That’s exactly the reason that people didn’t vote.

There’s no civilization in sight.

Your options are

1. drink the pond water and get dysentery. Struggle to find help while you are slowed down by your illness and shit yourself to death.

2. drink the bucket of shit. Same problem just much quicker

3. drink the camel piss. It’s sterile, (edit: I stand corrected) and provides some hydration

4. just fucking give up because all these choices are dire and no matter what you’re probably going to die because there is no sign of civilization or rescue, or another clean source of water, or things getting remotely better for you.

And you’re yelling at people for not happily slurping up the pond water and subjecting themselves to dysentery. Some people are going to have the fortitude to do whatever it takes for survival. And some people in that situation just give up.

People didn’t vote because of apathy, and no hope that things will get better in the future. Yes Harris is better than Trump. But she’s still a step in the wrong direction. Just because it wasn’t a running long jump towards doom doesn’t mean it’s not making progress in the same direction. You want people to vote for you? Inspire your fucking voter base. Give them something to rally behind. Make them excited. Give them hope. Give them a reason to stand in line for hours to vote after working an 8 hour day. Have strong policies that inspire confidence in your capabilities. Don’t make a large part of your campaign ‘at least I’m better than the other person’. That’s your selling point? Not how good you are. Just how less bad you are.

Let’s preface with the fact I voted for Harris, and understand where you’re coming from with lesser evil voting.

But the other half of your argument is that with the way that Harris was tacking to the right to try to gain moderate voters, the choice was between voting between fascism now and fascism later down the line.

But if we vote for fascism later then we have time to distance ourselves from fascism.

By sitting at home happy that you did your job and ‘defeated’ fascism, until the next election where your choice is again fascism now and fascism a little less later down the line?

As the Dems keep drifting further and further right. At what point do you put your foot down and demand actual progressive policies? And how do you get those demands to actually be listened to when the party knows you’ll vote for them because “at least we’re not as bad as the other guys. What choice do you have?” Supporting her is a message to the Democratic party that their strategy of slowly becoming more conservative wins elections. And this is the reason that I was very conflicted about voting for her, but just held my nose and did it for the greater good.

The average US citizen is not going to sit down and parse through 80 pages of policy. Why the fuck didn’t she promote it in interviews? Every speech and interview I have seen she just skirts around questions and gives vague answers, very frequently repeating herself almost verbatim. It really didn’t inspire confidence. And I say this as someone who voted for her.

I 100% agree with you on everything in this comment. My only point is that regardless of how badly trump wants to finish the job, Harris certainly doesn’t seem to want to stop it. And as such, she isn’t free from criticism. Moreover she needs to hear more criticism to push her into walking back her support of Israel “defending itself” by retaliating in a wildly disproportionate fashion. And the key time to do it was in the lead up to the election, because if she felt like enough people were upset about it that it could cost her the election, it had a higher chance of making a difference.

It’s possible to believe Trump is an evil piece of shit, but also that Harris needs to improve. Just because she’s the better choice doesn’t mean she’s perfect.

This really cuts to the core of the issue. Why would they need to listen to what people are saying if they’ve already won the election? To bolster their chances of being re-elected? But then the next election will most likely be a repeat. Vote for me or else the fascists win. Then we elect them, even though they state while they are running that they plan to do [x]. We make a big fuss to tell them we don’t want them to do [x]. They follow through with what they clearly stated while campaigning. And then next election it’s the same thing again. The only bargaining chip we really have as the American people is our vote.

If the situation is really that dire. (And I absolutely believe it is) And American democracy as a whole is at stake, who is really the one to blame? The people holding steadfastly to their beliefs and saying that they don’t feel comfortable/ good voting for someone who is saying they will continue to support genocide? Or the person that sees people saying that and points the finger at them as the problem instead of hearing them out and changing your policy to gain their votes? I understand that also poses the risk of losing votes, but do you really want the votes of people thirsting for genocide?

All of this being said I do completely understand that this is the choice that we’ve been stuck with, and that things will be massively worse if Trump does get elected. I’m voting for Harris, but I can’t say that I really blame people who feel like they can’t in good conscience. And I hate seeing everyone telling them to just shut up, vote Harris and worry about it after.

This looks amazing! Especially love the kitchen, workshop, and clean up areas. It’s great to give people a space to do things they don’t necessarily have the equipment or means to on their own. Which reminds me I should see if there are any publicly available workshops in my area.

Why can’t both be true? Sure. Trump tells Netanyahu not to accept the ceasefire. And when Netanyahu says no, rather than doing something to further pressure him, like making the munitions we send them conditional on a ceasefire, he just gives up and sends more bombs.

We’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of options! We asked him nicely to stop and he told us no. :(

To me it seems like less of a double standard and more of a representation of the divide between Americans.

Trump gets plenty of criticism from all around. Including from the same people that are also criticizing Harris. But his voter base is in full support of the stuff he’s spewing, and will believe anything he says wholesale. Even if it’s crazy, or unsubstantiated, or demonstrable lies.

