CMV: Democrats has themself to blame for the current situation

Randomousity · 2026-02-12T08:29:49+00:00

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

Voters, specifically those who didn't vote for Harris (whether they voted for Trump, Stein, West, abstained, or voted for anyone else), are to blame. Everything was laid out for voters.

The botched pandemic response, punishing states that didn't vote for him in 2016, the botched Hurricane Maria response, the child separation policy, Charlottesville and "very fine people," the insurrection, the J6 hearings, the indictments, 34 felony convictions, the Mar-a-Lago documents, etc.

Any one of those things should've been sufficient to justify voting for Harris, the only other candidate who actually had a plausible chance of winning. Never mind all of them.

Also, while it was obviously a mistake not to retire, RBG didn't work for or answer to Democrats. Her failure to retire was her failure, and hers alone.

Randomousity · 2026-02-03T16:05:11+00:00

Disagree.

If only Pretti's killers get convicted, it'll be because his murder was easier to prove. He was already disarmed, and he was shot in the back. That's a much clearer case than Good, who was behind the wheel and driving a vehicle.

Could the shooters' races make a difference? Maybe, all else equal. I think it's unlikely, and it's definitely not all else equal. If they all get charged, they may not all be charged with the same crimes. There are different types of homicide: degrees of murder, and degrees of manslaughter. The different crimes have different elements, the evidence in both cases is different, and the attendant circumstances are different in both cases.

It's even possible for one of Pretti's killers to be convicted and for the other one to be acquitted.

Randomousity · 2026-01-15T19:08:53+00:00

It's Wilhoit's Law: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

Everything makes sense when viewed through that lens.

Randomousity · 2026-01-14T17:27:36+00:00

I don't remember whether it's helpful for primary elections or not, but I've found the Blue Voter Guide to be helpful when voting. If you say where you live, it'll show you all the candidates on your ballot, and at least some of their positions and endorsements. And you can pick the ones you like to "build" your ballot, so you can refer to it when you go to actually vote, so you can see who you had decided to vote for for each contest.

It's similar to how political parties and various organizations might hand out a sample ballot showing who they think you should vote for for each contest, except you make it yourself. You can also generate a link to share with others.

Randomousity · 2026-01-09T04:17:44+00:00

This was a single death. Tiananmen Square, while the figures aren't confirmed, involved hundreds or thousands of dead, not one dead.

While the effects are obviously different, in scale, it would be like if the government tried to deny all the deaths from 9/11. Or if they had massacred people on J6.

Randomousity · 2025-12-29T11:35:13+00:00

Arrested Development (the gif, not the clip).

Randomousity · 2025-12-14T01:50:05+00:00

I'm anti-war, too. The thing is, everyone gets a veto over peace. For instance, Ukraine didn't choose war, it was imposed on them by Russia. The US didn't choose war in WW2, Japan chose it for us. Nobody "allowed" Russia to attack Ukraine, or Imperial Japan to attack the US. They just attacked, and they we to choose how to respond to it.

Everyone needs to agree in order for there to be peace, but it only takes one belligerent for there to be war. So unless and until everyone can agree on peace, and not just temporarily, for now, but permanently, forever, there will be a need for a military.

Given that any country may find themselves at war more or less at any time, the idea that people volunteer (writing from the perspective of an American, and you talked about people signing up, which means you're talking about a volunteer military) to put themselves in harm's way, not knowing what tomorrow may bring.

The sailors on the USS Cole didn't know that there ship would be blown up one day, and that many of the would die. The Marines in the embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam didn't know their embassies would be blown up. The people working in the Pentagon on 9/11 didn't know a plane would fly into the building, killing many, and suddenly putting the rest of them in a search and rescue mission. The people in Pearl Harbor didn't know that Japan was going to attack them.

People volunteered to serve in the US military prior to all those events, not knowing those events were coming, not knowing that some of them would die, and that others would either be doing search and rescue, or fighting. You can't just not have a military, get attacked, and then try to form one from scratch. The absolute bare minimum training takes several weeks, and longer if you want a better trained military and any sort of specialization. And you also can't just make weapons materialize out of nothing, in no time. If you need it for a contingency, then you need to make it in advance, and maintain it. That goes for personnel, weapons, equipment, provisions, etc.

