I’m really sick and tired of head-in-the-sand liberals pushing us over the cliff to fascism and then having the utter fucking gall to try to gaslight us that it’s our fault, not theirs.

they’re hardly mass appeal popular.

100% propaganda pushed by the capitalist (and therefore anti-populist) mass media.

And for those who are still confused: Bernie and Trump are both populists, but Trump is also a demagogue and that’s what’s a bad thing.

No, this is concrete. Gold would’ve been even heavier.

Putin and the Saudis

So what you’re saying is, RandomStickman’s “[Trump is] backed by literally the richest man on Earth” claim is true after all.

Democrats can’t conceive of adapting to the fact that the norms and process are broken because process is all they have.

Frankly, it’s yet another reason the Democratic Party has proven to be unsalvageable.

I’m both used CAD software professionally to do engineering and developed CAD software professionally, and TBH I, too, find FreeCAD difficult to use.

(I haven’t tried the latest versions that are supposed to be better yet, though.)

The lesson of RBG is that people in their 80s with cancer don’t have great life expectancy.

That lesson does not apply to Sotomayor, who is 70 and (AFAIK) healthy.

For the working class it was high inflation [i.e. their declining standard of living]

For the suburban voters it was the felt sense that we have porous borders and that our tax dollars were being used to support non-citizen [i.e. not getting enough support themselves and feeling the injustice of it]

These are just different misinterpretations of the same underlying problem. What both groups are experiencing is a feeling of economic instability and being left behind while the rich get richer. But Americans have been so heavily propagandized to for decades that we don’t have the political vocabulary to describe the real solution (at least not without using swear words like “s*****ism”), so we grope for some related issue to provide framing. And, of course, very often what we find is some scapegoat the ruling class’ propaganda has ‘helpfully’ provided to us in order to deflect their blame.

When people lose hope in a system the person who promises to break it down wins. Does not matter that it’s a charlatan or a champion.

I’d like to think people would actively prefer a champion to a charlatan, but when the Democratic Party abjectly refuses to offer a champion and says “fuck you” to anybody who tries, well, a charlatan is the only other option.

My hot take:

The Air Force wanted the cleanup to happen, but they just wanted it to come out of somebody else’s budget. But since the EPA is about to not exist anymore (fuck, I can’t believe I’m saying that) they’ve got no choice but to step up themselves if they want it done.

Libertarian: literally every ideology on the bottom half of the Political Compass, by definition.

That’s really interesting!

We’ve been overdue for a revolution at least in copyright law for a long time now.

Although liberalism and libertarianism share some important characteristics (strong emphasis on equality before the law and civil rights), they’re not the same thing.

Notably, libertarianism can be left-wing in a way that liberalism cannot (e.g. anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-communism, green politics, etc.). Some left-libertarians even reject the concept of private property entirely.

Liberalism doesn’t completely overlap with right libertarianism, either. Liberals are more willing to accept some authoritarian ideas, such as e.g. having a military to protect trade.

One thing I think is telling is how corporate law firms, accounting firms, consulting firms, financial firms etc. will happily provide their services advising shareholder corporations on how to operate, but are themselves organized as partnerships.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics:

Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy as a whole or certain social hierarchies.

…

In modern politics, the term Left typically applies to ideologies and movements to the left of classical liberalism, supporting some degree of democracy in the economic sphere. Today, ideologies such as social liberalism and social democracy are considered to be centre-left, while the Left is typically reserved for movements more critical of capitalism, including the labour movement, socialism, anarchism, communism, Marxism and syndicalism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

Liberalism is a political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law. Liberals espouse various and often mutually warring views depending on their understanding of these principles but generally support private property, market economies, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), liberal democracy, secularism, rule of law, economic and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion.

(Emphasis added)

Basically, liberals care more about equality of opportunity, while leftists care more about equality of outcome. (And, of course, conservatives actively oppose equality and promote hierarchy.)

On a “political compass,” leftism is the left half (obviously). Liberalism is a fuzzy blob centered somewhere below and right of center, but big enough to extend at least a little ways into the other quadrants because of how many different kinds of “liberalism” there are.

How do you interpret all that if not that the 2nd amendment exists to overthrow/incite war with a tyrranical government?

It does exist to do that. To make it possible. But you kept arguing that it existed to make it “a legally protected right,” which is a different thing.

How many times do I have to explain to you that “possible” and “legal” are not equivalent before you finally get it?

He never said anything like that. You’re reading your own interpretation into it and then objecting to that.