To fit with the grim dark setting, the greater good may or may not be foisted upon the Tau masses by a ruling caste through some sort of mind control. The utilitarian space communists might be unknowing slaves, dedicated not to an actual greater good but the ruler’s good. And if that is true, that ruling caste may or may not be actually perfectly benevolent truly working for the greater good, having raised the Tau from warring tribes into enlightened space communists. Can’t have nice things in the 41st millinium, gets in the way of all that “only war” you know.

I wish I had a party that even paid lip service to representing my political leanings, but left-libertarians apparently don’t exist in the US. I voted for my district’s Democrat as that was the closest I was going to get this time around, but even that was a protest vote as I am in a conservative bastion. Even if the Democrat party is wrested away from the corporatists, it will be temporary and the problem will repeat

We need to pass graduated voting nation-wide so we can get some viable alternative parties in here. I would love to have viable candidates ranging the gamut from conservative to communist, as that promotes a healthy political ecosystem instead of the current monoculture two party system. Makes a blight like the Christian nationalists or the Trump cult or the “leftist” oligarchs capable of infecting large swaths of the system.

Honestly? I won’t hold my breath, because the only thing that gets unanimous bipartisan support is congressional raises. I doubt we will see any of my suggestions or any campaign finance reform in my lifetime. We can’t even get a majority of elected Democrats to agree that insider trading by Congress should be illegal.

Realistically it’s probably a lost cause, but I will vote for, and campaign for, anyone running with that on their platform. Not supporting ranked choice voting is one of the many, many reasons I voted Democrat and not for my district’s Republican candidate, but that was a substantial issue I looked for in every candidate on my ballot.

Strict campaign finance laws, where all political donations go to a bipartisan elections department and then are split equally between all candidates in graduated stages from the primaries through until the general election. No contributions to candidates directly, no PACs or Super PACs (they can exist but fund everyone equally), no ads paid for outside the provided war chest. Any dark money found results in IRS forensic audits and criminal penalties for the campaigns.

If you want more money for your “side”, you get it at roughly 50% of what you put in. The “other side” gets the other half. Should still drive donations, including mega-doners, because their candidate still gets more money for ads and campaigning. This also allows 3rd party candidates to compete equally at all stages. If we can get graduated polling too this should spur a further plurality of viable candidates.

Political commentary from news and independent “journalism” on places like YouTube would still be covered under free speech, but audits are allowed to look into them being dark money ads with the above consequences for the campaigns.

Foreign ads are what they are unfortunately, but the IRS is good at finding US money laundering through offshore institutions. Make sending money to foreign assets to be spent circumventing these laws especially steep. A few campaign managers and money managers getting 20-life or going to Gitmo for laundering campaign money through Russian agents should help curb some shenanigans.

Yes. All money needs to be removed from politics with the same amount given to all candidates to run with and dark money investigated and prosecuted. Politicians shouldn’t be NASCAR teams, and lobbying should be called what it actually is.

Very true, because the ongoing border crisis currently works in their favor. We will see if they devote the departmental infrastructure to immigration under the Republican run government to improve the situation and “prove” that they are the correct handlers for the border, but I’m not holding my breath. I am also getting down voted to hell for saying that the solution is probably going to be more complicated than just making everyone legal in a blanket amnesty without also/first tackling the broken legal immigration system to prevent making the situation worse, so I’m not sure how popular investing in fixing the judicial system and immigration offices are on either side.

You call me a cuck, a dogmatic oligarchist, and a religious zealot, sprinkle in implications I’m too stupid to wrap my brain around the enlightened truth, and then call me a martyr with a victim complex for taking offense to you painting me as a bootlicking braindead conservative. Piss off back to lemmygrad, tankie troll.

Saying that we need low paid immigrants to harvest our fields and orchards to keep food prices low, while demanding that the US high school and college students serving that same food at McDonalds deserve $15 or $20 an hour is a hypocrisy, and the people working the fields deserve a living wage as much as the fast food worker. You are garbage if you think otherwise. Price gouging has nothing to do with importation of cheap labor, and you are deflecting the conversation with the best of them.

On the subject of price gouging though, since you are so keen, the 15 companies the control all consumer goods, along with the grocery monopolies need to be broken up like Bell or Standard Oil, and be forced to actually compete in a free market. Collusion laws need to be enforced and fines need to be punitive enough they aren’t a cost of doing business.

