[-] shikitohno@kbin.social 22 points 4 months ago

Could just be that you can only run so many campaigns in a row with "If you don't vote for us, it's going to be the end of the world as we know it. And at least I'm not as bad as the other guy." With the exception of Obama's first run against McCain, that's been the pitch for every single election I've ever been able to vote in, as well as a few before it. It gets old real quick, makes them come off as insincere, and doesn't motivate anyone when we're still largely dealing with the same BS issues that we were 20 years ago.

Trying to browbeat people into voting with the same old song and dance has diminishing returns, especially when your candidate is increasingly out of step with many of the voters they should be courting on major issues.

[-] shikitohno@kbin.social 45 points 4 months ago

who is maybe the perfect reflection of what everyday conservatives have become, ignorant, stupid, and incredibly well off while whining about how they’re not well off enough.

I wouldn't say they're that representative of a lot of everyday conservatives. A lot of them are doing pretty poorly, but they're ignorant and get pissed off at the idea that anyone else might benefit from a program they personally don't qualify for or disagree with. My father is absolutely convinced that if the Democrats had the political will and ability to implement a wealth tax, that he would somehow be absolutely murdered by taxes on his $10 or $11 an hour he's making at a Winn Dixie in Florida. He's also the sort convinced that welfare queens living it up with brand new cars and designer clothes are not just a real thing, but a common thing that happens that Democrats just don't want people to know about. He'd probably also chalk up his retirement sucking due to what limited social safety net we have in the US, rather than him draining his retirement accounts while he was unemployed before hitting retirement age so he could play golf and go hang at the bar with his buddies even though he was broke. Medicare is his right, though, he worked for that and earned it, but screw these poors under 65 trying to get healthcare with Medicaid. About the only thing he's missing for your average, everyday conservative is an unhealthy dose of religion.

[-] shikitohno@kbin.social 18 points 4 months ago

This is still predicated on the idea that the boomers and elites aren't happy to burn the US to the ground in order to sustain their death grip on the political status quo. They and the Israeli lobbyists are already attempting to implement some pretty wild stuff that shows they have no regard for anything but advancing their plans, come what may. Just recently, some conservative Democrat Assembly Members in New York advanced a proposed law targeting recent pro-Palestinian protests that would make blocking a road, bridge, tunnel or transportation facility as part of a protest an act that would get you hit with domestic terrorism charges, a class D felony and up to a 7 year prison sentence.

Unfortunately, the boomers and elites who still think fondly of Israel and have a knee-jerk rejection of any criticism of it have an entirely disproportionate influence on our politics, and are not averse to doing untold damage to our current freedoms, institutions and fellow citizens to advance their rabidly Zionist agenda full throttle.

[-] shikitohno@kbin.social 40 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Things have gotten bitter, but you can't have bipartisan politics when the majority of Republicans don't engage with it in good faith. As recent years have shown, it's a concept Democrats insist on sticking to for optics that prevents them from delivering on major platform issues, which the GOP only pays lip service to in years where they don't have the votes to ram through their policies, regardless of what the opposition thinks of them. As long as the GOP continues with this attitude that lets them pack the Supreme Court and other levels of the judiciary, while passing broadly unpopular laws and blocking policies that have majority support, insisting on bipartisanship is a losing play for Democrats. Leaving aside whether or not they would prefer to perpetually campaign on issues like reproductive right versus definitively solving the matter once and for all, it just feeds into the narrative that the Democrats are a bunch of incompetents who can't deliver on their promises, and even flub the ones they do make progress on by compromising their stances in the name of bipartisanship, sometimes before the Republicans even raise an initial objection.

Coupled with their abject failure at communicating their actual successes to the public at large, they're kind of self-sabotaging here. All they're accomplishing is further demoralizing their voters to maintain an image of respecting procedural norms in the face of an opposition who explicitly seeks to undermine and subvert those same norms. Who exactly is this supposed to excite?

[-] shikitohno@kbin.social 79 points 5 months ago

Why on earth would I want to shop somewhere that I can guarantee will ship with FedEx? I'll actively avoid places that only offer FedEx shipping as it is.

[-] shikitohno@kbin.social 74 points 6 months ago

I don't get how Republicans have any credibility amongst the electorate at this point. They demand blind obedience, or else cry foul, and somehow, a significant part of the population still supports this bullshit. Their eyes must be painted on, or else they're willfully ignorant.

[-] shikitohno@kbin.social 18 points 6 months ago

Maybe users wouldn't have felt the need for adblockers if ad agencies hadn't made them increasingly obnoxious, intrusive and pernicious. They just couldn't leave a fraction of a penny on the table and made sites more and more unusable without adblockers, so screw 'em. They can reap what they've sown.

[-] shikitohno@kbin.social 47 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Setting up a couple of spreadsheets at my job has basically been the entire grounds for me receiving bonuses last year, and it looks to be the same this year too. I don't even know that much, I just Google "excel xlookup" or whatever half the time, but people think it's black magic.

My main one last year turned a 30 minute daily task into something it do once a week in about 10 minutes on a busy week, and just print off the daily sheet each night to post. This year, I just added drop-down menus and some conditional checks to someone else's sheet.

I'm just amazed nobody else did this before, because I was sick of doing the old way everyday after my first week.

[-] shikitohno@kbin.social 19 points 6 months ago

There are plenty of packages still going through the USPS system. Plus, it's how lots of people get their medicine, where delays can really cause severe and unnecessary problems. I would rather get all my prescriptions at the pharmacy two blocks down the street from me that usually has my refills ready in under 30 minutes, but my insurance won't cover any medicines I need to take long-term unless I have them switched to 90-day prescriptions filled by CVS' mail-order service, for "my convenience" they tell me.

Now, actual junk mail, sure, ban it, for all I care. But there's a lot of legitimate mail still going out every day.

[-] shikitohno@kbin.social 28 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Screw that, I'm just taking a later lunch then. If they don't like it, they can take it up with the Department of Labor to see what they think of making employees attend a meeting during their breaks.

[-] shikitohno@kbin.social 19 points 11 months ago

I mean, people generally do want to work, actors included. They just don't want to be mercilessly exploited while they're at it.

[-] shikitohno@kbin.social 18 points 11 months ago

Yeah, for definitions of "hard left" that don't include a penchant for rugged individualism, a nearly pathological hatred of taxes and libertarianism, a lot of reddit is just liberal on social issues, at best. There is still a strong libertarian current of thought that is quite opposed to anything that could remotely be accused of being socialist and leans hard into tech utopianism saving us from the predictable outcomes of our current course of actions. There are also sizeable populist and conservative communities there. Sure, you have politically oriented subs that explicitly adopt leftist positions, but you could point to plenty on the right as well.

I guess just how for certain conservatives in the US, anyone to the left of Reagan is probably the love child of Stalin and Satan himself, it seems like calling any place that doesn't actively purge and issue an apology repudiating any leftist view that slips through is liable to be declared a haven of leftists.

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shikitohno

joined 1 year ago