Thank you for your honesty and for the passion you're bringing to this. I totally get it. As a teacher I'm getting to see first hand how aging is causing me to slowly lose touch with what it means...
Exemplary
Thank you for your honesty and for the passion you're bringing to this. I totally get it. As a teacher I'm getting to see first hand how aging is causing me to slowly lose touch with what it means to be young and how it is to be young.
With regard to online blaming, one thing that helps me is thinking of the internet as "full of editors". On reddit, where I used to hang out before Tildes, this was quite literally the case, as you could bet that any typo or error would be pointed out by someone. But really, the maxim holds true in a more holistic sense. The internet is full of people who spend a large amount of time finding, pointing out, and often criticizing the flaws they see in others.
At large, it creates widespread narratives about entire swaths of people (e.g. "millennials are entitled; boomers are out of touch"), and individualized, it creates friction, primarily in the form of blame. Blame is an outlet for discomfort as much as it is an absolution of responsibility. Furthermore, it can shapeshift to fit pretty much any narrative or situation. We can see it in the news literally today: young voters not voting can be spun as a moral failing of the voters themselves, the fault of a candidate for failing to inspire them, the fault of a party for conspiring against them, the fault of a country for demoralizing them, the fault of the system for disenfranchising them, the fault of the generation who raised them, or any number of other takes.
We spend a lot of time positing these theories and then arguing about them, resulting in a blame-shifting game of hot potato, where it's not about winning so much as it is not losing. Don't be the one stuck holding the blame at the end! It's not that there aren't people and entities deserving of blame; it's that too often we're unexpectedly saddled with blame tossed our way by someone else, and our only response is to redirect it elsewhere.
It's hard not to do, honestly, and I'm guilty of engaging in this exact behavior, right now, with this very comment. I don't want this to come across as a holier-than-thou rebuttal or a dismissal of others' behaviors because I do it too. We all do. It's easy to look at someone else's situation and assign blame. We've also all felt it happen to us. We've all been someone else's punching bag. Your situation is clearly your own fault. How could you be so stupid/naive/uninformed?
The modern internet has only made things worse. Because so much discourse has turned into culture war, showing weakness is a form of increasing your attack surface. By making myself appear flawless, I'm decreasing my ability to be blamed; by assigning blame to others, I'm then justifying my own blamelessness. If I had to go all armchair psychologist, I'd say this is why most of the arguments you see online don't actually change views and often merely entrench the people on both sides. Being attacked means it's simply all the more important to make sure my shields are at full strength.
When's the last time you saw someone admit to a mistake without it being an apology under duress? When's the last time you saw someone grappling with the guilt that comes from knowing they've done the wrong thing? When's the last time you've seen someone bring up their own faults in a way that wasn't sympathy fishing?
For all that we talk about online, these things are conspicuously missing. We hide these things partially because they can produce intense shame, but also because they make us vulnerable. Making a mistake and finding yourself at fault is often among the lowest moments of someone's life. The guilt, the second-guessing, the replaying of those decisions or the rethinking of them in hindsight can be crippling.
It is these moments where our need for human connection is often greatest. We need someone to tell us "hey, I've screwed up too" or "I know what you're going through right now" or "it might take time but things will get better again" or "I understand why this is so difficult for you" or "you were doing the best you could at the time". Instead, we're far more likely to get met with blame -- a chorus of "how could you be so stupid?" from a cast of strangers who presumably have never made mistakes at all, ever in their entire lives.
Blame terminates empathy. If I can cast blame, I don't have to think past that one focal point anymore. I don't have to consider the larger picture. I can shut off feelings of goodwill or shared humanity. Some people certainly deserve this. What they have done is so egregiously bad that they show themselves unworthy of that kind of consideration, but those people are few and far between. They are not your everyday person, or even your everyday internet commenter. They're not your everyday millennial or your everyday boomer.
Most of us are just troubled, flawed people trying to do the best with the hands that we're dealt and the information we have at the time. Most of us have also learned the hollow comforts of casting aspersions at others. Maybe doing so connects us to other likeminded folks. Maybe doing so helps us overcome some of our own insecurities. Maybe doing so helps us find easy answers for big, complex questions. Maybe doing so helps bring some semblance of sense into a chaotic and often unpredictable world.
What an internet of editors seems to forget is that a world full of flawed people doesn't need backhands; it needs helping ones. You're struggling? I'm struggling too. You messed up? I've messed up too. Let's get through this together. Let me share some of your burden, and thank you for sharing mine. There is commonality in our errors and flaws. We hide them to decrease our attack surface, but doing so also decreases our human presence. None of us are merely collections of textureless talking points, but too often that's how we portray ourselves online -- out of safety. It's an isolating kind of safety.
I worry when I write stuff like this because I feel like I come across as schmaltzy. After all, one of the rules of the internet is not to be earnest and not to put in actual effort. Oh, and remember to temper any sort of optimism with at least a small dose of catastrophizing. Furthermore, irony is protection and emotional distance is winning; earnestness is both weak and naive. Having genuine feeling on the internet and believing in some sort of universal good in humanity makes me feel like I'm a sap -- like I'm a Pollyanna walking through a post-apocalyptic, nihilistic wasteland. I can feel people rolling their eyes at me, if not for my attitude then for my extreme bouts of navel-gazing and pontificating. THIS fucking guy. Again!
Do I submit a comment like this to the internet of editors? After all, I've seen them so much they're part of my own internal monologue. I predict their responses before they even happen! This is the true weight of blame -- where you feel it pre-emptively and wear it hypothetically. You don't reach out for help in your darkest moments because you don't expect anyone to help. You need a hug, but you'll almost certainly get a lecture. If that's the case then why even bother?
I know I've said a lot, and I realize it can come across like a lecture, but instead I'm hoping it's more of a hug. You sound like you could use a hug right now. I know I certainly could. I think it's what a lot of us need right now. The blame hot potato is making the rounds again (did it ever stop?), and we're all tired of it landing in our hands. We're also tired of the reality that passing it on doesn't actually change anything; it just shifts the focus. The potato is still hot and it's still out there. How do we fix the issue rather than just passing it on? And how do we heal the burns it's caused? Is anyone even trying?
That's the nihilism talking. It doesn't have to be that way. We heal by connecting with others. Through trust and understanding. We grow as individuals as much as we grow as communities. We understand that who we were is not necessarily who we will be, both individually and collectively. I am malleable. We are malleable. This difficult and broken world we live in is changeable. We want things to be better for those that come after us. So many of us are trying for that. I teach because of that, even though it's sucking the life out of me.
I have to remember that there is reason to hope and there is reason to celebrate, and there are thousands upon thousands of reasons to look around and find someone who needs to be reminded that those things exist. In any given day there is so much human kindness shared in this world that it makes my heart swell. And every single day we have the chance to be a kindness in someone else's life. It won't necessarily fix the big things that are broken in the world, but it can help us fix each other and better endure, and even fight back, against the onerous weights imposed by those broken systems.
This, along with the rest of your post, made me smile. There's something wonderful about finding your place in the world, and there's something wonderful about seeing the world open up to others...
I feel like a skittish feral cat who's been re-homed, slowly acclimating to a truly loving and supportive environment.
This, along with the rest of your post, made me smile. There's something wonderful about finding your place in the world, and there's something wonderful about seeing the world open up to others and letting them in. I'm glad you have people who support you! I hope you feel that way here too! I can't remember if I've made this explicit in the past, but in case I haven't: I always appreciate your comments and the unique and insightful perspective you bring to this site. You're one of the many users here whose contributions I appreciate and look forward to, as I feel that you are always thoughtful, honest, and reflective -- often in powerful ways. Thanks for sharing so much of yourself with us. We're a better community for it!
It's not directly related, but just yesterday I happened to read through a series of old posts by Shamus Young, one of my favorite writers about video games. The series is called "The Twelve-Year...
It's not directly related, but just yesterday I happened to read through a series of old posts by Shamus Young, one of my favorite writers about video games. The series is called "The Twelve-Year Mistake", and it's about a series of poor decisions and financial troubles that he and his family went through starting in the year 2000.
Something he really emphasizes is that relatively minor issues can compound easily, and it can be really hard to notice the overall picture because you deal with it all sporadically:
I feel stupid now. It seems simple in retrospect, but of course the input data is incredibly noisy. Heating bills travel on a year-long sine wave. Electric bills follow the inverse wave. It’s hard to get a feel for how things are overall. But the other contributing factor – and I think this is true of a lot of slow-moving problems – is that it’s hard to diagnose problems if you view them at a really low framerate. I was only looking at and thinking about finances for ten minutes a month, and it’s really hard to see changes at that speed. If I was playing a strategy game and the last eight years were compressed into a couple of minutes I’d be able to see things easily. At any given moment a snapshot of the bills might look dire or reasonable. It's not until you average things out that you can see the true costs of living someplace.
It's a really great read overall (like everything he writes), and I'd definitely highly recommend it if anyone is interested in a good example of how a smart, fairly well-paid person can still end up in pretty deep financial trouble by making some mistakes, especially while other difficult things are happening in their life.
Here's the first post, there are big dark blue buttons at the top and bottom of each post to navigate through the parts.
Edit: as discussed in the replies to this, vivaria made a separate post in ~life for this series of articles here: https://tild.es/mdp
Up to you - I think it's a good elaboration on what you were talking about, so I'm putting it wherever your post is. If you want to change your post from a comment here to a new post in ~finance...
Up to you - I think it's a good elaboration on what you were talking about, so I'm putting it wherever your post is. If you want to change your post from a comment here to a new post in ~finance or something I can certainly move mine too.
Sure, that sounds good to me. It would probably be good to put something of a description in the title too so people know what they're getting into, like "The Twelve-Year Mistake: Shamus Young...
