I can agree with your position based on the election on 2016. He was a wildcard, and truly nobody could know exactly how he'd act in office.
I can't agree with your position based on the election of 2024. We knew exactly who Trump was, and it was obvious the second term was only going to be more extreme and unhinged.
And this is where you have to admit that the Democrats just ran a terrible candidate in '24. You might believe she was the better choice but she just did not appeal to the middle, and you need them to win.
I do blame the Democratic party and Biden especially for the major shitshow that was the selection of a presidential candidate. Their hubris and corruption definitely continued to enable this walking disaster of Trump's second term. The Democratic Party has failed America over and over again in terms of actually selecting candidates the people want over people whose "turn" it is.
I also blame the people who voted for Trump for Trump getting elected. Ultimately its the voters who chose this disaster of a presidency, despite obvious signs.
The second term I think was largely handed to him given the Democrats had no primary for Kamala, and frankly were tone deaf with what the “other side”’s needs were in a candidate.
Politicians flip flop, or hopefully truly develop different opinions after experience/learning more.
Kamala came off as a piece of clay molded in the last minute to appease groups just for their vote. A good politician makes that “molding” process come off more naturally. Her and Walz did not really resonate with voters, they were just not Him.
And that is a lesson I hope democrats or a third party has learned that they can’t just reflectively say “I’m not Trump,” they need to show that through their principals, track record, and message of unity.
Hillary admonished trump voters, many of whom are middle class union/laborers. Biden claimed he was pro union then broke up the railroad strike. Kamala couldn’t hold a conversation without some sound bite failure (doesn’t make her bad, just not a politician) and wasn’t elected in any primary.
I think we need to better hear and learn the context of the other side’s perspective to understand why they voted the way they did, then provide a better option not just a different one
I totally agree the Democratic party has routinely failed the electorate.
> I think we need to better hear and learn the context of the other side’s perspective to understand why they voted the way they did
I hear it all the time. If I vote democrat, they're going to do forced gender reassignment surgeries in our public schools. If I vote democrat, I'm for murdering babies. If I vote democrat, I'm supporting Satan, and can't possibly call myself a Christian. To vote against Trump is to vote against God's will. This isn't just some stupid talking point on TV ads, its a position I've heard in person countless times and has absolutely touched me personally.
I've had people who were supposedly my friends for years, people I shared a table with weekly for years, decide they couldn't associate with me anymore because of a yard sign.
These are the people you're telling me that I need to better understand.
Where is the expectation for them to take a real look at reality and actually examine their positions aren't backed by reality, and their votes are going against their own interests?
A problem many people have with Democrats is they think that they're condescending, smug assholes who think they're better than them, talk down at them, and think they're stupid.
Perhaps the many, many comments in this thread, going on and on about how people are misinformed, ignorant voters who vote against their own interests, could be understood for what it actually is, which is that.
There's no such thing as people voting against their own interests. People vote based on what they think will make their life better. The quality of a person's life has a massive number of interrelated variables that are hard to tease out.
Someone might decide that their quality of life will be improved by having better jobs or doing something about the extractive corporate sector that makes it almost impossible for normal people to thrive. They might also try to improve their lives by trying to make other people besides themselves feel humiliated and outcast in society since they are sick of being those people. In fact they might decide that's only thing they can change since that first thing isn't on the agenda of either party.
In all cases people get to decide what they care about and what they think their life improvement chances are by whatever metrics they pick. They are right about their preferences by definition. That's inherent to democracy.
What about when what someone cares about and votes based on turns out to not even exist?
There was a lot of campaigning in 2024 based on completely made up claims. Many voters voted based on that, even though they thought the other candidate was better on other issues they cared about.
> Democrats [are] condescending, smug assholes...going on and on about how people are misinformed, ignorant voters who vote against their own interests,
Totally. No one likes an asshole. But assholes can be right. What's a kinder label than "misinformed" for someone who rejects the truth because of its source?
There's no truths or untruths here. Just preferences and values. Some people care more about some things than others. People vote based on if their life is getting better or worse and who seems most focused on changing that if it's getting worse.
There are. There's a subset of Republican voters who absolutely believe that in Democrat states you can:
- get an abortion up to one month after delivery
- get gender reassignment surgery coordinated at your school without parental awareness or consent.
"There's no truths or untruths here". There absolutely fucking are. And then people like you are acting like we're the ones contributing to it, "Well, have you considered why they might think that way?"
You're not asking them "Have you considered how what you're saying is utterly disconnected from any reality whatsoever?"
