8, and I’ll lock it in and try my best to convince/manipulate Trump.

Vomiting on them would’ve been the most effective action you could’ve taken to improve the lives of the most people.

I mean, how else is the US ever going to get denazified?

This is the vibe I picked up. Trump talked a lot about how he was going to address housing with new construction. Who’s going to get those contracts? Either some sort of deal was made, or at least Mamdani expressed that the potential was there. That’s my guess anyway.

MTG accidentally stumbling into the Leninist position that the point of engaging in electoralism is to demonstrate the futility of reformism to the masses and to promote mass action.

Hey guys, I just got back from testing out my time machine! I didn’t mess up the timeline or anything, did I? Anything seem, you know, different?

As the former vice president is honored at Washington National Cathedral on Thursday, many eyes will focus on who comes — and who does not.

(Clinton kinda coming out of fucking nowhere)

I mean Clinton is known for a pretty big controversy where he received head, and boomers still cracking jokes about it like 20 years later doesn’t seem impossible.

But I mean, either way Vance fucks couches so we might as well roll with it.

You mean, if this is the thing that finally…

Dems:

There is a specter haunting r/Democrats…

Hell yeah, finally

Remember what they took from you

a known affiliate of these heathens

Woah, ok, maybe it’s true that all my friends are heathens but let’s just calm down a bit here, alright? Take it slow.

life back then mustv been crazy people just thought whatever

People still just think whatever tho.

Moral rules are not things to be blindly followed, but rather are useful guidelines to avoid screwing things up. They are “the manual,” they are “standard operating procedure,” they are there for a reason and you can deviate from them, sure, but you’d better have a damn good reason, or you can expect it to blow up in your face.

Virtually everyone seems to have this all twisted up. On the one hand, you have people who always try to follow SOP, even if there’s good reason to deviate from it. On the other hand, you have people who see that there are situations where SOP doesn’t apply, so they just ignore it altogether. Both of these approaches are foolish and lead to making mistakes.

The trolley problem is a thought experiment specifically designed to be an exception to the otherwise reasonable SOP of “Don’t kill innocents.” But you don’t make a rule from the exception. You don’t go around treating, “The ends justify the means,” or “It doesn’t matter how many people I have to sacrifice in persuit of the greater good,” as your new SOP, just because you saw a thought experiment where the old SOP doesn’t apply.

The whole reason moral guidelines are necessary is because the mind if fallible and prone to making mistakes. Our emotions, or our desire to fit a particular identity, may get in the way of good decision making. For example, the use of torture post-9/11 was driven by hatred, a desire for revenge and domination, and a desire to embody the image of the Jack Bauer antihero, willing to do whatever it takes to keep people safe. I’ve read reports of NSA torturers walking out of torture sessions while visibly erect. It was driven by, well, evil. This “ends justifies the means” mental framework makes it all to easy for hate or other emotions to hijack reason. Of course, in reality, this torture never produced any useful information, and in at least one case caused a previously cooperative informant to clam up.

Likewise, if a problem can be pushed out of sight and out of mind, it can easily be ignored or rationalized away. This is the case with liberals and the Palestinian genocide. When something is far away, when it affects people who I don’t know, then psychologically it becomes much easier to write off anything that happens - even moreso if you are operating on the framework of, “Any cost to achieve my aims.” But these situations are where moral guidelines are more important than ever. It is fundamentally unacceptable to act on willful ignorance of the suffering caused by one’s actions, to say, “This makes me feel guilty so I just won’t look at it or think about it.” This is another way in which one’s mind can compromise their reason and better judgement.

That’s also what’s at play, at least imo, when people continue to eat meat despite knowing about the cruelty involved in that industry. When we see someone beat a dog, we are horrified, we are outraged, we are moved to act to stop it - because our empathy extends to the pain the dog feels. But cows and pigs can feel pain just as a dog can, which means that rationally, we should be equally horrified at the conditions those animals are kept in. But those practices are always kept out of sight and out of mind, and the mind has powerful forces, like the force of habit, that are capable of compromising reason and good judgement.

When people try to convince me of things (especially things like torture or genocide) based on them being “the lesser evil,” to say it goes against SOP is an understatement. It’s like asking me to dance a waltz on the raised forks of a forklift. Now, maybe some set of circumstances exists in which standing on the raised forks of a forklift makes sense, like maybe it’s the only way to escape a fire. But I’m never going to accept that this is just a normal or generally acceptable way of doing things.

The rules are there for a reason and you shouldn’t deviate from them without a very good reason and the majority of the time that people think they have a good reason they are wrong.

This is one of the oldest and most effective tricks in politics. Every hack in the business has used it in times of trouble, and it has even been elevated to the level of political mythology in a story about one of Lyndon Johnson’s early campaigns in Texas.

The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumour campaign about his opponent’s life-long habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows.

"Christ, we can’t get away with calling him a pig-fucker,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.”

“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofabitchh deny it.”

In my experience they don’t even bother making up a source, they just ban/block you for committing the sin of heresy.