CuriousCat Archive Page 141 of 202

  1. So, building off this a bit, would any sort of gun regulation implemented need to occur along with the demilitarization of the police? I get the sense that this might need to happen so we don't inadvertently end up putting some minority groups at a disadvantage.

    in response to What are your thoughts on gun control? I feel like most leftists go through this journey on the gun control argument where they go from being moderates to being full on 'we need to abolish the 2a' to reaching a critical mass of 'we need to break the state's monopoly of violence.' And while I can see the argument for democratic control of the tools of violence, I remain divided because gun violence disproportionately hurts women, the poor, and Lgbtq populations, and because White Supremacists tend to be the ones that own the most guns.

    obvs

  2. Your answer to my previous question does not solve the problem. Capitalism, through an unbelievable production of wealth raised living conditions of the poor by several times throughout the decades. All socialism can do is realocate a little of the already existing goods to the poor, not allowing in any capacity for a change like capitalism has already enacted around the world.
    So really, what socialism can really do for the working class, that capitalism did not, in a better way?

    stop attributing to capitalism the accomplishments of workers and the industrial revolution

    capitalism guarantees the existence of poverty, it takes some real gymnastics to spin that as "good for the working class"

  3. Do you agree with the argument that Bloomberg is as bad as if not worse than Trump?

    fuck no, but clearing that bar isn't an accomplishment and he's still garbage

  4. Love having the 5th biggest country in the world with over 200 million people being reduced to a forest

    in response to Brazil, maybe?

    I'm not reducing the entire country to a forest, I'm pointing out that violent invasions are usually pretty bad for the local environment and the local environment of Brazil contains the Earth's lungs.

  5. What are your thoughts on gun control? I feel like most leftists go through this journey on the gun control argument where they go from being moderates to being full on 'we need to abolish the 2a' to reaching a critical mass of 'we need to break the state's monopoly of violence.' And while I can see the argument for democratic control of the tools of violence, I remain divided because gun violence disproportionately hurts women, the poor, and Lgbtq populations, and because White Supremacists tend to be the ones that own the most guns.

    I don't like guns, I don't think an armed society is a polite society or a safe one, I don't think the 2nd Amendment makes any sense in the modern day when its intent was maintaining a militia to overthrow the government if needed and it's hard to believe we'd overthrow a government with tanks and drones using handguns.

    That said, I know a lot of minoritized communities have protected themselves from bigots and cops by arming themselves.

    So, without further study, I tend to default to "I support sensible gun regulation that keeps guns legally accessible but keeps them off the black market."

  6. A while ago I asked if you thought people should only be permitted to vote if they are deemed to have been properly informed. You responded by saying "define properly informed" (iirc) and I thought about that for a while.

    My answer is, being properly informed would entail knowing and being able to recount what exactly the candidates believe and what policies they are running on. So, at a minimum, people would be asked to read each candidate's policy platform/manifesto, or at the very least have read and understood some summary of the policies and the arguments for implementing them.

    What do you think?

    The problem with putting any barrier of entry to voting is you can generally assume it will be abused by people in power. Like, it was a similar logic behind requiring literacy tests for voters in the South, which were, of course, used to disproportionately affect Black voters. Because public schools are funded by property taxes, the shittiest schools are in poor neighborhoods. And, because of decades redlining, people in poor neighborhoods are disproportionately Black. So, thanks to a number of interlocking systems of bigotry, you can make it more likely a Black person will be turned away from the polls than a white person, even though, with TV and radio, it is entirely possible an illiterate person is still well-informed.

    As soon as you're creating criteria for "properly-informed," you're going to have the test-designer's biases come into play. You can't ask someone to list ALL a politician's policies, so which do you pick? What are Sanders' most salient policies? Do you include both immigration reform and healthcare reform on the test? Healthcare has been more central to his campaign, so maybe it's unfair to focus on both, since a decently-informed person may still not know much about immigration. But, then, an immigrant might pay more attention to his promise to abolish ICE and not have read up as much on healthcare, especially if their status as an immigrant means they can't GET healthcare unless immigration is reformed. And wouldn't it be valuable for some conservative politician someday to leave immigration questions off the test precisely because it would suppress the immigrant vote and immigrants tend to vote for liberals?