> There's no truths or untruths here. Just preferences and values. Some people care more about some things than others
This is easily disprovable. People care about gas prices. They were unhappy with gas prices under Biden and said so loudly. They voted for the candidate that increased them even more.
Reason: ignorance and misinformation.
Outcome: voting against one's own declared interests.
I'm not denying preferences exist. But preferences are shaped by lies. They easily lead to outcomes contrary to those preferences.
What you're saying is just factually incorrect. They had a Biden presidency and a Trump presidency. Prices went up much faster and more painfully under Biden than under Trump.
So they voted for the candidate who had a track record of lower inflation.
Turns out things didn't happen that way but that's a different criticism. You're assuming a forward-looking omniscience of some kind or prediction skill that just doesn't exist.
Wars and pandemics that begin on the other side of the world cause inflation.
When "smug asshole Democrats" explained why this wasn't Biden's fault, given that it happened on the other side of the world, they got called "smug assholes".
Enacting tariffs and waging war also causes inflation. Tariffs were a campaign promise - zero omniscience required.
And gas wasn't this expensive in 2022. So you're wrong about that.
> So they voted for the candidate who had a track record of lower inflation.
So they made the ignorant choice at choosing the candidate who teed up the highly inflationary environment and enacted policies which driectly drove the inflation. Like, the $450B in cash handouts and the near trillion dollars in forgiven PPP loans with zero enforcement. Loans which his family directly abused.
> You're assuming a forward-looking omniscience of some kind or prediction skill that just doesn't exist.
No, I'd expect people to not make stupid choices. Anyone actually paying attention would understand Trump is bad for the economy long term. But here we are.
The largest problem with America is a strong culture of believing that my ignorance is just as valid as your knowledge.
This is because 35% of the country identifies as rejecting all science and asserting the belief that the earth is 6000 years old because they explicitly believe a "plain reading" of the bible trumps all
The believe that the earth is 6000 years old or "Young", a belief that is explicitly taught in hundreds of private schools funded through school voucher programs that only hand little timmy very special textbooks that assert that scientists are evil and trying to keep them from gods light.
This belief requires you to not learn how science works. It requires you to reject empiricism entirely. It requires you to believe that science in general is an evil cabal directly in league with satan to make you stop believing in god. It requires you to believe that democrats are in league with these satanists to "brainwash" your good little god fearing kid in school, so you should put him in a private school where he won't be brainwashed because instead he will be taught the truth of god, which is to just do whatever the Pastor and his leaders say, and don't think.
How would you describe a belief that says that technology and technology companies will improve people's quality of life and that the people who run them should be given more power and authority within our culture as a result?
It is very easy, remove all hospitals, power plants, etc from red states. Wait a few months. We will see what their opinion is on technology and its relation to quality of life.
If this was why you voted for Trump you once again failed to pay attention. If anything this administration is down to let billionaires and their tech corporations do whatever they want to do, far more than the administration actually starting to make regulations and antitrust proceedings.
Yet another example of "voting against your interests" due to massive amounts of ignorance.
Trump owns a social media company. The leaders of the other big social media companies backed his run to the tune of nearly $300M dollars.
There's no scenario where I'm voting for Trump. I'm a lifelong progressive and I've been involved in Democratic Party politics for about 30 years. Worked on my first campaign in the early '90s.
So you can dispense with that assumption. Hopefully you can pick up on the point I was making, which is that there are a lot of irrational belief systems in politics. You can find them everywhere.
What I dislike is this tendency among overeducated elite, nominally Democratic Party-type commentators to focus on this meta discussion: Why are they stupid? Why are they misinformed? What bots are influencing them?
How about we just focus on the merits? What exactly is your favorite politician proposing to do? Do they have a conception and understanding of how power works and will they use it to achieve goals of any kind? Can we evaluate them on those goals? The last time your team got a chance, what did they do with it? Can people trust you? Who do you serve and who do you fight?
If the answer to that last question is that you serve Wall Street corporate interests and Silicon Valley and you fight against labor and wage earners then you're not on my team either.
We don't talk about the merits because the merits are clearly not running the show as far as voter decisions. It's all emotion, mostly loyalty and fear. (Using "we" very broadly, since I'm nowhere near being nominally Democrat.)
We could go on and on about the merits of voting for Kamala or Biden in that election, but ultimately it didn't matter because tons of people think voting for a Democrat is a vote for post-birth abortion, forced gender reassignment surgeries, migrants coming to murder you and eat your pets, allowing transgender people to sexually assualt your wife and daughter in public bathrooms, forcing Sharia law on everyone, and force injecting people with dangerous vaccines which are more likely to kill you than the disease they're protecting against.
