It’s good to see the papyrus guy bounced back and became Secretary of State

I don’t mind that ICE is detaining legal immigrants and citizens in violent raids. It’s the people overstaying their visas and jumping the border that I’m more concerned about.

Both things can be true, this is not a zero sum between open borders and masked ICE agents abducting people.

I sincerely wish all the white collar crime and shit would get more press, especially since wage theft surpasses property crime every year. I won’t stop caring about property crime because there are bigger fish out there.

I heartily disagree with how ICE is currently operating and how legal status is being removed from people to get more “low hanging fruit” to inflate numbers. Obama managed to deport millions of illegal immigrants without the theatrics, or destruction of reputation for the department so we know it can be done.

This doesn’t mean that I cannot or should not also be concerned about illegal immigration or that I should support jumping the border or overstaying visas.

Ah yes, if one side is violating the rule of law then we can just throw laws out the window and do whatever we want. Always bring yourself down to their level, that’s how you win.

“But the alcoholic neighbor’s kids down the street are allowed to smoke and skip middle school, so why can’t I mom?”.

Who cares how they get here? They came seeking a better life. I would rather have more people like that, than elitist pigs who feel entitled to America, and we should all get their permission to live our lives.

No one is entitled to go anywhere they want whenever they want, anywhere on earth. Why would or should the United States be any different? The only people entitled to any country are the citizens of that country.

The reason someone would care about this is because society is maintained by rule of law.

Another reason is that we do not live in a post scarcity utopia, and resources are not unlimited.

I know it’s not the same, but do you support China sending immigrants to Tibet and annexing the country? How about the rest of their neighbors and the South China Sea? What about Russia doing the same in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea?

If national autonomy is something to be respected then border laws and immigration laws have to be as well. If you only agree with those things only for non-wealthy countries like the US and EU members, which I suspect might be the case, I would call that biased and hypocritical.

It’s time for Voodoo to make a triumphant return!

Are you talking about the Donald Trump who is definitely on the Epstein list, because the only reason to disappear evidence against your opponents is because you are also on there? I am also experiencing that particular deja vu.

I know several boomers who still believe Trump knew/knows nothing about Project 2025 and the amount of stuff getting completed on the Project 2025 is just purely coincidental. They cannot handle having been unable to tell Trump was lying about that, so cognitive dissonance it is

It doesn’t come across as you appreciating value in artistic expression and other intangibles when you say “suck it up and get a real job”. That may not have been your intention, but it can definitely be read that way. I think that is the “boomer” people have commented on.

I don’t think there are really that many people who think social media creators or better than farmers or essential services personnel, and those that do are completely out of touch, but there are plenty of people who see alternative media creators as less than any other job. I personally think A-list actors, celebrities and sports professionals are no better than grocery store worker or warehouse person, but I won’t deny they work just as hard in different ways.

By that metric do authors or poets or actors create a physical product? Do computer programers? Since the death of physical media, books and art are now far more frequently digital than paper or canvas. Applications and software is 100% digital. Newspapers are dead, so journalists don’t create a physical product. Is your argument that only physical labor producing physical things is “real” work?

Maybe guns are bad, and maybe if you bring a rifle to a high tense situation and hold it in any manner that may seem threatening, you deserve to get shot.>

Maybe guns are tools, and maybe if the majority of protesters were visibly armed then the police would not escalate tense situations to high intensity riot conditions and beat the protesters. Had the state had to hesitate to use violence on peaceful protesters, at least there would be a bunch less abuse of the media and civilians.

The Black Panthers proved this, which is why Reagan started gun control. Modern open carry armed protests have also proven it’s still true. Cops are cowards, Uvalde proved that, even with superior equipment they will find a reason not to start. Getting the left to disarm and put their protection into the hands of the very governmental authority they continually protest against has got to be the biggest con job in history

The question they replied to was where the pro 2A people were. The point of 2A is that the armed populace meets or exceeds the armed tyrants. One person with a gun can’t stop hundreds of cops with battle gear, that’s the point of everyone having a right to be armed.