    The fact is, the premise of democracy is that, if you are bound by a government's laws, then you have a right to representation in that government. Even if you're ill-informed, the granting of power to the government *must* be consensual. That's the deal. If people aren't well-informed, society's job is not to penalize them, it's to inform them.

  7. What IS the strategy for getting past a party that does not care about democracy?

    in response to AOC admitted recently that Bernie couldn't probably get M4A past Congress, and honestly, that kind of annoys me that people on the left decided that a candidate like Warren, who clearly believes in M4A but tried to make a realistic stepping stone plan that had a better chance of actually happening, was treated as not pro-M4A enough.

    I don't know

    it's their job to convince me they have one

  8. Brazil, maybe?

    in response to If the next president attempted to engage diplomatically with other nations' leaders to cooperate on halting climate change, and the fascist ones refused, would the president then be justified in ordering violent coups and/or strikes against those leaders so as to install new ones who would cooperate?

    oof, good point

    not Brazil's a fascist state but it's certainly taken a sharp swing in that direction

    still don't think invasion is the smart idea, we're trying to KEEP the rainforest from burning down

  9. Do you play or follow any sportsball thing?

    I don't even really follow Smash anymore. ;-;

  10. Are we so sure about that? There's no telling how big of an impact Bloomberg's spending will have on the outcome. How can we be certain that his advantage isn't big enough to run away with the nomination?

    in response to so I guess this'll be down to Bernie vs Bloomberg soon enough, huh? I'm pretty damn nervous.

    You can't be. Keep fighting the good fight. But the numbers are not presently in his favor.

  11. What's a game genre you just can't get into?

    RTS

  12. How do you think socialism can replicate the general improvement of living conditions for the poor, that capitalism made possible in a way never before seen in the history of humanity?

    the point of socialism is not to improve the living conditions of the poor, it's to guarantee that there's no such thing as poverty

  13. Remember Jon Stewart?

    those were simpler times, eh?

  14. AOC admitted recently that Bernie couldn't probably get M4A past Congress, and honestly, that kind of annoys me that people on the left decided that a candidate like Warren, who clearly believes in M4A but tried to make a realistic stepping stone plan that had a better chance of actually happening, was treated as not pro-M4A enough.

    I'm ambivalent about it. AOC argued that you should start by demanding your best-case scenario, so, if you don't get it, you can still end up with something pretty good. The criticism of Warren (and Clinton, and Obama) is they start with compromise positions, so, when Republicans drag them to the right, you end up with something much closer to the center. And I agree with her there; I think you should start with the big swing.

    But I do resent the fact that people put so much weight on the "fundamental difference" between Warren's public option and Sanders' single-payer, as though the bill that gets proposed is the bill that gets passed. Like, people have reduced it down to, essentially, "a vote for Bernie is a vote for healthcare and a vote for Liz is a vote for no healthcare," and made this the crux of "Bernie = left, Liz = centrist," when, in fact, it's quite likely Bernie's plan will look a lot more like Liz's by the time it gets through Congress. And I seriously doubt, if Bernie settles for a public option, that his fans will say he's now fundamentally a liberal.

    But what really gets me is... this is all assuming that *any* amount of compromise can get an M4A bill through Congress. Sanders' has said we'll get it passed by asking McConnell's constituency to put pressure on him. Mitch fucking McConnell. The guy who stole a Supreme Court seat. The guy who has repeatedly shut down the government when he doesn't like a budget proposal. The guy who refused to convene a vote on two different gun bills that had passed the House when he didn't have the votes to block them. We are now assuming that he's going to suddenly play ball with Democrats because the voters asked him to? That's some Biden shit right there.

    The reality is, right now I have NO IDEA what gets bills past Republican gridlock. I'm not sure anyone does. Warren thinks you start with something fairly left but signal a willingness to compromise; Sanders thinks you go further left and make them fight you for compromise. But which one works? Do EITHER of them work? What if they just say "no, fuck compromise, and fuck you, we're shutting down the government"? What if they just refuse to hold a vote? I haven't really gotten a sense from either candidate what their strategy is for getting past a Party that *does not care* about democracy.