How do you engage with the many, many millions of Americans which believe these things? You think they give a damn about how some infrastructure bill finally started the planning on replacing that bridge in town that they don't even realize is about to collapse when their pastor says voting against Trump is sentencing you to hell? These same voters that can't put 2 and 2 together and realize the reason why the only hospital nearby closed finally because their state refused Medicaid expansion so long ago.
What's the way you suggest we connect with these topics? What's the right give-and-take here? How do you come to a middle ground when they're off in adrenochrome-fueled lala land?
But hey, according to you, I guess they're acting rationally, and there are no truths or untruths.
People are refusing to vote for Talarico because they know he's a transgender vegan who will outlaw meat in Texas and force your kids to be gay. You think people who think these things will be swayed by another vote for Medicare for All or eliminating the tax cap on Social Security or paid family leave? Nah, he's unelectable because he suggested maybe God doesn't have a penis, as we know for sure God the Father is definitely a dude even though somehow women were also made in the image of God. They can't vote for Talarico because he's against God...as opposed to the guy who's defrauded his friends, practices extreme corruption, got impeached by his own party, and flies around the world with his mistress to party with fugitives illegally supporting him in a Muslim country while costing the public tons of money.
> smug assholes who think they're better than them, talk down at them, and think they're stupid.
Trump literally said he could say the stupidest things to his supporters and they'll still cheer. Trump is a smug asshole who thinks he's better than his supporters, talks down to them, lies to their faces over and over, and knows they'll support him because they literally see him as God's anointed one.
Now do the other guys. That's the problem here. We have two competing elitist political parties. They unite on their agreement that capital should rule everything and everyone, and disagree on a bunch of other stuff.
Tell me again about how this applies to a candidate showdown like James Talarico versus Ken Paxton.
> There's no such thing as people voting against their own interests.
This is truly as nonsensical opinion as people always choose healthy choices. People can absolutely make self destructive choices. A smoker choosing to smoke isn't making a good choice, but to you they couldn't possibly choose something against their interests. It would be in their interests to stop smoking, but they're unable or unwilling to make that decision.
> self-destructive choices can be rational at times
It's not a rational choice. It's choosing to make the irrational choice.
A drug addict choosing to shoot up isn't making the rational choice. It's a choice we can examine on why they made that choice, but it wasn't reason that drove them to make that choice.
Thinking Trump is the anointed one isn't a rational decision. Voting for Trump to get rid of corruption isn't a rational choice. Voting for a rapist in the middle of a big pedophile ring isn't the rational choice at fighting the pedophiles.
Is it irrational to smoke cigarettes if you're in a concentration camp?
Is it irrational to take out yourself as well as your enemies if you have no realistic prospects for improving your situation but you do have the ability to hurt people who hurt you?
> Is it irrational to smoke cigarettes if you're in a concentration camp?
Yes, I'd agree it's irrational to willfully give yourself a chemical addiction in a place where you are already have enough stressors and it'll be hard for you to continue to feed that addiction once started. It's probably a terrible choice to start an addition in a concentration camp. I can understand why people would choose it, and I don't fault them for making such a decision in such a bad place, but it's definitely not the rational choice.
I, and the other poster, are beyond that point. I've actually had it said that it's our fault (liberals) that things are like this, because we are refusing to engage and that we "owe" conservatives the opportunity to listen and understand their argument.
That we somehow owe it to people to argue in good faith with them when they are talking of (the ones I've personally had mentioned): post-birth abortion ("in several Democrat states, abortion is legal up to one month post birth!". Apparently you can take your baby home, come back a month later, and say "Nah, changed my mind on this one", who knew?), adrenochrome harvesting, etc.
That it was my/our fault such views propagate because we're not "willing to understand their perspectives".
The thing is, their perspectives are a lie. And in many cases, they know they're a lie, they just don't. fucking. care.
So they can go online and whine about being dismissed or criticized, or pat each other on the back for "knowing the truth". There's a subset who, I'm sure, see such things as actual literal truth, and that's a different issue altogether, but not sure it's my responsibility to solve, or that failure to engage on my part makes the current situation "my fault".
"Maybe I need to put more effort into why they think or feel that way?" That won't work, because I'll be the only one doing so. You'll note that it's never framed as a matter "maybe they should think about why people think what they're saying sounds absolutely ridiculous". There's no effort on critical reasoning or discourse that will work there, because it's not grounded in reason in the first place. And when that comes up, crickets. But no, "keep going high", keep working on empathy for people who actively celebrate LE shooting people, and for a President that will say from the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, quote, "My kids are insider trading all the time".