Sure, that sounds good to me. It would probably be good to put something of a description in the title too so people know what they're getting into, like "The Twelve-Year Mistake: Shamus Young describes how ...".
I'm going to post this in its own topic shortly, but the intersection between the absolutist traps of capitalism and mental health seems salient here. You've been left such a narrow channel to...
I'm going to post this in its own topic shortly, but the intersection between the absolutist traps of capitalism and mental health seems salient here. You've been left such a narrow channel to exist in, it's just piling on cruelty to claim that this was something you (or others with massive student debt) chose.
All I can do is work for a politics that unpacks and builds with the parts of a more just society.
I wonder why it's so hard to get young voters to actually vote. They're turning up at rallies, but not at the voting booth. Anyone have any insight? Pretty much everyone I know at the very least...
I wonder why it's so hard to get young voters to actually vote. They're turning up at rallies, but not at the voting booth. Anyone have any insight? Pretty much everyone I know at the very least claims to vote and always has.
Yes, apparently we are in a bubble. Going by what the people you know say is highly misleading. On Tildes especially! I was surprised that apparently almost everyone here supports Sanders.
Yes, apparently we are in a bubble. Going by what the people you know say is highly misleading.
On Tildes especially! I was surprised that apparently almost everyone here supports Sanders.
According to the various Tildes censuses, the users here skew young and largely tech-industry employed, tech-industry adjacent, or going to school for related fields. So the support for Yang and...
I was surprised that apparently almost everyone here supports Sanders.
According to the various Tildes censuses, the users here skew young and largely tech-industry employed, tech-industry adjacent, or going to school for related fields. So the support for Yang and Sanders seen on the site is kinda par for the course, as far as that demographic goes IMO.
FWIW, I don't support him, but also don't feel like getting into an argument about it, so I largely ignore the politics threads that talk about him and don't speak up about it because it wouldn't...
FWIW, I don't support him, but also don't feel like getting into an argument about it, so I largely ignore the politics threads that talk about him and don't speak up about it because it wouldn't get us anywhere. I have to deal with one particularly vocal and obsessed supporter at work, where he's put forth as the answer to every problem, and anytime the news points out anything he's done wrong, it's a bunch of rants about how the system is against him. Even if that were true, it so dominates the conversations at work that I simply don't want to deal with it anymore when I'm at home and trying to relax.
If you define leftism as some general move towards collective ownership/management over the means of production, UBI is a fairly rightist way to address the issue of automation. The leftist...
Yang has always struck me as the same Silicone Valley "big ideas and moonshots" type with a slightly left flavour.
If you define leftism as some general move towards collective ownership/management over the means of production, UBI is a fairly rightist way to address the issue of automation. The leftist approach would mean giving "the people" control over the robots. The UBI approach is functionally paying people off to let robots' masters run the show.
UBI has a libertarian aspect to it. Each individual makes their own decisions about how to spend the money. Yang's supporters are pretty ideologically diverse since there are a lot of different...
UBI has a libertarian aspect to it. Each individual makes their own decisions about how to spend the money. Yang's supporters are pretty ideologically diverse since there are a lot of different ways of looking at it.
Inorite? Isn't UBI the ultimate incentive to build up your own business? You can only fail so hard if you can fall back on a UBI. Thus ultimate liberty. Modern developed countries are...
Inorite? Isn't UBI the ultimate incentive to build up your own business? You can only fail so hard if you can fall back on a UBI. Thus ultimate liberty. Modern developed countries are post-scarcity (as evidenced by the artificial demand through advertising) and it's time they act like it.
I would love to just live on a UBI and spend my days making open source software. What's that? Even more liberty because it's libre? Ohh, Ayn Rand would be ecstatic.
Yang is what I imagine happens when techno-libertarians get haggard. And I don't mean any disrespect by saying that. Still lots of libertarian sentiment in tech. But also a lot of left wing sentiment.
Yang is what I imagine happens when techno-libertarians get haggard. And I don't mean any disrespect by saying that.
Still lots of libertarian sentiment in tech. But also a lot of left wing sentiment.
They haven't been truly impacted by their inaction yet. Imagine you are in your late teens, early 20s. You are taking on student loans for each semester of college but you are financially...
They haven't been truly impacted by their inaction yet.
Imagine you are in your late teens, early 20s. You are taking on student loans for each semester of college but you are financially illiterate and don't realize that your payments are going to be $1000+ a month for 20 years. Don't worry, you got plans to get a 6 figure job starting your own business. You get to be on your parents insurance until you are 26 so it doesn't matter. What are premiums exactly? You get on Twitter in this bubble of progressives talking about change and hell yeah, you want to be a part of it. Like a Netflix subscription, you chip in $5. Oh, you need to register to vote? By when? And then you have to go where? Meh, it's only 1 vote, it's not really that big of a deal if I skip this once. That's what the $5 is for.
Twitter doesn't show people dying from rationed insulin use. Instagram doesn't show the overdraft fees from the mom working 2-3 jobs to keep her household afloat. Life hasn't smacked these people across the face with it's full force yet.
But that's my 2 cents and can only base it off how I felt when I was 18 so many years ago.
I'm starting to wonder if me showing pictures of what I save on not having to pay for medication while on medicaid would influence anyone for M4A edit 4: got rid of the link, you guys get the...
I'm starting to wonder if me showing pictures of what I save on not having to pay for medication while on medicaid would influence anyone for M4A
edit 4: got rid of the link, you guys get the idea. I would have to be paying upwards of 6,000 dollars a month just to live with all my medicine combined.
edit 5: this has made me extraordinarily depressed because of how much I'm costing everyone and all the people that dont have coverage just die or go insanely in debt
I don't think they would understand. The cynic in me says you have to do something like #TheScroungeUpEveryPennySoIDontFuckingDieChallenge to get young people to realize how awful it can be to...
I don't think they would understand.
The cynic in me says you have to do something like #TheScroungeUpEveryPennySoIDontFuckingDieChallenge to get young people to realize how awful it can be to live paycheck to paycheck.
Interesting. I just looked up what that would actually cost here in germany: https://www.medizinfuchs.de/preisvergleich/invega-9mg-retardtabletten-28-st-janssen-cilag-gmbh-pzn-4597905.html - 200€...
Interesting. I just looked up what that would actually cost here in germany: https://www.medizinfuchs.de/preisvergleich/invega-9mg-retardtabletten-28-st-janssen-cilag-gmbh-pzn-4597905.html - 200€ for 28 paliperidon tablets, 9mg, as you requested.
And I don't think you'd even have to pay for it, any med that you can't get without a doctor's note is automatically covered by your health insurance and the rest is usually cheap. I've seen a 180€ bill pop up in the wild, but that was a relatively novel medication and also covered by the insurance upon asking.
Grain of salt from here on, but: Really, the more I think about it, the more I find the GKV part of the german system ingenious: AFAIK, the insurance companies determine together what's the minimum standard that needs to be covered (or it's mandated by law) and then they use their combined weight to lower prices. But beyond that, they offer additional services to compete for customers and thus drive providers to innovate.
Okay, this actually makes a lot more sense to me and really helps to drive home why we need to focus even harder on voting reform. Automatic registration, vote by mail, etc. Thanks!
Oh, you need to register to vote? By when? And then you have to go where? Meh, it's only 1 vote, it's not really that big of a deal if I skip this once. That's what the $5 is for.
Okay, this actually makes a lot more sense to me and really helps to drive home why we need to focus even harder on voting reform. Automatic registration, vote by mail, etc. Thanks!
Literally my first action once I'm the benevolent dictator of the USA (which will inevitably happen, mind you) is unfucking that voting clusterfuck. A representative system that makes parliament...
Literally my first action once I'm the benevolent dictator of the USA (which will inevitably happen, mind you) is unfucking that voting clusterfuck. A representative system that makes parliament switch off first-past-the-post. Any office that needs a definitive winner (president e.g.) gets a ranked choice system. No voting machines unless they leave a human-verifiable paper trail (e.g. you can check at the machine that your vote was recorded correctly in print) Republicans are crying for voter ID laws? Great, Wilco. And free IDs and automatic registration come along right with it. So before the election you get a letter containing your notification that an election is on, how you can mail your vote and when to go where if you want to attend, as well as resources if you can't reasonably get there (rural areas maybe). Felons get to vote too. Overturn Citizens United via amendment.
Then I'll peace out for a few years and let you untangle yourselves. If after a few years Fox News is still a thing, I'm gonna have to think some media ethics laws up. How 'bout "no outright lies" for starters?
I'm reasonably confident that that'll set the USA on a course where it can self-correct and doesn't need any outside intervention. I'd even bet that fox news would crash horribly if the voting system wouldn't artificially unite the right; no media ethics laws needed. Reason being that once the dems diversify into several habitually coalitioning parties, more voters would flock to them. The republicans follow suit, but the loosely tied together group of single-issue voters has a much harder time keeping their voters together. I can't see them making a coalition deal that ties anti-abortionists and pro-gun folks together reliably. It's much easier to reach across the aisle and get sensible legislation on the issue they don't care about out of them.
Yeah, I'm starting to think maybe student loans should be illegal? Or more realistically, capped. Although I can't tell if their teaching is any good (there are complaints, but there are always...
Yeah, I'm starting to think maybe student loans should be illegal? Or more realistically, capped.
Although I can't tell if their teaching is any good (there are complaints, but there are always complaints), I like how Lambda School does the financing, where students only pay if they get a good job.
If all colleges had to think about whether their students will make money after graduating instead of getting paid no matter what, it would be pretty devastating, especially for the humanities. But in a way that's the point. I like studying that stuff, but nobody should be taking on so much debt, and teaching really shouldn't be so expensive. All you really need are books and a teacher.
Teaching isn't expensive - at most universities, it's farmed out to miserably paid adjunct professors and graduate students. Bloated administrative costs, staff/faculty healthcare, sports, and...