Companies need to be fined the same way when found not using e-verify and exploiting illegal immigrants for manual labor in construction, meat processing, etc. Companies don’t get to break the rules and just roll it into the budget.

Acting like the importation of an undocumented underclass that can be threatened with deportation if they step out of line doesn’t depress wages in the industries they are being used in a asinine. Next you are going to say that outsourcing manufacturing from the US to China, and now from China to Africa and SE Asia doesn’t drive down the prices for those goods because the labor is cheaper and has less regulations.

People crossing the border using smugglers to then claim asylum when caught is an exploitation of our legal immigration process, and they do it because it works. Legal immigration needs to be reformed, no shit, but the way to do that isn’t to overwhelm it to the point of failure and then rebuild something from the pieces. This equivalency of illegal and legal immigration is one of the reasons why the Democrats lost to a piece of shit like Trump, treating the Hispanic vote like they are illegals. The worst part of the Republican party is the elected part, again no shit. Like holding your nose and voting for the lesser evil is exclusively for the left, and every Republican whole heartedly personally endorses everything on the Trumpublican platform.

Let’s see if calling anyone you disagree with a cuck helps the Democrats win more elections, because calling them a basket of deplorables worked so well in 2016. I’ll continue to vote for whomever best aligns with my own center-left ideology, and I’ll keep talking to the conservatives in my personal bubble like human beings to try and bring them around to some of the progressive ideas

I would really like to know where you get me being an extremist dogmatist, not questioning of private enterprise, and religious of all things? This is why I didn’t want to attempt to discuss anything with you, because you are putting words into my mouth, assigning me values you think I hold, and accusing me of being upset about people disagreeing with me.

I want immigration reform, socialized medicine, UBI, free education, free child care, free student meals, and am an atheist who wants all religion as far from government as possible (supporting the Satanists doing the same shit Christians do to shine a light on that bullshit). I also enjoy political discourse because I don’t think just slapping an Enemy label on those I don’t seem to agree with won’t do anything except create further balkanization. But please, let me continue to be your boogie man because I don’t support open borders and said not all conservatives are slavering Nazis.

The immigration system needs a major overhaul, it should not take years or decades, and we should have expanded guest and migrant worker programs for agriculture and other seasonal jobs. A solution is needed for the current illegal immigrants as well, but prior blanket amnesty legalization has not lowered illegal immigration. The question is if giving those who came in illegally a legal status to pay taxes and work while getting a pathway to citizenship will result in more people following that route instead of the legal pathways because it is faster/easier. Processing millions of applications takes time and manpower, and will require a robust department to deal with that.

Yes, there is a lot of FUD, and no, they are not the enemy and shouldn’t be treated as such. There are also those who do call for fully open borders and free travel for all, but it would be ludicrous to assign all Democrat voters with this anarchist, one world nation brush. Those who cross the border outside of a crossing and aren’t caught by border patrol aren’t being screened, and while this is honestly not a huge amount in comparison, it that allows the FUD to be driven even more successfully.

Everyone is just people, even if plenty of people don’t seem to believe it or act like it unfortunately. You are correct that much of it is fear mongering, and there is a shit load of propaganda that uses this. There is also a thriving industry of “businesses” taking advantage of illegal immigrants to pay less than minimum wage and break every other labor law and OSHA guideline through the threat of deportation. The most effective lies have a kernel of truth in them. Everyone else also isn’t as laze fair about competition for employment, and I can’t personally fault them for that.

The best was to combat this is not to claim it’s all fake news and tell people who are concerned about it that their internal motivations aren’t what they think they are and instead it’s because they are racists. Education doesn’t work if you berate people, because defensive people aren’t receptive to it.

I would ordinarily love to discuss several of your points as you seemed to request, chiefly surrounding legal immigration, asylum, labor pools, and the painting of all “conservatives” as a monolithic bloc that all personally believe what the worst parts of the Republican party espouse, but I can tell by the vitriol, name calling, and disparaging assignment of who you decided I am for pointing out my own observations of others motivations that this will be pointless. I hope you have a better day going forward.

This can be flipped just as easily. I am noticing that you seem to be viewing the existence of borders in an inherently hostile viewpoint. Do you believe that this country, or any country, could survive if they let anyone and everyone on earth that wanted to come for any reason at any time and without any limits, into the country? Could Canada survive in its current state if 100 million Americans suddenly moved there? Could Tibet or Ukraine survive if millions of Chinese or Russian citizens moved there?