This sounds like a conversation about something other than politics.
Do the candidates you support have any kind of track record of making people's lives better, helping average regular everyday working people live lives of dignity where they can afford to live in places and raise their families?
Or do they have a long track record of doing the opposite, favoring the interests of war overseas and corporate hegemony at home?
How is "does your candidate favor a corporate hegemony?" a political question, but "does your candidate favor allowing abortion?" not? Politics is the methodology by which we organize a society, which includes legality, morality, and ethics.
I feel you think you've had some sort of "gotcha" moment by implying that Democratic candidates have failed in meeting their claimed goals. For one, I am unable to vote in US elections. And for two, the candidates I would support would be far left of today's Democratic Party, and I would vote for that Party only if/because the realistic alternative candidates were ... as abhorrent as they currently are.
A candidate favoring or opposing government restrictions on abortion is most certainly a political question. A voter having delusional opinions (or claiming to) is something else.
> I feel you think you've had some sort of "gotcha" moment by implying that Democratic candidates have failed in meeting their claimed goals.
Yeah, of course I do. The fact that Democratic politicians have failed to improve the lives of regular people and aren't really trying to is pretty fucking relevant to why they lose to obviously corrupt opponents.
Which seems important if your goal involves acquiring and wielding political power instead of lamenting all the idiots out there in internet posts.
> The second term I think was largely handed to him given the Democrats had no primary for Kamala, and frankly were tone deaf with what the “other side”’s needs were in a candidate.
Yeah, the biggest speedbump for Democratic candidates or left leaning people is the DNC.
From Hillary and the whole Debbie Wasserman-Schulz sabotaging Bernie, being caught doing it, denying it, then ... surprise! She's Hillary's campaign manager within 24 hours of resigning DNC leadership...
... through to one of the most uneducated electorates (which is on both sides), where the single most popular Google search on Election Day? "Did Biden drop out?"
If the diagrams and descriptions are actually well-designed and written, I'd far prefer those. Especially one where I can ask clarifying questions. I'd much prefer a Haynes with some of the images lightly animated than having a 10 minute long video with a long intro for monetization reasons about how to do some simple thing where you can barely see what the mechanic is actually doing in the cramped, poorly lit, 360p video is trying to look at.
But getting actual service manuals cheap/free these days can be tricky, and their quality can leave a good bit to be desired.
When you give a ticket to a jr developer, do you look over their shoulder the entire time they write the code? Or do pause to answer questions, give feedback on how to go about a task, and review their results?
If we take just the good parts of this and compare it with just the bad parts for that, we can go really far before crashing against reality at incredible speed. But cherry picking is a lot of fun and two can play this game:
Can you assure that saving this 20,000 humans will not mean one million humans starving and dying later when their main source of proteins (fisheries) will vanish forever by lack of mosquitoes and introduction of mosquito fishes (those pesky fish egg eaters)?. Wouldn't choose to save one million babies, you? Wow, that's evil. Think in the babies, people!
You should probably stop doing anything then, because you can't prove you getting out of bed in the morning won't lead to the destruction of society. You can't assure me it won't!
Even us filtering water for drinking has downstream effects which may ultimately cause harm which can't be entirely unproven. I guess we should just stop drinking clean water!
There are tons of things we just ultimately choose to do or allow to happen which can have potential issues we may never even know are happening until its way too late. Ruminating on maybes we have no way to even measure or know or simulate isn't exactly useful. What are the likelihoods of those outcomes? Pretty dang small based on our current knowledge? What are the likliehoods of tons of people dying or being seriously injured from these diseases? Extremely high?
I totally understand there's a massive amount of unknowns about this. Let's continue analyzing what's the right course of action as we go, and ensure we're taking that understanding into account of what we do in the future.
In the end, whose lives do you prioritize given the lack of information today, and the lives at risk today? Deciding to do nothing still costs lives, and potentially drives us further into the bad state area.
I'm reminded of the horror movie Mimic, in which a genetically modified bugs are deployed to deal with a rampant cockroach population. Once the cockroaches are taken care of, the mutant bugs focus on the next disasterous infestation...humans!
US also has federal employer-paid payroll taxes the employee usually doesn't see or think about.
For a $110k salary the federal employer paid payroll taxes would be almost $8,500, or ~7.69%. They would also pay some amount to unemployment insurance, but that rate depends a lot state by state.
I realize that's less than the Euro taxes, just wanted to share so everyone is aware of these often forgotten US taxes when compared.
> A US employer also generally provides health insurance and retirement, of which they pay a large piece.