    So I really don't know whether all this talk about M4A even matters. Everything is just so fucking ridiculous.

  15. Thoughts on District Nine?

    Blomkamp peaked early, didn't he?

  16. What if we are being controlled by free will?

    *bong rip*

  17. Considering that the alt-right recruits and increases its numbers by preying on psychologically troubled people or enhancing their psychological issues, would the be wrong to say 'the right encourages mental illness'? By wrong I mean 1) is it inaccurate and 2) is it ableist to make that statement.

    I ain't touching that one

  18. So, you think we'll have a "Fox News, but for centrists" in a handful of years if Bernie or Warren wins? Biden and Buttigieg on there punditing about how The Left has just gone Too Far?

    in response to Why are they so worried about being pushed out of the Democratic Party? It's not like their careers would end; they could just join the Republican Party, or start up a new centrist party, and surely the leftist Dems would be amenable to adapting the party system to accommodate that party's existence?

    I think libs are too concerned with decorum and the appearance of fair play for that kinda thing, but who knows?

  19. Oh yeah previous asker, I meant that Hillary's platform in the general was to the left of Obama's in the previous elections, even if he "ran" as a progressive more. She ran as a moderate against Bernie and then pivoted when she won the nomination based on the platform the DNC came up with at the convention. But I agree that in a whole lot of other recent campaigns, "we need a moderate" has failed. I just imagine they can counter with the examples I gave. (Although Bill Clinton example being almost 30 years old should maybe give them pause about if it actually applies today)

    in response to Hi Ian, hope you're having a good day. I am a fellow progressive Democrat who likes Warren and Bernie. I have some family members who are older and also progressive and even voted for Bernie last time, but they are convinced that the party needs a moderate to defeat Trump and so were considering Biden and now Bloomberg and Klobuchar (they even think Buttigieg is too progressive and also too young and gay, really!). I really think that doesn't make sense, that they're basing this on what the media says and age-old elections logic that doesn't apply now, and that they really should just vote for the candidate they like the best, but I'm not sure how to say this. What would you suggest?

    Thing is, Clinton was viewed FOR YEARS as a progressive. His whole shtick is that he ran on his cred as a former hippie, and his wife was central to his campaign which they played as feminist. "Bill Clinton is a moderate" is how we see him NOW, as we better remember the effect he had on society as a whole over the branding of his campaign, and as he gets trotted out alongside Hillary, whose politics no longer seem so progressive in the current climate.

  20. Why are they so worried about being pushed out of the Democratic Party? It's not like their careers would end; they could just join the Republican Party, or start up a new centrist party, and surely the leftist Dems would be amenable to adapting the party system to accommodate that party's existence?

    in response to Is Bernie Sanders really even a threat to capitalists? I adore his policies, but I don’t understand what he is doing that makes rich people so nervous.

    They don't have futures in the GOP and a third parties aren't viable in our electoral system. They'd still be fine; they'd probably just become K Street lobbyists like most politicians do. But their time in politics would be effectively over.

  21. Didn't the Republican Party not want Trump to be the nominee in 2016? I feel like if Bernie wins, we'll see a similar thing play out where the establishment Democrats have to change their tune to go along with him.

    in response to Do you think the Dems would deny Sanders the nomination in the event he wins the popular vote+the highest number of delegates, but only pluralities and the primary goes to the convention floor? Basically if it goes to the floor it'd be really bad,right?

    The Dems don't have the same Party cohesion that the GOP has, so we might see some folks just bow their heads and keep mum for the campaign. But, generally, I think the DNC begrudgingly backing him is the most likely outcome.

  22. so I guess this'll be down to Bernie vs Bloomberg soon enough, huh?

    I'm pretty damn nervous.

    Sanders' chance of winning the primary is currently estimated at 37%. Bloomberg's is 8%. If he's the biggest threat, I'm not worried.

