Jace, Extat

Kid, I appreciate your vigor. But I'm asking y'all to be more open and compassionate because you're on my side, and I don't want my side to lose themselves to trollish nihilism or reactionary purity testing. I don't want to be on the side that won't reach out, that can't forgive. Because a huge chunk of this country needs to be forgiven for what they've allowed to happen here, and that has to start somewhere with someone being open to offering. I mean, what is your end-game here? To punish all the Trump voters?

The guy popped his head in to say that he was disturbed by what he saw and the responses he got were that he should have been disturbed a long time ago and isn't doing a good job explaining why he wasn't. Maybe that's not full tilt, but it sure as shit ain't productive neither.

Debating is for academics and entertainers, we're just a bunch of people on the internet. Try talking, it'll get you a lot further than debating.

Look, folks, I know that Republicans have a huge head start on being intractable mean-spirited assholes. I know that. But are you really interested in becoming like them? Because you are. Going full-tilt fuck-them on even people who are willing to talk is good entertainment, and even quite deserved for many, but it's not useful in repairing our damaged ability to talk to each other. This casting of politics as simply the regressives vs the resistance is not helpful. You gotta persuade people, and the way to do that is not by demeaning them and pointing out how wrong they've been. Y'all are living by wasteland rules, and I understand how you got there. But showing mercy and offering a friendly hand towards a better point of view costs nothing but to let go of resentment and that's the only way I see of going forward. Otherwise we're all just Dementus.

You gotta meet people where they are, playa. He's not anti-Trump, but he shared that he didn't like what he saw yesterday and y'all dogpiled on him. I'm sure it feels satisfying to have someone to dunk on, but that's not the way to win people 'round to becoming anti-Trump. And we need a lot of people to become anti-Trump from the ranks that weren't if this country is going to have a future. Like a dozen people jumped down this guy's throat as soon as he posted. That can be intimidating and hard to manage. C'mon now. I'm not asking you to blow him, but he's not in here spouting MAGA MAGA MAGA. He seems like a normal fella sharing that he's concerned, you don't have to treat that kind of person as an enemy. Just this morning I was having coffee with my uncle, who was once-upon-a-time an elected Republican. He didn't vote for Trump or Harris, but kinda liked Trump shaking up the government and shrinking its brief. However he was horrified by yesterday's events and went on to say that he'd never vote for Vance ever after what he saw. Now I could point out that that should have been his feeling already; or I could encourage that disgust to make sure that Vance has one less vote in Indiana if he tries to succeed Trump, which is what I did.

I think boarders, and liberals in general, could benefit from being a bit more gracious in this moment. A lot of people who aren't MAGA but may support parts of Trump's actions were horrified by what happened yesterday. Those feelings should be encouraged, not used as a cudgel to beat folks down for not being anti-Trump enough quick enough. At least if you desire anything more than to shit on people.

What did I say???

I ate a gummy

I cannot wrap my mind around this pervasive idea that certain countries militarize and/or develop nukes. Like, it really confounds me. Japan? Rearmed!?! NO! NO NO NO!!!!!!! NUKES!!!!????!!!! Good God, I don't even know what to say to such a thing.

The whole lane belongs to me when I'm in it, longways and sideways. I speed up if I see a turn signal in front of me and slow down if I see one behind. Because America.

It's a wacky and wild world, to be sure. I fear we are only at the top of the slide into the abyss, however.

You like entertaining communism, I like entertaining myself. It's an art, being a Jace.

Sorry, dawg but it is what it is. Communism as a political ideology has basically always led to horrors on a grand scale. Myopic or not, that's just the truth. I don't know jack shit about Vietnam, I'mma take your word on that. The Korean war... that started when the communists invaded south to force their ideology on the people there? Stop, I'm gonna get choked up.

I like one-a-week too. It gives you time to talk about the individual episodes with friends and the internet.

You can entertain whatever you like. But I'll rebut any talk of idealized communism by referring to the historic examples of what happens when those ideas meet the real world and real people are acting on them.

When people organize a society around pursuing communism you get shit like the Soviet Union, People's Republic of China, and North Korea. Whether or not a state successfully adhered to communism as a theory is less important than the fact that the ones which even professed to try ended up as authoritarian nightmare states.

"has led to" then.

And I disagree with that inclination. Or at the very least I think it doesn't matter whether Stalin's union was really communist, what matters is that it's the premier example of what communism can lead to.

'Aight. That looks good.

They'll have Hank in it to catch the furry demographic.

I know. I'm agreeing with you. But in the original post I was specificially referring Stalin's Soviet Union.

I meant what the Soviet Union became after Stalin took over. That's why I called it Stalin's, to differentiate between Lenin's vision and what it became after Stalin's death.

I don't understand the drive to divorce Stalin and his Soviet Union from communism. It was a national identity, over a hundred-million people convinced they were communists and champions of that ideology in everything they did. I get that Stalin and his government didn't implement the theory as written by the likes of Marx, but the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China is just what communism looks like in the real world.

I think that's the nicest thing you've ever said to me. I don't think interception technology will ever get the risk of nuclear penetration to 0%. But I do think we could get it down to say 3% or 5%, with appropriate dedication of resources. What that means for the countries that can afford such defensive systems is enormous, and isolated to probably just U.S.A. and China. Nobody else is going to be able to maintain a hemispherical Iron Dome. I expect much more overt competition for Africa this century, with boots on the ground to turn the continent into an enormous perimeter defense outpost between the two superpowers. (And plunder its resources to pay for these systems.) If an actual war starts between U.S.A and China it will be a tech battle, one side striking first to try and disable the other's defense systems with some kind of AI virus at the same time as striking the civil infrastructure (phones, mostly) so that there's internal discombobulation to go along with the military chaos. Russia might actually benefit from this situation and become a coveted ally as just a massive nuclear missile platform able to put one side into a dominant position. Hard enough to stop China or America's nukes, but Russia's as well? That could be good for them, keep them viable as a world power for a long time as long as those nukes are useable. So, to sum up: I think a few major cities get nuked within my lifetime, despite interception technologies making previous levels of worldwide destruction unlikely. For obvious reasons I hope those cities are in China. (Regarding using a nuke as a sort of EMP battering ram to knock out drones, I'm sure that AI will be able to figure out how to deploy the drones in such a way as to make that an ineffective strategy while maintaining a cloud of interceptors with minimal coverage gaps.) Ah, but what a villain was Errinwright. "I fought to save Earth, you fought to save yourself." At this point America would be lucky to have Sadovir in our government, and that's a damn sad thing to say.