The Virginia Society for the Preservation and Appreciation of High-Quality Posts

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Naso certainly does a lot of complaining about the United States for someone who purports to love them unconditionally. In fact, I'm not sure that I could name any poster who is more negative about this country. He doesn't like most of the people here, how they live, or what they believe. Why doesn't he leave?

Naso complains about persons who are incapable of stating unqualified love for America.  People who can't say "I love America!" and leave it at that.  People who cannot unequivocally state that America is a GOOD Nation. 

Can YOU say "America is a GOOD Nation!" unequivocally?  Without any add-ons?  Just leaving it at that?

Nothing could be easier than calling the United States a "good nation" when you define everything that you dislike about it as un-American.

Since you're asking, I can easily write a response mirroring his screed, but with an emphasis on a different set of virtues:

You hate the guy who wrote Civil Disobedience, if you've even heard of him, you don't value this country's natural beauty, you abhor our major cities, you have only contempt for American pluralism, you despise our environmental laws, you have no appreciation for this country's art or literature, you hate our Congress, and you hold plastic pop culture and a highly personalized sense of cheap nostalgia above all of our higher national ideals.

Naso's perverse vision is not unapologetically "loving America." He doesn't get to define what the United States is from his La-Z-Boys and then tell the rest of us that we're un-American for having different values. Even if his posts often read more like some kind of public decree. All that's missing is a leaden seal.

*Yes, I realize that most Democrats are sad and pathetic enough to apologize for anything, and that many on the left are too preoccupied with guilt and suffering to recognize goodness, but there's a world outside these increasingly dolorous alternatives.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Jesus Christ. Democrats you literally have a wealth of issues to attack him on. His odious economic policies, his trade war, his tax cuts for the rich, his f***ing wall, his obsession with keeping the minimum wage low.

Why do you need to attack him on Russia when you can literally attack him on any of these?

(Having said this, I also agree with the previous post quoted here.)

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

For somebody who claims to have been a Democratic Party activist in New York during the 70s, twice in the past few days Fuzzy Bear has demonstrated his total cluelessness about NYC politics.

Just because he’s invented his own reasons for becoming a right-wing Republican over the years, I guess that means Max Rose and Nassau county are soon to follow.

Nassau County has long been a Republican County with a strong political machine, but its voters are not uniformly conservative.  The Democrats have carried Nassau County in every election since 1992, mainly because Nassau County has a Jewish population of about 25%.  (Next door Suffolk County is more Jewish than it used to be, but still the more heavily Catholic county.)  These Jewish voters, not all Democrats to be sure, have provided a good many of Nassau's swing voters, voting Democratic for President, but Republican in local elections.  Nassau is now loaded with Democratic elected officials due to recent Republican scandals, but this has happened before, and Nassau's GOP (one of the last political "machines" in America) has proven to be resilient. 

This is a delicate balance.  What will happen if a significant number of Jewish voters, many of them Democratic and liberal, or independent swing voting registered Republicans, appreciate Trump's policies on Israel, and take note of the new anti-Semetism in the Democratic Party (Omar, Tlaib, AOC, for starters) and the progressively less supportive positions toward Israel the national Democratic Party takes?  This is not unlike the abortion issue for many Catholic voters; it's a social and cultural issue that is important to this group of voters.  Jewish voters on Long Island vote Democratic at a far higher rate than Catholic voters.  Trump's policies toward Israel, coupled with the emergence of the Omars and Tlaibs and a shift in the positions of many Democrats to on less favorable toward Israel, is a posturing that could, at least on the Presidential level, cause a realignment amongst Jewish voters in Long Island, and in other suburbs, and perhaps a nationwide realignment at least at the level of Presidential voting.

You hope

Well, the local Republicans in Nassau and Suffolk County were "the enemy" when I grew up.  While they nowadays represent some of the more reasonable Republicans, they have provided most of the corruption in Long Island politics (although Democrats, which are now more numerous and powerful than when I was young, are providing some crooks for the collection as well).  I don't support Long Island Republcans on the LOCAL level in Long Island politics.  I still have some friends from the old days who think I've lost my mind, but who knew me as a pro-life Democrat with relatively conservative leanings as I grew older. 

