It really is a scathing indictment of our country that, even if the allegations were true (they aren’t), the proposed solution to the problem Republicans have offered up is to deport all of the people back to their home country rather than just… I dunno. Making sure they have other means of feeding themselves.

What the fuck has become of our society?

The culture war has been going on for a lot longer than a decade, it’s just only in the last decade or so that it’s been amped up to 11 in terms of how aggressive it’s being fought. Conservatives are almost always on the losing side of social issues that require a culture shift. Women’s suffrage, civil rights, seatbelt laws, anti-smoking laws, gay rights… the list goes on, and the fight is never quite done for some, but they always lose in the end.

The very fact that conservatives are very pro for things like coal mining that liberals are trying to legislate away create strong reasons for some people to hold their noses and vote Republican regardless of how noxious the candidate is. When their livelihoods are literally at stake and the liberal response is “Well you should have gone to college to learn a new skill or trade” it makes sense that they are corralled right into the arms of conservatives. Economic drivers are the most powerful force behind the conservative movement right now, not culture bullshit that deep down they don’t really care about. It doesn’t help that very few people understand the relationship between “the economy” as outlined by experts and “the economy” as experienced when paying for groceries or filling up their car at the pump. It doesn’t matter that conservatives almost never deliver on their promises to fix the economy and often end up sending the nation into a recession, if bad decisions on a national scale lead to temporary relief on a local scale for some, that’s what they will remember when voting next time.

Liberals need to be doing more to bring disenfranchised voters into the fold. Educating them without being condescending or dismissive would be an excellent start. Turning down the temperature in politics is not possible without also lowering the stakes, backing off of hardline positions in the short term might be the most effective way of undermining support for terrible conservative candidates.

Normal people don’t hang out with klansman, we beat the shit out of them.

These people are far from normal. They’re downright weird.

I don’t normally pick at the physical appearances of people just for the sake of it, but I’ve noticed that Trump attracts a certain type of follower. Take a look at the people in the background of the next Trump rally and tell me what you see.

Those people and these people are the same. Just a bunch of trashy hillbillies. These klansmen are not the fringe supporters of Trump’s cult, they’re the ones down in the front. Like wax statues melting in the sun, their eyes glazed over enraptured as word salad pours out of Donald Trump’s mouth.

And don’t say “well that guy wearing the klan outfit is just a troll, the other people there are not associated with that!”. If you’ve got one Nazi in a bar full of people, you’re in a Nazi bar. If you’ve got one klansman at a Trump rally, you’re at a klan rally.

Mine is Magic: The Gathering, except I fully realize that I am pulling away from it and why.

The game sparked an immense amount of joy when I picked it up in high school. Now I barely recognize the game anymore. It doesn’t truly have an identity of its own and exists in this permanent state of limbo where 3rd party IPs are taking over the demand for new product and the rules are becoming so bloated that they can’t fit them on cards anymore.

This is such an “old man yelling at clouds” moment for me, because I heard just about every reason under the sun for why people quit the game when I was playing from power creep to changing art styles to just getting priced out of the hobby in general. I realize now that those people were not wrong, they were just not the target audience anymore. I am no longer a profitable demographic to pander to. I never buy packs anymore, and I’ve even stopped buying singles and I don’t attend tournaments or collect anymore, so why would Hasbro/WotC make products for me? Especially when there are deep pocketed whales out there who will pay top dollar for their favorite crossover set, no matter how silly or out of place it might seem.

I wish I could enjoy the game the way I used to, but I just can’t be bothered to hop back in when it doesn’t feel the same anymore.

Everyone I’ve ever known close to my age who was shown that movie at least one time as a kid said that it gave them nightmares, and I have to agree with them. It’s a pretty fucked up movie to show to kids.

In 1999, John passed away in his apartment in the Bronx, went to hell and met the devil and the cross of Jesus Christ.

Is… is the cross a sentient being that can speak? I’m a little behind with my Christian Mythology, but why would the cross be in hell along with the devil? Wouldn’t that imply that Jesus went to hell along with it? Am I missing the metaphor?

Things like this make me wonder how many mental illness issues are swept under the rug because they tend to take the form of some mainstream religious belief and not correctly identified as a psychotic episode because it’s not polite to challenge somebody’s faith even if what they believe is patently ridiculous.

Okay, you’ve made some pretty salient points. I’m not too proud to admit that my understanding of the topic is limited. I appreciate you taking the time to educate me more on the subject.

Let me know how that interview goes, because if the rocket you developed and spent billions of dollars building explodes at launch, you’re going to be looking for a new line of work.

I’m sure the next aeronautics company will totally understand. Mondays, am I right?

but focusing on “blowing up launch pads” tells me you probably know very little about the Space industry or development.

That wasn’t the focus of my post, but are you suggesting that there is a nonzero number of rocket explosions that would be considered acceptable?