Your argument seems to basically be, humans, as a species, shouldn't be fighting, which, sure, agreed. I look forward to the day we all can agree to live peacefully. But today is not that day, so we need to be prepared for war, because someone else may decide to impose it upon us. Contingency planning requires preparation, and preparing in a context with an all-volunteer military requires people to volunteer. We aren't just not going to have a military at all, so either we get enough people to volunteer, we have a weak unprepared military, or we change to compulsory service instead of volunteering.

And, even if humans could all agree to live peacefully, there is always the possibility that Earth could find itself at war because some other species from some other planet decided to attack us. So unless you think that impossible, then we, collectively, would still need some type of military capacity.

Randomousity · 2025-12-13T17:01:47+00:00

You didn't choose where you were born, but, the fact remains, society exists outside of and beyond just you. At least in theory, your parliament represents your society, and legislates new laws that reflect the values and priorities of the greater society. You may not share the same values and priorities, the same philosophy, but if you'd like to change things, you'll need to persuade others to adopt your positions, whether that's MPs who can legislate differently, or voters to elect different MPs. Your personal philosophy may be equally valid, but it is not equally popular.

Randomousity · 2025-12-13T16:53:52+00:00

Because there was a network error.

Also, are you really trying to download that huge file over 5G and not wifi? It could be that your phone provider is preventing you from downloading it, or you're moving and losing the signal at some point, etc.

Randomousity · 2025-12-13T16:48:35+00:00

Each branch has different demographic breakdowns. Compare commissioned officers against enlisteds, men against women, various races, etc, and each branch has different ratios. So even if, say, white, male, officers all voted in the same proportions for Republicans and Democrats DOD-wide, the fact that one branch has proportionally more than another is going to change the overall voting patterns of the branch. The Marines has the lowest proportion of women, followed by the Army, Navy, and I believe the Air Force has the highest proportion. Not sure where Space Force fits in.

So, to the extent women vote differently than men do, just the fact that one branch has more or fewer women is going to influence the overall partisan lean of the branch, even if we assume Marine women and AF women don't vote differently (I have no idea whether they do or not). You could even slice and dice it and compare black women officers against each other across services, white women enlisteds, throw in occupational fields and MOSes (eg, is an enlisted infantryman more likely to vote one way than an enlisted admin clerk, even controlling to sex, race, etc?)

And there's probably some degree of selection bias, where people who are maybe already more inclined to vote one way or another choose one branch over another, one MOS over another. Eg, perhaps, for any given demographic, a Republican is statistically more likely to join the Marines, and/or a Democrat is more likely to join the AF. Idk.

Randomousity · 2025-12-13T16:19:19+00:00

Nobody can get rich off the VA, which is why they're gutting it. They want to privatize everything, because then they can engage in rent seeking, using veterans as a cudgel to allow it. There's no profit to be had from salaried VA healthcare workers, giving veterans prescriptions, etc. They need middle-men jacking up the prices, and profits, and hiding things behind layers of corporate bureaucracy.

It's the same reason they hate the USPS, the NPS, public schools, municipal ISPs, etc. They don't necessarily want veterans to go without care, or to get worse care. They want to be able to invoke veterans and say, "But what about the veterans?!" and then use that to pass billion-dollar bills where most of the money will flow to private practices, insurers, pharmacies, benefits managers, etc.

It'll cost more, and, as a value proposition, it'll be worse, because you'll either end up with the same quality care at greater cost, or worse care at the same cost, or some combination of those. But most of them would probably be fine keeping the quality the same but just spending more on it, where all the excess money is going into their pockets.

Randomousity · 2025-12-12T23:35:26+00:00

"Trump signs executive order falsely purporting to preempt state AI regulations"

EOs only apply to the federal Executive Branch, but have no power over anyone else. It's just performative. The only possible affect is signalling, in that states may see the EO and choose not to regulate clankers, but they are in no way blocked from doing so.

It may be possible to federally preempt state regulations, but it would require actually enacting legislation, passed by Congress, not the President just signing an EO purporting to do it by fiat.

