Phi for All

This isn't a phenomenon found only in "the West". Russia is having the same problem, as is any country that favors authoritarians that undermine the social fabric of their countries. Costs of living increase, wages don't, and the super wealthy are allowed to use their money in ways they shouldn't be able to. The media in the US has no obligation to inform, and instead appreciates when we all have to spend more time deciphering the news. This problem is worldwide, atm.

I don't see this as productive at all. You dislike religion, so you create your own?! Non-participation is also an option. This isn't like saying you dislike store-bought bread so you make your own. This is like saying you dislike your astrological sign so you came up with something you like better. It may not be a specific religion you dislike, but rather the whole concept, in which case it may be better to ignore it completely.

You're only comparing salaries. The fact is, even "highly paid" tech workers are being underpaid compared to the profit they bring to the companies. Even a senior engineer salary at Apple is smaller than it should be compared to the US$391B in annual revenue they earned this year. It's been this way in the US for quite some time. It's pretty easy to see the trend. In the 50s, a household only needed one worker to afford a home, a couple of cars, and even college tuition for a couple of kids. After Nixon, it's been getting steadily worse here, until now most families have two workers and still struggle to maintain a home and vehicles.

Billionaire personality traits like paying people less than they're worth so the billionaire can have more? If you look at how productivity in the US continues to grow while wages haven't kept up since Nixon, you can see how billionaires get richer while getting more work from the rest of us for less overall pay. Their profit is basically our struggle. The more they profit, the more the rest of us have to struggle. Billionaire personality trait #1? Pretend your resources are worth 600 times what the labor to turn them into a product is worth, and pay workers as little as possible. Make them struggle.

I'm done with it. Nobody who voted for him is worth my time if they can't draw a line somewhere. The Access Hollywood tape was the deal-breaker for me, way back then. It was morally indefensible, but politically acceptable for some. Now I can say proudly that I consider consent to be important, and you know exactly who I voted for.

It's easier than you think, you just have to be honest. I'm far too racist for my own tastes, but I'm learning and growing. I've lived with racism my entire life, and I don't fool myself into thinking it hasn't affected me, and that helps me avoid discrimination (for the most part). I'm sorry you feel that way. I see it as an attempt to overturn the rule of law, and normalize discrimination by taking a moral stance and trying to make it political. I don't see equal rights as a talking point, but you obviously do. I absolutely am arguing that more than half of Americans are racists. I don't appreciate your lumping the rest in as a strawman, I have no patience for that crap anymore. Fascism is also applicable, but is a separate argument. I think any white American who thinks this society hasn't taught them to discriminate against many different groups is just trying to make a distinction between themselves and the more obvious racists who don't want to change. You can have racist thoughts and realize they're wrong, that they're part of an upbringing that you need to unlearn. What's proven ineffective in two elections is stopping the interference from foreign powers using our lack of informative sources to prejudice the American people. The media is entertainment rather than information, and coupled with an uneducated electorate we get folks voting to remove their own rights and safeguards. Good luck without NOAA, Florida!

What do you mean "she wasn't chosen"? She was elected as VP, voted into office by the People. What's the role of the VP, you might ask? One part is to take over when the president can't fulfill the duties. And Biden left us one of the strongest economies in recent history. So strong it encouraged US corporations to price gouge their own customers, knowing the uneducated would blame Biden, as if POTUS has control over private companies and what they charge. And yet you don't bother to link to it here. I'm going to assume you made it up. OTOH, TFG has decades of ruining people's lives under his belt: https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/13/politics/trump-small-business-owners/index.html https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/columnists/mike-kelly/2020/01/24/donald-trump-still-owes-money-to-contractors-who-built-taj-mahal-atlantic-city/4547037002/ https://nj1015.com/trump-stiffed-hundreds-of-workers-and-contractors-in-new-jersey-report-says/ https://theweek.com/articles/783976/brief-history-trumps-smalltime-swindles https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hundreds-claim-donald-trump-doesn-t-pay-his-bills-n589261 He's a swindler, so I assume you cheat people too. None of this is a deal breaker for you. People like you and him kill thousands of decent Americans every year. He's a racist, so I assume you hate people of color too. None of the bigotry and prejudice bothers you enough to make it a deal breaker. People like you and him discriminate against the only known humans in the universe, and ignore the diversity of life we have on this planet. I hope you don't pass this behavior to the next generation. He's fooled you because of all your ignorance and hatred. You're the poorly educated people he truly loves. Harris kept trying to tell you what she was going to do for us. TFG keeps telling you who he's going to punish, and you evangelicals just lap it up. It's all about punishment and atonement and how shitty humans naturally are, and now you have the shittiest human on the planet as your leader. Get down on your knees and take him there!

