(White) Americans of the center and left have long since lost the conviction that you may just need to bleed for your children’s freedom. It’ll come back, hopefully not too late.
The thing is, to most white Americans, their childrens' freedom isn't at stake. The majority of white voters have always supported Trump, and probably support ICE, whereas most of the rest simply don't don't consider it their problem.
And unfortunately that probably won't change until ICE kills more of them and makes it their problem.
You are right that America isn’t going to fix this problem until Trump supporters feel the pain. It is coming, but I’m afraid of what we will have to go through to get there.
This is awful in many ways. Among other things what really gets my goat is that Xbox something or other ads can have cartoony sexuality, violence, and so on. Those things don’t bother me, but there are plenty of elderly, conservative, religious, etc. people who would be taken aback by it.
There’s plenty of that content in our media, but those people don’t consume that media. A computer is a critical general purpose tool. Everyone needs it. This is like putting scantily clad elves on every refrigerator.
Probably a Samsung, the company that replaced door handles with a microphone for "open fridge" voice command, and advertises to you based on the contents of your fridge.
I live in Berlin but grew up in the US. Yep, Germany has much more train coverage than where I'm from originally. And that's great. But to understand the complaints you really have to spend some years living with the uncertainty created by the DB.
It depends which route you take, but for a wide swath of the German population, your chance of an absolutely wretched experience seems to be around 1 in 4. That means that people are constantly weighing the desire for affordable, sustainable, comfortable transport that may go horribly wrong, against the (similarly unpredictable) endemic traffic jams and exhaustion of driving, and often choosing wrong. If you have no car, you're weighing more reliable but slow and uncomfortable and traffic-jam-prone buses, or simply avoiding the travel. Constantly making decisions on penalty of deeply unpleasant consequences without any way to actually reasonably judge your decision is a special form of miserable.
At least in the US, most of the time, there is no decision to make: you drive.
I like reframing New Year’s resolutions in a more humane way.
It’s an arbitrary day on the calendar, yes.
I want to grow as a person, in terms of character and ability. My desire to evolve is a product of curiosity and vitality and ethics, not some capitalist mania for MORE.
Putting a random day on the calendar where I tell myself that I’m at an inflection point, that I’ve decided to bend my path, it’s useful. There are religious holidays where you atone, forgive, and so on. Those are also just days on a calendar. But they serve a purpose.
Which is all well and good, and if it works for you, I’m genuinely glad. But we know that’s not the case for most people. We know most set an unrealistic goal in the New Year which is never achieved (if it even lasts a month) then feel worse.
I’m suggesting that those who identify should cut themselves some slack and not feel pressured to have something planned to do in the New Year. Do it calmly. Don’t get hyper specific.
For example, instead of saying (in December) “I know nothing about plants, and in 2026 I’ll grow a giant sequoia”, one day during the year you may be walking around, see a book on home gardening with some seeds attached and decide to buy it to finally start to learn about plants.
Your description of Elmo applies to several other billionaires who have somehow avoided quixotic hyper-destructive rampages through American politics. I’m all for wired funny, but not when it comes with this much carnage.
I'm not sure who the whole 'Elmo' thing is for -- more than anything I cringe at the person saying it, rather than thinking less of Elon or whatever the hope is. Like 'drumpf', or the whole small hands thing, it just comes across like a redditism that escaped confinement.
Is the hope that Elon or fans of his read it and get offended? I doubt they care much, and I fail to see the point of it.
I use it to indicate my derision, and that I refuse to take this person seriously. That's the point. How the reader reacts is beside the point, to me.
Diminishing names used for delegitimization are not something reddit invented. Calling George W. Bush "dubya", Barack Obama "barry", or Richard Nixon "look it up" are all great examples of a time-honored tradition.
Most people don’t even know what regulatory capture really means. There’s no “brand” to rally around and I don’t know how you’d go about building one.
And without the concept spread through the population, where would you find the grass roots support you’d need for resisting the avalanche of interest-group pushback?
“Draining the swamp” or “revolving door” were sorta in the neighborhood, but still ineffective and counterproductive.
You’d expect the “unreasonable man” of Europe to be behind but stable and decent, whereas these days much of Europe can’t maintain living standards or political stability.
There’s also an argument to be made that China is putting in a very solid performance in a very reasonable manner. See: methodical capture of global EV+energy markets, soft power expansion into the global south, cold-eyed deflation of financial bubbles, 5 year plans, and so on. At this rate, I’m not sure that the freedom and unreason loving “man” that is the US will be able to compete either.
> whereas these days much of Europe can’t maintain living standards or political stability
Those are the side effects of Europe trying to offset its fertility rate with immigration, yet failing to explicitly address the enculturation tension.
It's remarkably how people so smart in one area (demographic issues and solutions) can flounder so badly in another (addressing cultural friction with immigrants).
Especially considering history has "a few" examples of exactly this same thing, although possibly Americans have more experience in modernity.
The cultural friction is not a real issue except for the extreme right. The real issues are the same as everywhere: standard of living is going down for younger people while wealth is being concentrated in fewer individuals. Those wealthy individuals are the ones who benefit from promoting this immigration/cultural friction theory.
It is a real issue, because it's human nature. Groups don't like outsiders.
Pretending that isn't human nature is why anti-immigrant parties keep attracting surprising support in elections.
And that tension shouldn't be swept under the rug and ignored via the 'it's just the far right' excuse.
It's a thing. It needs to be addressed. Which doesn't necessarily mean implementing anti-immigrant policies, but does at least mean some form of address (e.g. government support for enculturation, advertising benefits of immigration, etc).
Rocket Lab is also taking a more methodical and less iterative approach with Neutron, which should be ready some time next year. If they make that work well, that will be another point in favor of a methodical approach.
reply