It was Jewish voters switching to Reagan in 1980 that put Reagan over the top in NY.  Many of these Jewish voters that made the difference were pro-Israel Democrats (Scoop Jackson types) who viewed Carter as soft on Israel.  Carter led in every poll in NY state to the end, but lost by 3 points, and the shift of some (not all, but some) Jewish voters in metropolitan NY to either Reagan, Anderson, or just abstaining tilted the balance.

Let Joe Republic say I don't know what I'm talking about.  I was there, and I was active, working for every other Democrat besides Carter, regardless of leanings.  Carter lost NY in death by 1,000 cuts, but the loss of some Jewish voters on Long Island was critical.

Speaking as a decidedly pro-Israel Jewish voter who has often criticized the Democrats for not doing enough to combat the anti-Semitic left, I think you’re very wrong about a number of things here.  Tbh, I think most Jewish-Americans are about where I am on this:

-The folks Trump allies himself with scare the Hell out of us

- We really like *some* of what he has done on Israel

- We’re pretty outraged by the anti-Semitic left being treated with kid gloves,

- Reform Jews like me tend not to like Netanyahu while Conservative and Orthodox Jews typically do

- We’re throughly repulsed by most of the standard Republican policy positions (especially on education, which is a huge issue for most non-Orthodox Jewish voters since our community’s emphasis on education and hard work is part of why we’ve thrived in America).  Jewish-Americans also tend to view taxes as a civic duty rather than something we resent having to do (like doing some chores to keep your home clean), tend to support affirmative action and be hardline supporters of teacher’s unions (education again) while staunchly opposing the policies advocated by folks like Michelle Rhee (most goyem don’t realize how much most Jewish-Americans hate hearing politicians blame teachers or rant about ivory tower academics/pointy-headed intellectuals)

- We’re still pretty used to voting Democratic and given that many Jewish-Americans (in contrast to our Israeli counterparts) generally miss Obama, four years is not enough time for this to change.

- We’re sick of Jews not named “Bernie Sanders” being treated like a fifth column by millennial and especially post-millennial goyem in the progressive movement simply because we support a two state solution instead of a one state Palestinian one.  I’m not saying all left-wing activists who oppose Israeli policies are anti-Semitic b/c that is absurd fear-mongering designed to shut down important policy debates.  We’re not at that point yet and the damage is still easily reversible (a bit like a rough nuclear family argument right now), but the progressive movement needs to stop going out of their way to spit on us or they’re really gonna regret it 10-20 years from now.  We won’t stay where we’re not welcome, politically speaking, and the progressive movement needs us at least as much as we need them (if not more tbh) even though they’re taking our community’s support for granted.  But again, we’re not there yet and Trump is an anathema to many Jewish-Americans (most of whom, unlike our Israeli counterparts both dislike Trump personally and are not single issue Israel voters the way some evangelicals are on

- While some of Trump’s race-baiting (sadly) plays very well, stuff like separating kids from their parents, the “I don’t remember” clip, and the infamous Charlottesville comments plays very badly with Jewish-Americans (as does his emotional, body language-heavy speaking style) 

- A lot of us are (rightly or wrongly) deeply suspicious whenever Christian Coalition brand talking heads like Santorum and Huckabee claim they’re our friends (we regard it much the same way that African-Americans likely regarded Mark Fuhrman’s claim that he hadn’t used the n-word in the past ten years at the OJ trial).  I don’t think this applies so much to regular folks, but the default assumption when an evangelical Republican politician or talking head says they’re pro-Israel is that while we may have to work with them, they really just want all the Jews to go to Israel to be killed/converted so the rapture can occur.  I’ve been told by several folks that this isn’t even a thing in evangelical Christianity, but either way, a lot of Jewish-Americans certainly think it is even if we rarely talk about it (especially not in front of goyem). 