Teaching isn't expensive - at most universities, it's farmed out to miserably paid adjunct professors and graduate students. Bloated administrative costs, staff/faculty healthcare, sports, and monumental prestige research facilities consume as much as 70% of tuition dollars, depending on the nature of the institution. Higher education for science, technology, engineering, and medical fields is more expensive to deliver than humanities teaching, both for qualified faculty salaries and facilities.
It's not as simple as "kids shouldn't take on debt". Public subsidies for higher education are being decreased to compensate for increases in public healthcare costs. Trade apprenticeships have declined corresponding to decreased unionization, and the U.S. has never been good at post-secondary education support for anything other than college.
The Lambda School's not doing well. Not because of its original financial model, but because it's both failing to deliver adequate quality education, and promoting the practical equivalent of indentured servitude.
I don't believe that anyone should have to become personally indebted in an amount exceeding the equivalent of one year's minimum wage in order to qualify for a job. It's not even about college. Pre-K through 12 education is where unequal opportunities begin and are reinforced in this country, and we're desperately in need of equitable investment for grade schools. I can't find good data on what proportion of available jobs truly require tertiary education, but it's certainly not so high as to require sending nearly half of U.S. students through four year colleges.
In the absence of reliable information for generating policy, I'll settle for at least some student debt relief as a short-term measure.
Teaching isn't expensive, but people don't generally go to college to get an education. They go to college for a diploma, and for the people who go to college for a diploma, the more prestigious a...
Teaching isn't expensive, but people don't generally go to college to get an education. They go to college for a diploma, and for the people who go to college for a diploma, the more prestigious a university is, the more valuable that diploma. Teaching isn't expensive, but prestige is the most expensive cost a university has. The giant marble stairs, the ivy covered arches, the massive football stadiums, and the huge research departments are what win universities prestige, and prestige is what wins them students.
If you just want an affordable quality education, go to community college. I spent two years there and learned from passionate, intelligent professors who had experience in the fields they were teaching. I then went to a big fancy university and got to sit in a room with 300 other people cupping my ears to hear guys who didn't want to be there mumble from a textbook. I didn't learn anything at that university, and if I hadn't joined the military to pay for it I would still be in debt because of it. To top it all off, those vultures have the balls to make an undergrad call me 5+ times a year asking for a donation.
My experience with community college was much the same. I attended the local SUNY school for three years and paid a total of $1400 per year, most of which I worked off at the college as work study...
My experience with community college was much the same. I attended the local SUNY school for three years and paid a total of $1400 per year, most of which I worked off at the college as work study (they did need IT people).
That was all I needed to start a decent career. Later on in another city I attended a university briefly (on the employer's dime) and that community college was, ten years earlier, much better than the university was in every way.
That same community college I attended? New dorms, the old science buildings are renovated and replaced with trade skill workshops for industry, auto repair, electrical, etc. Their newly opened tech park nearby is focusing on robotics and 3d manufacturing. They just renovated a burned out hospital downdown into even more new dorms (a block from the local night life no less), and flattened the old business campus there to build a brand new one. The old crammed up dusty library is now a student center dripping in tech and toys.
The university? Nothing has changed, they can barely keep the lights on.
Yeah, that's the article I was thinking of when I said there are complaints. I'm hesitant to draw conclusions based on one article, though. I don't see how it's "indentured servitude" any more...
Yeah, that's the article I was thinking of when I said there are complaints. I'm hesitant to draw conclusions based on one article, though.
I don't see how it's "indentured servitude" any more than a student loan is? The terms seem better.
On reviewing the Lambda School's ISA FAQ, you're essentially required to seek work on completing their program. You are not permitted to take another ISA-supported education program after...
On reviewing the Lambda School's ISA FAQ, you're essentially required to seek work on completing their program. You are not permitted to take another ISA-supported education program after completing theirs. In some ways, the ISA is better than a conventional student loan (higher salary target before mandatory payments, fixed cost with no interest). But it's not a panacea, and it wouldn't surprise me if someone takes them to court over the terms.
If student loans could be discharged in bankruptcy you can bet creditors would be forced to do this counseling themselves. Instead, the fact that it's the most stable possible loan for them, to...
If student loans could be discharged in bankruptcy you can bet creditors would be forced to do this counseling themselves. Instead, the fact that it's the most stable possible loan for them, to the point where the federal government will garnish your wages on their behalf if you're behind on them, is what incentivizes them to hand them out like candy and jack up interest rates.
Twitter doesn't show people dying from rationed insulin use. Instagram doesn't show the overdraft fees from the mom working 2-3 jobs to keep her household afloat. Life hasn't smacked these people across the face with it's full force yet.
I'm not sure if the voter base is uninformed, or just apathetic. My sister is getting a 70k a year undergrad in communications. It's not that she doesn't know how bad the loans are going to be,...
I'm not sure if the voter base is uninformed, or just apathetic.
you are financially illiterate and don't realize that your payments are going to be $1000+ a month
My sister is getting a 70k a year undergrad in communications. It's not that she doesn't know how bad the loans are going to be, she literally doesn't care.
My opinion as to some reasons why they didn't show up: Armchair activism - It's easy to say you support something without actually doing anything about it. The same sort of people that did nothing...
My opinion as to some reasons why they didn't show up:
Armchair activism - It's easy to say you support something without actually doing anything about it. The same sort of people that did nothing more than change their profile picture or tweet a hashtag to "support" a cause or charity. It's the second to the least you can do and far more people do that than actually do something of value. Generally speaking everyone is lazy. Young people aren't an exception to this.
Social attention - Rallies, marches, caucuses, etc. are things that can be tweeted, live streamed, or otherwise shared so others can reward those individuals with the attention they desire/need. Voting cannot. You go to the polls alone, to your voting booth alone, there are no others cheering you on, you cannot stream it, you do not get the pumped up feeling you do in a crowd of like minded supporters. There's no incentive or immediate gratification to voting.
Complacency - They thought their numbers were so overwhelming that on an individual level they didn't have to go and therefore collectively screwed the pooch.
Consequences - They aren't old enough to have actually experienced consequences of their actions/inaction on this sort of level. And while Trump is undoubtedly a dangerous idiot that had he been left unchecked likely would have done more than merely made a country look foolish, has been largely ineffective and done nothing, aside from placing conservatives in the Supreme Court, that is detrimental in the long run. It's almost as if there are things in place that keep the most public individual in office from acting like a dictator...
Big part of it is just structural barriers to discourage it. There is lots of ambiguity about where they're supposed to go. Younger voters are likely to not have fixed addresses or live in the...
I wonder why it's so hard to get young voters to actually vote.
Big part of it is just structural barriers to discourage it. There is lots of ambiguity about where they're supposed to go. Younger voters are likely to not have fixed addresses or live in the same place year to year. Our voting system requires you to have a current ID and show up at a precinct based on where you live. If you don't get mail at your residence (like, most of your official mail goes to your parents' house) then you won't know. If you're a college student you might be out of state and not deal with the bureaucratic hurdles to vote absentee or get registered where you go to school.
On top of that, young people are less likely to have jobs where they can get time off to vote or get to a polling place.
And on top of that, voting is highly correlated with other kinds of civic participation, such as belonging to a church. Young people are least likely to be involved in groups like this because they haven't had time to develop the associations. This also depresses turnout.
I don't know the answer. I was pretty involved from a young age. As soon as I was old enough to vote, I did. I remember even before we were old enough to vote driving a girlfriend to the local...
I don't know the answer. I was pretty involved from a young age. As soon as I was old enough to vote, I did. I remember even before we were old enough to vote driving a girlfriend to the local party office to do volunteer work. So I'm probably outside the demographic that could explain it.
But thinking back, I also remember having very different ideas about the world and being baffled by things older adults said or did. For example, I remember it constantly being hammered home that "community is important." When I looked around, nobody actually acted like it was, but they said it a lot. I also felt that my community was pretty fucking awful to me, so why would I want to support them?
Now that I'm older and I see both the benefits of building a community and the pitfalls of not caring more clearly. (Which isn't to say that younger me was wrong. The community I grew up in were a bunch of shit lords and I'm glad I left.)
I think it's similar with voting. There are 300+ million people in the US, how can one vote make a difference? And it's easy to be cynical about promises that candidates make on the campaign trail. Even if a given candidate does put forth something they promised, it still has to survive debate and bad faith attacks, and all that other nonsense. Look how long it took just to get the ACA, and then after it passed, Congress tried something like 45 times to repeal it. And it was largely based on Republican ideas and passed by Democrats! If the people in charge are so hell-bent to destroy stuff they created and passed, how can we ever get anything new through? How can one candidate ever hope to fix even a small part of the system?
So maybe younger people just feel the system is so broken they can't fix it, so why even bother? I could hardly blame them for feeling that way.
This one in particular is something I've never been able to understand - either you do nothing and the system will absolutely continue on and never be changed, or you do something and there's a...
So maybe younger people just feel the system is so broken they can't fix it, so why even bother? I could hardly blame them for feeling that way.
This one in particular is something I've never been able to understand - either you do nothing and the system will absolutely continue on and never be changed, or you do something and there's a tiny chance you might contribute to change.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather do something than nothing.
Young voters become older voters; they don't stay young forever. Therefore every election different young voters must be encouraged to vote, whereas older voters already know to.
Young voters become older voters; they don't stay young forever. Therefore every election different young voters must be encouraged to vote, whereas older voters already know to.
Frankly I think it's more frustrating that we can't figure out a way to deal with this apathy. If it's too much a bother to register to vote, why not automatically register them to vote by mail?
It is incredibly frustration seeing how apathetic so many young people.
Frankly I think it's more frustrating that we can't figure out a way to deal with this apathy. If it's too much a bother to register to vote, why not automatically register them to vote by mail?