Not everyone. I thought MAGA wanted smaller government. All the offices you guys don't like will now be run by people who don't know what they're doing. You and I will be paying the salaries of thousands of federal employees who will be working hard to destroy those agencies. Their only qualification is loyalty to POTUS/Emperor. Big fan of the Russian invasion? Most people don't like Putin the way you seem to. Do you? It doesn't seem that way. I think you just voted to raise your own taxes to pay for a government loyal to one man. Elephant in the room? That's one of the first indicators for me for anybody's job performance. Most of the people who worked for him the first time refuse to be loyal to him now. They haven't exactly been quiet about how dangerous TFG is. Please elaborate on Kamala Harris' major faults.

He doesn't tell his own uneducated base that the tariffs are so he can exempt his friends and punish those who won't kneel: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/23/us/politics/trump-tariff-exemptions.html Openly corrupt, morally barren, and a convicted felon. And so many people are OK with that, and want him as their leader.

This would be a fantastic claim to support with any evidence you've researched.

! Moderator Note Let's drop the personal attacks. Focus on the arguments and stances, leave the people alone.

It's hard for me to think well of those who forgive him for all he's done. I only needed one deal-breaker, and here you are accepting a mountain of them with praise. You're too young to remember Nazis, you act like an incel Christian Nationalist by not recognizing the harm you do to women by denying them bodily autonomy, and you don't understand that the tariffs are to drive small business and the middle class into the ground. Fascists don't like a strong middle class, and since I'm guessing you and your family are part of the middle class, you just voted to hike your own taxes and costs, but you're white so you probably won't be deported. So you got that going for you.

Is this supposed to replace any of the knowledge science has worked hard to explain over the centuries? It seems like you've renamed several things or given them different definitions. This more or less guarantees you're the only one who will understand what you're talking about. This is why most folks interested in philosophy and science study what others have discovered before them. It's not boring.

In the version I saw, when it was explained to him, he then blamed the liberals for being stupid enough to have two names for the same thing.

He's helped a lot, for sure. Did he really air nude photos of Melania in the same news segments congratulating TFG on his win? Yes, he did! https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/russian-tv-melania-trump/

FOX News host and former National Guard Captain Pete Hegseth is the nominee for SecDef, because the US probably won't need its military in the foreseeable future.

When the "news" outlets are trying to entertain rather than inform, and the goal is to take up more of your time instead of telling you what you need to know and sending you on your way, it's difficult for me to single out FOX. Certainly the worst, but I had trouble with an MSN article recently about douchebag Nick Fuentes: https://www.msn.com/en-in/entertainment/hollywood/meet-marla-rose-woman-who-doxxed-nick-fuentes-after-being-pepper-sprayed-at-his-house/ar-AA1tUpQF After going on X to tell women of the US, "Your body, MY choice. Forever!", Nicky got doxxed. A woman who lived near the address went to go check it out, and ended up ringing his doorbell. Allegedly, Nick burst out of the door, pepper sprayed the woman and pushed her down the stairs, taking her phone, which the police later gave back to her. A witness called emergency services, who treated the woman. There are witnesses to all of this, but the article from supposedly center-left MSN is hardly fair and balanced. The headline is wrong: "Meet Marla Rose, Woman Who Doxxed Nick Fuentes After Being 'Pepper Sprayed' At His House". She didn't doxx him after being sprayed. She didn't doxx him at all. Someone else gave out his address and Marla Rose went to check it out. This is more than bad reporting, imo. The opening line of the story is wrong. "Marla Rose, a Jewish activist, allegedly tried to break in into far-right commentator Nick Fuentes' Illinois home and was 'pepper sprayed'." A few lines later they acknowledge that "She rang the doorbell and was allegedly met with pepper spray". MSN equates ringing a doorbell with breaking in?! How can we be sure the mistakes aren't put there on purpose to make us re-read the article a few times, or that supposedly center-left MSN wants to also get the attention of Fuentes white nationalist supporters by mentioning a break-in by a Jewish activist? Requiring the "news" to actually inform us looks a lot like expecting the medical industry to actually cure us. What's in it for them? Where's the incentive to benefit others?

