In my generation at least almost everyone said gay as a synonym for lame or whatever, but didn’t really connect the dots between the word and gay as in homosexual. Almost everyone I know that used to use it/still use it, if they learn someone around them is gay they’re like “he’s gay? k” and they aren’t homophobic in the least. It just turned into such a common thing that it got somewhat disconnected from the orientation meaning. I just stopped using it because I saw actual hateful people using it and didn’t want to be mistaken for them.

Hard disagree, I’ve met some super nice people who have 0 friends because they’re just shy and awkward or have anxiety, or are just plain weird. You can’t expect those people to be open and sociable when they hardly ever talk to people. Add on to that you have to make a huge effort to meet new people when you’re an adult, things being so online, loss of 3rd spaces, and that covid socially stunted so many people.

His actions were completely hinged

To be fair go look at dsa leadership (and some of the politicians), they do Russia apologia and have said tons of unhinged stuff, and abdul campaigned with hasan, who even if you agree with him you’re just giving Republicans and moderates a firehose of his greatest hits, like clips of him saying hamas is based and the real heroes, which might legitimately cost him a super important race.

Sadly this is all medicine, I lost so much faith in it as soon as it wasn’t “extremely obvious problem with extremely obvious solution.” For the brain, it’s a much worse situation because we understand it so little. It turns into “throw random ideas at it and hope one works” and a lot of people are just lonely or needed lifestyle changes so it “works” for them :/

It’s kinda even worse than that, it’s very close to just being a cult, they will give up almost all their values because the things they’ve blocked out that they’d have to face (everything really IS that bad, climate change is real, the immigrants I’m targeting are humans like me) is just too high a cost.

I personally know many trump voters and almost all are legitimately racist and do not care what happens to illegals, so long as it’s not in their immediate circle. Go look at polls of Republicans, they care about people in their family and friends, past that they don’t care. This person would not have cared even a little if it wasn’t their family member, and most likely would’ve had nothing to say. The fact that they were lied to about “immigrants taking their jobs” doesn’t make them caring so little about their fellow man any less reprehensible.

Reminder he was such a loser he couldn’t even get invited to epstein island

Such as? If I take out an evil tech CEO now I’ve radicalized the right to violence more, and other evil guy #27589 is sitting there waiting to take his place, and I’ve ruined my life and my families lives. Everything that would land me in jail has positives and negatives for everyone. Sitting out a pointless war in jail has no negative consequence except on the individual.

Well it’s truly pretty rare that I block people, and maybe people do do that for things that they just disagree with, but I took it as the “block negative things out of your life.”

Lots of crazy people on the internet, I just try to remember that sometimes I’m the one being smugly incorrect (and was that way up until like 25) so I can’t get too mad at other people for it. It’s why I heavily err on the side of caution, only when someone does the maga loop back to something they already agreed is false that I’m like ehhhh…

I think the DNC is generally a bad org, but I generally like the policy from democrats. Same as how I really don’t like how DSA leadership runs apologia for Russia and says other stuff I find really whacky, but some people in the dsa are great candidates.

I wish I lived in the world you’re describing where Republicans care even a tiny bit about guardrails, the only reason they wouldn’t reverse gay marriage is because even among Republicans that’s really not very popular. They literally break the constitution nonstop with deporting people with no trial, send the national guard because it’s an “emergency” that people are sitting in frog costumes protesting, trump breaks every law and the constitution at breakneck speed, and the supreme court gives a stern " " in response. They literally do not care even a little bit about the law. If we had a sane Republican party I would probably agree with you they should’ve codified things like immigration reform and roe v wade, and say the democrats are at fault, but maga literally doesn’t care even a little bit so long as they can get away with it without a countrywide revolt. Imo it would’ve made either 0 difference or it would’ve been another item on the 9000 articles about how trump broke another law. For biden’s comment on it, I think he has clearly shown a pro-choice record, and he was speaking to the concern of maga propagandists saying leftists want day before birth abortions, which would be very unpopular even among democrats. A republican would’ve said “yeah we’re moving to ban abortion” and then actually do it, like they did.