I mean when your immediate priority is being able to pay the bills this week so you have hot water, electricity, and food on the table, it's hard if not impossible to take a day off work to go vote.
I am pretty shocked the blatant voter suppression does not motivate them more to turn out.
I mean when your immediate priority is being able to pay the bills this week so you have hot water, electricity, and food on the table, it's hard if not impossible to take a day off work to go vote.
Understatement of the year. Just a few months ago we assassinated a major military leader of another country under the guise of diplomacy. It's just the latest in a long line of terrible behavior....
Tendency towards conspiracy.
Left-wing conspiracy is slightly more grounded and based on some modicum of truth
They're a good bit related though. The culture we live in fosters conspiratorial thinking due to the horrors we see and hear about that are confirmed facts. Operation Northwoods certainly lays out...
They're a good bit related though.
The culture we live in fosters conspiratorial thinking due to the horrors we see and hear about that are confirmed facts. Operation Northwoods certainly lays out a foundation for the 9/11 inside job conspiracy, especially with how quickly our leaders were able to capitalize on it.
Is it really that much of a stretch to see that a candidate who espouses consistently that we need to stop commiting atrocities and make lives better for the majority instead of the wealthy might have an uphill battle against the established power structures?
It might not be the DNC, but their readiness to accept Bloomberg into the process does raise some serious questions about the real motives behind the party. Not to mention the carefully crafted media narratives that have been pushing Biden hard since before he announced a candidacy.
I think "young voters who didn't vote are Bernie Sanders supporters" is a bit of a false equivalency. More likely, all the young people that were fired up about Bernie Sanders did vote but they...
I think "young voters who didn't vote are Bernie Sanders supporters" is a bit of a false equivalency. More likely, all the young people that were fired up about Bernie Sanders did vote but they happen to be outnumbered by the amount of young people that generally don't give a shit about politics and don't vote.
I wonder how much of this is actually voter suppression efforts by the GOP, paying unexpected dividends. Look at some of the states Biden won (e: in spite of the polls), like NC and TX....
I wonder how much of this is actually voter suppression efforts by the GOP, paying unexpected dividends. Look at some of the states Biden won (e: in spite of the polls), like NC and TX. Republicans there have been focused on making it harder and harder for young people and minorities to vote since at least 2010.
I read somewhere that the GOP strategy this time around is long wait times to actually vote. I mean, if you had shit to do and work and stuff and couldn't take off work would you stand in a 4 hour...
I read somewhere that the GOP strategy this time around is long wait times to actually vote. I mean, if you had shit to do and work and stuff and couldn't take off work would you stand in a 4 hour line for something the DNC already decided on before biden announced?
This voter suppression theory seems inconsistent with Biden's support being highest with blacks? If blacks had voted more, Biden would gain from it. It might work for the youth vote though.
This voter suppression theory seems inconsistent with Biden's support being highest with blacks? If blacks had voted more, Biden would gain from it.
Colleges are always a heavy target for GOP voter suppression, but that is a good point. I just always wonder what's going on when the polls and the results are so different.
Colleges are always a heavy target for GOP voter suppression, but that is a good point. I just always wonder what's going on when the polls and the results are so different.
Here is one quick recounting of seven hour lines at an HBCU in Houston: https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/massive-voter-suppression-in-texas-primary-likened-to-poll-tax/
It really makes you think doesn't it. It's almost as if those getting hit the hardest really want change for the better, and trust the oldest white man running who has a decent track record. It's...
It really makes you think doesn't it. It's almost as if those getting hit the hardest really want change for the better, and trust the oldest white man running who has a decent track record.
It's almost as if issues and integrity matter more to the 'royally fucked generations' than not being an old white man.
I'm an older millennial. My generation has about 3% of the national wealth. When the oldest boomers were my age, their generation had 20%. It's not looking much better for anyone younger than me,...
I'm an older millennial. My generation has about 3% of the national wealth. When the oldest boomers were my age, their generation had 20%.
It's not looking much better for anyone younger than me, and I fully acknowledge that I got lucky and only have a fraction of debt relative to my peers. The continually degrading protections for workers mean decent jobs are going to be harder to come by.
The last 3 presidential elections have been won by people espousing substantial change. While Trump's was an egregious lie, the point is that the wider populous is yearning for authentic change. Obama had a mandate from the people in his first two years. He could have pushed for substantial good change in the same way Trump has pushed bad change. Dismantling the war on drugs alone is a simple executive order. His failure to inspire lost him congress and things started degrading from there.
Older people have far more wealth on average and are terrified of the socialist boogie man taking it away. That's why Sander does well amoung younger voters, despite being the oldest white man.
I'm just still shocked about Biden's lead. Nobody seemed to have much insight on why he did so well other than the Clyburn endorsement factoring into 49% of black voter's decision to go to him...
I'm just still shocked about Biden's lead. Nobody seemed to have much insight on why he did so well other than the Clyburn endorsement factoring into 49% of black voter's decision to go to him over Bernie.
I'm trying my best to keep my tinfoil hat off, but it's times like this that I probably feel the most like a paranoid Trump supporter did where I'm just looking for someone to blame other than admit I've been in a bubble this whole time-- which I have been, and that bubble is me checking /r/politics every morning. I need to just stick with my Crooked Media podcasts, they've been pretty good about being impartial and realistic.
I don't know how to reach younger voters, but I myself write letters for Vote Forward, which just tries to get unregistered voters to register.
Thank you for sharing--I felt that in my bones. Like the author, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills sometimes. We don't have the time to elect someone without a sense of urgency, or (god forbid)...
Thank you for sharing--I felt that in my bones. Like the author, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills sometimes. We don't have the time to elect someone without a sense of urgency, or (god forbid) sit through another four years of Trump. I'll hold my nose and vote for Biden if he gets the nod, but the only situation in which we aren't fucked in the long term is if Sanders wins convincingly in November.
Longish quote, emphasis mine
Let us say Bernie did beat Trump, and that he did pass Medicare for All, and that it was a success. What would that mean for people like Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton? It would mean that they were wrong when they had not chosen to fight for these things. Completely wrong. In fact, they stood in the way of progress and prevented us from getting things we could have had all along. They “compromised” all of the important values for nothing. They should have been standing with Bernie and instead they were standing against him, creating needless barriers to fundamentally important social changes.
But it’s even worse than that for them: if Bernie beats Trump, liberalism is over. I don’t mean in the sense David Brooks means, that the liberal values of free expression and democracy are over. Bernie has fought for those his whole life. I mean incrementalist politics that declines to forthrightly challenge the distribution of power and wealth. Because if Bernie beats Trump in 2020, it will show that Bernie was right that he could have beaten Trump in 2016. And if Bernie could have beaten Trump in 2016, then all of the horror of Trump’s presidency—the kids in cages, the poisoned environment, the pardoned psychopaths—was avoidable. It didn’t need to have happened.
had to unsub. my homepage was literally just a bernie circle jerk on the few states he did win and nothing on biden or anyone else. I know its been like that for a while and I like bernie but the...
had to unsub. my homepage was literally just a bernie circle jerk on the few states he did win and nothing on biden or anyone else. I know its been like that for a while and I like bernie but the echo chamber was real.
Eh, NYT and WaPo have done some great reporting, but with regards to politics, they have their own share of biases no more egregious than Crooked Media's.
Eh, NYT and WaPo have done some great reporting, but with regards to politics, they have their own share of biases no more egregious than Crooked Media's.
Some of the takes I've read today make me feel like my emotions are stable and well-adjusted, which is not something I feel often. I'm disappointed that Biden made a huge comeback and is probably...
Some of the takes I've read today make me feel like my emotions are stable and well-adjusted, which is not something I feel often. I'm disappointed that Biden made a huge comeback and is probably going to win, and was kinda stressed about it last night, but I'm still gonna vote for him if he wins the nomination.
I've seen a lot of people talking about this on Reddit as well and I've been trying to figure out how this could impact the race going forward. My thought (and hope) is that most of the active...
I've seen a lot of people talking about this on Reddit as well and I've been trying to figure out how this could impact the race going forward.
My thought (and hope) is that most of the active young Bernie supporters who did show up and vote yesterday are also people who 100% agree with the Vote Blue No Matter Who movement, and so if Biden ends up winning the nomination, they would still show up in November to vote for him.
The concern of course is that all the young voters who couldn't bother to vote yesterday, but still support Sanders, will instead see Biden winning the nomination (if it happens) as just confirmation that their vote wouldn't have mattered because the system is clearly rigged against them, and so will now not show up to vote in November (but may have had Sanders won the nomination.)
Of course the problem is that many young people have a hard time realizing that most of what they read online in places like Tildes and Reddit is a bit of an echo chamber and so while it may seem like Sanders has been the overwhelming favorite since day 1, Biden has been polling consistently #1 or top 3ish since he entered the race, and while there definitely seems to have been some surprise at how well he did yesterday, it wasn't quite the coup that young voters thing it was.
Not sure what the best solution is other than to make sure you get all of your friends, family, and neighbors to vote in November! (and vote in the primary if your state's hasn't happened yet.)
My thought (and hope) is that most of the active young Bernie supporters who did show up and vote yesterday are also people who 100% agree with the Vote Blue No Matter Who movement, and so if Biden ends up winning the nomination, they would still show up in November to vote for him.
If you believe both candidates are bad, not voting is the only moral action and you are absolutely allowed to complain about whoever wins. Not voting out of principle is a position every bit as...
If you believe both candidates are bad, not voting is the only moral action and you are absolutely allowed to complain about whoever wins. Not voting out of principle is a position every bit as valid as voting.
Only if they're equally bad, and in this case they're not. Besides, there's no incentive for anyone running for office to advocate for you if you don't vote.
Only if they're equally bad, and in this case they're not. Besides, there's no incentive for anyone running for office to advocate for you if you don't vote.
