The last week or so it’s been Too Much Too Young by The Specials. It was on the radio, once, last week and for no good reason I’ve been stuck with it since. Thanks brain.

Several things can be true at once. We don’t have to be all-in on one side or the other of the Snowden affair. I’ve never understood why people seem so eager to pick a team on this issue.

You have to be some kind of moron to think it would be a good idea for the president to start dictating prices to grocery chains. Unfortunately Lemmy is largely populated by idiots and delusional fools, so I expect this observation to be unpopular.

I think this guy is just fucknut crazy, not a terrorist per se. Either way though, it’s not a great look.

True, but it wasn’t always true. In the 1960s and 70s the far left was more violent. Not especially relevant, but it is interesting.

I wonder what other hugely unpopular positions they can poison themselves with. This is what minority rule looks like. The only way we stop this is by defeating Trump and reforming our democracy. Minorities should have enough power to protect themselves from oppression, but not so much that they can impose their views on the rest of the country. This is what’s happening with the far right, which very much is a minority that’s far out of step with mainstream American opinion on virtually everything.

That must be nice. My company does a lot of work for one of the world’s largest chip manufacturers and getting access to some of their facilities is like pulling teeth. Somebody forgot to submit the right paperwork, it didn’t go to the correct department or project manager, this facility is always locked down on the third Tuesday of every month, for reasons, you name it I’ve encountered it.

Same. Mine is a regular watch with hour and minute hands and a digital read-out in the background that I can turn on and off. It’s nothing fancy, but I wear it with a fat black leather wrist-band which is pleasing to my easily-entertained soul.

I am a simple man in many ways.

Hardcore agreement with regard to hiking groups. I’m in my 50s and happily married, but my wife has MS and isn’t really able to join me on my hiking excursions. I have a brother and a nephew and a son who will sometimes join me on my various expeditions, but they aren’t consistent partners, which is fine, so I’ve since turned to a local hiking group that has things happening on any given weekend.

I’m not single or even remotely looking for a relationship, but I’ve definitely seen some younger people find romantic partners in our little hiking group.

While you are correct in one sense, you’ve also managed to completely miss the point in a way that to me seems deeply stupid, small-minded and idiotic.

I would ask you what part about my comment you didn’t understand, but I can tell that the answer is “nothing,” that you understood nothing, that you are utterly incapable of accurately rephrasing my argument, and that as such, you are a disappointing example of your sorry generation.

Here’s the thing; we are trying to treat a figurative heart attack while you are bitching about a figurative cancer.

In medicine we have the concept of triage, wherein we treat the most immediately life-threatening issue first, and then, once the patient is stabilized, we move on to the next treatment.

What you are arguing in favor of is basically treating the cancer while ignoring the full pulmonary arrest that is happening right before your eyes.

What part about this do you not understand?

I don’t get it. I truly don’t.

Nothing about what you ultimately want will happen if you and I do not stand up together right fucking now.

The plane is about to crash into the fucking mountain and you want to bitch about your little fucking objections?

Really? That’s who you are?

It’s an interesting and terrifying thought experiment. Hopefully we’re not actually going to run it IRL.

For whatever it’s worth, I don’t think it would fly in a country as massive and habitually fractious as the US, but I’ve been wrong about a lot of things in the past --never imagined that an unlettered buffoonish corndog conman like Trump could even come within sniffing distance of the presidency for example-- so who the fuck knows?

I don’t have a lot of faith in my fellow Americans. I probably never should have, but hindsight is always 20-20 or whatever.

Yeah, sigh, you’re right. On the plus side, I’m in my 50s and already feel old, so no worries about that.

Not a chance.

Not a chance.

Nothing really.

He hasn’t. With a handful of obvious exceptions, the entire Republican leadership has spent the last four years running a clinic in cowardice, pathetic boot-licking and groveling.

Bullshit. They’re simply saying that now probably isn’t the best time for infighting. As Levitsky and Ziblatt show in their book, “How Democracies Die,” a disunited and squabbling opposition is how authoritarian dictatorships come to power.

You can agree or not, but don’t misrepresent the argument.

This is correct. The left is utterly incapable of unity on anything for the very good reason that unlike the right, it’s a very loosely bound coalition in which each constituent interest group feels very little loyalty to the others. The result is that when we should be coming together to stop the fucking plane from crashing into the fucking mountain, we instead feel it necessary to trot out old internal grievances, back-stab, and in general form a circular firing-squad.

It’s why the conservative minority in this country is about to turn us into a right-wing extremist autocratic shit hole even though we vastly outnumber them.

Democracies die when opposition fails to unite in the face of populist autocratic movements.

But we’re also demographically a lot smaller than boomers, millennials or zoomers, so we kind of flew under the radar.