I appreciate the depth of your response. You’re right, critiquing Side A doesn’t mean endorsing Side B. It means demanding better from those who claim to represent us. The meme calls out false equivalency, but that shouldn’t silence legitimate concerns about the system itself.

It’s like this: if the house is on fire, I’ll vote to put out the biggest flame, but I’m also going to ask why the fire keeps spreading, and who’s refusing to fix the wiring. Reform isn’t a distraction; it’s how we stop the next blaze before it starts.

Thanks for adding a more nuanced layer to the conversation.

You’re clearly very passionate, so I thought I’d offer you a bit of friendly advice. Not about the content of what you wrote, that’s a whole different conversation, but about how you’re saying it.

What you’ve posted is a textbook example of something called the fallacy of verbosity. That’s when someone overwhelms the reader with so much information, so many accusations, claims, and ideas, rapid-fire and without evidence, that it feels like you’re trying to convince through sheer volume rather than reason. It’s not persuasive. It’s exhausting.

You’re not giving people a chance to digest or respond to a single thought before you’re already three topics down the road. It doesn’t feel like a conversation, it feels like a rant. And that’s likely why you’re getting downvoted. Honestly, I doubt many people are even reading it all the way through. It’s not necessarily that they’re rejecting your worldview (though some might), but the way it’s presented comes across as incoherent, aggressive, and conspiratorial.

To someone who already agrees with you, maybe this kind of intensity resonates. But to anyone outside that bubble, even someone trying to listen with an open mind, it reads like shouting in a crowded room. No paragraph breaks, no sources, no structure… just a flood of unverified claims, many of which sound reckless or even dangerous without context.

If your goal is to actually reach people, to get them thinking, to change minds, you’ve got to meet them where they are. Speak with clarity, not chaos. Choose a point. Back it up. Invite discussion, not submission.

Right now, you’re not inviting anyone in. You’re just pushing people away.

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Seriously, it’s just right-wing exploitative language. And yet, it’s the same left-leaning outlets repeating it again and again.

I wish there were more bold takedowns and real accountability, but it’s all so watered down now. Less like a pile driver and more like a sternly worded memo.

Why would anyone be stupid enough to not honor them? Now, even if they backtrack, their name is mud. It’s so stupid.

Fast food and major chains have gotten absurd. I used a gift card at Red Robin a couple months back. It was $19 before tip for a dry burger and bland fries. Two bucks more could’ve gotten me a seat and meal at a five-star local place just down the street. The value just isn’t there anymore. Eating local almost always tastes better, feels better, and costs the same or less. Why settle for mediocrity when better is right around the corner?

Fast food and major chains have gotten absurd. I used a gift card at Red Robin. It was $19 before tip for a dry burger and bland fries. Two bucks more could’ve gotten me a gourmet meal at a five-star place just down the street. The value just isn’t there anymore. Eating local almost always tastes better, feels better, and costs the same or less. Why settle for mediocrity when better is right around the corner?

That’s lovely. I’m my experience, tea people are special people.

Add it to the list. Might take you a while to find the bottom.

Excellent news! Slava Ukraini!

I highly recommend reading Ezra Klein’s latest book “Abundance” for a look at why the DNC has been losing the working class. It also offers some optimistic ideas for moving forward.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?.. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

I just finished Ezra Klein’s new book and I thought it was great. It illuminates the history that has brought us here and gives some hopeful ideas on how we can fix it. That is, if there is anything left to fix by next year.

Huh. For some reason all I see is *******.

I hear that you’re not anti-immigrant and that your focus is on encouraging higher birthrates among the existing population. That’s a valid position. But I’m still unclear on something: you say “substituting locals for immigrants won’t work”, but what does that mean, practically?

We’re already seeing immigrants and their children working in essential industries, serving in the military, paying taxes, starting businesses, and contributing culturally and economically in every measurable way. In that sense, it is working, not as a perfect system, but as a very real and ongoing contribution to national strength.

So if your point is that we also need pro-natal policies, that’s great, many countries are trying that too. But that doesn’t invalidate immigration as part of the solution. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

If you believe immigration “won’t work,” can you explain specifically what metric or outcome you’re pointing to? Otherwise, it feels like the disagreement isn’t about whether it works, but about whether we’re emotionally comfortable with who is coming in.

You’re right that immigration brings complexity, it always has. But what you’re describing isn’t a reason to reject immigration. It’s a reason to invest in integration, civic education, and community infrastructure, the very things that made past waves of immigration ultimately successful. The challenges Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants posed didn’t prove immigration was a failure, they proved that assimilation is a process, not a plug-and-play switch. And they eventually helped redefine the idea of who counts as “American.” That doesn’t mean there weren’t tensions, but it does mean people changed, adapted, and became part of the whole.

What I hear in your argument is a belief that culture is static, and that outsiders are always permanent outsiders. That’s a dangerously pessimistic view of human beings. It treats people as incapable of growth, and societies as too fragile to absorb change. But that’s not how culture works, not unless you let fear do the steering.

And yes, importing labor from poorer countries can create tension, especially if the host society is structured in a way that stratifies opportunity. But then the issue isn’t immigration, it’s inequality. The problem isn’t that “the poors” look different. It’s that we’re failing to create systems where they can become something else.

Extremist sentiment is rising in Europe not because immigrants are inherently dangerous, but because politicians and media figures are stoking fear and resentment instead of investing in cohesion. We’ve seen this movie before. It never ends well.

It’s not xenophobic to be concerned about cultural change, but it is misguided to assume that culture is a fixed object that only flows in one direction. America, and much of the West, has always been shaped by the beliefs, values, and adaptations of immigrants. People change, adapt, and contribute in complex ways. Immigrants don’t arrive with a USB stick labeled ‘final values.’ They raise kids here. Their kids go to school here. They vote here. And yes, they bring different perspectives, but so did Irish Catholics, Italian immigrants, and Vietnamese refugees. The melting pot doesn’t mean erasure, it means evolution."

Also, beware of confusing correlation with cause: conservative religious values exist in all societies, not just ‘third world’ ones. We’ve got plenty of evangelical pushback on rights from people born and raised here too. If we’re going to have a conversation about values, let’s do it honestly and not use fear of ‘the other’ as a smokescreen for deeper social anxieties.

Immigration isn’t ‘outsourcing childbirth’, it’s investing in the future of our country. People who come here, build lives, and raise families contribute just as much to our communities as anyone born here. Their children are American in every meaningful way. That’s not a loophole, that’s the foundation of our nation. If we start drawing lines around who counts as a ‘real’ solution based on origin, we’re moving away from what has always made America strong.

Forget the serious debate videos—his supporters aren’t watching those, and even if they did, they wouldn’t care. You want to make a dent? You go after the ego.

Picture this: an endless stream of totally “realistic” phone-recorded AI videos of Trump playing golf. He lines up the putt—misses. Tries again—air ball. It’s literally an inch away now—misses again. Doesn’t blink, just traps it in, smirks, walks off like he nailed it. Over and over.

The key is subtlety. These can’t look staged or flashy—make them feel like someone’s nephew filmed it from the cart. Make it look like he’s genuinely terrible but thinks he’s crushing it.

Then blast them everywhere. Flood the algorithm. Turn his “I’m the best at golf” schtick into a punchline.

This is how you use AI to actually take Trump down—with a thousand tiny ego papercuts.

Don’t worry. Trump is gonna remove taxes on tips. That’s like, so much money! /s

Also, it’s a terrible idea.