  23. Favorite sock length

    for my own comfort I wear normal sock length, but I'm a sucker for folks in knee socks

  24. Best single digit number

    Φ

  25. Hi Ian, hope you're having a good day. I am a fellow progressive Democrat who likes Warren and Bernie. I have some family members who are older and also progressive and even voted for Bernie last time, but they are convinced that the party needs a moderate to defeat Trump and so were considering Biden and now Bloomberg and Klobuchar (they even think Buttigieg is too progressive and also too young and gay, really!). I really think that doesn't make sense, that they're basing this on what the media says and age-old elections logic that doesn't apply now, and that they really should just vote for the candidate they like the best, but I'm not sure how to say this. What would you suggest?

    well, as I'm fond of saying, don't make trying to convince the handful of people in your family your primary praxis. but, for your own peace of mind in dealing with them, you might point out that "we need a moderate to beat the Republicans" has failed every time for the last forty years. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama won by bringing out the youth and minority votes, and they did so by convincing them they were bold progressives. it wasn't as true as they made it seem, but it was a viable strategy for increasing voter turnout. alternatively, the "we need a moderate" mentality was the driving logic behind the Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton campaigns, and every single one failed.

    so you might tell them that.

    (also, no offense taken, but, while I vote Democrat because they're the best I have to work with, I would not self-identify as one; I'm a leftist)

  26. Is Bernie Sanders really even a threat to capitalists?

    I adore his policies, but I don’t understand what he is doing that makes rich people so nervous.

    under Sanders' plans, unless I am sorely mistaken, the top 1% in the US would still be the richest people on Earth, but by a slightly smaller margin than they are now. given that they usually support candidates who INCREASE their wealth, Sanders is as far from that as electoral politics get.

    he is a larger threat to the Democratic Party, I think. the fact that Sanders' base is leftists rather than moderates means, if he succeeds, then the Party moving leftwards is politically viable. and if voters realize that - which, with AOC and the rest of The Squad making waves, they already are - all these centrist Dems need to worry about getting primaried. my assumption has always been that that's why the Dems oppose the Left - they built their careers on being middle-of-the-road and they know a leftier Democratic Party doesn't have a place for them.

  27. Do you think the Dems would deny Sanders the nomination in the event he wins the popular vote+the highest number of delegates, but only pluralities and the primary goes to the convention floor?

    Basically if it goes to the floor it'd be really bad,right?

    I don't predict the future, but I doubt it. That would basically be the Democratic Party self-destructing.

  28. I truly, honestly HATE how clever "Pythagorean Danskin" is. >:-O

    handle changes every month, always the same joke

  29. Paul Thomas Anderson, Wes Anderson or Paul W.S. Anderson?

    Gillian Anderson

  30. Do you think severely banning or limiting political advertising, similar to the restrictions on tobacco advertising, would be a suitable response to Bloomberg attempting to buy the election (assuming he doesn't win)?

    having thought about it for all of two minutes, I'd say equalizing campaign ad budgets (really, campaign budgets generally) and overturning Citizens United would be the way to go

  32. As a progressive I feel really anxious about the democratic primary right now. I would have been happy if either Warren or Sanders won the nomination, and now it seems like Warren can not. But I'm worried that without Warren's endorsement Bernie won't be able to win either, as Biden and Klobuchar are likely to endorse Pete later on in order to protect capital from any even slightly leftist policy. Do you think there's any merit to these concerns or am I misreading the situation?

    I know it's nice to imagine that all of "the capitalist class" will band together to fight the Left but Pete's numbers are still way behind Bernie's, Biden has enough of an ego that I think he'll wait a good long time to drop out, and I think the odds of Liz dropping out and endorsing Bernie are better than you think. She's already on record saying she'd be fine losing the election if the winner adopted her policies, and Bernie's the most likely to do that of everyone running.

    I'm hesitant to make any predictions because nothing went the way it was supposed to in the last election, but, at this moment, I think Bernie's got this.

  33. Wait... what's so annoying about wes anderson's films?

    in response to Favourite Wes Anderson movie?

    they're very twee

  34. Have you ever worked on a creative project and found out in the middle of it that another, potentially more (or in your case equally) popular person had the same idea as you? What's the best thing to do in that scenario? Do you start a new idea or just try to ignore the existence of the other thing and hope they don't get compared?

    I've never been deep in a video and had someone beat me to the punch. But I've had ideas floating around that I shelve when someone covers similar ground. Like, I'd been kicking around doing a video on Dr. Horrible for a while when Sarah Z put out her Dr. Horrible video, and it said a lot of the stuff I was thinking of saying. So now I sit on the bits she didn't say and see if they coalesce into a video or if they'll end up a tangent in another video or maybe a blog post or maybe they just fizzle out.