The people who make legitimate criticisms of Harris are not supportive of trump. But them criticizing Trump will not change Trump. He already has unwavering support from a large number of people. Why would he do anything to gain the support of someone who is willing to call him out on his bullshit and hold him to an actual standard? And it’s not going to change the minds of any of his cult-like voters. However they do have hope that by criticizing Harris they might see her actually make changes towards becoming a candidate they wholesale fully support. Not a candidate that they are forced to choose because of the alternative. But a candidate that they actively want to be elected. These criticisms might also be persuasive to other Harris supporters and call them to be vocal and advocate for her to change as well.

So it’s less of individuals having double standards and treating the candidates differently, but the two polar opposite standards that the voter bases have.

I understand that we are stuck with these 2 candidates. But is it not still valid to complain that we have to pick between full throttle genocide and a slightly more palatable “restrained” genocide?

I’m not advocating for people not to vote for Harris. But to boil everything down to “said some mean things” is completely reductive. And you’re correct that she is not the president yet. But the only indication of what her actions will be when and if she is elected, are the things that she is saying now. And right now we are not seeing much if any pushback against what Israel is doing. She keeps saying that Israel has a right to defend itself. But what Israel is doing right now is going far above and beyond simple self defense. It is a genocide.

One way that people have the power to convince her to change her policy is by being vocal about their dissatisfaction. Presidents need to have personal convictions. They can’t just be completely wishy washy. But their role is to be an advocate and representative of the people’s interests. This is why they get elected. Because people feel that the candidate they are voting for is in line with their beliefs, and policies and changes they wish to see. So when people are vocal about their dissatisfaction with the policies she is putting forth, it gives her an indication that it is time to take a second look at what people are criticizing her about. To actually listen to what people are saying and potentially change her views. Especially if she wants their votes.

The people that are criticizing Harris on these issues in particular are by and large people who very obviously would not vote for / do not support Trump. A criticism of Harris is not supporting Trump. It is hoping to convince Harris to become a candidate that they can fully support. Someone they truly believe in and want to become president. Not just somebody they vote for because “well at least it’s not Trump”.

Under the funny and spooky category, one of my favourite movies is Murder Party.

Right. We will be defending Israel from the incoming Iranian ballistic missiles after they kill innocent civilians on a scale larger than they already have been, prompting a response from Iran large enough that the iron dome is not capable of handing it. Which totally doesn’t make us participants. We’re not directly doing the bloodshed, just enabling it and defending Israel from feeling any consequences.

Genuine question. What do you think should happen with people that have committed violent crimes? If they have no interest in voluntary rehabilitation, imprisonment with the goal of rehabilitation seems to be a better alternative to just letting them roam freely and do as they please. And it seems a lot better than the death penalty. Specifically for reasons like what we’re seeing here. You can release someone from prison if evidence comes later that casts doubt on their guilt. It doesn’t prevent the harm that has already been caused, but it gives them an opportunity to take back their life. You can’t un-execute somebody.

If the prisons are focused on rehabilitation and reintegration instead of just keeping people locked up and treating them like they’re not human? Yes. Do I believe prisons in the US are like that? No.

This is such a nothing argument. If all you’re talking about is a summary of a book, people have been able to get that long before AI. I can go to a wikipedia entry right now of any book and look at a plot summary. The author does not get paid for me looking at the summary on Wikipedia. There are numerous other sites where you can find summaries of books. And if you’re asking an AI for a summary of a specific book by a specific author, what attribution would you like to see? The user already knows the source because they’re specifically asking for a summary of that source.

A bigger concern would be the AI reproducing your works and using them in responses.

Not going to pretend to be able to read the minds of Hamas. But it seems like the idea was that taking hostages would give them leverage to negotiate. Because although the Israeli government generally regard Palestinians as subhuman barbarians, surely they wouldn’t risk the lives of the hostages by retaliating full force. And it seems in general they were partially right. The general population of Israel is calling for a ceasefire because they are concerned for the safety of the hostages and want their friends and family back. But Netanyahu seems to have very little interest in negotiations.

While I agree that the system needs to be restructured, and rehabilitation and limiting of guns would be very very good policy. The idea of defunding the police exists for a reason.

US courts have ruled that police are not obligated to put themselves in danger for you. So if you are being attacked, and the police believe the attacker could pose a threat to them, they don’t have to do anything to help you or stop the attacker. So next time you’re being assaulted or robbed, it may still very well suck to be you even with the police in line of sight.

Furthermore, the police spend the budget that they do get on military equipment rather than training their officers in de-escalation.

So at what point do we stop funneling so much money into the police for them to waste it on things that make situations worse. We either have to defund the police and put the money towards other services such as social workers who can de-escalate through non violent means, or start putting restrictions on how the police are able to spend the money, and having stronger guidelines/requirements for the training they go through.