Ideas about how men are expected to live and behave will always differ from culture to culture, but even within a given culture there are different expectations, based on things like class, for instance. In fact, I would say that’s the big difference between the Republicans and the Democrats, at least in this instance. Walz is a working class man, Vance is firmly a member of the upper class. Given this, it shouldn’t be surprising that Walz seems more in touch with the “average American,” where Vance seems very, well, out of touch.

So why then do so many working class men identify more with Vance? It’s complicated, but it generally all comes down to hierarchy. Working class Americans have been told their whole lives that workers are lower in the social hierarchy, especially those who work more physical jobs and make less than what is necessary to be considered at least upper middle class. By this metric, Walz is a “loser” while Vance is a “winner.” Hierarchy is very important to many men and few of them want to be associated with “losers.” It doesn’t matter so much that Trump and Vance are weird and out of touch, what matters is they are rich, and in this country your place in the social hierarchy is largely determined by your wealth and income.

China, Iran and Russia are all spreading disinformation to sow discord

It’s not about supporting one candidate over another because they are more closely ideologically aligned with that candidate, it’s about amplifying division among Americans. Make no mistake, however, these countries did not create the divisions. The divisions stem from our ideological, political, religious, cultural, etc, differences, but these countries are trying to exacerbate conflicts and division, to increase instability and weaken the US.

If you are at war with someone, where do you attack them? Where they are strongest, or where they are weakest? You target their weaknesses, and our divisions are where we are weakest. Where we fundamentally disagree on our political, social, and cultural vision for America is where they target.

And it worked, we hate each other. To be fair, we might have gotten to this point even without outside interference, but I think it at least accelerated the process.

I don’t think the decisions that led to our current monetary system were made arbitrarily, not at all.

The cost of living will just keep going up because inflation is necessary in our current, debt based monetary system. The Fed tries to keep this under control by not allowing the rate of inflation to go much beyond about 2% a year. The recent inflation issue we’ve been having wasn’t about inflation suddenly happening where it hadn’t been happening before, it was about the rate of inflation increasing beyond the Fed’s 2% target. When they talk about inflation getting back under control, they’re talking about the rate of inflation getting back to near 2%. But make no mistake: prices are still going up - they have to, that’s how the system works - and they will keep going up every year, seemingly indefinitely. For this reason, a cost of living raise equal to at least the rate of inflation is absolutely essential, otherwise workers are getting a pay cut.

But this is further complicated by the fact that the core inflation numbers are very broad. Housing costs are exploding. Core inflation would be much lower if not for rising housing costs. But the way housing costs increases are measured is by averaging housing costs across all markets, meaning the cost of housing in low demand areas is averaged with the cost of housing in high demand areas. This means that if you live in a high demand area, the core inflation rate doesn’t necessarily capture the true cost of living in your area, and that the cost of living in your area is going up much faster than the national average. Therefore, many workers need an annual cost of living increase that is much greater than the national inflation rate.

As far as I know, there is no national law requiring companies to give cost of living raises every year. Many companies do, but many don’t. A mandatory, annual cost of living raise is something that unions can negotiate, once again showing the value of unions.

They need our labor to make their profits. Fuck their profits.

Do you mean the Democrats? If so, yeah, the Democrats do seem willing to accept anti-Trump conservatives into their party.

The Democrats really want to be a big tent party. They’ll take just about anyone within a certain ideological range, centered around the American political middle. This definitely includes many conservatives.

I question the effectiveness of this strategy, though, as when you include too many opposing ideologies in a single party, it can be difficult for the party to choose a clear path to take. It’s often the case that when you try to appeal to as many different people as possible, you end up not appealing to very many people at all.

This really isn’t that surprising. The Republican party has become a cult of personality around Trump, putting it at odds with actual, ideological conservatives.

I don’t know what Trump’s ideology is, or if he even has one. He seems to only believe in his own ambition, for wealth, power, and control.

However, conservativism does lend itself to people like Trump rising to power, because it promotes a central authority and/or aristocracy that preserves tradition, culture, and the established social order. Conservatism doesn’t just tolerate social hierarchies, like class, it promotes them, and, in fact conservatism believes that such hierarchies are not only necessary, but natural and essential. It makes sense that malignant narcissists would take advantage of such a system to try and take their “rightful place” at the top of the hierarchies, because they believe that they are inherently superior to everyone else.