TFG's campaign spent over $100M in the last weeks leading up to the election on TV ads targeting the fact that Harris approved transgender care for prison inmates in California, claiming she would do it nationwide if elected. $100M spent demonizing a tiny group, and lying about how much of a problem it is. The policies Harris supported have been in place since 2016. AFAICT, only two inmates have received such care in CA.

If you're stating opinion only, please use phrases like, "I think..." to let us know. The post in question was full of assertions about what Democrats did, that Harris should have stumped in rural areas (she did), and that you somehow knew what the Democrats were thinking and what they underestimated, all without any examples to support the stance. You even claimed, "Those that changed camps this election cycle were those bothered by the direction and economy of the country", again without citing a source for your beliefs.

Reasonable, and this is actually the current process, from what I've read. And here we go, positing that these decisions are made as "blind assumptions", totally negating the admission that case-by-case diagnoses are needed. Make your argument sound reasonable, then accuse the other side of blind assumptions and ridicule the whole process. Lots of hate, lots of misunderstanding, lots of butthurt about people actually trying to be happy in life.

Kiss the ring, get an armband, keep your guns? It's what Putin and Orban did. Otherwise, you need a full psychiatric evaluation to be licensed in Russia. Kim Jong Un might let some folks hunt (the East Germans used to have government supervised "hunts" for certain agricultural collectives), but as far as I've heard, he doesn't allow guns for protection except in military hands.

I don't think there can be a balance. You need a weapon to hunt or for target shooting, that's the "sporting" argument. Arguing to have weapons to defend yourself from other citizens or even your own government throws off any balance you might have had. There's no balance when both the police and the citizens are armed. I am curious about how easily the MAGA crowd will give up their guns when TFG asks for them (they've given him everything else he's asked for). You can't be an authoritarian leader with an armed citizenry. All his heroes heavily restrict who can have a gun in their respective countries. Eventually he's going to tell his worshippers that the enemy within might steal their guns and use them on innocents, and it's best if he confiscates them before that happens. He really just wants to protect you, whether you like it or not.

The GOP changed rapidly when TFG and QAnon took the party over. Republicans that had both experience in legislation and some honor wrt PoC and women were shoved to the background. The ones that remain are the scum of the Earth, and I have no doubt they are practicing all the horrible atrocities they claim the liberals are up to. I truly hope each and every one of them are held accountable for the damage they've inflicted on humans in the US. The GOP is looking for more slaves and trad wives, and unless wiser heads can prevail, they're all traitors to the democracy the rest of us are trying to maintain.

Sorry, but I do. Mathematics uses proofs, and philosophy uses logical proofs, but science uses theory. Theory is the strongest explanation science has, and its strength lies in the fact that explanations can be updated with new evidence as it becomes known, or dropped completely if shown to be false (like phlogiston theory). If you have an "answer" to something, or believe you've "proved" something is "true", you stop looking any further. With theory, you're constantly checking, experimenting, testing, predicting, and strengthening your explanation for a phenomenon, all while trying to remove as much subjective bias as possible. I don't see this as an ignorance issue, but one of definition. I don't need gods to explain anything I experience in this life, and as long as they remain unobservable I can treat them like any supernatural belief. I don't need to view them as impossible in order to deal with them as somehow outside of what we observe in nature. More reasonable is exactly what I'm shooting for. I think it's more reasonable to say "The current absence of evidence makes me skeptical, but I'm always open to listening if you find some" than to say "The absence of evidence proves there are no gods". Nothing prevents you from believing gods don't exist, but I think it's unreasonable to say evidence for gods can't exist. Perhaps I'm just sensitive to being called "hidebound" and "dismissive" when talking about religion.

I voted against having my society tell us how many children it needed us to have. In fact, JD Vance can go have sex with a couch and I still don't think society should require him to have children by it.