I would hazard a guess that in this context their answer is probably yes, they expect to need to protest with other pro gun (armed) protesters if they were going to be armed.

Ask the Black Panthers how well only one or two people being armed in a protest worked against the cops, compared to everyone being armed. There is a reason Reagan started gun control, and it wasn’t because his supporters were the ones that were armed.

I totally misread ‘good viable’ as good vibes, and immediately agreed despite having no substantive idea what that would be. Fleet of Magic School buses driven by assorted Ms. Frizzle’s? Cheech and Chong’s Uber service? Limo service where you get to answer suggestive Family Feud surveys with Steve Harvey? I don’t know, but I’m totally down for good vibes alternatives to driving.

Good point out, and I should have said not unique to either conservatism or hard leftism there. The “extremities” of the spectrum really highlight it obviously, but I think almost everyone is guilty of and/or capable of the same rationalizing over anything that forms a part of core identity, consciously or not. The stakes are just higher when it comes to politics than something like an odd food preference, and thus get stronger reactions both from external observers and the person holding that viewpoint. I try to apply a “never attribute to malice that which can be explained by something else (I know incompetence usually goes here but in this context comes off maliciously)” for most people. Everyone is the hero of their own story, yada yada.

I fall into the same trap advocating for left leaning libertarianism never being implemented with the correct mix of government guardrails (both from and against the government), and it will be funny when we all surprised Pikachu face when it turns out 500 years from now it was the Anarcho-syndicalists who were right all along ala South Park Mormonism.

Also I haven’t heard the Professional Left Podcast before but I’m definitely going to check it out, thank you for mentioning it.

This is a holdover from Reagan, and the boom times through the 80s and into the 90s. Deregulation works… until everything implodes/explodes. Revenue was up alongside the tax cuts because of the huge gains across the board, it just wasn’t sustainable.

The economy is like an engine, you can squeeze massive horsepower out of it for a few races or regulate it to run for millions miles. There is a happy spot that produces the highest output with acceptable longevity, but since Reagan the Republican strategy has been to crank it to the max.

The Democrats also continued the deregulation and government has abdicated it’s duty to enforce anti-trust laws, protect the commons, and ensure level playing fields. Add to that the lag time between government action and results, and you have the “Republicans do economy good”.

We have been a runaway diesel for decades, and the engine is close to detonation.

True, but sadly not unique to conservatism. It’s a human condition, lots of psychology involved with self-identity and worldview. See “communism just hasn’t been actually implemented properly yet, and the Soviet Union and China were/are actually capitalists pretending to be socialists/communists” for examples on the “opposing” spectrum.

If this doesn’t belong here, nothing does.

This very much annoys me. I am a left leaning libertarian (so probably considered Center Right), and this is stupid. Waste of money and labor. I am not really for the EV mandates because I respect a free market. But oil is heavily subsidized and thus not a free market, so charging infrastructure should get the same benefit to allow consumers to decide what works best for them. If low energy prices are a priority as their lip service indicates, then all forms should be treated equally. Government doesn’t get decide winners and losers. Lobbying is corruption.

I love my plug in hybrid. I would love to be able to charge at work. I also love gas and diesel, but I want to see where hydrogen and other cleaner combustion options can go for environmental reasons. Level playing fields is the main reason for Governments to exist.

Good, I was worried for a minute there. You don’t even have to like or even tolerate country music, Dolly is a national treasure and a lodestone of the soul of America. With the Right being historically the home of country and wholesome hospitality, it’s triply as bad.

The litmus test has failed, and apparently we need a new Committee on Un-American Activities investigating the powers that be. Who would have thought the parts would be so dramatically reversed this time around.

We lost Betty White, we cannot let the nation turn from Dolly and complete its fall to the dark side.

I thought that was one of the bedrock foundations of the US, regardless of political leaning: if you are against Dolly you are against America.

At the very least back up your Audible library in a DRM free format with something like Libation.

I am still using Audible because their web player works in my restricted office, and the authors get a couple of pennies from dragon, but have my library safely exported to ensure continued access and prevent fuckery like this.