What if OP is of Palestinian heritage and, as in this case, it's a choice between 2 self proclaimed Zionists? There are a hundred issues like this that can make a person decide not to vote. You...
What if OP is of Palestinian heritage and, as in this case, it's a choice between 2 self proclaimed Zionists? There are a hundred issues like this that can make a person decide not to vote. You don't get to decide for them which is less bad.
If you voting for a colour regardless of issues then they already have your vote and so there is no incentive to appeal to you.
Ok, if they both suck equally on the Israel front, they don't suck equally on climate change, civil rights, education, and general corruption, and the Supreme Court justices they would pick are...
Ok, if they both suck equally on the Israel front, they don't suck equally on climate change, civil rights, education, and general corruption, and the Supreme Court justices they would pick are vastly different. Ginsburg is 86 years old and if she or Breyer die in the next four years, Trump will replace them with guys like Brett "I like beer" Kavanaugh and Neil "that truck driver should have frozen to death" Gorsuch. Biden won't.
As much as it pains me to say it, if Biden gets the nod, you should. Even if your one vote is small, it's not any smaller than anyone else's vote in your state. Please don't use that vote to give...
As much as it pains me to say it, if Biden gets the nod, you should. Even if your one vote is small, it's not any smaller than anyone else's vote in your state. Please don't use that vote to give a pass to four more years of our insane orange god-emperor. Biden and the DNC fucking suck but they are not worse than Trump. Ordinarily waiting for a better candidate would be a viable play, but I think a Trump not beholden to the need for re-election would involve truly terrible things.
I voted third-party in 2016 because I couldn't stomach Clinton, and I've spent the last three years and some change regretting it.
My take on it is pretty simple. Trump is a giant hate-fueled distraction and his presence is continuing to polarize and intensify the divide that has existed in America since the civil war. He's...
My take on it is pretty simple. Trump is a giant hate-fueled distraction and his presence is continuing to polarize and intensify the divide that has existed in America since the civil war. He's breathing new life into an old feud and he's also getting away with blatant lying, misinformation, and god only knows what else. He's an international embarrassment that's already cost us the best parts of our working relationships with our allies.
If he wins re-election, America is signing off on this as the new business as usual. He'll cement this style of politics into canon at least for a time, and the country is going to pay dearly for that long-term as things continue to get worse.
I don't like Biden. I don't hate him either. I just want Trump gone so his daily dose of bullshit isn't clouding up the conversation.
That seems too broad? The president is apparently untouchable (other than by the Senate or the voters, if they choose) but the adminstration can and often does lose in court. What are some...
There is apparently nothing enforcing the law on the President and his administration.
That seems too broad? The president is apparently untouchable (other than by the Senate or the voters, if they choose) but the adminstration can and often does lose in court.
What are some examples of actions that are irreversible?
Although it's not in the Constitution, there seem to be some precedents for this dating from the Nixon era. The Supreme Court ruled that the president is immune from civil lawsuits for official...
Although it's not in the Constitution, there seem to be some precedents for this dating from the Nixon era. The Supreme Court ruled that the president is immune from civil lawsuits for official actions, and the Justice Department has a police dating from then that the president cannot be indicted. Meuller went by that policy.
I'm not sure the authors of the Constitution were thinking about in any differently, though? It seems like impeachment and elections, along with Congress's ability to withhold funding, were considered to be plenty of restraint?
Just to add some more weight to your sentiment, here's the little hard data I've seen on how the yang gang broke up. I posted this late in an old thread last month when he dropped out, but I think...
Just to add some more weight to your sentiment, here's the little hard data I've seen on how the yang gang broke up. I posted this late in an old thread last month when he dropped out, but I think it bears repeating.
PSP (which is a libertarian/progressive channel that got their start covering Yang) did an internal poll of their followers asking who they would vote for now that Yang was out. They published it on their live stream (link to start of poll report).
6,800 voted, and this is how it came out. This was all Yang gang voting, it wasn't a public poll, it wasn't up in a publicly accessible space where it could be brigaded. Only the folks who had chipped in for PSP with donations had access.
Quit Politics/Not Vote: 50% (3400)
Vote Bernie: 23% (1564)
Vote Trump: 16% (1088)
Vote 2nd choice in Dem Party: 7% (476)
Vote Blue no matter who: 4% (272)
I'd be surprised if the same poll conducted in other Yang strongholds would turn up results that differed significantly. This tells me that the people who crossed the isle for Yang's pragmatism won't be voting democrat, and that the remaining democrats by a large majority do not share this sentiment of simply supporting whoever the frontrunner is.
That said, this is an internet poll, conducted right after Yang dropped when people were still salty, so take it for what it is.
Remind me again how Trump got his first supreme court pick...I seem to have forgotten. It certainly wasn't because the Republicans were able to stonewall a Democrat's nomination for almost a full...
The fact that we have the potential for a 7-2 conservative Supreme Court
Remind me again how Trump got his first supreme court pick...I seem to have forgotten.
It certainly wasn't because the Republicans were able to stonewall a Democrat's nomination for almost a full year. And that same party certainly didn't make it easier for them to stonewall future Democratic nominees.
I'll vote for Biden. But I'm sure as shit going to form an exit strategy the day he gets the primary nomination.
Thank you for your honesty and for the passion you're bringing to this. I totally get it. As a teacher I'm getting to see first hand how aging is causing me to slowly lose touch with what it means to be young and how it is to be young.
With regard to online blaming, one thing that helps me is thinking of the internet as "full of editors". On reddit, where I used to hang out before Tildes, this was quite literally the case, as you could bet that any typo or error would be pointed out by someone. But really, the maxim holds true in a more holistic sense. The internet is full of people who spend a large amount of time finding, pointing out, and often criticizing the flaws they see in others.
At large, it creates widespread narratives about entire swaths of people (e.g. "millennials are entitled; boomers are out of touch"), and individualized, it creates friction, primarily in the form of blame. Blame is an outlet for discomfort as much as it is an absolution of responsibility. Furthermore, it can shapeshift to fit pretty much any narrative or situation. We can see it in the news literally today: young voters not voting can be spun as a moral failing of the voters themselves, the fault of a candidate for failing to inspire them, the fault of a party for conspiring against them, the fault of a country for demoralizing them, the fault of the system for disenfranchising them, the fault of the generation who raised them, or any number of other takes.
We spend a lot of time positing these theories and then arguing about them, resulting in a blame-shifting game of hot potato, where it's not about winning so much as it is not losing. Don't be the one stuck holding the blame at the end! It's not that there aren't people and entities deserving of blame; it's that too often we're unexpectedly saddled with blame tossed our way by someone else, and our only response is to redirect it elsewhere.
It's hard not to do, honestly, and I'm guilty of engaging in this exact behavior, right now, with this very comment. I don't want this to come across as a holier-than-thou rebuttal or a dismissal of others' behaviors because I do it too. We all do. It's easy to look at someone else's situation and assign blame. We've also all felt it happen to us. We've all been someone else's punching bag. Your situation is clearly your own fault. How could you be so stupid/naive/uninformed?
The modern internet has only made things worse. Because so much discourse has turned into culture war, showing weakness is a form of increasing your attack surface. By making myself appear flawless, I'm decreasing my ability to be blamed; by assigning blame to others, I'm then justifying my own blamelessness. If I had to go all armchair psychologist, I'd say this is why most of the arguments you see online don't actually change views and often merely entrench the people on both sides. Being attacked means it's simply all the more important to make sure my shields are at full strength.
When's the last time you saw someone admit to a mistake without it being an apology under duress? When's the last time you saw someone grappling with the guilt that comes from knowing they've done the wrong thing? When's the last time you've seen someone bring up their own faults in a way that wasn't sympathy fishing?
For all that we talk about online, these things are conspicuously missing. We hide these things partially because they can produce intense shame, but also because they make us vulnerable. Making a mistake and finding yourself at fault is often among the lowest moments of someone's life. The guilt, the second-guessing, the replaying of those decisions or the rethinking of them in hindsight can be crippling.
It is these moments where our need for human connection is often greatest. We need someone to tell us "hey, I've screwed up too" or "I know what you're going through right now" or "it might take time but things will get better again" or "I understand why this is so difficult for you" or "you were doing the best you could at the time". Instead, we're far more likely to get met with blame -- a chorus of "how could you be so stupid?" from a cast of strangers who presumably have never made mistakes at all, ever in their entire lives.
Blame terminates empathy. If I can cast blame, I don't have to think past that one focal point anymore. I don't have to consider the larger picture. I can shut off feelings of goodwill or shared humanity. Some people certainly deserve this. What they have done is so egregiously bad that they show themselves unworthy of that kind of consideration, but those people are few and far between. They are not your everyday person, or even your everyday internet commenter. They're not your everyday millennial or your everyday boomer.
Most of us are just troubled, flawed people trying to do the best with the hands that we're dealt and the information we have at the time. Most of us have also learned the hollow comforts of casting aspersions at others. Maybe doing so connects us to other likeminded folks. Maybe doing so helps us overcome some of our own insecurities. Maybe doing so helps us find easy answers for big, complex questions. Maybe doing so helps bring some semblance of sense into a chaotic and often unpredictable world.
What an internet of editors seems to forget is that a world full of flawed people doesn't need backhands; it needs helping ones. You're struggling? I'm struggling too. You messed up? I've messed up too. Let's get through this together. Let me share some of your burden, and thank you for sharing mine. There is commonality in our errors and flaws. We hide them to decrease our attack surface, but doing so also decreases our human presence. None of us are merely collections of textureless talking points, but too often that's how we portray ourselves online -- out of safety. It's an isolating kind of safety.
