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Voters in general have a memory of a goldfish. People vote on immediate concerns and issue. To be honest, if Democrats had a stronger backbone to stand up to Israel, this would not have happened.

I was going to say the 90s and 00s before the recession was better, but then I remembered it wasn’t great for the LGBT. Homophobia is casual and mainstream up until recently.

Honestly, I hate iterations of Batman where he is a dick (pun intended). A lot of the times they come out of nowhere like this one. That’s why I prefer the early 1990s Batman: The Animated Series because Bruce is well adjusted, more hopeful and understanding. But in the subsequently revamped The New Batman Adventures animated series, Bruce is gloomy even when he’s not wearing his costume, and he is kind of a dick for no reason, which is completely different from the first series.

People will make parallels with Hitler’s election and of Trump’s, but I never heard anyone say Trump will keep the status quo (i.e. the constitution) to save stocks.

Short on the AI stocks before it crash!

On short term the Nazis may have profited, but on the long term, all the potential talents were killed and brain drain occurred even before the war.

Yup. I have a similar argument before. If one reads more about Hitler and the Nazis, they are actually not different to any of the standard third world dictators like Idi Amin and Muammar Gaddafi. The difference is that the Nazis were only more powerful because they inherited a working institution-- especially the Prussian-based military-- while third world countries had to start from scratch after decolonisation.

The Nazis like other dictators are very inefficient. I am reading Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil”. The book goes through the convoluted bureaucracy and logistics of the Holocaust. Different pen pushers and administrators arguing who should be able to use the trains for their own departmental needs. What struck me the most is that the Nazis wasted so much effort transporting so-called undesirables to concentration camps, when their own soldiers are struggling to get supplies and reinforcements to the frontlines!

More importantly, as you correctly mentioned, Nazi Germany struggled to feed their own people. As a matter of fact, there is strong evidence that Hitler started the war in Europe to stave off the looming economic crisis, which his own economic minister warned him of, thanks to endless government spending particularly with the re-armement. That economic crisis had been warded (temporarily of course) by plundering the resources of their conquered territories.

You got down voted because some folks are either ignorant of wider geopolitics, or of certain inclination and don’t want to hear the inconvenient truth.

I am originally from Philippines which hosted a major US military base. Despite the protests, the Americans did not leave until a major volcanic eruption nearby prompted them to do so in the early 90s. I am anti-imperialists as much as the next guy and the overseas American military presence is an on-the-face sign of imperialism, but the fact of the matter is that many countries literally “free ride” under American protective umbrella. It saves the country money and deter rivals. That being said, in hindsight the Americans should not have left, as China has now started claiming an entire sea region and bullying Filipino and Vietnamese fishermen. China has also literally set up a military base within 200 nautical miles of Philippine exclusive economic zone without permission, which the international court deemed to be illegal.

Many Filipinos changed their tune from “go home Yankees” to “Yankees come back! You should have stayed” because hindsight is 20/20. Right now, American soldiers are dripping back slowly to the Philippines since the Chinese military is still squatting.

Yes, for the general population. Otherwise, companies will stop the psychological pricing. Same with corporate snooping to see our shopping and grocery habits and then send us with targeted ads.

It never works on me. I was taught at a very early age that pricing down by one cent of one dollar is a psychological trick and that I should round up to the nearest whole number.

You should read “Utopia for Realists”. It gave countless examples in history where providing unconditional basic income works. Even as we speak, other countries in the past decades did trial on universal basic income and it worked. In one experiment, twelve homeless folks were given regular unconditional cash grants. Except for one, all cleaned themselves up and are renting an accommodation.

UBI works unquestionably. But how has it not been implemented yet? Aside from the “fuck you, got mine” attitude, as well as I hypothesise that in evolutionary psychology, because energy upkeep is high-demanding, it makes us think not contributing to a group in any capacity is being a dead weight, UBI is still not implemented because many say that property owners will abuse unconditional income by raising rent prices. Instead, many propose universal basic utilities, meaning everyone would get free housing and utilities, but still working to get their own food presumably.