I don’t truly understand why the option is between someone who might be reasonable, and a convicted predator con artist who, at every turn, keeps demonstrating how they’re more racist and incoherent than your great grandpa

I think our system of politics as day time talk show style entertainment is part of the reason why the convicted predator continues to be a seemingly viable candidate.

In a system where a single person gets full executive authority,

Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it. No single person should have that much authority. But, regardless, does this debate platform really tell us all that much about how a person is likely to perform as chief executive? I’m not so sure. I think a person can do relatively well in a debate performance and still end up being a poor president.

I can’t vote for policies.

But you can vote for a representative (two, actually) who can vote for policies. That’s where our focus should be, I think. I’m not really sure why we need a president, to be honest. A single individual with that much power, who isn’t even elected by popular vote, seems undemocratic to me.

Politics shouldn’t be a sport. Critical thinking and data driven analysis are much better methods for determining the best policies than an arbitrary contest of who had the best quips or who totally owned their opponent more. Our future as a country shouldn’t be determined by the political equivalent of a rap battle.

Every corporation should have a worker advocate, a consumer advocate, and a community advocate on their board of directors. It is ridiculous that only the investors get to make the decisions, currently. Investors only care about one thing: maximum return on their investment. They don’t care how the company is run, they don’t care how many employees get laid off, they don’t care if the company is benefiting the community, they just want the value of their shares in the company to go up, and/or to receive the highest possible dividends at the end of the year. They want passive income, they want the value of their asset to go up so they will be wealthier. That’s it. It’s unacceptable that only the investors are given a vote, and that others, who are also deeply affected by how the company operates, don’t.

I know a Gen Zer who’s hoping her Gen X parents will leave her their house and their 20+ acres of land, but it ain’t gonna happen. When they reach retirement age they’re going to sell it all and that’s going to be their retirement. Retirement is expensive, and the longer you live the more expensive it is, especially if you get sick, and you will get sick, eventually.

All I’m saying is that people absolutely know why they want their own house. Pretending otherwise is a little ridiculous.

All I’m saying is I think people’s preferences are influenced by the prevailing culture, which certainly impresses on people that owning a home should be the ideal. We’re all influenced by culture, and we’re not necessarily always consciously aware of it.

If people want to live in an apartment that’s great, but it should be a choice.

It should be, I agree. And that’s a big part of the problem: in many cities, a large percentage, or even a majority of the land is zoned exclusively for single family development. There is no choice to build anything else. If the zoning was changed to allow any and all forms of housing to be built, I’m sure neighborhoods of detached, single family homes would still exist, but there would likely be far fewer of them, and/or they would be further from the city center.

I don’t think people should have to live in sardine cans, I think people should have the opportunity to live in apartments or condos that meet their needs.

I understand. I don’t necessarily have a problem with relatively restrictive zoning in rural areas. But, I do think restrictive zoning becomes a significant problem, the closer you get to population centers, or the centers of towns and cities. Limiting higher density housing in city and town centers kind of necessitates people moving into suburbs and even, eventually, rural areas. If there isn’t enough suitable, affordable, relatively dense housing where the jobs and schools and shops are, the suburbs will grow and spread. So, if you want to keep your area as rural as possible, you need to make sure people have plenty of housing options in the city and town centers. Unfortunately, much of the land in many city and town centers is currently zoned exclusively for single family homes. That has to change or sprawl will continue.

Certainly some suburbs are better than others. I’m glad that your suburb does not negatively impact your mental and physical wellbeing. Indeed, I am generalizing. However, I would argue that even the best suburbs are still more expensive and worse for the environment than the best urban areas. The more concentrated human population centers are, the more wild land there can be, and that’s better for the planet.

That being said, I don’t necessarily want to outlaw detached, single family homes, or force people to leave their suburb and move into densely populated urban areas. If your suburb works for you, you should be able to stay there. I do think any tax policies that result in urban areas subsidizing the costs of suburban areas should be eliminated, though.

It’s such a complex problem, it’s going to take a long time to fix. Part of the problem is people don’t really understand what the real problem is. They think the problem is that there aren’t enough detached, single family homes being built. I get why people would focus on single family homes because that’s what Americans want. The “American Dream” is to own your own home in the suburbs, and if you think that everyone who wants a single family home should be able to buy one, then, yeah, you’re going to see the problem as one of not enough single family homes being built. However, I would argue that the American dream itself is the problem.