    There's a lot of bits and pieces floating around in my head at any given time.

  35. Doing a "responding to the other anon" type of thing:
    It's not a complete tactical manual by any means, but the "Worst Year Ever" podcast's two-part dig "How The Furries Fought The Nazis And Won" touches a little bit on deradicalizing people in your community who haven't gone over the edge yet, and besides that is just an overall certified piece of Good Journalism.

    in response to Alright. I was hoping it'd be easier to figure out how to keep the pipeline from claiming anyone else than deprogramming those that already fell in. Thanks for the response, though.

  36. Favourite Wes Anderson movie?

    isle of dogs was the least annoying

  37. Alright. I was hoping it'd be easier to figure out how to keep the pipeline from claiming anyone else than deprogramming those that already fell in. Thanks for the response, though.

    in response to I feel like it's probably something that you've answered in TARPB that I've missed, but do you think there are any strategies we can implement to keep the Gabes in our lives from going down the Alt-Right Pipeline?

    I'm working on it.

  38. Do you think if Sanders got the nomination and lost it’d irreparably harm leftist movements in this country for a generation?

    Further if a centrist gets the nomination and loses to Trump, that would not harm their end of the spectrum, correct?

    centrists losing to Republicans never seems to hurt their movement, they just say "we need to move FURTHER TO THE CENTER!"

    it would slow our momentum, but the Left isn't going anywhere. if Sanders loses, we'll regroup.

  39. Do you think there is a credible danger of Trump acting on his apparent intention to remain in the White House longer than the allowed two terms?

    fuckin anything is credible with that guy

  40. I feel like it's probably something that you've answered in TARPB that I've missed, but do you think there are any strategies we can implement to keep the Gabes in our lives from going down the Alt-Right Pipeline?

    When I have strategies I'll share them.

  41. The longest run the US was not at war with somebody was six years under FDR, during the Great Depression. How does anybody uproot that kind of weed

    It's easier than it looks.

  42. It seems many left twitter people have gone full Qanon for bernie. No matter what the facts are everything is always rigged against bernie. If bernie wins then the caucuses were delayed to take the wind out of his sails. If he loses then the DNC rigged it for Buttigieg.

    It's really maddening the degree to which people will embrace things they've criticized in the Right when it suits their own causes. Conspiracism is ok when you're supporting a leftist. Claiming women make up allegations is ok when she's a liberal. Implying a gay man is staging a kiss with his partner for social justice points is ok if they're running against your guy.

    It's really putting a damper on what's otherwise a very exciting time.

  43. Do you think you could make a video about Parasite?

    in response to Doesn't Bong saying that all the characters are sympathetic and suggesting it's the system at fault make it less neoliberal though? When neoliberal movies make rich people evil the suggestion is that the problem is individual, that a "good" rich person would be okay. The fact that the Parks are naive and clueless as to others' oppression shows it's the system at fault. Yeah maybe it makes it a lot about purely their ignorance and "segregation" but the movie also says the circumstances of the Kim family are bad and should be changed, not just that it should moved closer to where the Parks can see it?

    no

  44. Doesn't Bong saying that all the characters are sympathetic and suggesting it's the system at fault make it less neoliberal though? When neoliberal movies make rich people evil the suggestion is that the problem is individual, that a "good" rich person would be okay. The fact that the Parks are naive and clueless as to others' oppression shows it's the system at fault. Yeah maybe it makes it a lot about purely their ignorance and "segregation" but the movie also says the circumstances of the Kim family are bad and should be changed, not just that it should moved closer to where the Parks can see it?

    That's one way you could read it, but it's not the way it comes off to me. It strikes me more as "if only there were more incidental contact between these groups, the class divide wouldn't matter so much." You can bring the argument to the movie that class divides are the cause of the problem but I don't feel the movie does that work itself.

