Things are different now as the educational system is being intentionally damaged, but every single child who grew up in America between the ages of 10 and 80 was raised in an educational environment that taught them in no uncertain terms ALL of the warning signs of fascism and manipulation - these haven't changed in hundreds of years. They are either willfully ignoring them or spent their years in school eating paint instead of internalizing anything.

It's totally reasonable to recognize they're victims. It's also reasonable to recognize that in most cases, they made themselves that way.

Why does it have to be either or? It's totally reasonable to blame BOTH.

"Hey Verne! Found a perfectly good hammer for free downtown where all that fighting was happening! Now we can finally put the finishing touches on those cabinets in your kitchen, know-what-I-mean?"

"Your honor, rather than pay his outstanding debts, this shiftless f***wit used 75 million dollars to fund a SuperPAC to bother people at their homes for the benefit of the Trump campaign."

Not the original, but...

https://bash-org-archive.com/

The fallacy here is the idea that they care in any way about what gamers WANT.

They care about what gamers are willing to PAY for.

You didn't answer my question even a little.

It's not a difficult question.

We've established your action and your goal.

Your action: Voting for Jill Stein Your goal: To force Democrats to remove corporate interests from their platform and selection process

I'm with you. Now it's a question.

Do you, in your heart of hearts, rubber meets the road, believe the action you are going to take will lead to the goal you want?

It's a simple yes or no. Do you?

In all seriousness, do you think it will do that? There's no place on a ballot to put the REASON you cast your vote, so isn't it possible the Democrats who look at the post-mortem choose to interpret your vote in some other way?

I see an awful lot of angry putting people on the defense, but let's turn this around. What result that's brought about by your vote for Stein creates the world that you want to see? In your world, what does the world look like on the morning of November 6th, and what have you accomplished?

Actually, the lesson I'm starting to see over the past few years is that for certain groups of people, there are ABSOLUTELY no consequences and every failure is just failing up. There's a good chance this kid will never find out.

The Onion needs another one of those repeating articles for FOX News.

"Shitty network masquerading as a news organization does shitty partisan thing"

Absolutely. It's sucked a lot longer than that.

Bees are pollinators because they go to flowers and collect and move pollen.

Mosquitoes don't have time to hang out in flowers because they're busy screaming in your ear at 2 AM.

"Hope he's okay"

I don't. I hope he's very not okay.

I may disagree with the main thrust of your argument, but I respect that there's some truth to it, even if in my cynicism I think it's ideologically unrealistic to expect better, and do agree that it's a massive disappointment that we can't get more progress.

Edit: But on the flip side, it is POSSIBLE this isn't some crappy alternative - this just might be the best we can do. I would like to believe there's huge support for progressive action that would help people, but I'd also like to believe 50% of my country isn't Nazis, and that's also incorrect. If the realistic option is small, frustratingly tiny steps towards positive change, I'll choose that every time.

But... what will happen to all the bustling cross-border traffic??

The vast majority of those deplorable candidates are still losing and Democrats are still pushing forward, albeit PAINFULLY slowly, with a productive agenda. The red wave never happened, and despite the absolutely horrible examples that slipped through like MTG, Republicans are generally NOT winning. All of that goes to hell if we let the ONE apparently "charismatic" one take control again.

You're right about Starmer. And the people who deeply care in the UK should be working towards building up a viable alternative right now. How many progressive candidates were you helping build a support base for in 2021? How much were you donating to their campaign funds? How much were you canvassing and campaigning and getting names out there?

Right wing extremists do not actually care what Democrats do. If Joe Biden decided to throw out all the immigrants, give everybody assault rifles, and outlaw abortion, and publicly send out bibles, they STILL wouldn't be on his side, and in fact they may actually entirely flip ideology just to be contradictory. Because Republican supporters, no matter what they say, it isn't about POLICY for them. It's about POWER, and you are not going to take away their pursuit of it through more action on EITHER end of the spectrum.

This whole argument reeks like parents who scream at their children when they spill water because "It's the only way they'll learn." The children already know they weren't supposed to spill that water, and Democrats already know their choices aren't God's gift to progressivism. So like that parent, all you're accomplishing is giving everyone the promise of years of trauma followed by decades of therapy IF they're lucky enough to make it out on the other side, all so you can feel like you made your position on the spilling of water perfectly clear. I'm sorry, but I don't find that compelling or reasonable.

I will give you this... I appreciate your HAVING and SPEAKING your opinion, as much as I think it's nonsense, as opposed to the anonymous downvoting cowards.