I don’t need to be Elon Musk, or even know much about the space industry or development to know that the target number should always be zero.

Fair point, I don’t want to fixate on that one aspect of the colossal technical challenge that is getting spacecraft into orbit, but I’m still of the opinion that a nationalized and fully government-funded space program will always yield better results than a privatized one because there is no profit-taking incentive.

This wouldn’t be a problem if we still had NASA doing the shuttle program, or some continuation of it, rather than outsourcing our spacecraft to the cutthroat lowest-bidder private sector. Is it really any surprise that SpaceX and Boeing are blowing up on the launchpads and having quality control issues when their sole objective is to make money? If we nationalized these initiatives again and cancelled the private contracts with these crooks, there would be no incentive for profiteering and corners would not get cut as often as they do now.

Sure, it would be a big cost to the taxpayer once again, but I think I’d rather have a reliable space program and like 2% less military budget to fund it, I think we’ll manage somehow without producing more tanks and planes that nobody is asking for.

Breaking News: Biden takes big sip of water from “World’s Greatest Dad” mug.

MBFC: “This source is left-leaning.”

I’m inherently distrustful of anything that tries to tell me if a source is biased or not. Who verifies that the bot isn’t also programmed to have an agenda?

I think I’ll just stick to plain old critical thinking skills and evaluate things for myself.

Oh, for sure, I’m pinning the blame on JJ for the bad setup and RJ for running with it without a plan. Disney Lucasfilm should have had a tighter grip on the project from the very start.

If you are trying to share a personal story or have contextual questions about my story, please ask them, because getting defensive about your own assumptions related to straw men scenarios you are propping up is bewilderingly off-topic.

Uh, what? I think you’re the one who is getting defensive here.

You are continually making incorrect assumptions and drawing false conclusions about someone you don’t know and have not tried to learn about.

Again, if you feel the need to share or ask questions, by all means go ahead, but try to divorce your own assumptions and preoccupations from my experiences.

Oh! Now I think I see what’s happening here…

I’m not trying to make any assumptions or conclusions. Yes, I am just sharing a personal anecdote with you. We’re having a conversation, not a debate. Sorry if you took that the wrong way. I’m not trying to convince you that you are wrong about anything, because quite frankly, I don’t think I’d be able to do that nor do I have the desire, especially since I don’t know anything about you that you haven’t already shared.

On that note, I think I’ll excuse myself from the thread. Have a good’un.

Of course he didn’t want the lightsabre that he’d already given up. Wouldn’t it be even weirder for him to be all “oh, thank you so much for giving me back the sabre I purposefully discarded after I tried to murder my nephew and turned him away from the light, it would look great on my wall!”

That was actually Anakin’s lightsaber, the one given to him by Ben that he lost in the duel on Bespin, that most people presumed was lost forever after having been shunted out of a trash chute into the atmosphere of a gas giant. He didn’t make a conscious decision to give that one up, though I understand his reluctance to accept any lightsaber in the first place what with everything that happened that we learn about throughout the movie, but the casual toss-over-the-shoulder for laughs was pretty inappropriate considering the tone of the same scene at the end of 7, explicitly framed in such a way implying that Luke had an emotional reaction to seeing either Rey or the Lightsaber again.

she literally said " I want to work in an office. I like offices."

What’s wrong with that? I want to work in an office too. I like offices. When I’m in one, I’m in the headspace of “this is work and I am here to focus and do my job”. I actually hated working from home during the pandemic and my mental health suffered greatly because I had so much difficulty “switching off” at the end of each day without the clear separation of environment. I strongly disagree with the notion that someone who desires to work in an office setting is somehow corpo-pilled and a slave to capitalism. I’d really rather be doing something else than sitting in an office for 8 hours a day, but if I have to be working to survive I’m gonna want to keep my work at work and my home at home.

As for the “spread out” point, maybe I didn’t articulate that well, but I wasn’t talking about owning land. Not everyone can fit their entire lives into a tiny home or an RV. I think I could do it, but I’d have to part with a lot of my possessions in order to make it all fit inside comfortably and it’d be difficult to manage. For others, maybe it’d be impossible? Sometimes it’s just little stuff, like having a living room with a coffee table and a furniture set that gives people the comfort of being in a home, even if it isn’t strictly necessary for survival.

I admire anyone who can commit to that lifestyle, but it’s not for everyone. Some people are born with wanderlust and others just want to put roots down somewhere they can call their own.

I don’t think it was so much her desire to confirm to some capitalist expectation of paying an enormous sum just to live in one place on the grid (because honestly nobody wants that), but a desire for stability and space to spread out, which are often in short supply when you live the camper/van/bus lifestyle.

I’m totally not surprised that the party that championed Birtherism is trying the same strategy a second time, given that no amount of evidence is ever enough to convince those people that they were wrong.