HelixDab2

Republicans certainly agree with your sentiment. I can't see any way that having only a single political party could ever go wrong.

It is, yeah. When you look at accounts like Occupy Democrats and start fact checking them, there's a lot of bullshit that they post. Like, pants on fire kind of bullshit. I knew a lot of people that followed them. In order to get engagement, accounts need to stir up emotions and get people to react and comment; it's easier to do that with things that outrage rather than dense policy positions.

I want to believe that the political left is more intellectually honest than the right, but that's because I'm mostly on the political left. (I'm an anarchist at heart, but with a cynical disbelief in the ability of people to work together in a country the size of the US without some degree of authoritarian control.) So I try to fact-check all of the sources that I use for both factual information, as well as ideological biases.

Yes, I understand that. But on social media you aren't necessarily getting right-wing propaganda, as there's plenty of left-wing propaganda and misinformation as well. That's why I'm saying that they're low- or no-information voters that are working solely on feels.

Oops, sorry... That was an oversight; my mind skips over Manitoba when I'm thinking of the large, southern provinces.

I also didn't bring up the Northwest Territories, Nunavet, Yukon, New Brunswick, or Newfoundland and Labrador. If they like mountains, NT and Yukon might both work, although getting any kind of supplies in will likely be difficult.

Even if you’re a relatively disconnected right winger

I'm not talking about relatively disconnected right wingers; I'm talking about people that are largely centrist, and not paying attention to Fox, NBC, CNN, or any newspapers, and gets all of their 'news' from social media. I guess you'd call them the hoi poloi; they're low-information voters (or no information voters), and mostly apathetic as long as they feel like they're getting by. Policy won't matter to them very much; they're voting on feels.

any right winger that obsessively follows the news is literally ben shapiro or alex jones.

That depends. There are a number of people that are extremely fiscally conservative that have zero interest in culture wars issues. Most of them have defected from the Republican party entirely though, because they see that the current iteration of the Republican party is deeply harmful to the kind of conservatism that they stand for. But that kind of conservative hasn't really been popular since about the time that Newt Gingritch was trying to stir up the country against a president that didn't keep his dick in his pants.

We can probably tolerate a little more disinflation, as a treat.

No, not really, because deflation (not disinflation) tends to be self-sustaining, much like hyperinflation does. If the dollar I have today will buy two dollars worth of goods next week, then I'm going to hold onto my dollar to make any sort of discretionary purchase until next week. When everyone does that, all at the same time, it's like building a dam; the flow of money just grinds to a halt. Companies don't have money coming in, so they can't pay workers, which leads to layoffs, and the people laid off have no income to buy anything now, which feeds right back into that cycle.

I agree with you that corporations need to be reined in, that executive salaries are out of control, and that things like stock-buybacks are the bane of a functional economy. But that's literally going to take legislation in this country to fix, in the same way that it did when the economy crashed in the 1920's, and I guarantee you that there's going to be zero political interest in that for at least two years.

Ironically, after working in production for over a decade, I'm hoping to go back to school for business management. Because it turns out that there's zero career track and advancement potential if I stick with what I already know. Depressing shit.

I've literally had people argue with me saying that someone wearing Nazi paraphernalia in public was legally an immediate threat of violence that you could respond to with lethal force. No, I'm not joking or exaggerating. A lot of people take this kind of thing at face value.

“I’m going to enjoy beating you until you stop breathing” is clearly an immediate threat to one’s life and health, for example.

Unfortunately, that is probably not accurate either. That kind of threat is not necessarily something that gives you free rein to immediately use violence in order to defend yourself; it really depends on the circumstances that surround it. (And of course the relevant case law in the state that you live in.) But a really, really good rule of thumb is that you shouldn't use physical force or violence unless the aggressor has used it first.

Look, I understand your frustration and fear. I really do. I'm in a deep red part of an already red state (thankfully not Idaho, at least), and this shit is scary and awful. Depending on the outcome of some House races that still haven't been decided, we're looking at a minimum of two really, really bad years, and a lot of non-white people, women, and LGBTQ+ people are going to be harmed. I understand the desire to lash out at the people who are both complicit and actively working for this shitsack future, because I want to also. But you have to be aware of the consequences of taking that kind of action.

Knee those balls if you can get away with it.

And that's the real trick. You might be able to get away with it, if they're embarrassed to have been taken down by a woman. But since it's probably a person that's known to the woman (this isn't really something that even the worst people would just randomly say to someone on the street, I don't think), the man might come back with intent to actually cause immediate harm. Or might call the cops, and then you're right back to potentially getting arrested.

Yeah, I agree 1000%, the people doing this deserve violence. But 'deserving' something doesn't mean that the law won't come down on you like a ton of bricks. It's frustrating as shit.

If I drop that name, that gives people enough to figure out which school I went to, what years, and they can correlate that with my post history to figure out exactly who I am IRL.

I've probably posted enough already that someone with a large enough database could do that already, but dropping names would make it much easier for just about any schmuck with an internet connection and decent search skill.

(And believe me, I would love to tell people the name of the pretentious dick that was the head of the department, but... Aaargh.)

It's not even a propaganda problem, per se, because most people aren't obsessively following the news and economic reports.

It's how they feel about money.

That was the biggest single issue.

People looked at grocery store prices and said, this is nuts, I was paying half this just four years ago.

It doesn't matter to them that global inflation skyrocketed along with inflation in the US, or that we're doing better than the rest of the world right now. They want to see prices go down, even though that would be deflation, which is incredibly bad for an economy.