In 2016, I was an ardent supporter of Bernie. But come the general, I voted 3rd party, because I was "Bernie or Bust." Many people accuse me of indirectly voting for Trump, allowing "the worst thing ever" to happen (esp since I'm in a swing state that went Trump). But here's the truth as I see it: Voting Democrat regardless of candidate, with their only qualification being "Not Trump," will only increase the USA's slide (deeper) into fascism.

The reality I see is that even if Trump had never entered the 2016 race, 90%+ of the policy, judicial appointments, and everything else that he has done since being elected would be identical no matter which "R" candidate won the race, because all of these things are exactly what the GOP has been doing for decades. In that regard, I consider Trump more favorable than any other R candidate, because he is at least failing to do his "real" job: Hiding fascist, imperialist policy behind a charismatic smile and some clever words.

Ultimately, this is the reason why I don't generally support Democrats either. Hillary's policy wouldn't have been as immediately destructive as the GOP agenda, but it also would not have stopped the march towards fascism. I voted my conscious in 2016, and will do so again in 2020. I just hope there are more people willing to do the same this time around.

I like to picture that the government of the USA is digging a hole. With every shovelful, we're sliding ever closer to a fully authoritarian fascist regime, and the destruction of our planet. While Trump (and the GOP as a whole) has been calling in for backhoes and drills to speed the process....as far as I can tell, only two candidates in the 2020 primary are calling to stop the digging: Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. At best, the other candidates are conveying messages akin to: "We need to compromise with the GOP and maybe slow down the rate at which we allow new backhoes to be brought to the pit."

In my mind then, it makes more sense for 4 more years of Trump, than to allow another center-right candidate for his opposition. Because at least Trump isn't able to pull off the charismatic smile and/or intelligent language that the Regan's, Bush's, Clinton's, and Obama's of the world have that allow terrible things to continue behind a cloak of "incremental change." It wakes up those who would otherwise tolerate these horrendous acts, and perhaps inspires them to become more active. By allowing for the political discourse to end with "Anything is better than Trump", it just permits the overall platform to gradually, but continually shift to the right.

And in my mind, it is the total death of real, dissenting voices in public discourse that is far, far worse than Trump winning another term could ever be.

I would love to hear if anybody else in this community has had feelings akin to what I've described here, as I've only been described as "insane" by most of the people I've discussed this with in person.

Did a lot of comparisons tonight, and I have to say I feel the variation of “Why Don’t You Do Right” sung by Amy Irving in Who Framed Roger Rabbit holds far more impact than the original recordings done by Peggy Lee, or even many artists after.

What redo/variation of a classic still holds you speechless?

I was browsing r/privacy today and I came across this guy going on about how Mozilla was just pretending to be privacy focused. Here's his comment. Now I don't really know what to think of this, and frankly, I'm getting really exhausted of hearing about how all the things I'm using aren't actually trustworthy. So can so someone put my mind to rest? Does this guy's claims have any truth to them? Thanks.

I think we need to be more open in changing our opinions now a days more then ever, or at the very least, open to listen to others. so what was a strong opinion you once had, but has changed since by listening to others?

Previous threads:

What DE and distro do you use and why?

What's your OS and how does it look?

What does your desktop look like? What tools do you swear by?

I've recently switched to Arch and today, it's finally done! You have no idea how hard it was to even turn it off. So I wanted to make another OS/screenshot thread, especially since it's been quite a long time since the last one, and Tildes population increased inbetween, so we might find something interesting again :-)

What's your OS, what do you love about it and how does it look?

I have stood on both sides of the abortion debate. I was raised conservative. Most of my family is conservative. But I became more liberal as an adult. In listening to both conservatives and liberals argue their side of the debate they have something fundamental in common: both are motivated by a desire to care and protect. Liberals want to protect the rights, autonomy and health of women. Conservatives want to protect the life of the unborn.

Both sides see the other as monsters out to attack. They think that because the other side works to thwart their efforts to protect, that the other side intends harm. But that's not true. Neither side wants to inflict harm. They may be willing to inflict harm to protect another, but that is not the same as wanting to inflict harm. Those who are pro-choice don't want to kill babies; they want to protect women and sometimes killing the unborn is the unfortunate cost. Similarly those who are pro-life aren't necessarily motivated by a desire to control women*; they want to protect the unborn and limiting some rights of women is the cost.

* This of course comes with some sticky caveats. There is plenty of sexism among many who are pro-life, and plenty of hardliners who think women should be subservient. And those people's sexism does color there views of women's reproductive autonomy. But there are also moderate pro-lifers who otherwise value the rights of women. You don't have to be sexist to be pro-life. Anecdotally the pro-lifers I know personally are in the latter group.

soundtrack for this post

The one thing people didn't learn regarding Trump and is repeating itself with AOC.

When you consider a politician stupid, it actually empowers them to be crafty. I think Trump would love for you to think he is stupid.

When you constantly attack a politician, you actually give them more followers. It's strange, but the Streisand Effect is real, especially in this Internet era.

The biggest weapon in someone's arsenal is to actually just talk about what they are for. Not attack their opponent and give them press. The rules have changed.

Suppose you want to participate in an old post with hundreds of comments. You made your fresh new comment, injecting your thoughts and effort into it and hit the post button with hopes and dreams.

The post is bumped to the top under Activity. Other tilders saw the old post on the top, they are intrigued, perhaps as much as you are and wonder what you can add to the discussion, but they couldn't find your comment.

Why is that?

You replied to a thread with a very old top-level comment.

As Tildes is still relatively new, this isn't much of a issue now, but one that I feel needed to be addressed eventually as the site grows. It is certainly a low priority issue for the time being.

Sort by new only sorts comments by the time when top-level comment is posted, which is an inherent characteristic of comment threads. If my last years of memeing on redditting has taught me anything, it is that a new post gathers the most views in the first few minutes when it was posted (This might be a few days on Tildes).

Bumping helps extend the longevity of a given post if the thread gathers enough attention and discussion value to warrant a comment, but that alone would not alleviate the fact that new comments is seen by less and less people as the post gets older (as indicated by votes). If we want to make high-quality comments seen by more people, we need to make comment age a less limiting factor.

Tildes needs to help its users to discover new comments.

A few solutions come to my mind.

1. By presenting comments in a linear fashion like the good old bulletin board does without any hierarchy such that sort by new would truly be sort by new.

2. By highlighting ( or whichever other means ) comments that meet certain criteria (Comments that are among the latest 10 or comments that were posted within the last hour, this can vary depending on the activities of the comments)

3. I would like to propose a novel solution to this problem by compacting the comment threads to a forest of trees with navigable nodes. This sounds totally outlandish, it might very well be, but its an idea that I think worth sharing.

The editing is rudimentary but I hope the idea is communicated well.

Cheers!