At the heart of the “we mustn’t be distracted away from the Epstein scandal” crowd is the naive belief that we have simply yet to find the perfect argument that, when shown to the frothing genocidal fascists, will somehow magically turn them 180 degrees and renounce american fascism.

I see it exactly the opposite. The focus on the Epstein files feels much more like an admission that they won’t listen to rational, logical arguments, and replacing those efforts with rhetorical tactics that do seem to be effective; namely, moralistic outrage.

We’ve seen that some of his base does respond to the Epstein fishiness. It’s driving a wedge between subsets of his base, and I personally know several former MAGAs that have really soured on Trump over it.

The cartoons I watched as a kid were deliberately gross and ugly looking.

It’s actually kinda the other way around. My uncle lived in Seattle for years, and he told me he ran into some Starbucks executive once. He asked about the burnt coffee, and they told him it was intentional so you could still taste “coffee” through all the sugar, syrups, and creams.

I also married one of them, but the rest were mostly positive experiences also.

I know what consent is. I’m saying that applying the concept of consent here is nonsensical. Consent is so logically impossible that it’s irrelevant. This is the part beyond understanding.

That’s why I bothered to go into any of the rest of the concern. The prior consent angle is meaningless, so the next place you go is retroactive consent.

I do want a biological child or two, but I do also agree with prioritizing adoption. I plan to adopt/foster several children after my biological children grow up. Personally, I feel that’s a bit more ethical, as I’d like to establish my parental skills with the benefits of raising from birth and biological similarity, before I presume to handle the additional complexities of a child with a past.

My point is the anti natalists have the perspective that the risk of suffering is not worth imposing on a new human.

You saying that assessment is overblown does not change their perspective

The real part I didn’t understand is the “prior consent” part. Like I said, before you have the child, there’s nothing to ask for consent. It doesn’t make any sense.

But as to the rest, I’m saying that the assessment is so overblown that it ceases to be rational. A fraction of a fraction of a percent of people will never get fulfillment from life, so no one should ever have children?

There’s always some risk associated with everything. To never do anything because there’s a minuscule chance it could be disastrous is ridiculous.

You have luxuries like a communication medium and some electronics that you use to your liking.

As do you, as does everyone else on the digital platforms on which the anti-natalist sentiment primarily resides.

And you can always revoke consent.

I want to be clear that I don’t recommend it. I think in the vast majority of cases, it is a permanent solution to temporary problems. I think the vast majority of people who consider it can live to change their minds.

I do think there are those who are so irreversibly disabled that their lives really are mostly suffering, and I support the right of those people to revoke their consent to life. But I think those cases are very rare.

Assuming the environment is reasonably stable, and there’s no serious history of irreversibly disabling conditions, I don’t think there’s a moral compunction to anti-natalism.

I cannot understand this kind of anti-natalist perspective. My life isn’t perfect, and I’ve definitely had my share of struggle and suffering, but I’m elated at the experience overall. There’s absolutely a lot of cruelty and ugliness in the world, but there’s also profound beauty. Not even physical beauty like landscapes and sunsets and stuff, but moving, personal beauty: selfless generosity and compassion, performing artists in flow state, unity and cooperation, real love.

There wasn’t a me to consent to sentience before I had the sentience to consent with, so by your ruling no one could ever be born. Now that I have sentience, I’m glad of it and give my enthusiastic retroactive consent.

Better for building a principled platform, sure, but way worse if we actually want that platform to win. Basically every new successful party in this country emerged when one of the existing parties completely dominated the other.

If we want a progressive party, step one is to keep the Republicans from winning anywhere. Destroy the Republicans, and you give politically savvy progressives the confidence to vote progressive without risking abject fascism.

Yes but toilets take up at least twice as much space. You can fit twice as many urinals in the same space, which means twice as many people pissing at once, which halves the wait time.

It’s hilarious that the good-ol’ days they talk about wanting to go back to were built on the most sweeping socialist policies we’ve ever enacted, that were so popular they had to put a cap on getting reelected.

Where do you think the river goes?

Yeah Exile was fine except for the pixel-hunting bullshit in the forest world. Riven is still the best though.

this is quite literally exactly what they said about Walz and Harris

Howso? That’s not what I saw at all.

I’m not sure how many times we have to do this the safe way before people start to understand that the safe option isn’t what people want.

It is what most people want. There is a fraction of a percent of the population who wants the exact same outcome as you. Most of them just wanna mind their own business and try to be a good neighbor.

You’re not going to radicalize 80 million people. Until the electoral mechanism is changed, you’re going to have to find the 80 million voter bloc that offends you the least and caucus with them.

On the contrary, I was one of many who breathed a little easier voting for Harris because he was on the ticket. The general wisdom is you choose a VP that scoops demographics that the ticket head misses. Just because you don’t care doesn’t mean no one does. I’m sure Vance scooped a couple shy demographics for Trump.

I like Walz. My leftist Minnesotan friends like Walz. He’s a likeable guy, he seems remarkably leftist for his demographic, which is the highly electable “old white dude”. The people who care about VPs will care that it’s AOC, and the people who don’t will see a friendly, straight-shootin’ white dude. Have a sense of strategy for Marx’s sake.

I’m cool with one more, if he did run. The man has an actual moral compass and cares about people, just look at how long he’s fought for 9/11 first responders. If the people want a celebrity, we could do worse.

That’s why I think a safe-but-amenable ticket header like Walz works best. We get the benefit of base activation since she’s still on the ticket, without fully exposing ourselves to the biases against her.

I’d rather she be VP for Walz first. I’m not ready to roll the dice again on Americans voting for a woman, and AOC in particular has been heavily demonized. Walz has the benefit of being a folksy old white dude, which seems much more electable across the board.