Yes death is inevitable but you do have the opportunity to guide how you are going to die, to a degree.

Treating your body like a garbage dump will give you a long slow miserable death as you age as the garbage destroys your body. Eating more healthy can lessen that effect.

and by continuing to give the people the right to vote adds a veil of legitimacy to the power of the government so there is less of a chance of a uprising.

I feel this with reading.

Personally I've never understood the flex around how many books someone has read in a year. I mean if you are a fast reader/comprehend-er then you be you. Yet I feel that most people are just reading book after book so they can get to some arbitrary number by the end of an arbitrary time frame.

But, hey if setting a goal of reading x number of books in y amount of time makes you happy - fucking go for it.

There is Holywood money in the world of progressive actors that could put something together but I don't know that world and how it works so I have no idea if it's something that is actually feasible.

It's a frustratingly true response... sigh

Why hasn't there been a push to counter the propaganda on social media with social media?

Use short form, humorous posts that integrate facts and ideas that give a different more positive take on others. I would guess there are great writers and actors that have a progressive-ish mindset that could put something like this together.

But honestly what is the reason this hasn't been done? Or if it is being done why isn't there more of a push to get it seen?

... and then these small government people will demand that the government help them out

Why all the hush-hush and meekness?

My feeling on this is that once an American politician gets established, they have won a few elections back to back, they start to gain influence and power. This then changes their view of their job. While it may have been to make changes to a system for the betterment of the citizenry early on, the increase in power and influence weirdly changes them and they become scared of losing their job.

With this change from "I'm here for my country" to "I'm here to have power and influence" they become more weak and more of a sycophant to those that have the money. If they start to rock the boat, speak out against the oligarchs, then there is a chance they will lose their seat of power and influence.

I think your definition of redistribution and mine are not the same.

If I'm reading this right you are saying that any "reward" someone gets for over achieving will be punished and that person has to transfer a certain percentage of their bonus to an underachiever. That is to say that the redistribution is a direct hand out of your reward in the form of cash to some underachiever?

My definition of redistribution is that if you live in a society that values the education of its citizens, then the redistribution (ie taxes) is pooled and then spent in a way can help people out of difficult situations so that they can pursue an education and a career that will improve their lives and in a bigger sense improve the economic life of the country.

I see taxes as patriotic that if you truly believe in your country (that is the people that make up the country) you are willing to make a small sacrifice to help others become better citizens.

I genuinely feel that most people don't vote for a policy they vote for a feeling.

I also think that either the DNC doesn't understand the anger that many have about the wealth inequality or they just ignore it due to the donors they were courting. If they did understand this and understand that people vote with their feelings, I believe it would have been a closer race.

Right - but a well educated, fully engaged population in a democratic state can keep those types of people in check.

This is a difficult and ongoing battle with those that want to seize that power and wealth and it takes sacrifice and time to do.

I didn't say it wouldn't have helped. That wasn't the point of the comment.

What I was getting at was that if she wanted to motivate voters, especially more progressive voters, then she needed to go bigger than "build some houses and hand out some money."

What they wanted to hear from their candidate was a bolder and stronger solution like outlawing corporations from owning thousands of homes. Take a firm stand on corporate greed and corporate inflation. But she never talked about that.

In high school we had one year of "world" history that went something like this:

Man "appeared" in Africa

Sometime later planted corn and stuff

Egypt, Italy and China had big dynasties and stuff

Now let's talk about the important history: Western Europe and more importantly America!!!

America is awesome - we do cool stuff and we are amazing oh yea the natives ... well they were well.. uh America is awesome!

WWII we kicked ass

Communism is bad

Vietnam war happened

Have a great summer kids!

My feeling is that once the DNC starts to acknowledge the progressive ideas then they open the flood gates to challengers to their (limited) power.

One of the frustrations I had was her solution to the housing problem was to just build more houses and give out some money. Sure great, but what I wanted to hear, and I think many other also wanted to hear, was her talking about corporate hording of housing and what she would do about that situation. But she just ignored it completely and so did Biden.

I think instead if she came out swinging against corporate greed, even if she actually did nothing about it, would have given her more votes.

My one hope out of this is that the massive swing to the right will be countered with more vocal progressives.

honestly the left needs more table flipping candidates.

There is a large, young population that are progressive and angry. They want to see that reflected in the people they elect. They want to see passion in leaders that will end with positive changes. Yet instead we get milquetoast, bland middle of the road candidates that are not inspiring or interesting.

This is an example of what I am talking about

My take on this is that the DNC has never understood that to win the presidency in the last 20 years you need to be a fire brand.

I think this stared in 2008 with Obama who won I believe because he fired up the base with great speeches about hope and change. It didn't really happen, BUT the man knew how to give a speech. That got people inspired to do something and they voted.

Bernie was another fire brand - told it like it was and it appealed to a large population.

trump won using the same idea, but just the opposite of hope and change yet it worked. It tapped into a visceral and deep frustration that this country has left them behind.

The modern view of the American president to the population is less of a wonky politician and more of a cheerleader for big ideas, even if those ideas are abhorrent and exceedingly horrifying.

Harris just wasn't the person to pull this off, she was too wonky and it felt like the entire campaign was playing the old card of "we are not trump" Instead if they really wanted to win they would have found ( 2 years ago) a feisty out spoken progressive leaning firebrand that would have inspired people to vote for something better.

The only reason that (bland) Biden won was because of how badly trump fucked up the Covid response.

There isnt anything inately bad about sugar

Well in moderation sugar isn't too bad. The problem comes when food manufacturers start adding sugar to foods so it will taste better and if you are not paying attention to the content you can consume a significant amount in a day.

In conclusion, very little scientific evidence exists that indicates a benefit of added dietary sugars; however, an overwhelming and growing body of evidence highlights the negative effects of excessive or prolonged sugar intake

I mean Cuban has some redeeming qualities but he is still a gold hording billionaire. Linda Khan is a threat to his and all his billionaire buddies' status to being a billionaire, so it's not really too surprising he wants her gone.

<rant>

And this is what frustrates me about billionaires, this pathological fear that they have about losing anything, especially money. These people are addicts to money and power. And when someone or some institution gets in the way of them getting their next money fix they will do whatever they can to tear them down. And there are many many people in this world that enable this addiction they have, they praise it and encourage them to do more. People like Khan are seen as 'narcs' out to ruin their fun. Fuck that.

I would love to see a nationwide intervention and help these poor souls break this dangerous and deadly addiction they have.

</rant>

I think everyone that wishes for the fall of civilization should have to read The Road - That was a bleak story.