  45. How do you feel about that video now as compared to when you made it? Are you as big into Smash as you were?

    in response to The Melee god Armada watched your Smash Bros video on his YouTube channel, have you seen it?? It's the vague crossover I always wanted

    I was big into Smash for a long time after that video, but have fallen off in the last year or so. I'm still very happy with that video, it had a nice density of ideas and effectively captured my enthusiasm, which I think is much harder than listing your criticisms.

  46. So are you saying bong joon ho has switched sides and watered down his voice based on audience perception over the years?

    in response to Why do you think Parasite is neoliberal?

    I think Bong Joon-ho is a multifaceted person who relates to capitalism in a lot of ways, and maybe some are contradictory, or maybe not all his movies perfectly reflect his beliefs, or maybe his beliefs have evolved, or maybe he sees capitalism as a problem but retains sympathy for the wealthy themselves.

    You've probably gathered by now that I don't like using films to read the filmmaker. I don't know Bong Joon-ho, I don't know what's in his heart, all I can do is look at what the ethos of a given movie is. And I am more excited by the ethos of Snowpiercer.

  47. Do you like Hobbies

    I like Calvie and Hobbies

  48. Why do you think Parasite is neoliberal?

    the overall ethos of Parasite is that society would be better if rich people and poor people weren't so segregated

    compared with Snowpiercer, the ethos of which was "blow up the idea of rich and poor people," it's a bit... centrist

  49. is spite a shitty motivation?

    whatever gets you through the day

  50. Did Parasite deserve to win Best Picture?

    sure, whatever. I didn't see most of the nominees, bit it was the best of the ones I saw.

  51. should other countries invade the US if they can?

    in response to If the next president attempted to engage diplomatically with other nations' leaders to cooperate on halting climate change, and the fascist ones refused, would the president then be justified in ordering violent coups and/or strikes against those leaders so as to install new ones who would cooperate?

    we spend as much on our military as the entire rest of the world combined, that would not go well for them

  52. Probably a bit of a personal question, but do you ever have to deal with intrusive thoughts? For me, it's like having a mini twitter person inside constantly trying to have hot takes about everything and I have no idea how to shut them up.

    I have Bad Brain days, yeah.

    The best advice I've heard is to personify Bad Brain as your shitty 9-year-old nephew in the back seat of your car. You can't reason with him, you can't ignore him, but obviously you're not going to do what he says. "You should drive into that telephone pole." "Ooookay, Trevor."

    There was a Tumblr post that recommended imagining Bad Brain as Donald Trump, and saying "fuck you and your fucking wall" to everything he says: https://queerlyquinn.tumblr.com/post/143822473068/my-therapist-and-i-decided-that-from-now-on-when

    Lately I've started imagining mine as a shitty YouTube commenter. Nothing they say is worth listening to.

  54. Have you ever tried growing a beard? If so, have you found it to be a positive asset contributing to your sexiness?

    growing a beard makes me look too much like my dad to judge its sexiness

  56. If the next president attempted to engage diplomatically with other nations' leaders to cooperate on halting climate change, and the fascist ones refused, would the president then be justified in ordering violent coups and/or strikes against those leaders so as to install new ones who would cooperate?

    I'm trying to think of a country that is a) fascist, b) not already addressing climate change better than we are, and c) a significant enough contributor to carbon emissions that their refusal matters

    not that I'm saying a country that checked all three boxes should be invaded, just doubting that such a country exists

  58. What do you think about the recent meat substitutes that have become available?

    they're fine, whatevs

  59. Also, getting correct political information is not “just a google search” away.

    Not sure about everyone else, but I find it difficult and time consuming to become informed when so much spin and misinformation is floating around.

    in response to Why are so many people still so consistently misinformed when the barrier between them and the truth is, more often than not, a simple google search?

    it really depends on the subject; a lot of things are, in fact, extremely simple to fact check. but, for some topics, the signal-to-noise ratio on google is borked to hell.

  61. Is capitalism inherently racist?

    I don't think so, but society is racist, and you can't put capitalism in a racist society and not expect capitalism to be a primary way that racism expresses itself

  63. Wong Kar-Wai or Bong Joon-ho's?

    this is a very weird comparison.

    I've only truly LOVED one Bong Joon-ho movie, though I still need to see Memories of Murder and Mother. but I'm gonna go with Wong Kar-Wai because I just adore the way his movies look and feel.

