I think 75% is far too generous an estimate, tbh. Every policy I’ve acquired through the ACA-mandated marketplace has been garbage, right from the start. For-profit health care is evil, and the ACA just served to further entrench this evil in our lives. It did some marginal good, and I’m certainly not advocating for its repeal in favor of ‘concepts of a plan’. But 75%? I can’t get on board with that.

I generally agree with your point, but the MIC is a bad example; both parties are equally happy selling bombs to murderers.

Like every single person who has ever claimed that downvotes proved their point, you are making an insupportable claim. There are at least two things I can point to in your comment that could provoke someone to downvote it, even if they agree with your other points.

You had 4 years to make a change, but you guys would rather just blame people that wants actual improvements and still doing so after you lost the election despite getting the candidate that you supported.

I think many commenters here would argue that at least some of the people who campaigned against Harris in the run-up to the election were not acting in good faith; certainly the comment you replied to implies this. It would therefore be inaccurate, in their view, to say that they’re blaming “people that wants actual improvements”.

It’s really funny to watch.

This kinda makes you sound like an asshole.

For the record, I agree that she was a bad candidate, and that the Democrats would have won the election if they offered real change, instead of rallying round the status quo as they so often have in my lifetime.

Can’t help but agree with both of you ‘(I am large, I contain multitudes.)’

To say nothing of all our other problems, anyone should be able to grasp the idea that the US health insurance industry is inherently evil. They provide and create nothing. It’s a whole sector of the economy that exists solely to extract profit by amplifying human suffering and death. It should and must be abolished.

Thanks for the perspective!

Sure there were Russian bots. Of course there was billionaire fuckery. That’s been the case every cycle for decades. Do you honestly believe that Democrats lost exclusively because of these things? And furthermore, that nobody should critique their performance or policies, because that constitutes sowing apathy? Weeks after the fucking election? That’s the dumbest fucking thing I ever heard.

The election is over. Democrats failed spectacularly. Now is the time for criticism and accountability. If not now, when? We’re all just supposed to pretend that Harris ran a great campaign? Are you familiar with the concept of learning from failure? I was beating this drum myself before the election—you know, when it actually made sense. Now it just smacks of sticking your fingers in your ears.

I don’t attribute a lot of positive things to social media, but I will give it credit for turning me around on spiders. Arachnophobia scared the crap out of me as a kid. For years afterward, I’d never sit down on a toilet without first getting down on my hands and knees to make sure there weren’t any spiders lurking underneath the bowl. Thanks to years of spiderbro memes, now I generally view them as comrades.

In the actual world, governed by actual mathematics, you are incorrect. This has been repeatedly pointed out to you, with illustrative examples, by many people. Your stubborn, willful ignorance cannot change the fabric of reality.

I really appreciate this take. It’s good-hearted and makes good sense. I’ll try to remember it going forward, when cynicism overwhelms.

I think you’re right, but I’d like to believe there was at least one person out there that thought, “Shit, I’d better vote for Harris, or he might shoot me in the face!”

What a twat.

Whataboutisms aside, if you’re going to claim an article is libelous, you ought to at least be able to refute one of the assertions made by it. You haven’t actually done that here. Jill Stein’s defense is that she’s naive to the point of idiocy. So she’s either a witting catspaw of Putin and the GOP, or an imbecile that has no business being president.

Furthermore, I was unable to find any language in the senate intelligence committee’s report to indicate that she’d been cleared of wrongdoing— merely the absence of an indictment. Regardless of whether she’s committed any crimes, she is objectively a spoiler candidate. She could be as pure as the driven snow, and it wouldn’t change the fact that the only thing her campaign stands to accomplish is to elect donald trump.

If she really wanted to further her purported agenda, she would use her candidacy to get concessions from Harris in exchange for dropping out and endorsing her. Stein could actually effect change that way. Instead, she parrots Russian talking points, exclusively attacks Democrats, and consequently is completely counterproductive with regard to her stated goals.

No, it’s the logical and inevitable consequence of the action you’re advocating for. Just saying it’s “dumb” in no way refutes it.

Whether that’s true or not, it doesn’t change the math. The world’s full of people advocating against their own interests. You still haven’t addressed the argument.

Care to engage with any of these, then?

But your proposed course of action clearly doesn’t align with your stated goal, for reasons that have already been pointed out to you. I don’t see you engaging with that argument. This leads me to believe that you don’t actually care about what happens to Palestinians; you just want to feel like you’re taking a moral stand. People that actually give a shit tend to care about what the consequences of their actions will be.

Can you see that you’re arguing against fictitious strawmen? You seem to be operating under the delusion that for all the dumb normies who have “bought into” the existing two-party system, politics is just a game that they play without understanding. You’ve reduced them all to NPC’s who lack the capacity to reason; obviously their only motivation could be mindless conformity to their “team”.

Is it your contention that it doesn’t matter what party controls the branches of government, because they’re both the same? While this is factually inaccurate, it would at least be in line with the actions you’re advocating. Speaking of which, how exactly do you imagine a “protest” vote would deny the subsequently elected government legitimacy? What force and effect do you foresee that action producing? Because anyone with a working knowledge of our electoral system can tell you that the only discernable result will be the empowerment of the minority party, which in this case seeks a fascist overthrow of our democratic system.

What you’re doing here is applying shallow, childish logic to a complex and nuanced problem, while pretending to have some high-minded motivations which—if they exist at all—clearly haven’t been thought through.