You still have spending wars. Politicians are bought and sold every day, and any large company probably donates to politicians of multiple parties.

I don’t see the problem originating from Congress necessarily being polarized. I think the problem is that corporate and big money interests are too strong, and they fund politicians that will try to divide the people on social issues so that they can distract the people from badness happening on the economic front. In other words, I think we’re seeing a problem with corruption that’s expressing itself as polarization.

Even the term “polarization” can also be used as a trap, because it tends to be used in a way that frames politics as a linear spectrum, and your views are somewhere between these two end points. In reality everything is far more complicated. People have highly nuanced views on many different subjects with good reason, and there’s no way you can easily capture it on one single sliding scale.

Exactly. If you’re as interest candidate, or arguably a center-right candidate, saying a few things to try to pretend you’re left wing is not going to get the support that you want. You need to actually change your policy in a major way well in advance.

Nobody is attacking your father here. At least I hope they aren’t. My questions were about your knowledge and beliefs.

If I told you that your assumptions about my background or wrong, and if I told you that I wasn’t confused, what would you say?

… It’s kind of sad, because you could have been part of an interesting discussion, but you got careless and decided that you would go into attack mode to protect someone who wasn’t being attacked from … I have no idea what you think you were protecting them from. Clearly they were trying to get a sense of why people have various intuitions, and presumably they are willing to be somewhat introspective about the things they grew up believing, too.

I think many of us, and many Important People, give a fuck. It’s just that we know to take our time and gather information before making any strong proclamations about exactly what happened. We all know that Trump would lie about everything, and initial reports from police and neighbors are notoriously unreliable.

Finally now, more than a day after the event, it feels like maybe we’re able to put together the beginning of a reliable picture about exactly what happened.

If you want to know how people feel about assassination attempts on presidential candidates, just look at what they said two months ago.

Typically the first amendment is going to protect you when you say most things. The types of things you definitely don’t want to say are specific threats.

But there was a sad situation in Colorado where the courts ruled that a guy could be locked up for saying that he wished that bad things fell upon some judges, even though he definitely didn’t say or imply that he was going to do them. So if you want to rely on the Colorado precedent, maybe there’s something to work with, but it’s a pretty terrible precedent.

That all being said, let’s not wish death on anyone. Even if it’s someone who’s done horrible things, let’s just wish that they’re forced to retire early and either get locked up in prison, if they committed crimes, or live out there lives in miserable condition in some community that we never have to visit or think about.

That’s not exactly true. He has lost a massive amount of public respect. He bought Twitter and now the company is worth much less than it was before. His credibility has gone down considerably in the last few years.

People often make bad judgments based on incomplete information. As you know, it’s a sad fact that some parents do horrible things to their children. If those children leave, never come back, and never send money, good.

Some things are common within a culture, but even in places where most people are inclined to help their aging parents, like various countries in Asia, there are still children who reasonably choose not to do so. Cultural tendencies are simply that, tendencies. If your country doesn’t have a law requiring you to provide support, it’s because lawmakers know that in some situations it might be reasonable not to do so.

Did you notice how you wrote that you would be seen as downright evil, but you didn’t say by who? I feel like that’s something you ought to consider more carefully.

You gave an example of sending your father money, but you haven’t seen him for 17 years. This raises many more questions. Does he need your money? Is your money helping? If you found out that he didn’t need your money and it’s not helping, would you stop sending it? Are you sending the money to make yourself feel good, even though it’s not helping him? How do you think he would feel if you found out you were sending him money even though you’re jobless?

Finally, you used the word “unnatural” knowing that it’s just not true. That was certainly an antagonistic approach to the issue. Is that what you intended? Was it accidental? If it was accidental, what word did you actually mean instead?

Unclear how legit they are. Don’t rush judgment, especially when the victim and his associates are narcissistic liars.

Or rather, define “legitimate”. It matters in a situation like this.

No no, the attempt was to hit theother ear. Symmetry.

That means they’re monitoring them … Gotta exploit that, see what happens.

Phone calls are a trap. Little good comes from answering them.

She wants to be famous, so she’ll deal with it.

You’re blaming people for being strongly anti-genocide. That’s basically absurd at face value. If you wanna argue against being a single issue voter, that’s a conversation to have. However, “I oppose genocide.” is kinda the single best single issue to rely on, if someone is inclined to be one.

All the while, Harris knows the risks. Don’t blame voters for Harris’s conscious choice. If you alienate your base, you deserve to lose your base. Deal with it… I think she still has the votes, but that is the risk for every candidate, and it always will be.

What are you talking about.

Attempted assassination will get your name on TV and in the history books. It might get you killed or locked up for life, though. So it depends on your life goals.

That’s probably true. But one of these decades maybe we can figure it out. Not because of Orange. Because of the school shootings. Maybe. Eventually.

She worked hard to look older!