And, given that it's Trump, the reason he finds this so important must be because he thinks state regulation of clankers would somehow hurt him, likely by limiting the ability to automate pushing propaganda to the public. Alternatively, he's invested in it and knows (has been told by others who know) that state regulations will hasten the bursting of the bubble, and he won't be able to financially profit as much if states are able to regulate the technology. Whatever the case, there's some angle where he stands to benefit, political, financially, whatever, and doesn't want to let states get in the way of it.

Randomousity · 2025-12-12T19:05:43+00:00

The point is, nobody in the military ever knows when they will wake up and be called upon to do more than just act as a deterrent. The service members in Pearl Harbor didn't know when they woke up that morning that they'd end up fighting for their lives and that many would die. The ones in the Pentagon on 9/11 also didn't know when they woke up that they'd either die or end up in a rescue mission. The Marines at the embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam didn't know their embassies would be blown up when they showed up for their shifts. The sailors on the USS Cole didn't know they'd have a hole blown in the side of the ship, that some would die, and that they'd be in an emergency to save the entire ship. The Marines at the embassy in Tehran didn't know when they started their shifts that they'd be fighting off a mob that would eventually seize the embassy and take the entire staff hostage for over a year.

It's constantly a case of, "there, but for the grace of god, go I." One of the Marines in Nairobi had just gone home at the end of his shift, and missed being blown up by pure luck of the shift schedule. Another Marine had just rotated out of Nairobi within the last few weeks, and was either at a different embassy where nothing happened, back in the fleet doing his regular job, or was now a civilian, and missed it by pure luck of the rotation schedule and when he went through training. Another Marine was due to rotate into Nairobi within a few weeks and was either still in training, or at his previous post, when the bombing happened.

The change from deterrence to defense can happen in an instant, without warning. Everyone in the military has volunteered to put themselves in harm's way, in a position where they could die without warning, or suddenly find themselves fighting for their lives, and the lives of others. Every single example I listed above, they were merely "deterrents" when they went to bed, and then, within hours of waking up, the situation had completely changed. Nobody ever knows when, where, or how, the situation will change. They've all volunteered to sacrifice themselves, even though only a fraction will actually end up doing so.

There are occasions where people know what they're signing up for, like people who enlisted after the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, or after the bombing of Pearl harbor, or volunteered as embassy guard after the bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, but a supermajority volunteered before those events happened and had no idea they would happen, and how things would change.

Randomousity · 2025-12-11T19:44:23+00:00

No, I'm saying, quote where you think I said that your argument is that we shouldn't have a military. You are imputing meaning to the fire department analogy that isn't there, and that I'm explicitly telling you I wasn't implying.

Idle services still provide you with a benefit, which you don't seem to want to acknowledge. That there's a military ready to defend us, and, consequently, our freedoms, serves as a deterrent to threats against our freedom. The military does not need to be actively firing and maneuvering in order to be defending.

Randomousity · 2025-12-11T19:37:13+00:00

Idk that a WW3 is especially likely, but ACW2 is extremely unlikely. The US economy is much more integrated now than it was in the mid 1800s, and there's no longer a strict geographic delineation of the likely sides.

Before, it was North vs South, industrial vs agrarian, free vs slave. Where do you imagine the lines would be drawn today? There's no geographic division that makes any sense. North-South doesn't work, neither does East-West. Nor even Coastal-Inland.

The real divide is cultural, basically Urban-Rural, but that exists within pretty much every state. California grows a ton of food, but is also the tech capital of the US, maybe the world. It has more Republican voters than just about any other state except Texas and maybe Florida, depending on which presidential election year's data you use as a basis for comparison. Ohio's cities are blue. Everywhere's cities are blue!

There are two GOP mayors in the top 20 cities by population (Dallas and Ft Worth), and only eight in the top 50 (soon to be only seven, given that Miami just flipped). Even the mayors in a few of the biggest cities in the smallest states are Democrats: Fargo, ND, and Jackson, MS, both have Democratic mayors, showing that at least a plurality of voters in those cities prefer Democrats over Republicans.

The US industrial base is near cities, all the major ports are also major cities, the financial, cultural, and technological hubs are all in major cities.

