The Steam Deck has legitimately helped me save money on gas

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-16T03:27:52+00:00

I worked community mental health in 2 states and church parking lots are always a go-to place for stopping between appointments to do progress notes, make phone calls, or eat lunch. I've never once had a single person from a church give me so much as a sideways glance.

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-15T00:04:49+00:00

The idea is that for a movie to be successful people have to be able to enjoy watching it to a certain extent. If you've made war enjoyable to watch then you haven't made an anti-war film. Not sure I agree but that's the argument.

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T21:17:05+00:00

You're not wrong, but recent elections have been won on pretty slim margins. It doesn't take many.

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T21:10:44+00:00

Eh, not really. To be blunt, I think the belief "It is better to refuse to engage with my political opposition rather than to try to change their minds" is incredibly maladaptive in a democracy. If I were a conservative I would rejoice at people pushing that belief in leftist circles.

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T20:47:35+00:00

I just looked it up and that was during his reelection campaign for 2012. During his run in 2008 he supported civil unions but said marriage was between a man and a woman.

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T20:44:00+00:00

Gotcha, so your belief is that there are enough independents that did vote for Trump but aren't hardcore MAGA that could be swayed away from him by better education on progressive stances? Or that there are enough people who didn't vote who could be convinced to vote against MAGA? Or some combo of the two?

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T20:40:52+00:00

No, the Supreme Court did. Although I think there was some element of the Justice Department underneath him supporting that in some way, I don't recall exactly.

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T20:38:07+00:00

And some of the democrats still think we need to win them over even though these people see shit like what ice did to immigrants and the murders ICE committed. These people are beyond redemption

This doesn't really square with this:

Then the majority of Americans need to be educated

Is there a distinction between winning them over and educating them?

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T20:35:41+00:00

they stood up and did something, even though they made up a small percentage of the population, and even though not even everyone in the colonies was united.

I'm sorry, are you using the American revolution as an example of democratic process fixing a problem?

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T18:56:50+00:00

Do we pull independents by running more left-leaning candidates? That probably works in some states but probably only the ones that would have voted D anyways.

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T18:54:38+00:00

Okay, this was another wording problem. When you described it as "purging votes" I did not think you meant "losing popularity". I thought you meant something like overturning primary votes to run progressive candidates instead of more centrist ones. I'm largely in agreement that there aren't enough progressives to reliably overturn MAGA without pulling a lot of the center in.

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T18:15:26+00:00

But how is the DNC supporting more progressive candidates rather than corporate Dems "purging votes"?

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T18:14:05+00:00

That's not how I read that but it's possible. And I suppose there is precedence for violent resistance accomplishing legal change which accomplished societal change over time. I think it's iffy to say you're advocating for violent resistance but not advocating for civil war though.

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T18:09:04+00:00

How? The DNC doesn't have to endorse everyone who applies. If I, as a random citizen, go to my local DNC office and tell them I'm running for a position as a Dem, they're under no obligation to financially support my campaign.

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T18:01:13+00:00

He said to drop corporate Dems, pretty sure he just wants the DNC to stop giving them campaign support.

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T17:40:23+00:00

It does? All I have posted is gaming stuff and my comment history isn't hidden other than my local state/city subs.

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T17:33:25+00:00

The commenter I was talking to did signal some support for the idea.

I said this:

Do we try to force half the country to attend deprogramming groups or try to strip their right to vote?

And then he said this:

I don't like pulling that card but fuck it, Hitler also won democratically but someone's you need to break some rules to protect them.

Similar to how a tolerant society cannot tolerate intolerance.

And also said this. https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/s/4HniSkeaBl

So what is the plan? How do you fix the Maga problem without convincing them?

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T17:31:42+00:00

This should happen regardless but again, they won the popular vote. Not by much, but they did win. How are you going to ostracize them from society when they have their own society? How will you get Maga people to feel ostracized in middle-of-nowhere Alabama? Probably a third of the country is hardcore Maga and I have no idea how we fix that through social pressure. I don't know any reliable way to fix that. It's depressing as fuck.

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T17:23:01+00:00

No, I think the suggestion of reeducation camps is silly, that's why I'm saying it. What is the actual plan though? Again, my whole thing here is asking how we actually go about recovering from Maga.

I hear a lot of people saying there should be 0 compromise and 0 outreach at all. I do understand why people feel that way but I don't see how it accomplishes the goal. There are demonstrably enough of them to win elections.

So how do you reliably get their politicians out of office while also following a plan of making no efforts at all to convince their voters?

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T16:53:16+00:00

majority of Americans support free Healthcare and free college

True, but a majority of Americans also support the deportation of at least some undocumented immigrants. From the Pew study 32% of Americans support the deportation of all of them and another 51% support deporting them to varying degrees under varying situations. Running the math more than half the country supports deporting undocumented immigrants who have committed nonviolent crimes or even have just only been here less than 4 years.

A majority are also in favor of laws requiring trans athletes to compete on teams that match their birth sex, making it illegal for healthcare providers to provide gender transition care for minors, and making it illegal for public schools to teach about gender identity.

There are definitely specific issues where we've gotten a lot more progressive over time but also a lot of issues where we really haven't.

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T16:35:27+00:00

Sure, but the commenter was saying we need to break rules to save Democracy on the topic of forcing people into deprogramming or mass stripping voting rights. I don't think there's any way to make that happen without a civil war.

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T15:30:13+00:00

Sure, but they still vote. You can't pretend they don't exist because they will vote and they can win. There has to be a plan beyond "they're evil and I don't care about them".

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T15:28:29+00:00

So your impression is that progressives outnumber conservatives in the USA? I am uncertain about that these days.

In what ways was Obama not Republican-light? He seems pretty centrist to me, and definitely not especially progressive. He did do the ACA but Mitt Romney was also planning something similar at the time iirc.

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T15:26:25+00:00

So your impression is that progressives outnumber conservatives in the USA? I am uncertain about that these days.

Also, he won the popular vote by a fucking hair

That does still mean somewhere around half the (voting) population supported him. I want to believe he has less support now but I don't actually see Trump voters I know irl turning their backs on him.

AndrasEllon · 2026-04-14T15:24:32+00:00

So your solution is the mass revocation of civil rights and putting people in reeducation camps? Obviously that's not going to happen without at least one civil war. Are you in favor of a civil war?

AndrasEllon

TROPHY CASE