The primary is 7 months away. Nobody can vote yet and neither of us know exactly what will happen between now and then.
Regardless, I see the person pushing populist policies as the lesser evil. Janet Mills could win the race if she leaned into populist policies, but she won’t.
Janet Mills is the most unpopular Democratic governor in the US and is extremely pro-corporate. I don’t see her winning against Susan Collins.
If I’m voting for the next president, I believe that they should be representing all Americans instead of primarily representing corporations and big donors.
Ideally, they should have clear principles, charisma, an ability to lead, a vision for the future, and have the ability to recognize that not everybody is as privileged as they are.
I don’t feel that a person who fails to meet any of the aforementioned criteria is suited for the highest office in the country. Maybe that’s just me.
This is center as defined by those that shape the narrative - not specifically by Americans in any representative or descriptive sense.
Kamala, with all due respect, please get mental health treatment for your apparent psychopathy.
It would be wise to make openly manipulating social media systematically (with or without AI) illegal, immediately.
Social media is for real people to freely engage and share their viewpoints, not for bot farms and other forms of organized astroturfing to shape opinion by appearing as independently-affiliated real people.
Discourse is an incredibly valuable tool for humanity, and we can’t let this be taken away from us - especially by those making a killing off of it or those paying for the privilege.
name one bad thing about it.
Okay, the wages and working conditions of plantation workers (modern slaves). The cost of bananas in first-world countries is ridiculously low, and is demeaning to those who work hard to enable this privilege for us.
Truth is all just relative now, shifting like sand in the desert.
The truth is truth. It’s not relative, it’s not subjective, it’s not ideological, and it’s not partisan - it just is.
This is like accidentally outing your fetishes/porn habits when you’re typing in the address bar with somebody next to you and blaming viruses or somebody else using your computer.
Mr. Miller: It’s okay to get off on Trump’s plenary authority, but please try to keep it to yourself instead of forcing it upon society.
There was a pretty solid illusion or at least a silver lining we could point to, but I digress.
Of course it wasn’t a glitch. CNN is no longer trustworthy, not even a little bit.
https://slrpnk.net/comment/18417992
See my comment above. Status Coup News calls them corporate sacrifice zones.
What will come of it
Usually the rich get richer and the people get sicker, while experts and environmental organizations downplay the crisis and gaslight everyone.
People aren’t that stupid. Americans are chronically underinformed and misinformed - we can inform them properly.
https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/map/
…and so forth. I’m sure the vast majority of people have no idea the reality, even the most informed of us. I’m learning new details regularly - despite the media’s, the EPA’s, and various expert’s effective silence on this subject.
The current state of affairs is completely unsustainable - and the kicker is that we only regulate and test for around 100~ chemicals out of many thousands.
Status Coup News regularly puts out on-the-ground, original journalism on the pollution crisis in America - while the rest of the media effectively covers it up.
Roseland, Louisiana is the latest corporate sacrifice zone that you likely haven’t heard of. <- it’s more outrageous than you’d imagine.
Polluting our freshwater is the most anti-human and anti-Earth thing one can do. I think most people would agree.
There are absolutely vote manipulation campaigns still happening.
See this from 12 days ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1nldj4m/why_are_we_all_just_accepting_metas_new_spy/?sort=old
12 days ago almost every top-level comment was below -50 and responses were untouched.
Mocking individuals that you disagree with by reducing all of their arguments down to “both sides same” and setting up a straw man that you easily defeat is not helping anyone.
Turns out they have investigated water, and it’s fucking toxic here in the states. 100 or so chemicals are regulated and tested for out of many thousands.
Based on the data of the chemicals that we regulate and test for, the reality points to our water as being a potential environmental cause to seriously look into.
https://www.ewg.org/interactive-maps/pfas_contamination/map/
The fruits of the industrial revolution are driving chronic disease in a general sense, at the very least.
Yes, I do think it’s important to address the echo-chambers and the centers of propaganda, no matter which side of the coin you’re looking at.
To the side that you’re referencing: Fox News (et. al), conservative think-tanks, and the many conservative influencers spread these perspectives and viewpoints. Responsible individuals and organizations convince everyone that it is a matter of survival that they don’t contribute to their societies.
These groups and influencers convince people that others shouldn’t have it easy because it invalidates their struggle. They also convince them that the government is out of control, that it is interested in taking their wealth and their rights, and that it largely doesn’t serve their needs — that they are getting a raw deal.
So these individuals want a small government. They don’t really care what happens to society at large because they are just focused on themselves, potentially their families, or at best a portion of their local communities or churches. They are in the weeds of survival mode and tribalism — they are warding off invaders and perceived threats and stopping others’ ability to take what they earned, including their status and power in society.