Suburbs are expensive, and inefficient, bad for the environment, and bad for our physical and mental health. Suburbs necessitate car dependence, and cars themselves require a lot of expensive infrastructure. I know a lot of Americans don’t like to hear it, but we really do need to be living in higher density urban areas. Higher density, mixed use urban areas allow people to walk and bike more, which is better for our health. It’s also less expensive. The farther apart everything is, the more you’ll need to drive, and that means owning your own car, which is expensive.

I don’t think people even necessarily know why they want a single family home. I think Americans want single family homes because we’re told from day one that is what we should want. It’s our culture. You grow up, get married, buy a home in the suburbs, and start a family. You own at least two cars, you drive everywhere, that’s the American dream. I think we need to start questioning if this is really what’s best, and if we should really want it. I know I have, and I’ve decided it isn’t best. I think I would be happier and healthier living in a mixed use urban area, where I could walk or bike to a lot of places, or take public transportation, and if I needed to drive somewhere, maybe I’d take a taxi or rent a car or use some car sharing service.

Very few places like these exist in the US, and that’s because too many people still want to live in a single family home in the suburbs, and many of those people, also have most of their personal wealth in their home, so they push for restrictive zoning laws and other regulations, limiting how much higher density housing and mixed development can be built, thus making such areas relatively rare and thus expensive. There’s a battle going on between people who want single family homes and people who want higher density, mixed use areas.

I know people don’t want to talk about that, because they don’t want to make it an us vs them thing, but it just is. Our desires are mutually exclusive, due to the finite nature of land. A given piece of land cannot be both a low density, single family suburb and a higher density, mixed use area, simultaneously. It must be one or the other. How we “fix” the housing crisis depends on which we choose to prioritize. We either find ways to build more and more suburbs, or we eliminate single family zoning and invest in building many more, higher density, mixed use urban areas. I know which one I choose.

In the document, Democrats recommit to their support for Israel in the fight against Hamas, as well as their backing of a two-state solution that “upholds the right of Palestinians to live in freedom and security in a viable state of their own.”

Where is the Palestinian state supposed be? In the territories where Israel has already built illegal settlements, or the territories where Israel will build illegal settlements?

Look, the Palestinian people are fucked. They just are. The process of replacing British Mandate Palestine with the state of Israel has long since been set into motion, and it’s unlikely to be stopped. Any idea that there can be both a Palestine and an Israel state is nonsense, espoused by people who are either foolish or being disingenuous. The existence of Israel and the existence of Palestine are two mutually exclusive prospects. It is one or the other, it’s as simple as that, and the Palestinians simply don’t have the military capability to defeat the Israelis. That’s large in part because Israel has backing from the United States, the world’s dominant military super power. For numerous complex reasons, the US chose to support Israel in this conflict. I don’t like it, I wish the US had remained neutral, but that’s just not what happened.

I’m really not sure what else the Democrats could do. If the Democrats were to come out and publicly state what I just said, true though it may be, they would be crucified by Americans who still foolishly believe that there can be an independent Palestinian state. Do the Palestinians deserve to have their own state? I believe they do. I believe every group of people deserves autonomy and independence. But, it doesn’t always happen. In fact, it often doesn’t. It’s just not possible for the entirety of the territory once known as British Mandate Palestine to be both Israel and Palestine, it must be one or the other. Sure, the territory could be divided, but is either side really willing to accept such a compromise at this point? When Palestinians chant, “from the river to the sea,” they are not advocating for a two state solution. And we know Israel doesn’t actually want a two state solution, because they continue to encroach further and further into Palestinian territory. I don’t think the Palestinians want Israel to exist any more than the Israelis want Palestine to exist. This is a zero sum game, and Palestine is going to lose because Israel has support from the US. It’s not fair, but that’s the way it is.

If leftists or progressives want to help the Palestinian people, the best thing they can do is help any Palestinians who want to, relocate to the United States. That doesn’t give the Palestinian people autonomy or independence, but it will save many Palestinian lives.

That should be illegal.

Only people who know absolutely nothing about Marxism think Harris, or any other Democrat, is a Marxist.