- Pence plays really, really badly with Jewish voters, especially Reform Jews.  Plus, he sometimes opens his campaign rallies in suburban areas with a few prayers led by those “Jews” for Jesus people (such as at an infamous MI-11 rally for Lena Epstein that really hurt her with both Jewish and to a lesser degree even non-Jewish voters in the district).  I don’t know why Pence does this (it almost feels like he’s marking his territory or something), but I cannot stress enough how completely and universally despised the “Jews” for Jesus/Messianic “Jews” are within the Jewish community. 

- Social justice is very important to most Jewish voters and Jewish Americans tend to be anti-isolationism (often supporting American involvement overseas for humanitarian purposes), pro-gay rights, anti-religious discrimination, pro-immigration reform, highly supportive of measures to combat income inequality.  I’d add that Reform Jews tend to be pretty supportive of women’s rights and are largely pro-choice on abortion.

- Again, most Jewish-Americans are not single-issue Israel voters even if it is an important issue and I have yet to hear of even one Reform Jew who is a single issue Israel voter.  There is a real fight coming in a decade or two between Jewish Democrats and the anti-Semitic left and it may leave an opening for a more pragmatic and socially moderate Republican Party if that somehow became a thing...but Trump is decidedly the wrong type of person to take advantage of this and Pence is even worse. 

- However, Trump will improve with really old Jewish voters and I think this will end up being his ace in the hole in Florida.  It probably won’t help Republicans anywhere else though.  I do wonder how Gillum would’ve done if he were better on Israel b/c (rightly or wrongly) there was definitely a perception that he was far more sympathetic to the Palestinians.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Well, with Biden performing as well as he has been, even this early, it continues to suggest that the Democratic Party's big tent status keeps its primary voters less ideological than in the GOP's primary base.That may change in the future, but it doesn't seem to be happening yet.

This is the problem with the far-left thinking they can take over the party like the Trumpities. Most of the voting base is non-ideological, not having a preference whatever they are moderate or progressive, all they cared about is if the person has a D next to their name. You need to better appeal to these groups if you want to win the game.

The far left are some irrelevant people who don't like Bernie. Progressives on the other hand actually matter and are fed up with the Democratic party not standing for anything.

Well, look at how the leftist reddit subs like Chapo Frat House praise Bernie even if they acknowledging being to his left. Progressives are not against much of Bernie's proposals so much as we feel cautionary about implementing them into a workable deal that will satisfy many factions of government.

Except that that arguably is the problem. As long as many of those factions are run by Republicans, who have no history of compromise beyond goalpost moving and or worse, deciding to go even farther off the cliff despite utter capitulation [see Obamacare], a workable deal won't happen.

To get a "workable deal", then, one has to go extreme and scare out the other side into calling uncle.

Bernie's lack of realism then isn't an issue, it's a feature. One the GOP understand and have exploited quite nicely since at least 1968.

Unfortunately, as of now, the so-called mods haven't remembered/learned this yet and haven't gotten nihilistic enough yet to roll with it the same way the moderate GOP did after Romney lost.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Institutional religion (particularly Christianity) has been in decline in the Western world since the development of capitalism and its consequent factors of industrialization, urbanization, and globalization. The disruptive socioeconomic forces unleashed by that system, to which Protestant Christianity has been fervently wedded for centuries, is, arguably, the primary culprit of the cultural changes that have made faith in and practice of Christianity feel meaningless and, often, disagreeable for an increasing number of people.

There is no turning back the clock for Christianity in the modern, Western world. The future of that religion lies in the Global South (Latin America, Africa, Asia, Oceania). To the extent it survives in Western Europe and the Anglo world will be as a set cultural relics - old customs, objects, and places that once held transcendent meaning, but are now bereft of any life save for anthropological curiosity. The decreasing number of adherents will have to form enclaves and focus on familial and group transmission of knowledge to perpetuate their living traditions within a generally indifferent-to-hostile society.

