There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been. Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’

-Isaac Asimov, 1980

I think you might need to brush up on your reading comprehension, and maybe your empathy. You’re coming off a bit condescending her. e

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.

-Sir Terry Pratchett

Hahahaha I’d forgotten about that! Man, and people unironically call him a genius still.

Yellow by Coldplay

Don’t know why, but I hate it with a passion.

Across Dimming Asterisms. My brain seems to have developed an addiction to it.

Although anyone who works in an ER will tell you the full moon is the busiest night; the occurrence rate of every issue but murder goes up.

In a graveyard near my place, there’s a family gravesite with simple headstones. The mother’s name, the father’s name, two of their kids names… the final headstone simply says ‘babies’.

I mean, I get that it’s a metaphor.

The answer to the MAGA thing is simply that you build, not for them, but in spite of them. You build for everyone. If you want to exclude people who aren’t willing to follow the rules of society and only cause trouble you can, but that’s different than refusing to build anything because they might use it.

The people like MAGA that only seek to tear down what others build, or who refuse to build at all because there’s a chance someone who they don’t approve of (ie PoC) will use it hurt not only themselves, but everyone around them. They are destroying the future by refusing to help build the present, and I think it’s really sad that they would rather a terrible future than one that has things they don’t like in it.

We must build despite those attitudes, or we will simply end up following them into a bad future.

They meant the question showed a viewpoint that seemed to center entirely around you (also a rather libertarian thing, honestly).

‘Someone who would never build something for you’ sounds a bit like you’re expecting a tit-for-tat, I-do-this-for-you-so-you-have-to-do-something-for-me in everything, and that’s just not how societies work.

I’m curious; are you using that phrase to refer to, say, rich assholes who just take and take, or Nazi assholes that would rather cut off their own hands than build something a black person might use? Or are you using it to refer to people like severely disabled folks, or say, low-functioning autistic people, who society supports but who don’t have much capacity to ‘return the favor’?

Or are you just referring to future generations, who will be around after you’re gone?

I think it’s just your question comes off as nihilistic and a little bit libertarian, and neither of those is mentally healthy really

With Trump, it isn’t a difference in politics.

It’s a difference in morality.

You don’t live in the Bible Belt I take it. They’re probably jumping for joy down there. This is one of their dreams come true.

Pretty sure that’s the goal tbh. It’s like how these techbros crash a business and walk off with all the assets. They’re trying on countries now.

Sounds tasty! What’s the job market like?

Now now, don’t blow your brains out if you get depressed; there’s plenty of worthier targets.

Boy let’s hope so, or once Trump has our military licking his boots the rest of the world is going to be in big trouble.

Montana is banning those. Expect a nationwide ban to come soon.

They plan to import workers with visas and then hold those visas over their heads to force them to work for peanuts.

I mean, they do this small-scale already.

Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot one, and there’ll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland? In fifty years’, thirty years’, ten years’ time the world will be very nearly back on its old course. History always has a great weight of inertia.

-Terry Pratchett (Lords and Ladies)

Been thinking about this quote a lot lately. The fact that Trump is so popular shows that he’s just the symptom of a deeper, possibly terminal disease.