You used to hear people in other countries say they have nothing against the American people, they just hate the American government.

The reality is, the American government is the American people. The enormous effort that goes into gerrymandering and screwing with voter registration just goes to show that it is still a democracy, and the pieces of shit running things are the pieces of shit we picked.

Even with all the gerrymandering and rigging that goes on, they still needed a metric shit ton of fuckwits to vote for them. If Americans weren’t astoundingly stupid, we wouldn’t be in the situation we’re in.

However, don’t everyone go patting yourselves on the back just yet. Stupid isn’t limited to America.

Ironically, that’s the only way his death would get a modicum of sympathy from most of the country.

I don’t think there’s really any chance, but I’ve reached the point where I want things to get so bad that we actually elect enough progressive politicians to actually fix what’s wrong.

I truly believe in democracy, even though it has been fucking up lately. I think having a bloodless revolution every 2-4 years via elections is infinitely superior to having to actually build guillotines. At the same time I also think there’s a point where interfering with the process for bloodless revolutions makes bloody revolutions inevitable.

The current administration is both homicidally incompetent, and completely out of touch, so there’s a chance that the pressure will keep increasing until a fault forms and the ensuing catastrophe shakes the electorate out of their current stupidity enough to elect progressive people who will actually run the country for the people.

The alternative is the slow sleepwalk into slavery that we’ve been doing for decades.

The effort to gerrymander the shit out of everything is actually a positive sign: it shows that even the sociopaths running things understand that elections still matter. If elections still matter, the people are still in control.

Unfortunately, most of the people are mouth-breathing morons.

I wish more countries’ leaders would do this.

It’s the lack of a soul.

What is a COVID vote?

I don’t spend a lot of time dealing with churches. I certainly don’t believe in any of what they say anymore. However, I have gone to some weddings.

When my youngest cousin was getting married, we arrived at church and were greeting family that we hadn’t seen in years.

The priest yelled at us because we weren’t behaving in a way he felt was respectful (hugging, laughing, experiencing joy). I don’t know what he learned about Christ, but the Jesus I was taught about would have laughed in his face.

When my wife’s brother was getting married, the priest lectured the entire wedding party at the rehearsal about his belief that children shouldn’t be at weddings. As the parents of the ring bearer, my wife and I felt a bit attacked. However, I just assume he didn’t want to be too close to temptation.

Freeciv

If it was any other country but the US, we’d already be facing sanctions at least.

Everyone else is already complicit.

They shouldn’t, but they can.

It’s a really bad idea for them to do so.

It seems so strange to me that you’re focused on straps and ignoring the heels. There’s nothing about either of those shoes that make any sense.

Can’t she just fuck off already?

The administration has had a similar impact on most of the country.

Yeah, it was a bullshit analogy.

Just like yours.

I thought that’s what we were doing.

Taiwan is a representative democracy now, not a dictatorship.

I think a slightly better analogy, if you’re serious, would be the relationship of the U.S. and Cuba (to make you feel better, I’ll go along with your propaganda and pretend that the U.S. is the only bad guy in the world).

So, China and Taiwan are like if the U.S. tried to control Cuba and failed, and then some other country from the other side of the world (just for example, let’s suggest it was Russia), stepped in to prop up and protect Cuba.

So, can you see how maybe what would be best for everyone is that the Cubans should get to decide on their own how they are governed? Much like the people of Taiwan, through their representative democracy, should be able to tell China to piss off already.

I disagree.

A broken pencil can be sharpened.

Disappointing.

I would expect a sign in a library to say, “No fellatio in the library.”

That’s funny. I’m 55 and the reason I’m pro-palestine is the American doctors working there who reported that they worked on babies that were intentionally shot.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/859/chaos-graph

Out of the 53 American medical workers surveyed who did emergency care for children in Gaza, 44 said they saw kids shot in the head or chest. Here’s Mark.

Mark Perlmutter

83% said they saw a child who was shot in the chest or head-- 83%. So it’s not just my finding.

Ike Sriskandarajah

Could you describe that moment when you saw just how many?

Mark Perlmutter

Oh, I cried. Yeah, because it gave a number to the tragedy.

Ike Sriskandarajah

Feroze published an op ed in the New York Times with the results of the survey. A group of the doctors wrote two letters to then President Biden outlining what they saw. Feroze thought that would mean two things-- they’d get a call from the White House and there’d be an investigation.

Which is, of course, the reason there could be no survivors.

Technically, I’m past the point of needing it. It’s more just to support a company that isn’t total shit.