Journalists, with or without quotes, don’t generally get to write headlines. Editors write those.

It’s not holding society together; it’s bleeding it dry

That’s what the oligarch’s think. It won’t be the first time the powerful have ignorantly destroyed themselves.

You think people depend on this machine?

Absolutely. It’s in the math. A middle age existence could never support the number of people alive today. If Americans had to grow their own food, most would fail spectacularly. We depend profoundly on specialization and trade. We can’t live as islands in this modern world.

And hunting? Spare me the tough-guy act.

There is nothing tough about hunting, and it’s just what will be. You are ignorant trash who doesn’t care who your ranting destroys.

The machine seems to be breaking just fine but, on behalf of the people who depend on that machine (pretty much everyone in the US and a whole lot of people outside the US) if you want the machine broken then you are my mortal enemy.

Accelerationism is insanity. Even when you get past “some of you may die, but that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make” collapsing societies rarely lead to something better. It’s almost always the worst people that manage to win the resulting power struggle because, like you, they don’t give a shit who dies in the process.

The most likely scenario if (when?) the machine breaks is that we look a lot like Russia does today. I know plenty of people like you and, on that day, I start hunting.

Some maybe, but the sloppiness makes me think they are the result. People obviously fall for this shit or we wouldn’t have Elon for President.

The libertarian movement was originally left wing and was co-opted by anarcho-capitalists. The original meaning was very anti-authoritarian, but not the one adopted by the Libertarian party. Real libertarians see one of the government’s primary purposes is populist opposition to financial dominance by oligarchs. Libertarians see any government action as definitionally oppressive and blindly pays homage to oligarchs and the “free market”.

It’s “Libertarian” not “libertarian”. The Libertarian party stole the name and applied it to anarcho-capitalist fascism which is the exact opposite of libertarianism. As a real libertarian, the double-speak really gets under my skin.

But yes, hacker culture was a prime target of the deceptive brand confusion and it worked perfectly. Corporations have gone from being cyberpunk villains to heros fighting “government overreach”.

Trump is a disaster, but Democrats using that to somehow whitewash what does appear to be clear corruption on the part of Democrats is pathetic and, frankly, not an adequate response to the moment.

Also, the Democratic party putting a thumb on the primary scale to favor a candidate with baggage like that borders on criminal negligence. Fuck the Democrats for getting us here.

Ugh, some of the comments under the article are painfully dumb.

It never seems to work out that way anymore. The bad guys outlive us all.

This is frankly impossible to do in the modern workspace. Access to everything needed to do the work can be switched off almost instantly. Also, good luck getting financial institutions to comply or even meet with you when they know you’re going rogue and don’t have the force of government behind you.

Just talking from my own experience with these two vehicles, they will continue creeping along until I feel the physical brake engage.

It makes a certain amount of sense that a car that isn’t moving can’t generate power by stopping, and no regeneration means no regenerative braking. Were the car completely stopped it would have to start moving a little to get braking power, and imperfect efficiency would mean it’s never going to be enough to stop the vehicle completely.

I know what you’re talking about with smaller electric vehicles, but I think that locking operates on different principles. I don’t think many of those have regenerative braking because the math doesn’t make it practical at that scale. I definitely don’t put myself forward as an expert though.

as with any war, there’s never a solution that’s going to please everyone.

I hear Hitler was particularly displeased with the way WWII ended. Pleasing everyone ain’t the goal here Skippy.

Ending the war, by itself, is a good thing.

If either side thought that, there wouldn’t be a war. Obviously there are “bad things” associated with ending the war that are considered worse than continuing it.

Do you think that if the Ukraine military and government surrendered completely today that it would mean peace? Not a chance. Russia would be oppressive and an uprising would begin the moment formal hostilities ended - as would be right and proper.

Russia does not have the manpower - in training or just raw numbers - to effectively occupy and quell rebellion in Ukraine. The result would be a bloody quagmire for at least a decade, and it would arguably be worse than the current formal hostilities.

Depends on the vehicle. My Nissan Leaf (full electric) and Chevy Volt (plug in hybrid) both brake primarily with regenerative braking, but pushing the brake pedal past a certain point engages conventional brakes.

I don’t think it’s even possible to come to a full stop in either vehicle without engaging the physical brake. Regenerative braking doesn’t do much when you get under 10 MPH or so.

