It’s been anticipated throughout the campaign, but kind of got overshadowed by all the other horrible stuff about Trump. RFK Jr. is the biggest anti-vaxxer in the world. Trump ran with him openly to get his cult on his side. This is the obvious result.

Clearly we can solve homelessness by simply terraforming Mars and moving all the homeless there, right?

Also a good reason why driving a giant vehicle like a GMC Sierra that smashes anything it touches shouldn’t be free. A higher vehicle tax on something like that would be appropriate, instead they get higher tax write-offs and lower emissions and safety standards.

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Whatever oil wants, oil gets.

There’s a plethora of contradictions. Americans hate for-profit healthcare, inequality, and CEOs, but love to vote Republican and worship Elon Musk. The sad reality is the people did this to themselves and will keep doing it to themselves.

And if there was a disagreement about whose property was who’s? With no laws to settle it, it would just be determined by who grabs said property and runs off with it first. That’s indistinguishable from a free-for-all.

Home grown food from urban gardens. Your soil is probably completely untested, and the idea of “maybe I shouldn’t just pour chemical waste out of the window” is barely 4 decades old.

And let’s not forget that any soil near a road had a ton of lead released nearby throughout much of the last century, and that just stays there. As well as lead paint chips from buildings.

“Doesn’t the 14th Amendment pose a problem for that plan?”
“Not a problem, no one handles amendments like me. 14 amendments is nothing, when I…when I do the Christ stuff before food I do 15, 30, 100 amendments. And people say ‘Wow, you are so good with the amendments, no one does the amendments like you.’ So I got that all taken care of.”

If the law said my car is no longer my property, then driving away with it would cease to be stealing, correct. What is property without legal, government-backed title? There’s no way to formulate a definition, because without government and laws property has no meaning.

All property is a social construct and is defined by law. So if the law says debt is no longer valid, then the loan agreements cease to be property and there is no stealing it.

Killing a CEO is still doing nothing about the deaths caused by the insurance industry. How would it save lives of people harmed by privatized healthcare? If anything, it makes that anti-private-healthcare crowd look like a bunch of murderous zealots and will drive away any sympathy, making the problem worse. See: effect on indian raids on views of Native American rights, effect of Hamas attacks on views regarding Palestine, etc.

This is more like you let the train go and kill 5 people, or you pull the lever and kill one person, but that track loops back around onto the same track and kills the 5 people anyway, and then keeps going and kills 5 more people just tied on the part of the track the train already passed.

Let’s be real, many would pull the lever anyway because they just want to feel like they did something about it.

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Well the causal relation there is speculation. The thing that seems odd to me is the shooter seemingly went to great lengths to avoid sending a message - hiding their identity, issuing no public statement, etc. If this was over a denied claim that they threatened over, why bother hiding their identity? It would be trivial to figure it out based on the claim.

Then you have the fact that the shooter apparently used a silencer too and cleared a jam quickly. Seems like rather than a disgruntled nobody sending a message, this seems more like someone trying to make him go away as efficiently and quietly as possible.

So alternate theory: The victim had a lawsuit filed against him by the DOJ related to an anti-trust investigation and insider trading. What if he decided to make a deal with the DOJ, and somebody else found out and didn’t like it?

3 explanations, in order from what I believe most likely to least:

1. It could be selection bias. All communist nations originated from dictatorships, and as democracy isn’t a key part of communism, any democratic ideas get kicked to the side. It may require a dictatorship in the first place for a communist revolution to occur, as democracy may lead to people feeling content enough with the system that they may not feel it needs fundamental change.

2. The inevitable need for concentration of power in the hands of a few. Assume that the powerful will always try to concentrate power in their own hands one way or another. Capitalist societies use wealth (a.k.a. purchasing power) to replace the concentration of political power that a dictator would enjoy. As communist societies lack such a mechanism, the powers-that-be can only use political power to force their own superiority.

3. The centralization of economics leads to concentration of economic power that can be used effectively to buy loyalty from would-be challengers to a dictator’s power.

As someone with an NPD “friend” - I have to look beyond the insults and threats and see the insecurities and vulnerabilities behind them. Most people just can’t or don’t want to do that and will be insulted if not scared away by the things my friend says to them. There’s also a stigma associated with being friends with someone who is abusive - I keep the friendship secret from all but my closest friends, who have a hard time understanding it themselves.

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This breaks from tradition

What a great way to minimize what’s going on here

I’d be curious about what makes him different from the others. There’s been some research regarding fluid intelligence* vs. crystalized intelligence, where liberals tend to be more on the fluid side. It kind of makes sense because rather than trying to figure out what they can’t understand off the bat, conservatives tend to rage against it.

As far as gifts, I dunno. Maybe a puzzle game? I don’t know what’s big in the puzzle game world now, if anything. The idea is make your son more comfortable with the idea of tackling novel problems instead of trying to cram them into an existing framework.

*it’s called “intelligence” but I tend to think of it more like a thinking strategy. Fluid intelligence being “can I think of a way to solve this?” while crystallized intelligence is “what strategy that I’m familiar with already can solve this?”

This is the difference. Both the right and the left have their cranks, but the ones on the left never get mainstream acceptance. While on the right, they make the crank president.