July 28, 2022

third parties might be fine if it weren't for the electoral college

The Electoral College punishes third parties and makes them irrelevant unless they can basically steal a majority right away from existing parties. I think that's what the Yangsters are hoping for.

If we had a different voting system, like a ranked choice popular vote, then third parties would fluorish because they could contribute their positives without the penalty of being spoilers for the consensus majority.

I would like to hear somebody articulate a centrist position which acknowledges why centrism has failed and everyone has gone to the edges, which is basically because of income inequality and wage suppression. People are not supporting moderate status quo policies because the status quo is not supporting them back. This is the core of why Hillary wasn't able to sail to easy victory with a centrist position.

July 14, 2022

there are two Frank Wilhoits, and the one you googled is probably not the one who coined the law

https://slate.com/business/2022/06/wilhoits-law-conservatives-frank-wilhoit.html

I do like the turns of phrase of Wilhoit #2, like "Conservatism has long been surrounded by an enormous shimmering halo of pseudo-philosophy." I've noticed this myself: that through their punditry and movement leaders, right-wingers like to throw up a big facade of ideals and ideology, when in fact they don't believe in any ideology at all. The entire Libertarian movement is a piece of that fake-ideological facade, and really, so is a lot of evangelical Christianity. It's all a smokescreen for the simple fact that they want themselves to be privileged and everyone else to be suppressed or subjugated.

July 13, 2022

Biden is the most valuable and least appreciated president I've ever seen.

I thought Obama was the best prez of my lifetime but honestly, Biden is outperforming him.

July 9, 2022

the reddest flag

In some countries, people manage to own guns without enabling hordes of trigger-happy killers, but sadly, we do not live in such a country. Trigger-happy killers are abundant here, and we are forced to act accordingly. So we enact "red flag" laws to identify who we really should consider not giving guns to.

And in our culture, just wanting to have a gun is already a red flag in itself. When you say you want to keep one or more guns in your house, I feel that you are already letting me know that you have a dark side I can never fully trust.

But that's not the reddest flag. The thing that really lets me know you're not someone I want to trust with a gun is if you show clear racism. I suspect this country has a lot of racists in it who want guns just for when the day comes that they can open fire on people of color. In self-defense, of course, if only in their own minds. They think the threat they will someday need guns for is most likely to be black people.

If a red flag law was really designed to be effective, it would examine people not just for a violent history or mental instability or bloodthirsty ideation or drunkenness, but also for bigotry. Of course, the howls of protest at the unfairness at that would be deafening. They'd say we were just trying to take guns away from everyone who wants one... which in practice might not be all that far off.

July 6, 2022

If you want an AR15, my question is how many of your neighbors you think are going to need killing.

What are you afraid of? A zombie plague? A Chinese invasion? A post-nuclear battle for survival? A race war? A driveby from a rival drug cartel? Under what scenario do you think you'll need to fight an advancing horde of other people? Why do you imagine that the citizens around you are someday going to end up needing to be gunned down?

If you just want to shoot automatic weapons because it's fun, why not just go to a range that offers a rental? We could set that up. Why do you want it in your house?