I worry when I write stuff like this because I feel like I come across as schmaltzy. After all, one of the rules of the internet is not to be earnest and not to put in actual effort. Oh, and remember to temper any sort of optimism with at least a small dose of catastrophizing. Furthermore, irony is protection and emotional distance is winning; earnestness is both weak and naive. Having genuine feeling on the internet and believing in some sort of universal good in humanity makes me feel like I'm a sap -- like I'm a Pollyanna walking through a post-apocalyptic, nihilistic wasteland. I can feel people rolling their eyes at me, if not for my attitude then for my extreme bouts of navel-gazing and pontificating. THIS fucking guy. Again!
Do I submit a comment like this to the internet of editors? After all, I've seen them so much they're part of my own internal monologue. I predict their responses before they even happen! This is the true weight of blame -- where you feel it pre-emptively and wear it hypothetically. You don't reach out for help in your darkest moments because you don't expect anyone to help. You need a hug, but you'll almost certainly get a lecture. If that's the case then why even bother?
I know I've said a lot, and I realize it can come across like a lecture, but instead I'm hoping it's more of a hug. You sound like you could use a hug right now. I know I certainly could. I think it's what a lot of us need right now. The blame hot potato is making the rounds again (did it ever stop?), and we're all tired of it landing in our hands. We're also tired of the reality that passing it on doesn't actually change anything; it just shifts the focus. The potato is still hot and it's still out there. How do we fix the issue rather than just passing it on? And how do we heal the burns it's caused? Is anyone even trying?
That's the nihilism talking. It doesn't have to be that way. We heal by connecting with others. Through trust and understanding. We grow as individuals as much as we grow as communities. We understand that who we were is not necessarily who we will be, both individually and collectively. I am malleable. We are malleable. This difficult and broken world we live in is changeable. We want things to be better for those that come after us. So many of us are trying for that. I teach because of that, even though it's sucking the life out of me.
I have to remember that there is reason to hope and there is reason to celebrate, and there are thousands upon thousands of reasons to look around and find someone who needs to be reminded that those things exist. In any given day there is so much human kindness shared in this world that it makes my heart swell. And every single day we have the chance to be a kindness in someone else's life. It won't necessarily fix the big things that are broken in the world, but it can help us fix each other and better endure, and even fight back, against the onerous weights imposed by those broken systems.
This, along with the rest of your post, made me smile. There's something wonderful about finding your place in the world, and there's something wonderful about seeing the world open up to others and letting them in. I'm glad you have people who support you! I hope you feel that way here too! I can't remember if I've made this explicit in the past, but in case I haven't: I always appreciate your comments and the unique and insightful perspective you bring to this site. You're one of the many users here whose contributions I appreciate and look forward to, as I feel that you are always thoughtful, honest, and reflective -- often in powerful ways. Thanks for sharing so much of yourself with us. We're a better community for it!
It's not directly related, but just yesterday I happened to read through a series of old posts by Shamus Young, one of my favorite writers about video games. The series is called "The Twelve-Year Mistake", and it's about a series of poor decisions and financial troubles that he and his family went through starting in the year 2000.
Something he really emphasizes is that relatively minor issues can compound easily, and it can be really hard to notice the overall picture because you deal with it all sporadically:
It's a really great read overall (like everything he writes), and I'd definitely highly recommend it if anyone is interested in a good example of how a smart, fairly well-paid person can still end up in pretty deep financial trouble by making some mistakes, especially while other difficult things are happening in their life.
Here's the first post, there are big dark blue buttons at the top and bottom of each post to navigate through the parts.
Edit: as discussed in the replies to this, vivaria made a separate post in ~life for this series of articles here: https://tild.es/mdp
Up to you - I think it's a good elaboration on what you were talking about, so I'm putting it wherever your post is. If you want to change your post from a comment here to a new post in ~finance or something I can certainly move mine too.
Sure, that sounds good to me. It would probably be good to put something of a description in the title too so people know what they're getting into, like "The Twelve-Year Mistake: Shamus Young describes how ...".
I'm going to post this in its own topic shortly, but the intersection between the absolutist traps of capitalism and mental health seems salient here. You've been left such a narrow channel to exist in, it's just piling on cruelty to claim that this was something you (or others with massive student debt) chose.
All I can do is work for a politics that unpacks and builds with the parts of a more just society.
I wonder why it's so hard to get young voters to actually vote. They're turning up at rallies, but not at the voting booth. Anyone have any insight? Pretty much everyone I know at the very least claims to vote and always has.
Yes, apparently we are in a bubble. Going by what the people you know say is highly misleading.
On Tildes especially! I was surprised that apparently almost everyone here supports Sanders.
According to the various Tildes censuses, the users here skew young and largely tech-industry employed, tech-industry adjacent, or going to school for related fields. So the support for Yang and Sanders seen on the site is kinda par for the course, as far as that demographic goes IMO.
FWIW, I don't support him, but also don't feel like getting into an argument about it, so I largely ignore the politics threads that talk about him and don't speak up about it because it wouldn't get us anywhere. I have to deal with one particularly vocal and obsessed supporter at work, where he's put forth as the answer to every problem, and anytime the news points out anything he's done wrong, it's a bunch of rants about how the system is against him. Even if that were true, it so dominates the conversations at work that I simply don't want to deal with it anymore when I'm at home and trying to relax.
It kinda goes against the whole "techno-libertarian" painting of that demographic, though, doesn't it?
If you define leftism as some general move towards collective ownership/management over the means of production, UBI is a fairly rightist way to address the issue of automation. The leftist approach would mean giving "the people" control over the robots. The UBI approach is functionally paying people off to let robots' masters run the show.
UBI has a libertarian aspect to it. Each individual makes their own decisions about how to spend the money. Yang's supporters are pretty ideologically diverse since there are a lot of different ways of looking at it.
Inorite? Isn't UBI the ultimate incentive to build up your own business? You can only fail so hard if you can fall back on a UBI. Thus ultimate liberty. Modern developed countries are post-scarcity (as evidenced by the artificial demand through advertising) and it's time they act like it.
I would love to just live on a UBI and spend my days making open source software. What's that? Even more liberty because it's libre? Ohh, Ayn Rand would be ecstatic.
The people who get rich in the tech industry lean libertarian, but they are a tiny minority.
Techno-libertarianism gave us the tech giants so I highly doubt it.
Yang is what I imagine happens when techno-libertarians get haggard. And I don't mean any disrespect by saying that.
Still lots of libertarian sentiment in tech. But also a lot of left wing sentiment.
Precisely, it's because I'm in a bubble that I'm asking if anyone has any insight!
They haven't been truly impacted by their inaction yet.
Imagine you are in your late teens, early 20s. You are taking on student loans for each semester of college but you are financially illiterate and don't realize that your payments are going to be $1000+ a month for 20 years. Don't worry, you got plans to get a 6 figure job starting your own business. You get to be on your parents insurance until you are 26 so it doesn't matter. What are premiums exactly? You get on Twitter in this bubble of progressives talking about change and hell yeah, you want to be a part of it. Like a Netflix subscription, you chip in $5. Oh, you need to register to vote? By when? And then you have to go where? Meh, it's only 1 vote, it's not really that big of a deal if I skip this once. That's what the $5 is for.
Twitter doesn't show people dying from rationed insulin use. Instagram doesn't show the overdraft fees from the mom working 2-3 jobs to keep her household afloat. Life hasn't smacked these people across the face with it's full force yet.
But that's my 2 cents and can only base it off how I felt when I was 18 so many years ago.
I'm starting to wonder if me showing pictures of what I save on not having to pay for medication while on medicaid would influence anyone for M4A
edit 4: got rid of the link, you guys get the idea. I would have to be paying upwards of 6,000 dollars a month just to live with all my medicine combined.
edit 5: this has made me extraordinarily depressed because of how much I'm costing everyone and all the people that dont have coverage just die or go insanely in debt
I don't think they would understand.
The cynic in me says you have to do something like #TheScroungeUpEveryPennySoIDontFuckingDieChallenge to get young people to realize how awful it can be to live paycheck to paycheck.
Interesting. I just looked up what that would actually cost here in germany: https://www.medizinfuchs.de/preisvergleich/invega-9mg-retardtabletten-28-st-janssen-cilag-gmbh-pzn-4597905.html - 200€ for 28 paliperidon tablets, 9mg, as you requested.
And I don't think you'd even have to pay for it, any med that you can't get without a doctor's note is automatically covered by your health insurance and the rest is usually cheap. I've seen a 180€ bill pop up in the wild, but that was a relatively novel medication and also covered by the insurance upon asking.
Grain of salt from here on, but: Really, the more I think about it, the more I find the GKV part of the german system ingenious: AFAIK, the insurance companies determine together what's the minimum standard that needs to be covered (or it's mandated by law) and then they use their combined weight to lower prices. But beyond that, they offer additional services to compete for customers and thus drive providers to innovate.
That looks like it is for the brand name stuff? The price I'm getting is the generic
Good lord. I thought I had cred at 479.61 (yes, oddly specific CVS)
I would literally be dead without medicaid
Okay, this actually makes a lot more sense to me and really helps to drive home why we need to focus even harder on voting reform. Automatic registration, vote by mail, etc. Thanks!
Literally my first action once I'm the benevolent dictator of the USA (which will inevitably happen, mind you) is unfucking that voting clusterfuck. A representative system that makes parliament switch off first-past-the-post. Any office that needs a definitive winner (president e.g.) gets a ranked choice system. No voting machines unless they leave a human-verifiable paper trail (e.g. you can check at the machine that your vote was recorded correctly in print) Republicans are crying for voter ID laws? Great, Wilco. And free IDs and automatic registration come along right with it. So before the election you get a letter containing your notification that an election is on, how you can mail your vote and when to go where if you want to attend, as well as resources if you can't reasonably get there (rural areas maybe). Felons get to vote too. Overturn Citizens United via amendment.