Not partially anymore. I just checked my maps and it’s now just the Gulf of America. Where did the constitution give the President that ability again?

I won’t say if I agree or disagree with you, but the argument you make is absolutely a legitimate one that we as a society should be considering in an ongoing process. Some level of forced integration was absolutely necessary after the end of slavery, but we all should want to live in a future where it’s not necessary at all. How far along that scale we are, and how we push further in that direction are questions that current policy discussions largely ignore.

However, we also have to contend with the fact that overt racism is still rampant and that a large part of this country doesn’t want a reasonable national conversation on the topic. The noise coming from the right makes it next to impossible for these conversations to occur. Sadly, that’s why the politicians who rely on bigotry embrace that rhetoric, whether they are personally racist or not.

It takes an act of Congress to eliminate it, but apparently a rogue President can make them sit on their hands and be useless.

Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, AOC, and Jamaal Bowman couldn’t be brought to call the genocide in Gaza a genocide

What the fuckity fuck does that have to do with inside vs outside electoral strategy?

trapped within a party that is beholden to corporate interest

Trapped within a SYSTEM that is beholden to corporate interests. You don’t get to dodge that bullet when running under a different party’s banner. In fact, you make it even easier for corporate media to shut you out.

these are your most “progressive” figures in congress

And, who are YOUR figures in Congress?! Oh wait you don’t have any. Well, that sure does make it hard to criticize them.

…until they pick up a gun and join a union.

Union membership shot up under Biden’s pro-union labor department. Now that the labor department answers to Elon Musk, how do you think that will impact union membership?

If it comes down to picking up guns, I’d much rather be facing a liberal police force that at least tries to look like they respect constitutional protections. That’s not what you will get from Trump.

We are in no way better off today because Trump won. Not politically, and certainly not in policy. All of your hand waving has still not even approached a discussion of how a third party strategy would work any better than all the deficiencies you rightly call out about the Democrats.

This discussion is about electoral strategy, which is one small aspect of political activism. All that other stuff is critically important too, and every one of them just got harder when Trump won. I don’t think the effort would have been “wasted” if a lot more people showed up to vote to keep Trump out of the Whitehouse.

Your electoral arguments are all empty rhetoric. Not one of them is based on reality, or even tries to be. It’s all hand waving, like the left wing version of reactionary politics.

The genocide in Gaza has nothing to do with the “Democratic Party” and everything to do with the people running it. The party itself is an empty shell, but it’s an empty shell that maintains a tremendous amount of loyalty across this country that you have zero strategies to break. These diatribes have been exactly the same for decades.

I’m a rebel by nature. I love the underdog and I love clever strategies that catch Goliath by surprise. I hate the Democratic establishment with a passion and if made god-emperor of America I would gladly see the Clinton’s, Obama, Biden, Harris, Pelosi, Schumer, and a lot of other Democrats do jail time. I should be your easiest convert, and you aren’t even getting close. How the fuck are you going to convince the suburban hordes, the black churches, the union members, and the millions of Americans who put maybe a few minutes a year into thinking about politics? What will you do differently than has been tried for decades?

Not to anywhere near the same degree. Primaries are LITERALLY the party’s contest to do what they want with.

And the general elections are LITERALLY whatever the two parties want them to be. Ballot access is the ballgame for third party candidates and there is LITERALLY nothing preventing them from writing access rules to make it nearly impossible to overcome.

Nope. That’s just not true.

Ah, the “that’s just like your opinion man” argument. I love that one.

What you’re advocating for is to change the rules of the game by letting the opponent continue to be the corrupt referee…

How the fuck do you not get that the rules for national elections come from government fiat ruled by the existing two parties?

I’m not saying that working outside of the party to effect real systemic change won’t be extremely difficult, but your way is literally impossible.

My way has LITERALLY had successes, including big ones like FDR and the New Deal. What successes does the third party approach have to show?

Every damn election we have to pretend like the third party approach has never been tried before. It’s been tried almost every election since forever and has a perfect record of abject failure.

But what if everyone finally just did what your telling them to do, right? If only everyone would just vote how you want them to vote, your political strategy would work perfectly! Damn, you’ve solved politics!

What attitude? There is no attitude, just reality that some folks can’t face. It’s like every damn election people think third parties are a new idea, or that this time they will work. It’s not undying loyalty to want to oust party leadership, it’s just a better strategy.