You appear to be implying that nations and national identity is inherently bigoted, which is exactly the thought process in some corners of the leftist world. Anarchy and destruction of existing society is the first step of many policies there.

As someone who has a lot of contact with the right, the conflating of illegal immigration with our past and present as a nation of immigrants is the point of the wedge and why this is so effective. Many conservatives I know are fully in support of legal immigration, and even expanding legal immigration as long as it is not done at the expense of existing Americans like with H1B slaves many tech companies want to import.

The left then paints them as racist for it, saying it is xenophobia and not support for rule of law and protections for vulnerable Americans. Many grew up taking a job cleaning bus station toilets and other jobs to make ends meet or get back on their feet that the left now says “Americans don’t want”, proving no actual jobs are lost. They, rightly or wrongly, see this as the lowest skilled Americans having jobs stolen from them, and see “Americans don’t want these jobs” as “Americans don’t want these jobs for that pay” pushing wages down using illegal immigrant labor.

The left enjoys telling business that if they can’t afford to pay a living wage for their lowest paid jobs then they don’t deserve to be in business, while at the same time decrying the cost increases to food and janitorial if those industries had to pay non-migrant workers enough to do those jobs. It is an easily exploitable hypocrisy that even allowed Brexit to happen.

It allows the Fox News crowd to be swindled more easily, and it allows actual racists to get away with more because the conservative masses can’t hear the dog whistles, which is the point of dog whistles.

Incredible to see a Generals reference in the wild, it was such an interesting entry in C&C.

I 100% agree with the sentiment, but you can’t really compare not following religious rituals and what the religious consider murder. The existence of injustice is enough to mean something to someone. That’s how empathy works.

People get up in arms over the death penalty, and I don’t think it’s right to tell them that if they don’t like it, just don’t commit a capital crime or pay attention to scheduled executions.

The same for both Ukraine and Israel/Palestine, people are demonstrating and attempting to bring their beliefs to the government. The people who have true conversations about abortion see these as equivalent.

I don’t think they are blaming their religion for their voting in so much as outlining that their convictions that are informed by/in line with their religion (life begins at conception) makes abortion their largest single issue. Those of honest conviction see abortion as murder, and specifically murder of a baby, and that trumps the rest of the ticket. There are plenty of grifters and hypocrites on that side too, but I would hazard that the “silent majority” on the right are the sincere convictions type.

Can you really choose what you believe, though? Could you make yourself stop believing in gravity or anything else you truly believe in? Could you make yourself believe in flat earth if someone told you too? The mind isn’t something so malleable that you get to pick and choose your beliefs like a salad bar. Religious beliefs are one of the hardest to change, with even those leaving organized religion ending up frequently still believing in a God of some kind.

I grew up in a religious household but open minded and science oriented, so I deconverted and consider myself an atheist. I whole heartedly agree that the world would be a better place without religion, it’s the world’s greatest con job, but let’s not kid ourselves about the spectrum of the word choice here. It’s a (lesser) reverse of the religious telling anyone that isn’t heteronormative in any way that those are choices. It’s all brain chemistry occurring in a black box that we know vanishingly little about for how much we have studied it.

That is true of everything that isn’t barred by the fundamentals of physics, and disingenuous and you know it.

You can murder people, you can enslave others, Hindus can slaughter and eat cows, etc, you just don’t want to because it’s illegal.

For most religious people the tenents of their faith are core to their being and not something they just kinda like. Otherwise they tend to deconstruct from their religion after the inertia runs out. That’s why religion in the West is on a downward trajectory outside of Islam which is driven by immigration.

I fully support reproductive rights as much as the next guy, but let’s not pretend that the person outlined above single issue voting against abortion isn’t looking at the other side as otherwise great but you have to accept a few sanctioned murders. You would probably be single issue voting if we had a modern Aztec government that was close to a utopia but practiced human sacrifices to Quetzalcoatl because it maintains prosperity.

But look at how small and dexterous the children are, able to squeeze and clamber through the tunnels. And look at what they play all day: Minecraft. Clearly the children are best suited, as they yearn for the mines.

Close, but it’s a threat: You’ll Never Walk Again. They are kneecapping people up in here.