I thought Lyman was Jon’s roommate

What does it depend on?

What’s the remedy when anyone steals anything?

That’s a tough one … I think I’ll go with they’re all culpable.

I think the people cutting down 150 year old tress are pretty clearly the ones to blame for cutting down 150 year old trees.

The very last line stuck out to me:

Markou, the grower, said of the tree-cutting. “You kill your own history here.”

As a general rule I try to never hope someone dies. Harris is very intelligent and very capable but she has zero charisma and like it or not charisma is important. Reagan had it, Clinton has it, Obama has it, Trump has it, and I think Biden used to have some of it too. Harris doesn’t have any and that’ll make getting elected hard. I know a lot of black folk, almost university men, who don’t like her because of her record as a prosecutor. I honestly think it would be very hard for her to win a national election. I think her best chance would be a scenario like you described where she would have time to show Americans how intelligent and capable she truly is.

You’re absolutely right that the stakes are incredibly high. I could be naive but I like to think of myself as cautiously optimistic. I do not like Mike Pence. I’d never vote for him. But I’m incredibly happy that he didn’t play along with the insurrectionists’ playbook. He could have. I’m proud that there are at least some prosecutions for submitting false electors. I’d like to see more.

I work with people who tell me that their 401k was better under Trump and that’s why they want Trump back. Some of them voted for Hilary and Biden. That makes me nervous.

I told someone else that if Biden dropped dead on November 4th I’d still vote for him on November 5th.

Downvotes don’t bother me. I’m happy to have a discussion with pretty much anyone about pretty much anything. A lot of people here skew young and liberal or leftist but some are making very interesting points. Some are making less interesting points.

What I’ve been thinking about is could this ever turn into a tit for tat escalation of violence or not. Does anyone here have any faith in institutional checks or do they see themselves as the only check on domestic extremism.

This is going to be a really telling election I think. Are there any moderate Republican voters who are getting fed up with the current Republican party or are they Republicans-to-the-end?

It is a bad time right now but the 60s were a bad time and we made it through. I like to hope this is temporary.

Steve Scalise was shot by someone who protested at Occupy Wall Street and volunteered for Bernie Sanders (source). I’m not blaming Bernie or Occupy but it isn’t fair to say 100% of political violence is on the right. There’s at least some on both sides.

Edit - feel free to downvote this opinion but all I ask is you make an argument. Why are you downvoting? Let’s have a constructive conversation.

I’m so happy that all the declawing fervor might be over.