PumpkinSkink
I was kind of Lukewarm on Walz initially, but he was super endearing. He was cooking there for a minute and then the DNC muzzled him. I remember the moment he got shut up about the electoral college I thought to myself “annnnd now all of his appeal is gone and he’s just another boring politician”. It was really startling to see how little he actually had to do to get the leash tugged.
A lot of expensive hobbies don’t have to be expensive. I’m a musician, and I have spent thousands of dollars on musical equipment but realistically, if I weren’t going to play out, or record high quality songs, you can get away with just a $200-$300 guitar (you might even be able to go lower. Cheap guitars are crazy good these days), a used amp, a tuner, and a cable. With that alone you have a lifetime of entertainment and challange, and the most expensive long-term cost is your strings. It’s honestly a steal in term of cost to entertainment ratio.
Now. That said. The real challenge is not falling into GAS (Gear Aquisition Syndrome), which is a real challange. And if you become even mildly capable on guitar you’re probably gonna wanna play live and record too, so, easier said than done, but it doesn’t have to be expensive.
I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but I think people, especially very politically-minded people tend to imagine their fellow citizens as has much more inflexible political views than they really do.
Most Americans are pretty ignorant of politics in general, and we get fed what is essential political theater in place of political news. I think those of us sitting online vigorously discussing politics tend to overestimate the political convictions of the average voter.
Most American voters, outside of those who are extremely entrenched in their parties, seem to me, to be pretty protean and contridictory in their views. I think it’s not unlikely that a self-described “conservative” would in fact support a lot of progressive policies as long as they were presented in a way that Tucker Carlson hasn’t pre-provided a talking point for.
Don’t forget that Trump was *against the discriminatory trans bathroom bills" in 2015, and all the same people who are now ready to organize pogroms against trans teenagers voted for him either way.
It’s also important to note than depending on how we define “income”, many of the richest have no “income” or a misleading small income (Zukerburg has, like, a 1$ salary or something) because they don’t their money from a wage… they get it from returns on investment. This is also why income tax is a misguided policy goal a lot of the time. We need to tax the investment income of the rich, not their salary.
People don’t vote because politicians don’t materially benefit them. When politicians provide significant support to regular ass people in way that materially benefit them you will see more voters turn out, not when you whine to them about them not voting. If politicians wanted this to occur, our state reps and their staffers would be in our work places, talking to people, giving them reasons to be involved with the political party apparatus, and providing material aid to the poorest and least represented among us with their own hands. We have bad voter turn out because shitty, myopic politics breeds political disinvestment. This post has it pretty much exactly backwards.
Anecdotally, I have friends from MA who don’t give one fuck about politics. Haven’t voted in years despite me telling them, messaging them with voter registration status, and locations, giving them every resource they need to make it as easy as possible. None of it mattered. Two of these friends in the last year have told me they want to vote for Governor Healy because they intend to use the free community college program, unprompted. Went out of their way to tell me. Another friend told me they like their state rep because they showed up at a union rally for their union and my friend realized from talking to the politician personally that the rep was a socialist who just happened to have a D next to their name.
So if throwing paint at a entierly replaceable cover for a dusty old painting is too far gone to be acceptable, what action can we take to stop oil production? Like. It needs to stop. To continue producing fossil fuels is a death cult. It needs to stop, like, a decade ago. I ask genuinely, how is this too far, and what is an acceptable response to an existential threat?
edit: On the off chance someone reads this so long after the post, I just want to point out that nobody actually engaged with my question here.