  64. Have you ever read Kropotkin

    get off my curiouscat, tabby

  65. Why are so many people still so consistently misinformed when the barrier between them and the truth is, more often than not, a simple google search?

    People google things that don't jive with their preconceptions. When people hear misinformation that sounds true, they have no reason check if it is.

  66. If Twitter was completely deleted tomorrow, would you join Mastodon?

    I would enjoy my freedom.

  68. Bernie Sanders is clearly a class reductionist as are the majority of his staffers. He's such a strong break from the left-right culture wars that he's received praise from anti-immigrant organizations and conservative Catholics.

    So why pretend he's more than what he is? If you feel that his left econ politics are the best option available right now (and there's a strong argument to be made there) isn't it enough to just say so? This is politics after all and most voters are usually willing to pinch their nose.

    I don't think it's fair to say he's a full-bore class reductionist. Rather, I think there are some class reductionist tendencies to some of his rhetoric and policies. He's actually done a lot of work to be more inclusive of social issues since his 2016 campaign, and to address his blind spots. So that's promising. At the very least he's demonstrated that he can surround himself with people who are stronger on these issues, and that he responds well to pressure from his constituency. I can work with that.

    But I've heard minoritized people say they still feel like he doesn't *get it*, and that comes through in his campaign. Like, there's a reason a lot of edgelord-y, class-first lefties flock to his campaign, and there's a reason a lot of people are suddenly comfortable making homophobic comments about Buttigieg, thinly-veiled sexist comments about Warren.

    I think we can get desirable results out of Sanders with the right pressure. Also, the President doesn't have to write every piece of policy, and we still have a lot of progressives in Congress who will be writing social policy and Sanders is unlikely to stand in the way of them (though... he has been against some important policy in the past... we'll have to turn him around if he takes the wrong stance on something). And, with Warren polling so far below him with little sign of turning things around in time, it's looking more and more like Sanders is our best shot at an actual reformer.

    So I'm appreciating his good qualities and getting ready to address his weaknesses. The biggest impediment is not him but his fans.

  69. Is aesthetics and the look of a film more important than say its contents?

    Do you think everyone these days would rather look at movies that are shot beautifully and amazing technical aspects than a story?

    Because I think stories are basically the same for almost 100 years but just retold differently by different people

    I don't really think aesthetics and narrative are separate things.

  70. Do you think that there should be a leftist party and the Democratic Party should become a centrist party encompassing Democrats to the right of Sanders/Warren and Republicans to the left of Trump?

    winner-take-all elections do not leave room for more than two parties, so our best option is to either drag the Dems left or replace them with a leftist party

  71. The Melee god Armada watched your Smash Bros video on his YouTube channel, have you seen it?? It's the vague crossover I always wanted

    wait WHAT?!?!

  72. Are you obligated to wear a gown too? Cause I'd bet you would totally rock that look.

    in response to Did you get the Iowa crown yet? Do we peasants have no choice but to stan?

    I can't do sleeveless, don't have the shoulders for it, but maybe I could pull off puffed sleeves...

    I'll bring it up at the next meeting of the High Council.

  73. Would you do well on Jeopardy?

    I would do great on Celebrity Jeopardy

  74. Did you get the Iowa crown yet? Do we peasants have no choice but to stan?

    in response to Who won Iowa?

    it's really more of a tiara

  75. People rag on Tom Nook a lot because he gives you a loan, even though in New Leaf he builds your house from the ground up (which is kind of implied in Wild World as well.) Often its chalked up to (justified) frustration on how land lords exist, but should that extend to architects and construction workers? Being that Nook *also* owns a bodega which in advances to a two story franchise location, perhaps the remuneration he requests is beyond that of its true value (the audience never sees the construction directly, after all, so who knows who helps him build it.) Is it wrong then for corner stores to exist as well, being that their role is just to store and receive goods to be sold?

    Could the entire crux of this question be avoided with a reevaluation of Tom Nook's role in the community? What would that look like? Would he still be the guy who does House and Home stuff, or would a different profession be needed entirely?

    Yeah I know it's animal crossing and I should take a chill pill but maybe you're not a real Gamer so hm

    I dunno fam I don't really play pokemon

Anon commented:
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