Cosmonaut

This is hilarious to me because he's getting SO close to the idea that financial penalties should be imposed for environmental degradation! But in classic Republican fashion, easy narratives (the smoke is coming from Canada, so their forest management must be poor!) trump any actual analysis of root causes (fossil fuel use warms the earth and increases the likelihood of major wildfires!).

It's not hard for me to hold Trump accountable. I wake up every day and curse this administration for the terror they've unleashed. But this is a pop music forum where a bunch of gays are talking about politics and where everyone except NYCMusicBox is clearly anti-Trump. It does not serve me to talk about what Republicans could do to stop this, because they do not want to stop this. You're right: nobody is forcing Republicans to allow the murder of innocent people. It is very clear that they want people to die. Democrats at least claim to want an end to ICE's abuses, but then many of them vote in favour of Republican initiatives to fund and expand the power of ICE. Same goes for Israel. How does that make sense? As a registered Democrat, my time is better spent agitating for the Democratic party to actually stand on the values of progress, equality, and acceptance that they claim to espouse. So: why is it so hard for you to acknowledge Democrats' complicity? Note: Activists have been calling for ICE to be abolished since the agency was founded as part of a wave of Islamophobia in the early 2000s. I had those conversations in college under the Obama presidency. This is not "noise," nor is it new.

I'm not really interested in owning a lib. I'm interested in pointing out the kinds of arguments that (perhaps inadvertently) dehumanize people. You: "Why are you mad at dems? Republicans gave ICE the power to murder innocent people." People in this thread: provide evidence that ICE funding was expanded and that ICE was killing undocumented folks under Dem leadership You: "Was ICE killing those with legal status and U.S. citizens with no repercussions during the Obama or Biden era?" Nobody is arguing with you that Trump's ICE is more sinister than prior administrations. The point is that they enabled Trump's ICE to become what it is by overlooking previous human rights violations and continuing to expand the agency. Republicans didn't give ICE the power to murder innocent people. Every person murdered by ICE is an innocent person. Your desire to protect the Dems from accountability because of the difference in the magnitude of ICE's cruelty—while still enacting cruelty and murder—is not logically coherent with a worldview in which you believe undocumented people and citizens/folks working here legally have the same right to life and protection under the law. The only way to square those two ideologically is to believe ICE should be abolished.

The cynical deployment of racism to defend status quo politics is maybe the key reason the Democratic party is floundering. Crockett is messy for this—and it's just more confirmation that she has no ideological theory of political change beyond preserving her own power and virality. Pretty much any leftist critical of the establishment is supportive of Ilhan Omar, Summer Lee, Maxwell Frost, Darializa Avila Chevalier... need I go on? Why all the backlash to the idea that black people don't necessarily know best simply because they're black—particularly when that assumption is never extended to progressive black politicians?

I keep forgetting that it's not worth attempting to have a discussion with any intellectual substance with you because you act like you don't know the implications of your own words! It relates to your post because your initial question was in response to a post stating that the expansion of ICE happened in part under Dem leadership. I oppose ICE completely. ICE is and has always been an inhumane institution that should not exist, regardless of the party of the president. It seems like you only oppose it under Republicans. Your question seemed to insinuate that only the killing of US citizens or "legal" immigrants was unconscionable—but that ICE under Dem presidents when undocumented immigrants were still dying in custody is not also worthy of criticism. What was the point of your question?

Do you believe undocumented folks have less of a right to life than "those with legal status and US citizens"?

I know nihilism is your bit and I **** with it honestly, but like, I think the answer—and the exact thing that we're seeing happen right now—is that progressives are working to persuade voters of a real vision. I just don't think it's true that it's not happening fast enough. Sure, I wish it was faster, but this is the (slow) work of movement building. I don't think any of us saw this wave coming a year ago, but there is real change happening. I'm optimistic for the first time in a long time (even as I acknowledge the most likely end to this story is climate collapse and mass immiseration) precisely because the consensus around what we should demand from politicians and political parties is meaningfully shifting. And the movement will continue to grow as Fox News and the mainstream media continue to try to demonize progressives while inadvertently making them into celebrities. It's one case where nationalizing politics might actually help foment a broader progressive movement. The Dems need to suffer a bit, and poll results like this don't bother me because "far left" to the average voter is neopronouns and whatever Fox has designated the social bogeyman of the day, but these people are much more persuadable on actual far left positions. Platner losing doesn't signify a progressive failure either; it shows that for progressive movements to work, we need candidates who have integrity.

When I have these moments I just have to recall Foucault's observation that where there is power, there is resistance. Nobody ever had an easy path fighting against the powerful, the rich, the despotic. But seeing these attacks on progressives reminds me that they're genuinely threatened—so we either give up or we celebrate these wins that reveal that alternative forms of social organization (esp. socialism) are more popular than ever.

It is sadly the case that many people view salacious texting as somehow more of a stain on one's character than funding a genocide or empowering an autocrat.

Nightmare blunt rotation

I got citizenship last year and cast my first ever vote in NY today after moving back a month ago. So proud of this city 🥹

This should be a huge scandal. It won't be, but this is so damning. The Dems and the Republicans are a uniparty. I don't want to hear another word about horseshoe theory from liberals when their favourite politicians are hobnobbing with the elite tech right.

The thread you're posting in is about a peer-reviewed article that shows that socioeconomics influence brain development, and hence that "IQ" is not some innate quality that is entirely disconnected from broader forces of discrimination, economic inequality, etc. You are linking... a Psychology Today article that claims that IQ is positively associated with income, after controlling for various other factors (race, gender, wealth, educational attainment). Fine. No argument there. Your initial comment that "A lot of times, the wealth disparity gap is driven by the IQ gap" is not substantiated by this article. In fact, it states that IQ is a much better predictor of income than net worth/wealth. The whole point of discussing wealth disparity is to reflect on how structural factors permit the wealthy to retain and pass on that wealth, while poor folks are structurally prevented from attaining that wealth for various reasons. On a separate note, your frequent tendency to resort to ad hominem attacks ("before you deflect whatever it is you're going through on me"; "5 people seem to be slow, poor, and ignorant it seems") when someone disagrees with you is lazy and disrespectful.

Don't be obtuse. I think you know exactly what the implications are when you imply that IQ (itself a blunt and inaccurate measure of intelligence) drives wealth disparities. Particularly in a country that explicitly does not provide equal access to educational opportunities to all. So, please, explain to us all how the wealthy are simply smarter than poor people?

Or perhaps just not weird eugenicists!