The answer is finding the real cost of our system, of ineffective governance, and of not making any forward movement as a global society. What are the real costs of this apathy and inaction? It can’t be something that you simply argue with science — with the costs of runaway industrialization, because they have been propagandized to think our emissions/etc. have no effect on the world at large. They are thinking small, and again, in a state of survival.
Conservatives, under the rule of this current administration, are going to be faced with some harsh realities and truth as this stagnation (and at worse, this regression) continues. They are going to quickly find out the source and human cost of our goods, be it domestic produce or various other items sourced from exploited countries.
It’s relevant to point out that an estimated 40% of US agricultural workers (arguably more) are undocumented immigrants. This administration is deporting workers that we depend on to work our fields, harvest our food, and likely produce the products that go on our shelves. They are doing so at a breakneck pace. When these conservatives are forced to work the fields to survive or forced to go into the factories, they will quickly understand how much blood, sweat, and tears go into their consumerism.
As for Doordash, it is a symptom of our apathy, the disconnection with our communities, and the result of local business being crushed. Just like Doordash being not so great, you can’t go to the grocery store and not support modern slavery. You need to consume food to live. The food on our shelves is devoid of nutrition, it is loaded to the brim with chemicals and contaminants (like PFAs, from the use of biosolids to fertilize our crops), and it is vastly under-regulated and making us ill. Our soil practices are also unsustainable and they will only remain viable for approximately 60 more harvests.
If RFK and some of his proposals (particularly regarding food) resonate with these voters, there is hope yet, especially if these individuals get a wake-up call in the form of a food crisis, facing the consequences of alienating our trade partners, and our store shelves going empty.
They already resonate with the government being broken, and we don’t need to give up anything as a society to thrive and live sustainably. We can accomplish all modern convenience and privilege with our technology and ingenuity without raping the environment.
These individuals are propagandized against green energy and regulation (industrial or otherwise). If we can convince them that everybody can thrive without breaking a sweat, and show them the costs of deregulation of our environments (e.g. their communities and their water tables) and the costs of deregulation on our health (their health and the health of their children), they will probably come around quick.
https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a63152930/proton-batteries/
If that technology is finished, we won’t even need rare elements to store energy. It is a story that many slept on. Solar panels are very cheap comparatively to make.
The culture is already there. We have a great base called the constitution and its bill of rights — we largely already support concepts like democracy and human rights.
Humans and our units tend to be weak and vulnerable, we are easily manipulated, and we are easily corruptible. Capital has an greater influence on individuals (and especially our leaders and institutions) than forward momentum and the act of working towards solutions — making life better on this planet for everyone. Capital should not be a factor operating at a level above our ability to govern and direct our societies.
Humanity has to start to learn how to thrive and simultaneously learn to live in balance with the planet. Consumerism is certainly out of control, but it’s reductive and unfair to single out any single person, group, or entity. Humanity is largely kept in survival mode (and also in fear, hate, and division), scarcity is artificial with our current level of technology and organization, and the truth of our consumerism (and its roots) is veiled to us.
Nobody besides the oppressed truly knows the extent of modern slavery, of modern child slavery, and of third-world exploitation.
In my eyes, the solution is direct democracy and socialism. Building up our communities and making our society at large (and especially our cities) self-sustainable.
I personally think that an international human bill of rights would be a wonderful goal to have to kick off a golden age for humanity.
The power of capital exists in the form it does because government doesn’t exist. It’s a big lie. We are in the age of modern feudalism, ruled by corporations, oligarchs, and others that concentrate wealth, power, and influence.
I wouldn’t trust the government to reliably redistribute the money or to reliably tax the very rich.
We have a system that rewards greed, parasitism, and exploitation with wild success. Until that is solved, redistributing wealth will be unsuccessful — a temporary fix, at best.
People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them
I’ll just save time for my future self: He died complicit, supporting and enabling the system that creates inequality and blocks progress, and he directly stagnated technology by engaging in monopolistic practices.
Bill Gates quite obviously pays a lot for PR, and giving away wealth to those in need is obviously positive, but if he used his influence to call out Microsoft for using their technology/AI and infrastructure in war, called out the imperialism and destabilizing influence of the US empire, and so on; maybe I would have a more charitable forecast for his legacy.
I would be more than happy to be wrong and I hope I am.
Okay, now split into at least 4 different companies and compete with each other - if we want the illusion of a free market and competition to exist in the minds of those living under capitalism.