What happens to religious beliefs in a more general sense is an interesting question. There's no substantial evidence of some impressive growth in Atheistic/strictly materialistic beliefs. The overwhelming majority of people hold some religious ideas, whether it's expressed in an organized or eccentric/individualized fashion. The decline of Christianity has simply coincided with an increase in beliefs in the existence or supernatural power of cryptids, astrology, meditation, yoga, divination, "universal life force," and so on. Religion has simply taken a more individualized, disorganized, and esoteric form - which permits less obligations, moralism, and prescribed behavior as such belief systems lack any organization, hierarchy, or structure. That fits perfectly with our increasingly alienated and atomized lifestyles, but will only exacerbate the negative side effects of that lifestyle, namely depression, anxiety, and vulnerability to extremism.

Overall, the decline of Christianity offers positive benefits, such as improved quality of life and access to rights and resources for historically underprivileged and persecuted groups. It also allows society to adapt its moral values to new material and social conditions. However, it also exacerbates some of the most psychology harmful aspects of modernity - alienation. But, we're in new and uncharted territories that will allow us to shape our personal lives and communities in ways we hadn't been able to before.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

https://twitter.com/JaxAlemany/status/1179922556985516032

I like that she is prodding Ernst on this, but the answer (cynical as it may be) has been available for years now: They care more about their jobs as members of Congress than they care about enforcing the rule of law, making specific policy (to a degree) or maintaining relationships with our allies. It's long been an insult that politicians only care about power and the perks of the job, but a proper one, and there have always been examples of this being true, it's just the Trump era has made it painfully obvious because Trump has constantly presented his own party with situations where they have to either try to reign him in or just excuse his behavior while sacrificing any morals, ethics or dignity they purport to have. The response has almost always been to do nothing or flat out distort reality to defend Trump, and even for the politicians who initially came out against Trump, all they did was run their mouths on the talk show circuits while refusing to actually use their leverage in Congress to try and force Trump to change.

I mean, not that it's even necessary imo, but just to indulge, Senators Risch and Johnson themselves previously said colluding with a foreign government to win an election is improper and illegal, but when this issue blew up, suddenly they all look at the transcript and say no, it's fine. The reason it's "fine" now but not before is because they suddenly woke up one morning and found out that they either had to put up or shut up, and the very idea of actually putting up was never truly on the table - never. And don't even get me started on Graham. He did the same thing. He is one of the biggest and most high profile examples of a politician completely changing their tune to keep their job, going from critical of Trump to total sycophant. Imagine what kind of person you have to be to have such a visceral reaction to this guy, and then just morph into an enthusiastic bootlicker and spend years debasing yourself, contradicting yourself, and feigning outrage in front of cameras, all so you can keep a job writing and talking about legislation that never gets passed anyway. I mean, how does he even live like that? Are these people really fine having virtually no dignity or self-respect?

To these people, it's all just acting. They don't care so long as they keep their jobs, money and power. Or, rather, perhaps they do care on some level, but not remotely enough to make them react on principle instead of their usual self-interest.

The fact is, most of these people belong nowhere near the halls of power, but because the people themselves only believe what they want to believe and reject anything that makes them feel uncomfortable or suggests even a little bit that they might have voted for the wrong person, these are the kinds of people they get to represent them. Corrupt, self-interested spineless partisan hacks whose only true goals are clinging to power.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Yes but almost all new wealth is going to the millionaire and billionaire class while the GOP continues to propose cuts to welfare programs. Almost all job creation since the Great Recession are low paying jobs. Wages have been stagnant since the 1980s and income and wealth inequality are at an all time high.

GDP, economic growth, and the stock market are indicators that people with views similar to David Koch and their billionaire friends love to point out as signs of a great economy but in reality that often means didly squat in terms of how the average person is doing.

The thing is blue avatars to some extent recognized this prior to 2016 when it was convenient so it’s a sign they’re just working backwards from there conclusions.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

As more jobs become eligible for telework (technologically, legally, and socially), this will become irrelevant. The rural decline in this country also is the product of people voting with their feet -- preference and not just necessity. More educated people (the right people for these jobs) seem to prefer living in cities where there simply is more to do. I don't see why this is a bad thing. It's just a fact.

