“Vote for my shitty policies or the other guy will have shittier policies” is not a platform.

The point of a democratic republic is that elected officials enact the policies those who elect them want. If you don’t offer to enact those policies you don’t get elected.

Yes, non-voters were stupid to not vote for the lesser evil, but the Harris campaign violated the very basis of democracy and thought they could simply use Trump to bully people into voting for them.

Imagine a system where a fascist Boogeyman is held up every election and people reliably vote against them without regard for who they vote for. The other party could put up whatever shitty candidate they wanted whether they espouse the views of the population or not.

Not only is that not at all a fucking democracy, it was the documented strategy of the Democratic party! Except it doesn’t fucking work, which they should have learned in 2016.

The Biden campaign offered something, notably student loan forgiveness, but both Clinton and Harris’s campaigns relied on the dumbfuck Pied Piper strategy that they would offer nothing to the voters other than being not-Trump.

That’s a dumb fucking strategy because there are fewer people that will vote Democrat as the lesser evil than will vote Republican just because Republican. They have to court people with policies they actually want.

And the absolute crazy thing is they tried this in 2016 and it failed, yet somehow had the balls to try again when it mattered more.

They didn’t lead to the apathy - they pointed out the existing apathy would cost Dems the election. It’s like saying the person who said you need to wear a seatbelt caused the wreck.

You’re exactly right about people being excited for Trump and lukewarm on Harris, but that’s entirely on the Democrats for picking the platform and strategy that lost to Trump in 2016.

Harris had a notable and surprising lead when they announced Biden was out - then they changed nothing else. People didn’t just not like the candidate, they didn’t like the policies. They only changed the candidate and thought Trump was a big enough cudgel to bully people into voting even though that demonstrably doesn’t work.

Yeah. I think it was the biggest issue and was easily solvable, but the campaign was a fuck up through and through.

Across Biden and Harris they kept trying to steal a sliver of the conservative vote instead of just taking from the huge infrequent voter slice. They didn’t do anything to try to get that slice to vote for them, they just threatened them with Trump if they didn’t get out to vote.

Trump didn’t get any more votes than last time.

He won because the Democrats lost.

The Harris campaign turned out great initially.

They fucked it up immediately by saying they weren’t going to be any different from Biden on Gaza and that was one of the wedge topics that had been created about Biden.

Rather than compromise with the electorate to get people out to vote, they tried to use Trump to bully voters out of the house saying he’d be worse.

It’s not even close to half. Republicans are a quarter to a third of the country.

It’s voter suppression and Democrats being the biggest possible fuckups they could be at every fucking opportunity.

Must have dropped out of strawman school…

You’re definitely on the right track.

The only actual job of the police is to file crime reports.

They do not prevent crime. Protect innocents. Make people show up for court etc. They have no obligation to stop a crime in progress or protect someone being hurt, even if they’re standing right there and could stop it.

Anything in the justice system that you value is either done by someone else, or actually isn’t done at all.

Tell that to Volkswagen, BMW, Messerschmitt, Audi, Deutsche Bank… And all these guys: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Holocaust

This is a good example of keeping your mind so open your brain falls out.

No. The article doesn’t explicitly say what party he planned to vote for. That’s right.

Almost all instances of election violence have been committed by the same party - even the attempted assassinations. I’m sure there could be examples of violence from the other party but I’m genuinely struggling to think of any.

So if a reasonable person hears someone in an election line was violent they’re not going to think “well there are crazies on both sides, so yaneverknow.”

And abortion being legal doesn’t mean shit for a Catholic.

No one’s up in arms because non-Catholics eat meat during lent or don’t believe in transubstantiation.

Their religious belief has no place in government. If they don’t want to do it, then don’t.

The concept of the tragedy of the commons existed centuries before Hardin. He just uses that concept to justify an unsound conclusion and the concept would exist whether he wrote his paper or not.

Every time someone references it, they’re referencing that concept that really does affect communal resources, and probably have no idea what argument Hardin ever made based on it.

The beginning of the paper lays out the idea very well and I use it to teach people to treat shared resources respectfully, but tell them not to bother reading the conclusion.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=2016+Clinton+pied+Piper+strategy

Something like “I don’t like to chat at work”.

The other suggestions seem far too inviting for follow-up or could be perceived as sidelong attacks.

That phrasing is hard to follow-up on, though not impossible, and focuses only on you. I suspect you also don’t chat with others, so they probably can’t say something like “But you chat with Johnny?”

Talking about what they’re doing that annoys you opens a conversation about them feeling attacked or maybe trying to find alternate ways to talk to you etc. You don’t need to explain why you don’t want to chat because that will open other conversations. They probably will try to follow up or redirect, but calmly insisting that you prefer not to chat may work.

HR is generally a bad place for employees to take issues since their stated job is to protect the company from liability their employees might incur. If you have a union or some other third party resource go to them first, then go to HR if they advise it. Since HR is interested in protecting the company from liability created by employees you may be able to aim them at the other employee, but you need to be sure that’s what they’ll do before going to them, otherwise they may view you as the liability.

EDIT: And you don’t need to wait for them to ask if you’re OK. If your issue is that they’re talking about non-work and that’s not why you’re there, just bring that up immediately.

And also be clear they can still talk to you as long as it’s work related, and that you’re not refusing to work with them. Otherwise you become an HR problem.

Harris chose to do something immoral because “it was the law”, or it benefited her, or whatever - and you can expect her to continue doing that.

You still have to vote for her, but you also have to be realistic about who you’re actually voting for.

Republicans are the party who holds their candidates up without criticism - and Dems put up Kamala now exactly because Democrats were criticizing Biden - and even though she’s one of the worst candidates they’ve put up in years, she’s still far more electable than Biden.

So yes. You need to both vote for and criticize Harris. It’s the least immoral choice.

Canada Goose

https://youtu.be/GqeJ38DThVc

This was originally a spring song.

I got my prependix taken out as a kid due to an infection.

It’s staged in that every element is fake.

When they take photos of Obama playing basketball, Trump golfing, etc. the subjects are still actually doing those things and actually do them off-camera as pastimes. The comms people are taking real interests and skills of their clients and casting them in the best possible light. The circumstances are staged, but the pastimes are not.

Mussolini never harvested any wheat and Trump never worked at McDonald’s. The comms people are completely fabricating their client’s interests and skills.

It’s not even Dirty Jobs levels of slumming it where they actually do the job but get paid thousands of times more and go to a fancy hotel at the end of the day. They’re just models.