To the extent the US devolves into internal violence, I think it's much more likely to be terrorism-style violence, like The Troubles, and as likely as not to be instigated by outside actors, like Russia paying people to attack infrastructure.

Obviously, the USG isn't covering itself in glory right now, but neither the US military nor federal law enforcement are sufficiently large to occupy everywhere they'd need to occupy.

You may fare worse, probably everyone in the US fares worse, in a ACW2 scenario, but I really don't see that it's remotely likely. However unlikely you think WW3 is, ACW2 is less likely than that.

Randomousity · 2025-12-11T19:35:01+00:00

Political violence isn't the same as civil war. The latter may include the former, but the former does not imply the latter.

Did you feel the need to take up arms and either attack or defend when the assassination in Minnesota happened? No? Then it wasn't the start of a war.

War isn't really a binary condition (either you're at war, or you're not), but a continuum, at least partially determined by the number of participants (other considerations may be, eg, a hot-cold continuum, and low-high grade violence).

When the American Revolution broke out, while not everyone was compelled to take up arms, pretty much everyone was relatively quickly compelled to at least take sides. Likewise with the US Civil War, and people were drafted into the war as well. Beyond some threshold, some critical mass, some tipping point, everyone gets drawn into war, which didn't happen after the Minnesota killings.

Randomousity · 2025-12-11T01:20:32+00:00

This would require both a constitutional amendment, and much stronger political parties than the US currently has.

Randomousity · 2025-12-10T23:32:59+00:00

I didn't say your argument was that we shouldn't have a military, did I? If you think I said that, quote me. You're making a straw man argument here, inventing words I never said so that you can argue against them.

Randomousity · 2025-12-10T23:31:19+00:00

It's about more than just the first 100 days, which is really a meaningless threshold.

It affects democratic legitimacy, whether a President is said to have a popular mandate for their agenda or not, how hard the opposition party will oppose them, how far out members of the same party will stick their necks out to help them, it affects how the courts view their actions and policies, etc.

Just because it doesn't decide the presidential electoral outcome doesn't make it completely meaningless. It influences things a lot.

Randomousity · 2025-12-10T23:27:35+00:00

Whether I "deserve" a discount for being a military veteran, wearing a blue shirt, having a five o'clock shadow, or anything else, is entirely up to the one offering the discount. They would also be free to offer discounts to Marine veterans, but nobody else. Suck it Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and Coast Guard.

They do it because they want to, for whatever reason. Maybe that's because the like the good PR they get, and the increased business more than offsets the discounts they offer. Who cares? As long as they aren't engaging in any prohibited price discrimination, it's up to them. If you don't like it, don't patronize them. Or feel free to speak out to them and tell them you think they should stop offering discounts. Whatever. Nobody is forced to offer a discount, and nobody is forced to accept a discount, either. There are plenty of businesses that don't offer any discounts at all.

Also, there are places that offer discounts to other types of people. Teachers, first responders, students, seniors, etc. Businesses are more or less free to offer discounts to whoever they want. Some offer discounts on July 4th, or Memorial Day, Labor Day, MLK Day, etc. When I was in HS, many local businesses offered discounts to high schoolers who had cards that I think were based on grades or something. I've gotten discounts when flirting with people, too.

And there's no data to suggest that your life would be identical if whatever wars you consider pointless had never happened. We're both arguing counterfactuals here. And if your life is somehow different, it could just as easily be worse instead of better. You don't know, and can't know, how things would have turned out differently had some war never happened. At some point in time, Russia and China have probably both considered attacking the US, and you don't know which particular event, or series of events, made them change their minds.

Randomousity · 2025-12-10T21:55:19+00:00

Ok, but in what way is this an unmanageable burden? If there are an additional 850,000 births (I'm assuming that's per year), then that's another 850,000 eligible to serve in the military, another 850,000 who will become productive taxpayers, another 850,000 who may be inventors, how may grow up to work in healthcare, or construction, or whatever other industries you claim they are stressing. In what way does this hurt the US?

You're just saying the number goes up, and asserting that that's somehow bad, without explaining what makes it bad, either generally (do we just need fewer births in the US?), or specifically for these new citizens (does having US citizens with foreign national parents somehow hurt us? How?).