Also why do people from rural areas love to hate the nation's capital? Hawley couldn't wait to get out of Missouri by competing for a job in the wicked capital city.

People don't move to cities on a mass scale because of leisure qualities. Urbanization is a product of industrialization and capitalism. Urban areas are also built upon countless pointless jobs that exist merely to keep the existing system of capitalism afloat, not because they are actually needed.

The decline in rural employment is due to automation and outsourcing. The countryside is the life blood of the American economy; coal, natural gas, petroleum, wheat, soy, corn, dairy, meat, etc... that's what keeps the American economy going. It is pumped from the countryside to the cities where it is managed, traded, sold, and bought. In years past, when automation and outsourcing were not as destructive to the rural populace, their labor was essential and taken for granted at significant costs because most realized their dependency on these Americans and their labor.

Today, they're deliberately overlooked or treated with disdain while their land and resources, along with the labor of a shrinking few, is intensely exploited while all the wealth produced therefrom is extracted and transferred to the urban parts of America. The American countryside is, like the developing world, part of the periphery of exploitative and extractive capitalism, whereas the core are places like New York and LA, which take for granted their existence and wealth, which is entirely dependent on the exploitation of the "hicks" and their resources.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

KY Politics at the State level are statewide politics but tie into an Historical Narrative, which can trickle into Federal GE Races....

The revival of the Trade Union Movement in the Form of the Teacher's Strikes in Kentucky have revived the memories of older retirees in a heavily white impoverished State.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/13/us/teacher-walkout-kentucky-oklahoma-arizona/index.html

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2019/03/20/teacher-strike-sickout-kentucky-jcps-wayne-lewis-names-list/3223587002/

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/education/2019/02/28/kentucky-teacher-sickout-strike-due-to-pension-system-bill/3012091002/

https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/409014-some-in-kentucky-teacher-strike-were-confused-says-governor

https://apnews.com/3622dc9b61204787a5b5f3da24e409e1


Although this did not directly cripple the KY State Republican Party, it is clear that they got a punch in the face from segments of the electorate that they had expected to win, based upon the popularity of the 'Pub brand on items such as Energy Policy, Social Conservative Religious Platforms, and even possibly even Gun Owners (Although that vast majority of KY Voters have a firearm within their house).

Anybody who chooses to believe that many registered KY DEMs within the Coal Country of SE KY have forgotten their Coal Miner Daughter Roots, let alone Coal Counties of Western Kentucky (Muhlenberg County for one example) have forgotten their Trade Union Ancestral Roots, must be smoking a bigger and stronger form of Crystal Meth than any of the "crackheads" within the declining Timber Mill and Factory Towns of Downstate Oregon....

UMWA Pension Plans have been screwed over from the bosses for a long time, which is currently one of the major items for the rump of the UMWA, while meanwhile there are literally generations of Coal Miners within the tight-knit communities of Appalachia that will always remember and never forget, while meanwhile their kids and grandkids migrate to the bright-lights and big cities of places like Cinci, Indie, Chi-Town....

"Insert John Prine Song from the early '70s"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEy6EuZp9IY

No Question: Beshear's win was directly a result of the Union Movement activists in a heavily Non-Union State, with the small exception of a handful of Public Sector Workers (Teachers, Cops, Firefighters, County, State, and Municipal Employees) that were getting screwed over by the same type of forced "Austerity Politics" we have seen enforced against our rural communities over the decades from both Democratic and Republican Political Leaders alike.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Whatever my many other problems with Fuzzy, he's fantastic on health care. This is one of the best Atlas posts I've ever seen.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

This was a dumb move that plays into Trump/R's hands re: rural areas being ignored.

The average voter does not know who the Senate Minority Leader is, lmao.

After Trump goes on about how Dems abandoned the Iron Range at a local campaign rally, many will.

