocide, even Kamala wrestled with that reality - as detailed in her book.

Literally no one is arguing that they are squeaky clean. Not a single person doesnt advocate for them as the significantly less evil of 2 evils.

This is reality.

This point right here to me is the think that has really stuck out. This makes me think you are a closeted conservative. That you are currently pretending to have liberal/leftist viewpoints, because not a single democrat I have ever talked to has ever believed this, and no one would even believe someone would honestly feel the need to make such an argument given that no one believes it.

Everybody would benefit from calming down.

This is the same ol rhetoric of “meet in the middle” where non maga takes one step forward, and maga takes 2 steps back, and then says “meet in the middle” again.

People have mostly wizened up to this nonsense. There is no “calm” middle ground between fascism and not fascism.

but rather just calm down and stop seeing violence as inevitable.

“Hey people just ignore reality because if you point out the obvious heading, that means you support it!” - Your logic right now.

Given the point above with me being convinced you aren’t honest with your views, Im sure youll have some long reply, but I doubt its in good faith, and I don’t think anyone is reading down this far, so it probably won’t be worth spending this much time on responding to.

I would say I hope you become a better person, but anyone willing to be this deceitful isnt the type of person who even internally believes that they are doing what is right.

know the kind of people you’re actually talking about. There is still value in electing the lesser evil, and pushing to get better and more progressive Dems in office (that are usually better at pushing back against fascism anyways)

This is exactly my point. The democrats have huge AIPAC backing and support some awful things, but they are fucking saints compared to the only other options in this political system.

They are the only potential vehicles for long term change and stability exactly the way you described.

Progressive candidates have to be winning primaries despite swimming upstream, and democrats have to continue winning federally despite the bad taste (chemo) they put in your mouth.

Yet you posted the initial useless comment that does the same thing.

Every opinion to convince other people is that.

There was no substance in this reply. You haven’t shown knowledge of anything, and havent addressed any criticisms levied.

The crazy thing is that so many issues matter all at once.

And yet he hasn’t been able to

Its only been ramping up, not down.

They have to resort to playing old protest footage and making up easily disprovable lies to rile people up - does that not read as desperate to you?

No. That reads as a disinformation campaign, and one that is working as they have ICE members ready and willing, currently committing heinous acts against the people.,

Despite the world population exploding, there has historically been much worse happening - and at much greater scales.

This arugment couldn’t be more brain dead

“There are worse things than modern genocides, so its not that bad”.

I’m finding it hard to think you arent a troll with logic like that.

Which unfortunately isn’t an entirely new occurrence if you look it up.

Is every single bit of logic you have false equivalences in bad faith? That seems like it might be it.

Under this administration, it’s certainly much more well-funded, it’s much more chaotic, it’s much more performative in the way it’s being done, and people being denied due process and getting shipped away to death camps and countries they’ve never been to is obviously extremely concerning and is not a positive trajectory (and is not performative, it’s very real). It’s not an indicator that there is a civil war on the horizon though.

This is tremendously brain dead logic once again, and it starts with you inserting a civil war angle to try to bait this discussion into going a specific way so we can’t discuss the details of whats happening through their logical stages.

When this ramps up further, and people need to defend themselves, it doesn’t matter what you call it.

Everybody was free to do something tangible about that, including the people who held power after that event.

This does not change anything. This is just you pointing out a separate failure.

More than that, they didn’t do nothing, as otherwise there wouldnt be any people to pardon.

No, you are hearing the most vocal and insane examples through social media and other forms of media.

Polls repeatedly show that his supporters support him basically no matter what. You’re just trying to downplay this, when in reality double digit percentages more republicans own guns than democrats, and their rhetoric for years has been to find a purpose for them.

People are densely packed in with each other

Its almost like there is a reason that cities are blue, and anywhere that isn’t a city is red.

Surely though this means everyone loves thy neighbor according to you.

They are being manipulated into believing this is a matter of survival.

How are you in one breath saying its no big deal and they don’t think like this, then in the other breath, in the same god damn comment, saying that they think its a matter of survival?

that the other side is demonic, woke, and ineffectual. Hate doesn’t factor into the equation for most of these people.

This is crazy double speak. You are literally stating here that they think the other side is demonic, that they hate them for being woke (acknowledging the hardships of marginalized people), and ineffectual (similarly to how in Nazi germany jews were portrayed as weak, yet powerful and coniving), and somehow you pretend its not about hate.

Craaaaaazy set of clearly contradicting sentences.

The world is a different place outside of social media and partisan media.

The difference you are portraying is one where you stick your head in the sand and ignore what is actually happening in order to believe that everything is fine and nothing ever happens.

Ground yourself, considering connecting with your community by attending an event or group or volunteering your time, and understand that things are not always exactly how they are presented by those that literally thrive on our attention.

Your attempts at condescension while being completely ignorant are astounding.

77 million people voted for Trump. There are over 340 million people in the US.

Less people voted for the only alternative, and of those polled, for the eligible non-voters (Which you know is the number that matters and is exactly why you used total population to be misleading), surveys have said that trump would have still won if they voted.

Proclaiming Matthew 25 would diffuse a large part of what is going on - that’s how much of a house of cards this all is.

Quoting the religious text of the regime to me after all you’ve just said is the icing on this shit cake.

And yet still, somewhere out there, there is a fake or brain dead leftist spouting on about how democrats support genocide.

“Chemo makes me sick, so Ill stick with Cancer”

I completely disagree with your take here.

The idea that we shouldn’t have services with end to end encryption because “think of the children” is an absurd take to have.

I think you’re being upvoted because its anti Zuckerberg, but seriously people, think about the long term consequences of not being able to chat without being spied on.

There are millions of people in the US - if there was really an appetite for mass violence in the populace, it would’ve already revealed itself.

This is insane logic to me when the president is clearly gearing up to do violence against the people, and the violent rhetoric is at an all time high.

“it hasn’t happened yet, so it wont happen despite all the signs saying it will” is such a bad take its unimaginably bad.

Accept that we are relatively peaceful in modern times and rethink your beliefs.

There are literally multiple genocides happening right now. There are literally people being disappeared off the streets with no trials, identification and we don’t know where they are ending up.

This is just an insane take.

They fucking stormed the capital!

Would even the people deepest in the MAGA movement want their children to exist in a world where they aren’t safe due to political violence and civil war?

Yes??? Are you not hearing these people. Holy fuck.

This is a new level of sticking ones head in the sand.

Could they reasonably protect them in such a reality?

No, but they value hate above incredible personal sacrifice, hence their voting choices.

Im shocked he didn’t just shoot.

Cameraman is brave has fuck to be heckling the single digit IQ party member.