You beauty! I missed the update.

This bias has been known and commented upon in UK political forums for over a decade. This, for instance, is parr for the course.

The show also constantly used rightwing hacks from client media or thinktank spokespeople when filling the non-politician spot. It got to the point that if felt that Kate Andrews had been burnt onto my monitor.

Hey hey hey!

Don’t be dragging granola into this fuckwit-ocracy. It’s a perfectly reasonable low effort breakfast for those of us that are unable to cook for ourselves because we can’t find our arses with both hands for the first hour of semi-consciousness in the morning.

Definitely. But it does depend on the severity of the trauma. A very strong trauma will be constantly trying to retake control of your bandwidthh.

This is my go to type of therapy. It’s about re-centering your focus so that your mind stops looping back to the trauma./ Where it becomes problematic is then weaning yourself off the game to healthier pursuits.

A big part of political inertia is building and maintaining pressure on your opponents. Labour are currently trying to strip the Tories of their base by politically marching rightwards. The Tories on the otherhand are continuing their age old policy of stripping Labour of their working class base by duping the poor to voting against their own interests and collective responsibilities by inflaming their base instincts through the medium of tabloid-esque campaigns.

The London population firmly leans to the left so Labor only have to field a competent scandal-free (though of course scandals can always be manufactured) candidate for a shoe-in. Even with Khan’s milquetoast record the Tories had very little hope of replacing him.

So the political calculus was find a fall-guy (not one of their big guns) to take the L but bombastically push the type of toxic shite that the base of politically illiterate narcissists they have cultivated need to stay angry. Even though much of the issues were local to London the amount of extra airtime the London Mayoral race gets makes it a useful vehicle for more realistic target constituencies outside of the M25.

Take the ULEZ or LTN. Both are sensible approaches to reducing air pollution and improving quality of life in London. And most Londoners agree because they have to breath the air that’s available. However outside of London this issue becomes more about car owner’s rights as narcissists care less about how their journey into and around London effects the people that live there than their own convenience. So the Tories have set their stall up against these modest policies. They have been supporting and catalysing the tiny fanatical groups you occasionally see out protesting against them in London. These small groups make a lot of ‘noise’ in the news and online for little or no cost. That creates pressure on that part of social-norms that limit the perceived degree of acceptable selfishness and that’s a win for the Tories.

Not for me, but…

I arrived during the trailers, into a packed arthouse cinema, to see Happiness. Way before the credits 90% of the audience had walked.

Subjectivity?

And I appreciate your civil attempts at clarifying your stance too. To the degree that I think we’re both talking past each other.

On my part, even as an outsider to US politics, I have been getting more and more frustrated with a lot of the bullying rhetoric I see on this platform directed towards potential voters that are very concerned about the US’s current complicity in the ongoing genocide. I see them getting talked down to with utter contempt. Being berated by people who insouciantly weigh a potential loss of comforts at home against the real and current killing of tens of thousands of innocent civilians and the forced famine of hundreds of thousands.

Now is the only time that they can apply pressure on Biden. Now that he actually needs something from them. But (like MLK’s white moderates) people here are telling them that “now is not the time” and a whole spectrum of worse accusations too. But if the civil rights movement hadn’t agitated and pressed for change decades would have passed before the moderates would have opened their eyes and acted beyond the pale.

Personally, I agree ostensibly with your calculus (though not with your particular framing of it but it is still a very, very tight call) but if I was a US voter I would be vocally holding my vote hostage until the last moment to make sure that my discontent was given the greatest chance of not being ignored.

More importantly (and central to this whole discussion) i still believe that people have a right to respectful discourse if they can’t morally make it over the sizable hurdles.

Which brings me round back to you. You’ve been very patient and civil throughout this discourse even though we have different perspectives. So my ‘beef’ ain’t wit you my friend. Though I do wonder what is your line in the ground that if both of the two main candidates were guilty of something that you’d drop the lesser of two evils calculus and vote for a third party. For me both are terrible choices but the potential for long term democratic, human rights, and environmental protection regression under Trump cannot be underestimated

I was on holiday in Munich for that eclipse. It was badly overcast there too. When the full eclipse hit in it got really dark so everybody was screaming and yelling at the sky in the park we were in so at least it was a bit of an event.

It is ‘rational’ attitudes such as this that MLK bemoaned in his Birmingham jail letters. Order above justice. An order in which the boot is not on your neck. So you minimize its dehumanizing brutality in relation to the maintenance of the day-to-day comforts you enjoy.

Hypothetically: if Biden was sending weapons and financial support to Russia in support of their war efforts but mildly denouncing Putin when pressed; and Trump was pledging full throated support of Putin and offering to nuke Kyiv; would you still feel so enthusiastic about voting for Biden or for your moral calculus? Might you lament the electoral system that has put this decision before you. Might you protest this mockery of democratic choice. Even if you internally still cede to moral calculus, might you continue to make your displeasure known and apply whatever pressure was within your purview as a voter to make. Might you be offended by people demanding you not only vote for Biden regardless your rightful concerns about Putin and the sovereignity of Ukrainians but also try to insinuate that you are part of some foreign operation to undermine the election for voicing your concerns?

Voting for big genocide or voting for small genocide is irreconcilably voting for genocide for some people. It’s a morally cognizant choice for some to not want to put the endorsement of their vote on either.

Let me crystal clear. I do not think that your position or attitude are moderate either. Haranguing people to vote against their conscience is a bad look. Big genocide, small genocide, both are genocide. If that overloads some people’s ‘election calculus’ it’s a reasonable and engaged reaction. If anything talking down to them is more likely to turn them off voting at all.

Some of these are clearly wedge-driving divisive (sic) trolls posing as moderates. Especially those hectoring voters that vote with their conscience now that attitudes toward a current genocide is making it impossible to vote for either of the frontrunners.

Potty mouth.

It looks like the intent is to deter any of the neighbouring countries from interfering with Isreal’s ongoing genocide.

When I was poor and complained about inequality they said I was bitter; now that I’m rich and I complain about inequality they say I’m a hypocrite. I’m beginning to think they just don’t want to talk about inequality.

To be fair we’ve had various shades of unfettered neoliberalism for near on 50 years; so it’s a policy without an awful lot of competition.

Would that it were.