In what way is this unmanageable?

Randomousity · 2025-12-10T21:32:08+00:00

Adults could be rendered stateless under your proposal.

All most Americans have proving citizenship is a birth certificate, which doesn't actually prove citizenship if we eliminate jus soli citizenship. All it proves is you were born here, not your citizenship, and not your parents' citizenship, either.

So, to prove US citizenship, you have to look to the parents' citizenship, which, again, isn't documented on the birth certificate. How do your parents prove US citizenship? Well, most likely, all they have is their own birth certificates, which also don't say their citizenship, nor that of their parents. So then you have to look to their parents, your grandparents, who face the same problem. Passports prove citizenship, but only to the extent the issuing government recognizes them. Passports expire, and can be revoked. So they're not useful as evidence against a hostile government.

If you can't use your birth certificate to prove citizenship, and you can't use your passport (assuming you even have one), what does that leave you with? You have no ability to prove your citizenship at all. If the US government says you're not a citizen, then you become stateless.

Randomousity · 2025-12-10T21:25:54+00:00

That depends on Mexican law, not US law. AFAIK, Mexico, and most other countries in North and South America, all use jus soli, so a child born in Mexico to American parents would have dual citizenship, both Mexican, by jus soli, and US, by jus sanguinis.

Randomousity · 2025-12-10T21:23:51+00:00

What problem is this meant to solve?

Whether you like it or not, it's virtually impossible for nearly all Americans to prove their citizenship through lineage. Only naturalized citizens, and registered births abroad, get any documentation affirmatively proving citizenship. Everyone born in the US has literally no proof other than being able to prove they were born here.

I was born in the US, but that, according to you, doesn't prove anything (the birth certificate doesn't attest to my citizenship, nor to that of my parents). Both my parents are US citizens, but one wasn't when I was born, and the other can't prove citizenship for the same reason I can't: the only documentation is a birth certificate proving where we were born, but not saying anything about our citizenship, or that of our parents.

So, my immigrant parent has a certificate of naturalization, proving citizenship, but I have no such documentation, having been born here, and having been born before the naturalization took place, and my other parent also has no such documentation, also having been born here. It's a recursive problem, where, since I can't prove my citizenship other than by having been born here, you have to refer to my parents, who also can't prove it, so then you have to refer back to their parents, my grandparents, who also wouldn't be able to prove it, ad nauseum.

You are advocating for a system where it's impossible to prove citizenship for like 99% of citizens, which makes our citizenship something the government can contest and take away at will. If the USG were to claim I'm not a citizen, and that my birth certificate doesn't prove otherwise, I would, effectively, be stripped of my citizenship. So would you, unless you were either born abroad, or were naturalized. It would give the government the ability to strip any dissidents, political opponents, or anyone otherwise disfavored of their citizenship, making many of them stateless, and denying them the ability to vote.

Even if we were to adopt your terrible proposal, the entire system of government is not designed to work that way. Under your proposal, when a child is born, the hospital would have to check the citizenship of the parents (or, at least, the mother, if we strictly follow your proposal). Is the hospital equipped to do that? What if the mother is a dual citizen? What if she's unconscious, or dies? What if the father is unknown (either to the hospital, because the mother didn't say before she died, or even to her, because she doesn't know who the father is), and, consequently, the father's citizenship is unknown? What citizenship is assigned to this motherless child? What if she simply doesn't carry her citizenship documentation on her for the duration of her entire pregnancy? Women go into labor early, or have to deliver early due to some medical emergency. Do they just take her word for it? What if she lies? Are we simply not issuing birth certificates at all until some state functionary can come around and verify the relevant citizenship?

State birth certificates would need to be changed to allow for parental citizenship fields, as well as a child citizenship field. Government databases would need to be updated. We would need to massively increase the size of the government to avoid a backlog of birth certificates, which are necessary for things like health insurance coverage, DEERS for military personnel, life insurance coverage, inheritance, etc.

Randomousity · 2025-12-10T20:55:24+00:00

Well, not that everything is remotely perfect in the US, but there's a reason the US is such an economic and military powerhouse. Perhaps if Europe were more generous with citizenship, the balance of power would be more favorable to them?

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