Goodguy
10d ago
Yes, but independents, undecideds, and casual voters might decide to abstain from voting or vote for Republicans instead of voting for Democrats if the Democrats move further toward cultural and/or economic leftists.
Goodguy
10d ago
I question the idea that progressives and socialists are the Democratic Party's base. The last three Democratic Party Presidential candidates have been Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris - definitely not socialists, and also not real progressives in the modern sense of the term "progressive". Progressives and socialists are loud online, but they don't seem to make up a dominant fraction of the Democratic Party's voters. The Party needs their votes - well, it needs as many votes as possible - but that doesn't necessarily mean it would gain more votes by shifting "left" than it would lose by shifting "left". It might or it might not.
Goodguy
10d ago
But why should the author's opinion matter, if the opinion is not explicitly written into the text of the actual Amendment? That would open a whole can of worms. If that is what the author meant, why did he not write it into the Amendment? After all, it seems to have not been completely obvious, since he felt the need to comment on it.
I think that literal interpretations of the Constitution don't work in practice though, because it almost unambiguously says that the government can't stop me from having nuclear weapons. I'm pretty sure that "arms" back then just referred to weapons in general. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
And if that's the case, we have had a very weird situation for a long time now where the 2nd Amendment has been interpreted in a very limited way even though the clear reading allows all weapons.
It could be argued that this is what the amendment procedure is for, though. I wonder if it would actually be possible for an amendment that limits the 2nd Amendment to certain types of weapons to be ratified in today's political climate. There would be obvious slippery slope concerns from many people.
Goodguy
16d ago
My sympathies lean toward the side of "a grid of pixels shouldn't be illegal", but with CSAM there is a problem: it is easy to make CSAM in third-world countries, so there is no way for the US government to actually shut down production short of using international law enforcement or military force.
That said, this is the same US government that kept military forces in Afghanistan for many years, spending huge sums of taxpayer money, without eradicating child sexual abuse in the country. So it would be somewhat hypocritical of it to go really hard after the already-produced CSAM based on such a justification as I gave above, given that this government had a chance to stop child sexual abuse in Afghanistan and didn't do it.
I said "my sympathies lean", and I should clarify: I am generally extremely pro free speech, but I can definitely imagine exceptions: the fabled nuclear codes, a recipe to create a bioweapon that would kill 99% of the world population Stephen King style, etc.
Goodguy
20d ago
I think the typical incel would reject prostitution because it doesn't provide the ego boost, and indeed actually for an incel has a high chance of being bad for the ego. But the typical incel would jump on the opportunity to have a get laid and leave every week kind of deal. It's better than what the incel currently has.
Goodguy
20d ago
That would be an extremely pyrrhic victory for Israel because it would result in the governments and populations of the West ostracizing Israel vastly more than they do now and would probably also massively intensify the split between more liberal, more peacenik Jews and hawk Jews.
Goodguy
21d ago
The sex. They still do genuinely want sex, or at least they think they do (in the case of those who have never had sex yet). And they still would get the ego boost from secret sex. So the only thing missing would be the approval from peers.
Goodguy
21d ago
Sexual access dominates a huge portion of the mindshare of men, especially young men.
It does. I wonder, though, how much of it is actually a desire for sex and how much of it is a desire for the good ego feelings and positive feedback from one's peers that having a lot of sex with attractive women brings. I think the main reason why male incels suffer is not because they lack sex, it is because they feel like losers and failed men.
Goodguy
22d ago
I have many issues with how our economy is set up, and I have some issues with things like marriage law that seem give women priority rather than equality, but when it comes to some other things I am very happy with the last 100 years of changes in norms and laws. I am happy that here in the US, there is effectively no military conscription. I am happy about the sexual revolution, that I am free to be sexual in whatever way I want to be. I don't feel that I would have any difficulty in finding a wife if I wanted one. I am also happy that I am not being pressured by society to find a romantic partner or a wife, if I don't want one. Maybe I'm an outlier when it comes to men, and granted I am a bit older than "young". I'm not so sure though. It's hard to say what fraction of young men who are having trouble finding partners are actually having the trouble because of changes in social norms. Certainly many of them are mainly being held back from meeting women by shyness rather than by lack of opportunity. And certainly many of them are freely choosing to avoid marriage, rather than being held back from marriage by the state of society.
One difference, though, is that having nukes means that it's very unlikely that you will have other countries try to assassinate you. Whereas being able to shut down the Strait of Hormuz and blow up Gulf Arab infrastructure is very nice, but does not deter assassination to anywhere near the same degree.
Having nukes also protects you from other countries trying to invade and overthrow you in a way that conventional deterrence does not. And, while a regime-change invasion by the US seems very unlikely right now, the possibility does hang over the heads of the Iranian leadership. If the US developed the political will to do a regime-change invasion, Iran's government would not be able to do anything to resist it other than put a few speedbumps in its way. The ability to close the Strait of Hormuz and blow up Gulf Arab infrastructure is not a major deterrent to an invasion by the US, since such an invasion would probably succeed rapidly enough that the economic damage would be fairly limited.
Goodguy
27d ago
Battles like this are a good test of AI's power, since if and when AI ever became sufficiently intelligent and powerful, one could tell it "{model name}, I would like you to run a campaign to politically destroy {list of politician names}. Assume that you have {number} dollars of budget and the ability to delegate tasks to humans." and have a reasonable hope of success, at least assuming that those politicians weren't running their own AI to keep themselves in power.
It's worth noting that even the San Francisco subreddit mostly thinks that harassing Wiener like that was a bad thing.
The people who genuinely think that this harassment was a good thing are a small minority in the overall "leftist" coalition.
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