I spent years working in the Melbourne CBD, and on the several occasions where as a pedestrian I had to take evasive action, it was because of buses running red lights. Multiple times. You'd think it'd be couriers, or meth-heads, or emergency vehicles (who at least had an excuse). But no. Bloody buses.
I don't intend this as a personal criticism, more of a whinge about the world in general. But this sort of thing isn't a mistake, and it bugs me when that language is used to describe it.
You could argue "I made a mistake" when you choose the wrong course of action when presented with a tricky dilemma. Or when you're misled by someone, or misread the circumstances.
But even associating with Epstein after the truth about him became known isn't a mistake.
The sound of "fast" for me is a liquid cooled two stroke motorcycle engine. Imprinted on them in my teens. And the smell of "fast" is burned fully synthetic two stroke oil. It's been thirty years and I still get a positive emotional reaction to hearing and smelling a "modern" two stroke engine running.
These days I drive a "boring" emissions compliant diesel (not a VW 😜) and ride a four stroke. But I deeply understand the emotional connection people have to the sensory experience of their vehicles. For me it's freedom, excitement, speed, challenge.
Comparing Trump to Stalin is funny, actually, because no matter the mistakes and errors Stalin made over his decades as the leader of the soviet union, he was never a genocidal imperialist.
Wait, what? The USSR wasn't an empire? The Holodomor wasn't a genocide?
’Of course I’m guilty!’ cried Parsons with a servile glance at the telescreen. ’You don’t think the Party would arrest an innocent man, do you?’ His frog-like face grew calmer, and even took on a slightly sanctimonious expression. ’Thoughtcrime is a dreadful thing, old man,’ he said sententiously.
Only if it were implemented in one place, as a centralised ballot. Why not have States individually run their own?
... in fact, I wonder if it'd be legal under US law (I'm not an American myself) for a State to unilaterally start using sortition to provide their representatives? 🤔
Our instructions relative to the Barbary states having required us to proceed by way of negotiation to obtain their peace, it became our duty to do this to the best of our power. Whatever might be our private opinions, they were to be suppressed, and the line marked out to us, was to be followed. It has been so honestly, and zealously.
...
These are the reasons which have influenced my judgment on this question. I give them to you to shew you that I am imposed on by a semblance of reason at least, and not with an expectation of their changing your opinion. You have viewed the subject, I am sure in all it’s bearings. You have weighed both questions with all their circumstances. You make the result different from what I do. The same facts impress us differently. This is enough to make me suspect an error in my process of reasoning tho’ I am not able to detect it.
Trump writes - and thinks! - like a young and petulant schoolchild in comparison with Jefferson.
As a non-American, I hope you're right, but fear you're not.