I feel ya, but the practical reality is that almost all news, all social media, all politics, all technical information, all medical information, and all official documents are presented primarily or only in English.
Yes America doesn't have an official language, but if you had to pick between living here with fluent Spanish and no English, vs. fluent English but no Spanish, which do you think is gonna give you an easier time by far?
I don't find 21% illiteracy hard to believe. I went to a particularly good high school, and even there about 1/5 kids could only read books aloud in a painfully halting, word-by-word manner. And they could either read aloud or understand what they read, not both. And again this was a top-rated high school in the area by far. And just look at the social media trend of flashing words one by one as captions - people pretend it's for those with sound down or hearing difficulties, but the truth is it makes the content vastly more digestible for people who can't pay attention to words but get overwhelmed by the sight of full sentences. So even the people who can read are fantastically bad at it.
I respect that you acknowledge my way of thinking rather than caricaturizing it. Thank you. I am still of the opinion that had the grenade not been thrown now, it would lead to situation becoming even worse next time around. This is why I say Harris would only have delayed the inevitable. It is my opinion that the death toll would have been higher and more dramatic if the issue was allowed to fester for another election cycle. I agree that sometimes you have to take a loss to keep fighting long term - it's just that to me, the current situation is that loss, and it enables us to keep fighting in the form of people like Mamdani being elected. I strongly believe that if Kamala had won, Mamdani would not have. Mamdani may actually move the window, we'll see. That's what we need.
Blood is partially on my hands indeed, but it is also on the hands of all the neoliberal voters of the last few decades by the same reasoning. If the grenade had been thrown 30 years ago, it also would have blown up, albeit less spectacularly, and that lesser blood would be on the hands of those who refused to vote out of principle that year. If the grenade had been thrown 25 years ago, it would have blown up, slightly more. 20 years ago, even more. Etc etc. This is why I believe that if we sucked it up with Kamala this time around, then we would just find ourselves with the same gambit in the future but with even higher stakes. Every election, people have said "sometimes you have to take a loss to keep fighting long term" and "THIS is the ONE election that you really can't afford to throw the grenade! That last one maybe, sure. But that's in the past now anyways. THIS is the one you have to suck it up and vote for!" And indeed it never gets better. Blood is on the voters hands either way, the only difference is if we see the toll paid immediately (making it easy to blame them) or see it delayed by decades (making it hard to connect the dots). From my perspective, the majority of blood spilled today is precisely due to the lack of strategic foresight of compromise-voters of decades past, exhibiting exactly the same mentality that called for voting for Kamala this time around. In a nutshell, I believe my mentality spills blood today, but the compromise-voting spills more blood tomorrow. I consider my ability to properly take into account a greater future cost over a present cost exactly an example of strategic thinking. So it's funny that we have an identical qualm with each other - it comes from simply a different prediction of the future.
I'm sure that this still leaves us in disagreement, but it is at least a smaller disagreement, not about strategy, intention, or even mentality - we merely have different judgements of the most likely future, which I think is a much more negligible disagreement - since predicting the future accurately is known to be difficult.
"Steve Bannon, another top Trump ally, told The Atlantic that the deranged persona Miller adopts in front of the cameras is just an act. “He plays the character well, knowing he always wants to have the libs’—the progressives’—heads blow up,” Bannon said."
The fact that this mentality or narrative was ever bought by anyone is a much larger part of the problem than most people recognize. "It's just a prank bro" but on a national scale. I love ironic humor/memes/etc. but this type of stuff does make me understand where people are coming from when they say irony has poisoned our culture and we need a return of sincerity.
I hope you're right, but from my perspective all the important and bad parts of the movement existed well before Trump. Trump assumed the position at the head of the movement after the fact. All this evil was festering in the country even back when Trump still called himself a Democrat and wasn't involved in politics at all. His death will certainly be a blow and destabilize them for a bit, but the fact is that about 30% of the country is extremely xenophobic, extremely racist, extremely uneducated, very bigoted, very religious fundamentalist - And they do a lot better job of getting along with each other than everyone else. All you need to hang with that club is to say something like "fucking mexicans, right?" or even just wear your church hoodie. Trump is a good vessel to channel their energy, but they were doing a pretty good job actionably directing their energy themselves long ago. They have like 8 different options for figures to rally around next. The left has maybe Bernie, AoC, Mamdani, but can't even agree on that. The left has no beloved podcasters, no beloved billionaires, no beloved news agencies. It's an asymmetric battle because the right is intrinsically the establishment. Only real underdogs need rallying figures, but the right is only ever a faux underdog.
