That is liberal identity politics which everyone hates. Real leftists like Sanders and AOC have never said anything like that.

Advertising is absolutely morally reprehensible. It is propaganda that exists only to manipulate people into buying shit they didn’t want or need. And it turns out that mindless consumerism is destroying society and our planet.

As we destroy the planet with car centric urban sprawl and climate change, people are living increasingly more and more online through video games, twitch, tiktok, and Netflix. Basically ReadyPlayerOne, but without the cool virtual reality.

Nov 5th was a monsterous setback for environmental issues. Project2025 will undo all the progress we have made on environmental regulation.

German conservatives formed a majority coalition with the Nazis in 1932. Conservatives have always sided with fascism over socialism and always will.

Next you’ll tell us Putin’s Russia is as strong as ever

China didn’t have to steal anything, the west handed them all of our trade and engineering secrets on a silver platter just to boost their profit margins.

You’re not completely wrong. There are many aspects of our system that are deeplh undemocratic: the way that the donor class gatekeeps who is able to run, the way politicians serve lobbyists and donors over the public will, and the way that oligarchs own 95% of our news media all create an environment where the interests of the people are not represented by our government

The supreme court and congress has put the executive branch in its place before.

The SC betrayed democracy with Citizens United and again when they gave Trump immunity for his countless crimes while in office. Don’t forget that the SC openly take bribes from billionaires.

I mean, Russia has been a fascist country for 30 years now and they haven’t collapsed

80% of Nazi casualties happened on the eastern front by the Communists. But yeah, the Soviet Union no longer exists, Russia has fallen to fascism, and now the US has too. The world is fucked.

Voting against fascism doesn’t make a person a liberal. Liberals suck, but fascists actually want us dead or in jail.

Do live in a housing co-op? Because those are the only rentals I know of that base their prices on actual costs rather than greed.

Cutting down the trees was out next biggest mistake. For example, the Europeans who colonized the US cut down 93% of the trees they found. They clear cut forests of giant oaks and blackwalnut trees. And we replaced all of that natural beauty with asphalt and endless urban sprawl.

But it seems when a company does the importing it doesn’t count for some reason?

If lobbying is legal in your country then political representation is literally for sale which allows the rich buy to special privileges.

Old appliances broke, but they were made to be easy to fix so our grandparents could just swap out the broken parts. I helped my dad replace the compressor on an older fridge as a kid and the heating elements on my grandma’s toaster. I remember my dad taking me to some locally owned mom and pop hardware store where we could buy replacement parts for old appliances off the shelf. My parents still have the toaster, but that store closed down and new stuff isn’t made to be fixable anymore (most likely due to planned obsolescence thanks to late-stage-capitalism).

On a tangent, when you think about it, throwing an entire toaster away because one heating coil burned out or throwing awag an entire fridge just because the compressor gave out is not rational. But if you tell people we should have the freedom to buy repairable appliances then they look at you like you are crazy. To me, it is the other way around. Sustainability isn’t political or a luxury, it is an inevitabe, unstoppable force of equilibrium.

He has potential, for sure, but putting the blame on one person was a massive whiff, especially when his own sources had spelled out the real problem multiple times:

"When Gomes pushed back on the multiple requests for growth, Fox added that all three of them were responsible for search, that search was “the revenue engine of the company,” and that bartering with the ads and finance teams was potentially “the new reality of their jobs.”

On February 6th 2019, Gomes said that he believed that search was “getting too close to the money,” and ended his email by saying that he was “concerned that growth is all that Google was thinking about.”

“Growth is all that Google was thinking about”. Companies prioritize quality and customer value when they are worker owned or trying to corner a market, but once they have a monopoly that goes out the window. Profit driven monopolies always end up cutting corners and abusing their customers. That is why anti-trust laws are so important and why it is so frustrating that we allow companies to bribe our politicians into eroding our anti-trust protections

A recent Factually! Podcast with Adam Conover interviewed a Political Science professor about why US politicians are so old and it came down to wealth. The boomer generation has more wealth and you need a shit load of wealth to jumpstart a political career so the US is stuck with older politicians because we are far closer to being an oligarchy or plutocracy than an actual democracy

I just want to point out that the idea that “questioning your party helps the enemy” is an authoritarian mentality. If we aren’t free to demand that the left-of-fascism party stop supporting (funding) genocide, then perhaps the US has already fallen to authoritarianism.

Voting isn’t a love letter, it’s a chess move

The difference is you can win a game of chess. There is no winning with our two party oligarchy. Which candidate will give us universal healthcare? Which candidate will give us economic democracy by converting capitalist companies into worker co-ops or nationalizing critical industries? Which candidate will give us free college and the freedom to unionize without fearing for our careers? Neither of them? Cool. So either we vote for liberal corporate oligarchy or the fascist oligarchs will make us pay dearly for it. Either way we lose, but one is worse than the other. Our “democracy” is like holding a gun to someone’s head and telling them they are voting to get shot if they don’t vote to drop their pants and bend over. I’ll do it, but only because the alternative is worse.