Health insurance yes, retirement… no, not really. They may offer a 401k plan and some might even offer a match, but most companies offer at most a 4% salary match (dollar for dollar, or sometimes 50c per dollar).
So, it’s a vehicle to invest retirement funds with some tax advantages, but it’s not really “providing” it like you would subsidized healthcare.
For a role like that, they'd likely cover a decent chunk of the premium cost. Its not always the full cost though, FWIW. People earning such a wage paying for the rest of their family often still spend hundreds of dollars a month for their premiums, along with also needing to stash a few hundred dollars a month towards healthcare savings whether in an HSA or an FSA.
I do agree though, such a thing should also be considered when thinking about total cost of the compensation. Things definitely start getting a bit fuzzier though. You then also get stuff like HSA matching, 401k matching, etc.
It doesn't need to be for the whole house, it just needs to be for the lighting fixtures. Obviously nobody is going to use a microwave or blender on 12V. It's not like our bulbs plug into NEMA 5-15 outlets. Having good DC standard voltages and plugs would be incredibly useful. Don't bother running 12V everywhere, but like after the 120V light switch go to a single controller that then drives the lights for that room. Or have that be in the box with the switch, although that might still have the same kind of cramped heat issue.
And it's not like we need to just stop producing Edison socket styles tomorrow. But let's make sane standards today.
I don't know how it is where you live, but most apartments where I've lived in Paris didn't have dedicated wiring for the lights in the "living" spaces. They had them in the bathroom / hallway / kitchen, but not in the living rooms, for example.
My current apartment has dedicated circuits in the living room and bedroom. But in the living room they're in awkward places.
I always had to resort to multiple lamps that would plug into an outlet so I could place them where I needed them. Running 12 V for the bulbs would require rewiring most of the apartment.
Now, I'm not against having a new socket standard. But it would have to be connected to 220 V.
That is fairly typically in the US as well. Most often there is a switch in the living spaces, which controls have the outlet half of a duplex outlet. Plug something into the top (sometimes bottom - there is no standard) and the switch controls it so you can get the lights on/off when you enter/leave the room, plug into the bottom (again sometimes top) and it is always on, perfect for whatever else you have in the room.
Its not like your bulbs are plugging straight into your wall outlets. You've got some kind of lamp fixture that the bulbs screw in to, correct?
Your lamps would still plug into mains, same as they do today. The lamp fixture overall would contain the driver components, hopefully in packaging which lets it manage heat well and have good build quality. But whatever parts do fail routinely should be able to be easily replaced with some kind of standardized socket. It just seems like we're trying to squeeze too much too cheaply into a form factor that's ill suited for the requirements by trying to shove all the driver circuitry into the same envelope of an older Edison A-shape socket style bulb.
This has already kind of been a thing for a while with low voltage halogen lamps. The bulbs themselves aren't made for mains voltage, the lamp structures themselves give the right voltage for the halogen mini bulbs. I've replaced a few bi-pin halogen lights for LEDs with drop-in replacements (especially for outdoor lights), but this same kind of bulb packaging hasn't really been very common for interior lighting from what I've seen.
> Now, I'm not against having a new socket standard. But it would have to be connected to 220 V.
Why would it need to be 220 V in the "socket" for the bulb? Why do we need lamps themselves to just be a frame to hold a wire, why not put the driver circuitry in there to step it down to whatever voltage we decide to drive the DC LED bulbs at?
> Why would it need to be 220 V in the "socket" for the bulb? Why do we need lamps themselves to just be a frame to hold a wire, why not put the driver circuitry in there to step it down to whatever voltage we decide to drive the DC LED bulbs at?
I was talking about the lamp itself. Maybe I used the wrong term? I meant the fixture which holds the wire and expects a bulb. That fixture needs to go into mains, because that outlet may have to also service something else entirely.
Now, sure, usually those fixtures tend to be larger than the bulbs, so they could hold the conversion circuitry. I'd be fine with that. But the commenter I was replying to talked about having an alternative DC circuit for the lights.
Sure, and we can have that too, in the places where the lights are built-in to the ceilings or cabinets or whatever. When we have lights in the ceilings, the fixtures again can handle this specialized LED bulb style. And one might even link several lights into a single DC circuit for all the lights in the room versus having each individual light do its own AC->DC conversions in compromised envelopes.
We should allow batting machines for baseball players to hit the ball more reliably as well. Poker players should play with their cards face up. I agree.
Manually controlling to the limits of the car is a big part of the skill of racing.
I can't agree with your position based on the election of 2024. We knew exactly who Trump was, and it was obvious the second term was only going to be more extreme and unhinged.
reply