I'm not for rural areas being ignored, but I doubt that Trump knows, much less cares, about DFL politics.

Au contraire.

The Iron Range is full of historically Democratic union voters who are culturally conservative energy industry workers and miners who have been loyal, liberal Democrats for most of my life (and that includes during the McGovern debacle in 1972).  Trump is well aware that this move is another shift toward latte liberal suburban environmentalism at the expense of union workers in "dirty" industries that were the guts of the Democratic Party that I knew for most of my life, and was a party that I could generally support, even after registering Republican (for local political considerations) and even as the Democratic Party pushed its pro-life elected officials out of the party, one office at a time.

Today's Woke Dipstick Democrats are working hard to ensure that the 2020 Democratic Party nominee gets a lower portion of union voters than did George McGovern (whom the AFL-CIO did not endorse).  The latte liberals are now all Democrats, and the country is more socially liberal now than it was in 1972, and that's not ALL for the worse, but the Democratic Party has traded people who work at union  jobs for a living in exchange for socially liberal soccer moms and Woke Imbeciles.  That does make for a different Democratic Party, does it not?  I strongly suggest that this trade in constituencies has changed the Democratic Party by making it more elitist and less responsive to the people who actually do the work of our society.  If that's how they intend to rebuild the middle class, I suppose I'll learn to live with disappointment.

I agree with the general spirit of this, but only MN political insiders and Atlas neckbeards know or care about who leads the DFL, is my point.  If Democrats are going after urban and suburban voters at the expense of rural, this is partly because that's where more of the voters are.  Rural communities are sadly in decline and neither party has much to offer them.  The Republicans take their votes for granted much in the same way centrist Democrats take African Americans for granted.

A few months ago I transcribed a bipartisan political conference for creating job opportunities in rural Iowa, and even there the solution they proposed wasn't to bring back dangerous mining jobs which the economy will no longer support, but to invest in STEM (particularly tech) fields and businesses.  Blue-collar union jobs are going to be harder to create and sustain in the age of automation, as are most jobs, and rural communities are being affected the most.  With fewer union jobs being available, Democrats are at an inherent disadvantage.  De-wokeifying the party probably wouldn't help them regain the ground they've lost in these areas.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Given the situation she was in, I'm not gonna judge her for accepting the $500,000 that she got to do this. Yes, it was a sh*tty decision, but that money had to have been literally life-changing. She's had a crazy, rough, sad life (having batsh*t crazy, alcoholic parents; being a young runaway, a closeted lesbian in the '60s forced into an abusive marriage & into having a kid at 16; her mother tricking her into signing over parental rights of one of her kids; then being thrust into the national spotlight with Roe v. Wade) which I don't envy. She just seems like somebody who had a really hard life &, as a result, made irrational decisions at times, so it's hard to fault her, especially since she came clean eventually.

If anything, we should simply be glad that, in the end, her choice was to come clean & be honest.

This is why I think the real story of Norma McCorvey is of a poor woman with little education or resources being taken advantage of, first by liberal elites and then by conservative elites. They all trotted her around like a prize pig at the fair, pulled her strings to make her say what they needed her to say, and then stuck her in the corner to gather dust once they'd gotten what they wanted out of her.

Sarah Weddington and Gloria Allred got money, power and distinction when she was Jane Roe; the conservative-industrial complex of rich, right-wing power brokers got a big win in "turning" her.

What did Norma McCorvey get? Fifteen minutes of fame from each of them, before being shoved back into a hardscrabble life of poverty and irrelevance. And like so many people from her station in life, she died before she even reached her 70th birthday.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I prefer the other weak old bumbler to Trump, but plausible answers occur to me:

#1. Trump is a Holy Fool and can't be expected know better. People don't expect what he says to cohere in the sense that viewing this as a scandal assumes.

#2. "Preventing panic" is a standard for public health officials. That's what they tell politicians to say, and that's what public health campaigns emphasize. This might be why Fauci's comments on the tape were so conciliatory.