Then I'll peace out for a few years and let you untangle yourselves. If after a few years Fox News is still a thing, I'm gonna have to think some media ethics laws up. How 'bout "no outright lies" for starters?
I'm reasonably confident that that'll set the USA on a course where it can self-correct and doesn't need any outside intervention. I'd even bet that fox news would crash horribly if the voting system wouldn't artificially unite the right; no media ethics laws needed. Reason being that once the dems diversify into several habitually coalitioning parties, more voters would flock to them. The republicans follow suit, but the loosely tied together group of single-issue voters has a much harder time keeping their voters together. I can't see them making a coalition deal that ties anti-abortionists and pro-gun folks together reliably. It's much easier to reach across the aisle and get sensible legislation on the issue they don't care about out of them.
Yeah, I'm starting to think maybe student loans should be illegal? Or more realistically, capped.
Although I can't tell if their teaching is any good (there are complaints, but there are always complaints), I like how Lambda School does the financing, where students only pay if they get a good job.
If all colleges had to think about whether their students will make money after graduating instead of getting paid no matter what, it would be pretty devastating, especially for the humanities. But in a way that's the point. I like studying that stuff, but nobody should be taking on so much debt, and teaching really shouldn't be so expensive. All you really need are books and a teacher.
Teaching isn't expensive - at most universities, it's farmed out to miserably paid adjunct professors and graduate students. Bloated administrative costs, staff/faculty healthcare, sports, and monumental prestige research facilities consume as much as 70% of tuition dollars, depending on the nature of the institution. Higher education for science, technology, engineering, and medical fields is more expensive to deliver than humanities teaching, both for qualified faculty salaries and facilities.
It's not as simple as "kids shouldn't take on debt". Public subsidies for higher education are being decreased to compensate for increases in public healthcare costs. Trade apprenticeships have declined corresponding to decreased unionization, and the U.S. has never been good at post-secondary education support for anything other than college.
The Lambda School's not doing well. Not because of its original financial model, but because it's both failing to deliver adequate quality education, and promoting the practical equivalent of indentured servitude.
I don't believe that anyone should have to become personally indebted in an amount exceeding the equivalent of one year's minimum wage in order to qualify for a job. It's not even about college. Pre-K through 12 education is where unequal opportunities begin and are reinforced in this country, and we're desperately in need of equitable investment for grade schools. I can't find good data on what proportion of available jobs truly require tertiary education, but it's certainly not so high as to require sending nearly half of U.S. students through four year colleges.
In the absence of reliable information for generating policy, I'll settle for at least some student debt relief as a short-term measure.
Teaching isn't expensive, but people don't generally go to college to get an education. They go to college for a diploma, and for the people who go to college for a diploma, the more prestigious a university is, the more valuable that diploma. Teaching isn't expensive, but prestige is the most expensive cost a university has. The giant marble stairs, the ivy covered arches, the massive football stadiums, and the huge research departments are what win universities prestige, and prestige is what wins them students.
If you just want an affordable quality education, go to community college. I spent two years there and learned from passionate, intelligent professors who had experience in the fields they were teaching. I then went to a big fancy university and got to sit in a room with 300 other people cupping my ears to hear guys who didn't want to be there mumble from a textbook. I didn't learn anything at that university, and if I hadn't joined the military to pay for it I would still be in debt because of it. To top it all off, those vultures have the balls to make an undergrad call me 5+ times a year asking for a donation.
My experience with community college was much the same. I attended the local SUNY school for three years and paid a total of $1400 per year, most of which I worked off at the college as work study (they did need IT people).
That was all I needed to start a decent career. Later on in another city I attended a university briefly (on the employer's dime) and that community college was, ten years earlier, much better than the university was in every way.
That same community college I attended? New dorms, the old science buildings are renovated and replaced with trade skill workshops for industry, auto repair, electrical, etc. Their newly opened tech park nearby is focusing on robotics and 3d manufacturing. They just renovated a burned out hospital downdown into even more new dorms (a block from the local night life no less), and flattened the old business campus there to build a brand new one. The old crammed up dusty library is now a student center dripping in tech and toys.
The university? Nothing has changed, they can barely keep the lights on.
Yeah, that's the article I was thinking of when I said there are complaints. I'm hesitant to draw conclusions based on one article, though.
I don't see how it's "indentured servitude" any more than a student loan is? The terms seem better.
On reviewing the Lambda School's ISA FAQ, you're essentially required to seek work on completing their program. You are not permitted to take another ISA-supported education program after completing theirs. In some ways, the ISA is better than a conventional student loan (higher salary target before mandatory payments, fixed cost with no interest). But it's not a panacea, and it wouldn't surprise me if someone takes them to court over the terms.
If student loans could be discharged in bankruptcy you can bet creditors would be forced to do this counseling themselves. Instead, the fact that it's the most stable possible loan for them, to the point where the federal government will garnish your wages on their behalf if you're behind on them, is what incentivizes them to hand them out like candy and jack up interest rates.
we have very different twitter feeds then
I'm not sure if the voter base is uninformed, or just apathetic.
My sister is getting a 70k a year undergrad in communications. It's not that she doesn't know how bad the loans are going to be, she literally doesn't care.
Compulsory voting would help
My opinion as to some reasons why they didn't show up:
Armchair activism - It's easy to say you support something without actually doing anything about it. The same sort of people that did nothing more than change their profile picture or tweet a hashtag to "support" a cause or charity. It's the second to the least you can do and far more people do that than actually do something of value. Generally speaking everyone is lazy. Young people aren't an exception to this.
Social attention - Rallies, marches, caucuses, etc. are things that can be tweeted, live streamed, or otherwise shared so others can reward those individuals with the attention they desire/need. Voting cannot. You go to the polls alone, to your voting booth alone, there are no others cheering you on, you cannot stream it, you do not get the pumped up feeling you do in a crowd of like minded supporters. There's no incentive or immediate gratification to voting.
Complacency - They thought their numbers were so overwhelming that on an individual level they didn't have to go and therefore collectively screwed the pooch.
Consequences - They aren't old enough to have actually experienced consequences of their actions/inaction on this sort of level. And while Trump is undoubtedly a dangerous idiot that had he been left unchecked likely would have done more than merely made a country look foolish, has been largely ineffective and done nothing, aside from placing conservatives in the Supreme Court, that is detrimental in the long run. It's almost as if there are things in place that keep the most public individual in office from acting like a dictator...
Big part of it is just structural barriers to discourage it. There is lots of ambiguity about where they're supposed to go. Younger voters are likely to not have fixed addresses or live in the same place year to year. Our voting system requires you to have a current ID and show up at a precinct based on where you live. If you don't get mail at your residence (like, most of your official mail goes to your parents' house) then you won't know. If you're a college student you might be out of state and not deal with the bureaucratic hurdles to vote absentee or get registered where you go to school.
On top of that, young people are less likely to have jobs where they can get time off to vote or get to a polling place.
And on top of that, voting is highly correlated with other kinds of civic participation, such as belonging to a church. Young people are least likely to be involved in groups like this because they haven't had time to develop the associations. This also depresses turnout.
Very good points about voter disenfranchisement!
I don't know the answer. I was pretty involved from a young age. As soon as I was old enough to vote, I did. I remember even before we were old enough to vote driving a girlfriend to the local party office to do volunteer work. So I'm probably outside the demographic that could explain it.
But thinking back, I also remember having very different ideas about the world and being baffled by things older adults said or did. For example, I remember it constantly being hammered home that "community is important." When I looked around, nobody actually acted like it was, but they said it a lot. I also felt that my community was pretty fucking awful to me, so why would I want to support them?
Now that I'm older and I see both the benefits of building a community and the pitfalls of not caring more clearly. (Which isn't to say that younger me was wrong. The community I grew up in were a bunch of shit lords and I'm glad I left.)
I think it's similar with voting. There are 300+ million people in the US, how can one vote make a difference? And it's easy to be cynical about promises that candidates make on the campaign trail. Even if a given candidate does put forth something they promised, it still has to survive debate and bad faith attacks, and all that other nonsense. Look how long it took just to get the ACA, and then after it passed, Congress tried something like 45 times to repeal it. And it was largely based on Republican ideas and passed by Democrats! If the people in charge are so hell-bent to destroy stuff they created and passed, how can we ever get anything new through? How can one candidate ever hope to fix even a small part of the system?
So maybe younger people just feel the system is so broken they can't fix it, so why even bother? I could hardly blame them for feeling that way.
This one in particular is something I've never been able to understand - either you do nothing and the system will absolutely continue on and never be changed, or you do something and there's a tiny chance you might contribute to change.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather do something than nothing.
People don't have infinite stamina for having their hopes crushed in front of them, and if you're not part of a team, you won't be hurt anymore.
Young voters become older voters; they don't stay young forever. Therefore every election different young voters must be encouraged to vote, whereas older voters already know to.
Non open primary elections. People don't want to join or be affiliated with a political party.
Frankly I think it's more frustrating that we can't figure out a way to deal with this apathy. If it's too much a bother to register to vote, why not automatically register them to vote by mail?
I mean when your immediate priority is being able to pay the bills this week so you have hot water, electricity, and food on the table, it's hard if not impossible to take a day off work to go vote.
Understatement of the year.
Just a few months ago we assassinated a major military leader of another country under the guise of diplomacy. It's just the latest in a long line of terrible behavior.
Here's some more fun links:
They're a good bit related though.
The culture we live in fosters conspiratorial thinking due to the horrors we see and hear about that are confirmed facts. Operation Northwoods certainly lays out a foundation for the 9/11 inside job conspiracy, especially with how quickly our leaders were able to capitalize on it.
Is it really that much of a stretch to see that a candidate who espouses consistently that we need to stop commiting atrocities and make lives better for the majority instead of the wealthy might have an uphill battle against the established power structures?
