There’s a relevant and oft’ cited Churchill quote to the effect that while democracy isn’t great, it’s better than any other governing system we know of.
In other words, leave us not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
As for why democracy is the best system, it’s simple; in theory democracy gives everyone a stake in governance. While it rarely if ever works out that way, Churchill was correct that it’s better than any other system we know of.
I’m not attacking you personally. Personally, I wish you nothing but the best.
What I’m attacking is the phony mythology that has thousands of fatbodies imagining that being heavily armed is somehow a valid and necessary counter to the possibility of government overreach.
It’s an objectively absurd and laughable proposition.
My dad served with the 4th ID in Vietnam, my grandfather fought from Guadalcanal to Okinawa where his war ended, and then he went on to fight in Korea and survived the clusterfuck that was the Chosin Reservoir.
My point is only that such men still exist in the US armed forces, and there is no universe in which “Fatbody Joe McGee” and his airsoft buddies stand a chance against them, no matter how heavily armed they think they are.
What’s funny is you getting defensive about it. Sounds like you might have a fitness issue yourself.
I’m not saying that you necessarily are a “disgusting fatbody,” (to quote Gny. Sgt. Hartman,) but if you were, that’s exactly how you would react to the fact that every competent military on the planet demands high levels of physical fitness of their combat troops.
It’s just a fact, my dude; you don’t last long in real combat if you’re heaving and gassed within the first 15 minutes.
That’s only one relatively minor factor among many. Anyone who points to it without also mentioning the much more significant impacts of things like global supply chain disruptions and the war in Ukraine is either ignorant, or is trying to spin a particular narrative while being intellectually dishonest about their priors.
Especially since those guys are pretty much all lard-asses. There’s a reason why every competent military on the planet emphasizes physical fitness before anything else; it’s because real combat --as opposed to playing paintball with your fatbody friends-- is one of the most physically and psychologically punishing activities known to man.
This is a phony bullshit talking point. The possibility of a cooling climate was briefly raised and entertained in mainstream media for about a year in the 1970s. It was never even remotely a scientific consensus view. Contrast that with human caused warming which has been settled science for decades. There is no comparison. As I said, it’s a bullshit talking point.
I am a union member so this isn’t a thing that happens. If management does something unacceptable, we do a strike authorization vote which, if passed by the membership, starts a clock ticking down to strike time and management knows that they are on notice and need to start negotiations.
All of which is just to say that unions are good for workers, regardless of what kind of bullshit you may have been led to believe.
My work-around was to never read replies to my comments unless I had good reason to think they would be intelligent. Ultimately this meant that I only really read replies to comments made in niche subs.
It’s also the case that several things can be true at once. Like, maybe you are part of the reddit mob-mentality, but on certain issues you have opinions that very much go against the grain.
It’s very true. Cable networks are private property whereas broadcast bandwidth is public property. That’s the difference. It creates two very disparate regulatory environments.
It’s very true. Cable networks are private property whereas broadcast bandwidth is public property. That’s the difference. It creates two very disparate regulatory environments.
It’s very true. Cable networks are private property whereas broadcast bandwidth is public property. That’s the difference. It creates two very disparate regulatory environments.
It’s very true. Cable networks are private property whereas broadcast bandwidth is public property. That’s the difference. It creates two very disparate regulatory environments.
This is correct. The idea is that bandwidth is public property and as such holding a license to use part of it entails public obligations. This is why radio stations are required to repeat their identification a certain number of times per hour, for example.
Cable networks are privately owned and therefore were never subject to the same kinds of regulation.
The internet itself is far more to blame than either of the factors you cite. Why? Because it destroyed journalism’s traditional revenue model and in so doing murdered local news. Only the biggest legacy news organizations can still make ends meet through a subscription base, so the result is that everyone else is left churning out bullshit clickbait articles in a competition for views.
“Information wants to be free,” was the mantra of the early internet, and that’s nice as far as it goes, but good journalism is expensive and when we gut the revenue stream of an entire industry, we shouldn’t be surprised that what’s left kind of sucks.
Jaron. It’s Jaron. Pronounced with a J sound, not a Y.
Jaron. It’s Jaron. Pronounced with a J sound, not a Y.
A lightweight Linux distro can get you the same results with current software. Hell, even Ubuntu will. The deterrent has always been that you have to tinker with it to get it to work right, but that’s a lot less true now then it was in the past. I recently installed Ubuntu 22.04 on my wife’s old iMac and it’s lightening fast and worked straight out of the box with no tinkering whatsoever. It’s about 20 times faster than it was running iOS.
On the flipside, it’s also true that if we all simply give up and don’t have kids because the future looks so bleak, by definition we are admitting to a kind of psychic defeatism and epistemic hopelessness. Having kids is one of the best ways for regular people to have any hope of influencing the future.
I think my old man had much the same, or at least somewhat similar thoughts, when he came home from Vietnam. He was a UH1 door-gunner/crew-chief with the 4th ID in the Central Highlands, survived being shot down, was awarded a Distinguished Service Cross, a purple heart, a fistful of air medals and came home with a giant chip on his shoulder.