I think you are right that we mostly agree. Thank you for engaging.

Systemic problems require no malice.

Fair, calling you a cynic is bad faith. I don’t think pessimism is unwarranted. We have a lot of reasons to be pessimistic.

I just think that when things happen, it’s usually optimists getting them done. We need the optimists.

Controller by nothing and accountable to no one is a weird definition of controlled.

Hard disagree on your last paragraph. Cynicism serves them far better than starry eyed optimism.

Naive optimists have something to lose. Cynics don’t register on political calculus.

If you believe the US is a uniparty, that’s fine by them. Whether you are correct or not doesn’t matter. You don’t matter. You weren’t voting or donating or volunteering anyway.

Japan has been run by the same party since the second world war, with a single brief change of power in the 2010s.

Japan has a ruling party and an opposition.

That is legitimately the message they take when they lose elections. Clearly, America is a conservative country.

Yes, but if they signal that they don’t Identify as such I would stop for them.

*had a bad tattoo, he had it covered.

The majority population falls into progressively more desperate poverty. Work hours are extended for less and less personal gain and greater risk of injury, disease, and disability. Recreation, autonomy, and actualization become ever more out of reach.

Republicans: not even once.

I wasn’t born, but a world in which Carter won re-election instead of Reagan or Humphrey defeated Nixon would have been… So much better.

Even Eisenhower, best of a bad lot, did nothing to stop the red scare and instead used it as an opportunity to remove homosexuals and leftists from the civil service.

Not even once.

My pets have always used generic drugs.

Edit-they cost less than the same amount of human drugs too.

We just need to end the filibuster.

Americans need to feel the consequences of their votes and stop relying on gridlock to save them.

Until the US military gets fried and the dollar collapses the rest of the world will care.

That day may not be far off, but it not here yet.

Edit- sinking the navy would do it.

Ranked choice can be done state by state. Alaska, maine, and New York City elections are ranked choice.

The electoral college can be nullified by state by state adoption of the popular vote compact.

That’s only a few states short but all the blue states have signed on, so it needs support from red states which is a much heavier lift.

They will be fucked for exactly 2 election cycles. 2026 and 2028. 2030 will be a red wave year. Calling it now.

Voters have memories worse than goldfish. Dems will be a shoe for the white house in 28 but will be lucky to hold it in 32 unless something historically tragic in the scale 9-11 or COVID happens in 31.

Scuba rhyming with bubba is peak.

Philip is the English spelling of the name.

I assume Houston Street is named after a man that pronounced his name House-ton. Houston the city was named for Sam Houston, the first President of the Republic of Texas. He pronounced it Hews-ton, so that’s what we call it.

Pretty sure she is socialist in the “when the government does things” sense, not the “will end capitalism” sense.