But I do not know about the arguments on UBI and basic utilities because of the emerging and inevitable usurpation of humans by AI on the labour market. The current thinking on both UBI and basic utilities is making presumptions of operating under the current free market framework-- that everyone will still be working in some ways and contributing to society. Sooner or later, with the coming of AI, the current mindset about working as a default behaviour is becoming obsolete and being relegated, in my opinion, as a relic of evolutionary psychology.

All these government benefits programs are ready to deny 100 valid people benefits if it means they stop one instance of fraud.

That’s my criticism of conservatives obsessing and crusading over welfare fraud. Sure, fraud happens, what system is fool proof? But conservatives make it as though it is prevalent when statistics show that it’s not (I don’t know about the US but in UK welfare fraud is statistically not a big of an issue as it is made out to be). I met a guy who is nice and intelligent, and a conservative based from the views he espoused during the conversation, but he obsess over welfare fraud like many conservatives. Just because he personally saw few instances of fraud, he makes it as though it is a pervasive issue.

To be fair, Giorgia Meloni has somehow been acting more moderate than expected.

Some people are just that daft. They change or adopt an entire worldview simply because of one pet peeve they have.

That’s the case in most companies.

I’m down voted because nobody reads and understands my comment, which is fine because we all don’t think the same, and I don’t look for approval. By all means, disapprove! I reject conformity! That being said, part of the loneliness many people experience is because they want to “fit in”. Like I said, who cares what others think! As long as it won’t affect you or others in negative way, why should anyone care how you do, what you do, or what you choose! With the exception of extreme examples (as you mentioned, being lgbt in an oppressive society, although Stoicism has something about countering a tyrannical regime but that requires its own wall of text) most of us live in theoretically a free society and yet we choose to let ourselves be imprisoned by opinion of others. And conversely, we let people who don’t mean to us live rent free in our minds. “Hell is other people” as Albert Camus said.

I don’t equate “content” to “happy”. If you read carefully, I reject “happiness” whatever it means. I define content as being in the medium of accepting what is not in their control and changing when one’s in control. I don’t mean to tell others to “just be happy”, I mean to say “change what you can change”! It is like being on a boat on a river. You can’t change what direction you’re going because the flow of the river’s is fixed, but you can swerve your boat to avoid obstacles. Or if there is a diverging river, you can choose to paddle your boat to that direction if you wish.

I can’t pretend I know what it’s like to be lgbt or neurodivergent, but most therapists will tell anyone regardless of background that you can only change what you can change. You cannot change the past or control the future, but how you react to the present and the present itself is what you can control.

It was brought up in the movie, “Lincoln”, that the “Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection” by Charles Darwin was already published at the height of the US Civil War. Somehow, I disassociate the two events as being on completely different time period.

The media had ingrained us to pursue happiness, and everything will be fine. We will all get “good ending”. But movies never tells us life goes on. Anything and everything could happen-- happy or good. The reality is that the universe is indifferent and it is what it is. From my experience, many people’s unhappiness comes from not accepting the situation as it is, and holding on to their view of what the world should be in spite of what reality presents.

It takes a long time, but learning to know when and where to use emotions is important. This is not a slight to anyone who are feeling down, but in my experience many people also place too much value on certain things that do not matter in the grand scheme of things. Be it status, others’ opinion, material wealth, rejection by a crush, etc. That’s not to say that one should not pursue more earnings and live like a pauper, or “just get over” a crush rejecting you, but you could control how you react to them, not the circumstances controlling you. There are many other potential singles out there you could ask out. It’s perfectly fine to buy an expensive item if it makes you happy, but what good is a $300 vase for showing off if you have nothing left to buy food? And if that vase breaks, why be upset over a broken vase which does not fulfill any basic necessities to survive? And if you did something embarrassing in front a stranger in a park, why mind the opinion of a person whom you will most likely never meet again? We all stress needlessly and that is a challenge we all have to overcome.

I never actually understood why the need to pursue constant happiness. It is as fleeting as sadness. The trick is to be content. Manage what is within your control and let go of what isn’t in your control.