I can agree I don’t like the immigration policies of democrats either, and at certain times it was abhorrent, but voters in America are extremely racist, and most people see brown come in = president is doing a bad job, so the president and the senate are going to pass bills that reflect that. What Trump and the Republicans are doing is just evil for the sake of being evil, pulling illegals who had committed no crimes for years out of their homes, causing people to die in inhumane conditions, killing Americans, deporting Americans (several times), increasing the ICE budget to unbelievable amounts and essentially running around America causing terror with masked thugs. It’s like the worst situation with Obama but 4x as much, at least the kids in cages weren’t being killed with tainted food and water, and it was nowhere near the scale of terror for everyone as it is now.

I guess my point with obamna was, a lot of the bad policy from the dems is because that’s what their constituents wanted, and sometimes those people are morons but we live in a democracy. The people in the senate will reflect the anti-gay sentiment, and you can’t just decree something even if you think it’s right. To be honest even there the blame is majorly on Republicans for spreading lies about gay and trans people being weird and unnatural, which the democrats would almost always say the opposite.

I just see when democrats are in power, things I like happen, along with things I don’t like. For instance more rights for trans people (even though this is still very divisive and is hard to get bills passed), more solar and wind, more regulations, higher corporate taxes, restrictions on power for large corporations, less support for world leaders I find evil, less playing games with the wording of the law, more social safety nets (obamacare was a massive bill for instance), more support for families and schools. When Republicans are in power, I can’t name 1 thing that they do that I like, literally not one, and almost all I find abjectly evil. If I have the choice between evil demon and ineffective against the demon but often passes policy I really like, I will be the biggest cheerleader for the loser who gets bullied but is generally doing things I support.

PS: I appreciate the time you have taken to debate an anonymous malcontent on the internet.

Hey I just really care about this, and I feel like democrats get fair criticism for some atrocious things they do, but not enough credit for the real fighting many dems are doing, who end up getting lumped in with the maga-lites. I think people don’t realize how racist and close-minded many Americans really are, and how hard dems have to work against the snake oil propaganda that Republicans have successfully sold for years. It’s a battle against 24/7 propaganda, where the dems have to sell you on a harsh reality while the Republicans promise you everything. I complain about dems caving on the government shutdown, but 90% of dems stood firm and said “we’re not passing these dogshit cuts to medicare/Medicaid so billionaires can keep more money. Reach across the aisle you fucks.” It’s always the same group of maga-lite losers who cave to everything.

I was using comey as an example of democrats trying to be good faith and avoid seeming biased, and Republicans not caring and smearing them anyway. I think democrats have learned that lesson, with the majority now voting directly on party lines (minus the few who are just Republicans, like Chuck Schumer).

Hillary won the popular vote in the primaries in 2016, blame the voters for saying “Bernie old socialism bad, can’t vote for him!!” And then voting for Trump. She definitely mishandled documents as did every president, but no president had such an incredible witch hunt for a mistake every president in the history of the US has made, that was loudly broadcast on national news, called out by the head fbi agent, that is just insanity.

The Obama number was because they now did formal “removals” where previoue administrations did informal “returns,” i.e. at the border or recently crossed in, which massively inflated the numbers. Not to say there weren’t some terrible situations with immigration under him. In his second term they changed focus with ICE to avoid people who had been settled, and mainly go after those who had committed crimes or recently crossed. Again there were definitely some hugely negative parts to it, but Biden had no such draconian policy. Even the worst things done by Obama pale in comparison to what Trump is doing, and unlike Obama who changed course, Trump is tripling down, trying to kill as many brown people as possible, and we’re only 2 years in.

Gay marriage was not that popular during the Obama years, there has been a massive shift in that in the past ~15 years or so. When I was growing up, bullying people for being gay and saying it’s unnatural and wrong was extremely common, now you really only hear that from very religious or very extreme Republicans. In about 2010 that shift started to swing over to most people don’t mind it, and the president and senate will reflect their constituency. I’m not saying he was a saint on these issues, but Republicans are, with no exaggeration, literal demons who want trans and gay people to stop existing.

I really don’t think codifying roe v wade would have made any difference with this supreme court, they would just say “it’s unconstitutional cuz it kills a life lol” and it’s gone. They probably should have anyway, but it would’ve just been symbolic, the Republicans do not care about rules at all.

