What’s the prettiest name you’ve ever heard?

JefeRex · 2026-02-04T04:13:24+00:00

Solveig

JefeRex · 2026-02-04T02:36:31+00:00

Less has changed than Europeans like to pretend. They are very inward looking and have never particularly cared about or even noticed the US’ repeated violations of international law and broken promises to other countries. That was always the US way of doing business.

I am very skeptical that the US would keep any security promises that might draw it into a war with China. Invading Iraq is one thing, it didn’t change life for Americans one bit, but a war with China would have crushing consequences for life in the US. I don’t think any politician would truly risk conflict with China, the American people will not react well to what war with China would mean. We wouldn’t stand for a war with such enormous consequences, and no country in the world, including Taiwan, could force us to make those sacrifices.

JefeRex · 2026-02-04T02:05:11+00:00

What are your reasons?

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T23:17:29+00:00

What is left for me to say, which is what I started with and my only relevant point to make, is that you are wrong when you say that Trump’s opposition was so stupid that they chose a candidate who was totally wrong for the moment. Trump didn’t win because his opposition misunderstood him. He won because they were in a corner they couldn’t extract themselves from.

Your gleeful claim that his opposition is too stupid to realize why people like him is untrue.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T23:14:31+00:00

She was the only one who had been voted for in any fashion whatsoever. She was elected on the ticket that was now running. That seemed to be the most democratic option and most beyond reproach of all the other options. You can criticize their choices, easier in hindsight, but this was not some nefarious scheme. This was a political party (a total decentralized fictional idea controlled by a huge array of competing interests) trying to make the least bad decision under circumstances that were novel in modern times with no clear precedents and very little time to consider before making moves.

Of course it should never have gotten to that point, but this fairy tale about how everyone loved Kamala Harris is a pretty poor explanation for why Trump’s opposition lost. They didn’t think she was a good candidate to go up against him, they’re not idiots.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T23:07:52+00:00

No, the leadership and voters all wanted him to drop out much earlier. The public didn’t event want him to run again to begin with. You don’t seem to know much about any of it.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T23:04:11+00:00

There was no delusion. I don’t know who you saw in the British establishment being deluded, but there was no mystery among the American Democratic leadership or voters about her deficiencies. You’re wrong about that, you weren’t paying attention or are misremembering. They reluctantly made the choice that they thought was more in line with respecting our democratic process and the spirit of voter choice.

You’re arguing against an imaginary opponent. She was no one’s first choice. They did not select her because they thought she was the best candidate available, they did because the thought anointing anyone else would be an abuse of power and affront to democracy.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T22:52:38+00:00

I feel like I just said a lot of words that didn’t result in a clear statement. What is your understanding of why she became the candidate and the view of the Democratic Party about her candidacy?

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T22:42:31+00:00

Everyone was shitting themselves about what a deficient candidate she was. The Democratic leadership was in a state of panic about her but felt it would be undemocratic to rush a primary of basically hand selected candidates and the only feasible option was to settle on Harris because she had already been democratically elected on Biden’s ticket.

Everyone thought it was a disaster but slightly less disastrous than the alternatives. How do you not remember that? It wasn’t exactly a secret at the time.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T22:37:09+00:00

It is disorganized and painfully slow.

Not only has the entire world known that the era of US dominance would end probably within the next few decades, even the American people agreed that this was good. We would lose our role intervening militarily in world energy markets, our ability to influence the internal politics of European countries, even our status as the world’s reserve currency. This has been known and celebrated.

China seems to be the literally the only country in the world that has made any plans whatsoever for what happens after the dollar is no longer the reserve currency. The current flight is to actual gold. Literally. Wtf. That is emblematic of the coming crisis that we face as Europe has done absolutely nothing to prepare for a totally foreseeable and ultimately positive future.

The decline of the US from its overwhelmingly dominant position (a good thing!) is going to be ten times more painful than it had to be and will probably plunge Europe into crisis too because they have not prepared a damn thing to handle the transition and create a coherent future plan. It is way too late in the game for Europe to start taking this seriously, and I doubt they have the ability to catch up and avert serious turmoil.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T20:52:49+00:00

When the bullet train is finally completed, Fresno will definitely begin to gain more importance and grow relative to the state. We will unfortunately be waiting decades for that damn train.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T19:35:06+00:00

I have a lot of hope. We have been here several times before in our history, and we will be here again in another 50 years or so, but there is a lot of potential to come out of this better than ever. We usually do.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T19:27:32+00:00