It might not be the DNC, but their readiness to accept Bloomberg into the process does raise some serious questions about the real motives behind the party. Not to mention the carefully crafted media narratives that have been pushing Biden hard since before he announced a candidacy.
I think "young voters who didn't vote are Bernie Sanders supporters" is a bit of a false equivalency. More likely, all the young people that were fired up about Bernie Sanders did vote but they happen to be outnumbered by the amount of young people that generally don't give a shit about politics and don't vote.
My hypothesis, anyway.
I wonder how much of this is actually voter suppression efforts by the GOP, paying unexpected dividends. Look at some of the states Biden won (e: in spite of the polls), like NC and TX. Republicans there have been focused on making it harder and harder for young people and minorities to vote since at least 2010.
I read somewhere that the GOP strategy this time around is long wait times to actually vote. I mean, if you had shit to do and work and stuff and couldn't take off work would you stand in a 4 hour line for something the DNC already decided on before biden announced?
For the record I voted
This voter suppression theory seems inconsistent with Biden's support being highest with blacks? If blacks had voted more, Biden would gain from it.
It might work for the youth vote though.
Colleges are always a heavy target for GOP voter suppression, but that is a good point. I just always wonder what's going on when the polls and the results are so different.
Highest with conservative, Southern, older, black people. Biden's support with young black voters is not better than Sanders. Here's one source:
Here is one quick recounting of seven hour lines at an HBCU in Houston: https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/massive-voter-suppression-in-texas-primary-likened-to-poll-tax/
I wonder who black college students voted for after waiting so long?
All I know is that Bernie far and away wins with younger people of all demographics.
It really makes you think doesn't it. It's almost as if those getting hit the hardest really want change for the better, and trust the oldest white man running who has a decent track record.
It's almost as if issues and integrity matter more to the 'royally fucked generations' than not being an old white man.
I don't understand what you're trying to get across?
I'm an older millennial. My generation has about 3% of the national wealth. When the oldest boomers were my age, their generation had 20%.
It's not looking much better for anyone younger than me, and I fully acknowledge that I got lucky and only have a fraction of debt relative to my peers. The continually degrading protections for workers mean decent jobs are going to be harder to come by.
The last 3 presidential elections have been won by people espousing substantial change. While Trump's was an egregious lie, the point is that the wider populous is yearning for authentic change. Obama had a mandate from the people in his first two years. He could have pushed for substantial good change in the same way Trump has pushed bad change. Dismantling the war on drugs alone is a simple executive order. His failure to inspire lost him congress and things started degrading from there.
Older people have far more wealth on average and are terrified of the socialist boogie man taking it away. That's why Sander does well amoung younger voters, despite being the oldest white man.
I'm just still shocked about Biden's lead. Nobody seemed to have much insight on why he did so well other than the Clyburn endorsement factoring into 49% of black voter's decision to go to him over Bernie.
I'm trying my best to keep my tinfoil hat off, but it's times like this that I probably feel the most like a paranoid Trump supporter did where I'm just looking for someone to blame other than admit I've been in a bubble this whole time-- which I have been, and that bubble is me checking /r/politics every morning. I need to just stick with my Crooked Media podcasts, they've been pretty good about being impartial and realistic.
I don't know how to reach younger voters, but I myself write letters for Vote Forward, which just tries to get unregistered voters to register.
Thank you for sharing--I felt that in my bones. Like the author, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills sometimes. We don't have the time to elect someone without a sense of urgency, or (god forbid) sit through another four years of Trump. I'll hold my nose and vote for Biden if he gets the nod, but the only situation in which we aren't fucked in the long term is if Sanders wins convincingly in November.
Longish quote, emphasis mine
had to unsub. my homepage was literally just a bernie circle jerk on the few states he did win and nothing on biden or anyone else. I know its been like that for a while and I like bernie but the echo chamber was real.
I try to mostly get my political news from these sites because they seem to be fairly neutral:
I've been trying to figure that out too. I knew /r/politics was biased but I guess I didn't think about just how much it was.
Eh, NYT and WaPo have done some great reporting, but with regards to politics, they have their own share of biases no more egregious than Crooked Media's.
Some of the takes I've read today make me feel like my emotions are stable and well-adjusted, which is not something I feel often. I'm disappointed that Biden made a huge comeback and is probably going to win, and was kinda stressed about it last night, but I'm still gonna vote for him if he wins the nomination.
I've seen a lot of people talking about this on Reddit as well and I've been trying to figure out how this could impact the race going forward.
My thought (and hope) is that most of the active young Bernie supporters who did show up and vote yesterday are also people who 100% agree with the Vote Blue No Matter Who movement, and so if Biden ends up winning the nomination, they would still show up in November to vote for him.
The concern of course is that all the young voters who couldn't bother to vote yesterday, but still support Sanders, will instead see Biden winning the nomination (if it happens) as just confirmation that their vote wouldn't have mattered because the system is clearly rigged against them, and so will now not show up to vote in November (but may have had Sanders won the nomination.)
Of course the problem is that many young people have a hard time realizing that most of what they read online in places like Tildes and Reddit is a bit of an echo chamber and so while it may seem like Sanders has been the overwhelming favorite since day 1, Biden has been polling consistently #1 or top 3ish since he entered the race, and while there definitely seems to have been some surprise at how well he did yesterday, it wasn't quite the coup that young voters thing it was.
Not sure what the best solution is other than to make sure you get all of your friends, family, and neighbors to vote in November! (and vote in the primary if your state's hasn't happened yet.)
I'm not voting for Joe Biden.
If Joe Biden is the nominee and you're not going to vote for him, then you're not allowed to say a single word against Trump if he's re-elected.
If you believe both candidates are bad, not voting is the only moral action and you are absolutely allowed to complain about whoever wins. Not voting out of principle is a position every bit as valid as voting.
Only if they're equally bad, and in this case they're not. Besides, there's no incentive for anyone running for office to advocate for you if you don't vote.
What if OP is of Palestinian heritage and, as in this case, it's a choice between 2 self proclaimed Zionists? There are a hundred issues like this that can make a person decide not to vote. You don't get to decide for them which is less bad.
If you voting for a colour regardless of issues then they already have your vote and so there is no incentive to appeal to you.
Ok, if they both suck equally on the Israel front, they don't suck equally on climate change, civil rights, education, and general corruption, and the Supreme Court justices they would pick are vastly different. Ginsburg is 86 years old and if she or Breyer die in the next four years, Trump will replace them with guys like Brett "I like beer" Kavanaugh and Neil "that truck driver should have frozen to death" Gorsuch. Biden won't.
As much as it pains me to say it, if Biden gets the nod, you should. Even if your one vote is small, it's not any smaller than anyone else's vote in your state. Please don't use that vote to give a pass to four more years of our insane orange god-emperor. Biden and the DNC fucking suck but they are not worse than Trump. Ordinarily waiting for a better candidate would be a viable play, but I think a Trump not beholden to the need for re-election would involve truly terrible things.
I voted third-party in 2016 because I couldn't stomach Clinton, and I've spent the last three years and some change regretting it.
My take on it is pretty simple. Trump is a giant hate-fueled distraction and his presence is continuing to polarize and intensify the divide that has existed in America since the civil war. He's breathing new life into an old feud and he's also getting away with blatant lying, misinformation, and god only knows what else. He's an international embarrassment that's already cost us the best parts of our working relationships with our allies.
If he wins re-election, America is signing off on this as the new business as usual. He'll cement this style of politics into canon at least for a time, and the country is going to pay dearly for that long-term as things continue to get worse.
I don't like Biden. I don't hate him either. I just want Trump gone so his daily dose of bullshit isn't clouding up the conversation.
History doesn't exactly repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
That seems too broad? The president is apparently untouchable (other than by the Senate or the voters, if they choose) but the adminstration can and often does lose in court.
What are some examples of actions that are irreversible?
Although it's not in the Constitution, there seem to be some precedents for this dating from the Nixon era. The Supreme Court ruled that the president is immune from civil lawsuits for official actions, and the Justice Department has a police dating from then that the president cannot be indicted. Meuller went by that policy.
I'm not sure the authors of the Constitution were thinking about in any differently, though? It seems like impeachment and elections, along with Congress's ability to withhold funding, were considered to be plenty of restraint?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_v._Fitzgerald
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-indictment-explainer/can-a-sitting-us-president-face-criminal-charges-idUSKCN1QF1D3
Just to add some more weight to your sentiment, here's the little hard data I've seen on how the yang gang broke up. I posted this late in an old thread last month when he dropped out, but I think it bears repeating.
PSP (which is a libertarian/progressive channel that got their start covering Yang) did an internal poll of their followers asking who they would vote for now that Yang was out. They published it on their live stream (link to start of poll report).
6,800 voted, and this is how it came out. This was all Yang gang voting, it wasn't a public poll, it wasn't up in a publicly accessible space where it could be brigaded. Only the folks who had chipped in for PSP with donations had access.
I'd be surprised if the same poll conducted in other Yang strongholds would turn up results that differed significantly. This tells me that the people who crossed the isle for Yang's pragmatism won't be voting democrat, and that the remaining democrats by a large majority do not share this sentiment of simply supporting whoever the frontrunner is.
That said, this is an internet poll, conducted right after Yang dropped when people were still salty, so take it for what it is.
Remind me again how Trump got his first supreme court pick...I seem to have forgotten.
It certainly wasn't because the Republicans were able to stonewall a Democrat's nomination for almost a full year. And that same party certainly didn't make it easier for them to stonewall future Democratic nominees.
I'll vote for Biden. But I'm sure as shit going to form an exit strategy the day he gets the primary nomination.
You'll think about leaving the country?
Not just think, have a solid plan.
I've got a kid. If push comes to shove I'd rather raise them somewhere where human life has a bit more value.
That's admirable.