I mean I can’t really argue on that, democrats seem to have a “the guardrails will hold” attitude while the Republicans tear through them any chance they get. I’ve been immensely disappointed several times, like when some “”“democrats”“”" caved during the government shutdown, what was the point of holding out at all then?

I’m just saying one side is being literal demons, and one side is not resistant enough to those demons. Democrats in power = sometimes very good policy, sometimes very bad policy. Republicans in power = ruin everyone’s lives, tear families apart at a massive scale, destroy the environment, get into wars, support dictators, kill American citizens, defraud the government, cheat more evil people into power. Even if your single ticket issue was israel palestine, Trump is literally netanyahu’s lapdog, and basically doubled their funding.

That’s 29% that joined for financial stability, not that they had no other options. There are many that join because they are destitute, and I won’t blame them just like I won’t blame the few in auschwitz who stole from others while starving. That is absolutely not the majority though and most are there because it was convenient for them or high paying.

The cook is not equally responsible, just like a getaway driver in a bank robbery is not equally responsible, but they are still massively aiding the perpetrators. If every cook quit the military, would that not have a massive negative impact on military operations? Lower morale, harder to get certain types of foods eaten, more waste, food is one of THE most important things for a military.

You can argue the extent of the impact, but it’s one of the biggest deciders of morale, and no chef means massive morale hit, which means less willingness to follow (in trumps case, illegal) orders, less willingness to remain in the army, and worse overall performance. By providing that service you are significantly increasing the effectiveness of the military. That doesn’t make you the same as the person shooting the gun, but you still carry a lot of the responsibility for it happening.

I mean sure you could just guess at the percentages, or you could look at what people actively serving said their reasons for joining were.

https://worldmetrics.org/reasons-for-joining-the-military-statistics/#b-7-data-sources

29% said it was for financial security, and if we assume ALL of those have NO option besides being homeless, not just that they wanted financial stability, that’s still 70% of the military supporting the current evil by choice.

Yes you should also not work for Amazon, if you have a choice. For most people they do not have that choice unless they want to be essentially homeless. Most people do have other choices than the military. The severity is also worse, one is supporting an evil company, one is killing civilians, so you are more morally in the wrong for being complicit in the latter.

If I’m the one who hands the killer the gun, am I almost exactly as culpable? What if I hand it to the guy who hands it to him? What if I just fix the ship he is on to kill people? Well suddenly now I’m just fine and did nothing wrong?

Be a draft dodger then and offer to help your neighbor leave, and if you can’t then go to jail over the military. These people aren’t cardboard boxes who have to do what they’re told, they have agency to quit. Improving your life isn’t an excuse to be complicit, unless you will literally be killed or starve otherwise, neither of which is the case here.

I got banned from a ton of ai communities for some mild push back, saying that people value bad art that has a person behind it rather than AI art which doesn’t feel like it has a human story and character behind it. Some of the softest people on the whole fediverse.

Well maybe bad faith wasn’t the right term, I think for me it’s just that if someone disagrees with me, my response is almost never even close to “I don’t like this,” unless they’re being hateful, unreasonably rude, saying proven false conspiracies, etc. Most of the time it’s “oh I think they don’t realize or haven’t considered xyz” and most of the time either they didn’t know or they correct me on something.

For things I would block, if a racist maga person comes in and says something, I gain absolutely nothing from hearing how climate change is fake, how libs are the real racists, how we hate trump for no reason. It’s just negativity conspiracy brainrot and it’s a huge waste of my time. Same for posts about what random out of touch billionaire #45 said, same for people generally being mean or super negative towards others, that’s what I actually don’t like and am happier having blocked it to never see again.

Yes which is why I’m not against ai as a whole, just in its current form it needs massive regulations. I would still not be happy about how it’s ruined huge portions of the internet, but I would probably put up with that for the value it provides.

Sure not all the critique is accurate, but in its current form, it causes huge issues with water and noise pollution in places the data centers are built, and are sucking unbelievable amounts of power, while essentially DDOSing tons of sites to scrape data, and often using copyrighted material that they have no license for. It is also reducing people’s ability to think critically because people turn to it immediately.

I’m not an idiot who will say it’s not useful, but we need to slow down by about 20x with what we’re doing with it now, and save it mainly for medical usage until we have a solution to those massive problems.