They do matter. Because the fact that nobody took those critiques seriously is what caused people not to vote for her. The fact that nobody took those critiques seriously 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30, even 40 years ago - is how the United States entered the situation that it is now. Half a century of "barely good enough" on the "representatives" of the left and we wonder why America is the way it is.
And ultimately, she lost, because people didn't vote. And those people clearly stated why. In advance. For years. Yet the Democrats still insisted that everyone do as they're told.
Think about it, if the line had been drawn 40 years ago, and voters said "No, we won't vote for someone who is merely not as bad as the other guy. We only will vote for someone we actually WANT to vote for". Then maybe that election we would have got some shitty right winger due to low dem turnout. But the next election, the Democrats might have run someone who was actually more left leaning. But voters didn't do that, and instead they get shitty half-left democrats, and this moves the window to the right. One day that window is far enough to the right to make room for Trump. That's not only the responsibility of the Republicans dragging the window the right, that's the responsibility of Democrats refusing to ever drag the window back to the left. And that's a direct result of Democrat voters repeatedly sucking it up and voting for someone they don't really like.
I truly believe that if Kamala had been elected, the same process would repeat, the window would move further right, and the next time a Republican won it would a Trump 3.0 type figure as a result. So as bad as it is that Trump is president, given that our option was lancing the infected boil now or letting it balloon some more and get even more infected, only to be lanced in a more disastrous way later. This was the decision in the minds of those who did not support Harris - even if you think they had the wrong idea, can you at least respect their reasoning and see how it is not the sort of petty revenge that you mistakenly imagine it to be?
Realize that electing Harris would only have prolonged the inevitable. The movement Trump fostered was and is growing and will continue growing after he dies. There is a deep systemic problem of which Trump is a symptom, not a cause. Remember when Biden got elected? And what good has that done us now? Kamala would have simply been another delay of the reckoning that is occurring now. She would not have made actual PROGRESS in defusing the time bomb. You can say it's still better to have delayed it, but why? No lives would be saved, it would just be different lives impacted.
Try to at least engage with people who are also on the left, mind you, in an honest way rather than making strawman jokes about them. I understand why you think people should have voted for Harris, and although I disagree with your reasoning, I'm not posting thought-terminating jokes about your view, but instead trying to express a nuanced reason for why people think slightly differently. This is the kind of unity that the left must exhibit if we want any positive change to happen. I understand you're mad at people for making what you see as a bad decision, but what good comes from making fun of them for it now? It only creates division.
He gets a lot of shit for this and I do think he's a pretty annoying guy, but I just now developed a head canon for this where he does it on purpose whenever someone he personally knows is being a narcissist. And so it's like a super petty passive aggressive way to piss them off. I could get behind that tbh. Can you imagine? Every time your annoying brother calls and asks to borrow more money, you post some quote about greed to your huge social media following. Lol.
Yeah I just can't stop getting ragebaited by the Electron hate. All Electron haters are free to develop their own efficient, pleasant looking, cross-platform native app instead since it's so easy
I feel ya, but the practical reality is that almost all news, all social media, all politics, all technical information, all medical information, and all official documents are presented primarily or only in English.
Yes America doesn't have an official language, but if you had to pick between living here with fluent Spanish and no English, vs. fluent English but no Spanish, which do you think is gonna give you an easier time by far?
I don't find 21% illiteracy hard to believe. I went to a particularly good high school, and even there about 1/5 kids could only read books aloud in a painfully halting, word-by-word manner. And they could either read aloud or understand what they read, not both. And again this was a top-rated high school in the area by far. And just look at the social media trend of flashing words one by one as captions - people pretend it's for those with sound down or hearing difficulties, but the truth is it makes the content vastly more digestible for people who can't pay attention to words but get overwhelmed by the sight of full sentences. So even the people who can read are fantastically bad at it.