#3. The COVID death rate has been lower than many of us were fearing in March, and mortality is extremely low for children and most adults below the retirement age.

#4. Many of us are so cynical about the motivations of American politicians that we assume that their actions are guided by politics anyway. We assume that most of them would throw away thousands of lives for political gain if they had the power to make that choice.

#5. Many Americans believe that media and politicians have been exaggerating the risks of COVID. Their "lived reality" of the pandemic has not been consistent with what they see on their televisions and smartphones.

When it comes to Trump, speaking personally, I'm not outraged by any particular comment, I'm outraged by his existence. I fail to understand how anyone can keep their sanity while remaining critical of him without adopting this attitude.


The more pressing question is "Why do people who talk as if they believe that the country needs a strong leader continue to support this idiotic buffoon?", and the answer is that Trump's success has always been more about identity politics, distrust in the political system, and pissing the right people off.

The branding of his personality isn't meant to be anything more than superficial and that's why, with few exceptions, his most damaging political acts are consistent with what might happen under any other particularly corrupt and incompetent GOP administration.

In the case of this coronavirus, I think it's clear that a better president could have  pulled the country together well enough that most of us would feel substantially better now, and that is no small thing. But the death rate in the United States isn't the result of policy choices at the federal level. The policy failures that have occurred come out of the states, our geography, and the structure of our government.

The other point to remember is that elections are choices. Trump is likely to lose the upcoming election but he's equally likely to receive well above 40% of the vote. I'm not telling anyone not to be disturbed by that. But a vote for Trump in a two-party system isn't really an endorsement of his politics, just as my vote for Biden will not be an endorsement of his politics. It's an expression of a preference and no more.

I'll go further and say that even many of the seemingly hardcore people parading around in MAGA hats aren't necessarily deeply invested in Trumpism in a way that betrays any serious political conviction, at least aside from the same tribalism that underlies corporate fandoms such as Star Wars or the Boston Red Sox. This is no less stupid and dangerous.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I don't get why "safe, legal, and rare" is considered a moderate position. Do most pro-choicers think that abortion should be common or unsafe?

Rare is a relative term, and one that public figures who describe themselves with that phrase usually prefer to leave ambiguous. That allows them to appeal to the people who believe that 15-25% of pregnancies ending in abortion (i.e. typical rates for US states) is "rare" enough and those who would prefer to see those numbers brought much lower.

State-level abortion rates vary by an order of magnitude, but the numbers rarely seem to enter the conversation except for anti-legalization people quoting raw numbers for shock value or pro-legalization people pointing out that the national rate is at an all-time low. It would take some courage for someone wishing to stake out a moderate position to say that they oppose restrictions on access like those in South Dakota while also saying that states like New York and Maryland where doctors abort closer to one out of three pregnancies have a problem that demands a policy response.

Speaking personally, I am strongly opposed to any criminal penalties for mothers or health care providers (so long as the latter are not coercing women into aborting their pregnancies). But I'm not convinced by the pro-choice consensus that this is only a matter of providing better sex education and welfare support, because that's not what the variation indicates.

It's also unfortunate the increasingly massive racial disparity in the percentage of pregnancies aborted has become a point of trolling, because reducing that disparity is the single greatest remaining opportunity for preventing abortions that take place in the United States.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Porn is basically 'victory gin' - an inferior substitute that has a similar look and taste to what it mimics, but lacking in substance and quality.

That being said, I think young people aren't having sex as much due to stagnating economics rather than porn addiction. Our grandfathers and grandmothers enjoyed unrivalled prosperity in the fifties and sixties; we are left holding an increasingly empty bag.

What 20-year old would want to start a family right now? You have no money to pay for childcare, housing, and healthcare, let alone the more direct expenses that come with having a family. If you're not trying for a baby, you're also going to have a lot less sex.

Another thing to consider ism millions more people are moving away from their hometowns today. When that happens, people cut ties with a good number of friends and lovers. Then they have to start from scratch in their new home.

It's not easy to build close, intimate relationships when you've just arrived in a new town.