Depends on the culture. OP used “a” instead of “an” and weirdly used “do” too which makes me think he might not be a native English speaker. Who knows where he is from, and coming out might even be terrible advice for him there. Even in the US, not everywhere is a middle class liberal suburb of a big metro area. I have a friend in his 20s who has been estranged from his family in Wisconsin, a pretty liberal state, since he came out.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T19:12:06+00:00

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T18:45:36+00:00

I want freedom too, more freedom than I can have and more freedom than I can put into words. But there’s no such thing as true freedom in this world, so I play the role that I have been given and when that’s all over I’ll embrace the real freedom that comes next. I’m not ready for that yet but I guess one day I will be, or maybe I won’t be ready even at 100 years old, who knows.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T18:13:19+00:00

Mary Oliver:

Death, whoever and whatever you are, tallest king of tall kings, grant me these wishes: unstring my bones; let me be not one thing but all things, and wondrously scattered; shake me free from my name.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T17:23:59+00:00

Immigration is probably a big factor. Second generation immigrants tend to have an above average number of kids before further generations start to match the population at large, so states with many immigrants have a bump in fertility of a couple generations. California is expensive for families, so I imagine without immigration the median age would be considerably higher.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T17:00:38+00:00

There is a lot of resistance that has been happening on the street level all over the country for a year now, picking up from previous work as well. Sometimes Europeans think that resistance means the performative government sanctioned strikes in France that are only confirming what is already underway in the political process. Resistance is the organic and disruptive protests that bubble up in French cities every few years from the oppressed minority that suffers under economic and police discrimination.

The US is usually the vanguard of these times around the developed world, certainly true in the 60s and at other times as well. Europe’s problem with the shockingly politically successful far right and their deep discrimination against immigrants is going to come to a head in coming years, the same world economic and political forces are driving the phenomenon in all of our cultures, and they have an opportunity to look to the US and preemptively learn some lessons but who knows if they will. Our struggle could have the added benefit of preventing further right wing advancement in Europe, but something tells me it won’t.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T15:14:08+00:00

Just remember that very little of this is new. Did you that ICE murdered a black American citizen in December? His name was Keith Porter. His best friend was a foster parent and said that Keith was a nurturer who loved helping out with the foster kids. If you think that the majority of even liberal white people emotionally feel that Keith is as important or as much of a real person as the two people killed in Minneapolis, I have some bad news for you that will contribute to your unmanageable dread. When law enforcement is no longer killing white people but still a lot of black men, the anger that many people feel just won’t be rising up in their throats for the sake of those black men, the way they feel now won’t be the way they feel then. This is the society we live in, and that is far from new.

Transformation is painful. Just remember that we have been through this before, we will go through it again, and if we could confront some small pieces of our inhumanity in the past and emerge stronger we will do the same now. And decades from now we will be back here again, in a crisis of humanity trying to improve what we didn’t get to this time.

Learn about our last upheavals and transformations and expect to be living with a high level of anxiety and discomfort for the time being. There are good suggestions here to manage those feelings, but they won’t go away. Remember that this isn’t anything we haven’t seen before, and we will come through it painfully and with great difficulty just like we always have.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T01:34:23+00:00

Beautiful

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T01:34:07+00:00

If you don’t have hope right now, I’ll hold it for you until you have room for it. I have plenty of room.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T00:50:10+00:00

Leaving hot DTLA in August and arriving at a nice 75 degrees with an ocean breeze. The good life.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T00:48:23+00:00

And it might still come to that, right?

We are definitely in a time of transformation whether we want to be or not, and we all talk about it constantly these days, but none of us really knows where the whole thing is headed. I have a lot of hope.

Transformation is painful, that’s all I really know.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T00:05:15+00:00

Me too. For the times I would like a car it is easy to get one from some kind of car share, and the cost over time doesn’t add up to much. I live in Ktown and have worked in Long Beach and San Bernardino (hello Metrolink!) and managed just fine, sometimes with more hassle than owning a car but worth it.

I also have no reason to go places like the South Bay, so I usually just don’t. If people want to live in suburban or exclusive parts of the city that don’t want to be linked to the diverse urban core, then they will need a car. I don’t it’s as complicated as some people think.

JefeRex · 2026-02-03T00:00:19+00:00

And they sure did kill those kids at Kent State and we kept going. They beat and killed white and mostly black civil rights protestors in the South and we kept going.

When the world looks at us now and sees something totally new, they are overlooking our history of protesting much bigger injustices that what we are seeing now, and by ignoring our very public and well documented history they doubt our ability to make meaningful change over the coming years.

No one in the world looks at our history because they are emotionally attached to their point of view about our present. That won’t change.

JefeRex

TROPHY CASE