I actually think there tends to be very few allegations that turn out false. You may be confusing it for allegations that have nothing done with them or allegations that get retracted, but very few turn out to actually be false. Even the retractions are usually done because the victims get harassed or further traumatized, and not because they turn out to be false.
Right. But it never stops at free data.
It probably starts free. You create a market and then start selling it as rental equipment, or you market to cities. They are making money.
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I like to point to another instance of something similar happening with left handedness. See, there was a huge stigma around being left handed that was very religiously ingrained (sinister being a term for someone being left handed), and children were mostly taught to be right handed because of this. Like, forcably switching hands for writing and eating and other activities if they used “the wrong hand”. But, when this stopped being so poorly thought of and stopped being forced on children, left handedness SPIKED! You know, until it reached population levels, which is somewhere around 1 in 9. And then it stayed there.
Because, like, obviously left handed people didn’t just appear out of nowhere. They were always there. They were just being forced to be right handed. And it was causing a lot of unnecessary trauma to force them to be right handed.
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Trump has concentration camps where children are being raped and disappeared. Like systematically. As part of the deportation process. I do not think that is better. Do you think it is better? I think that is worse. Obama didn’t have fucking goon squads kidnapping and shooting people in the streets, camping out at bus stops and churches. Like, I get that Obama was cruel, but he did not let ICE fuck children and shoot people with impunity. And that is the difference. And you are trying to pretend it is better to have the 1.5 million even if severalfold more of them are raped and murdered as a result. I think that’s worse. Do you not?
I think that is fair. I would argue that the multiple steps ahead would probably include things like primary voting and caucusing, and that is where we push for the greatest progressive advances. So, you are mainly right.
Basically, while I understand your approach, I mostly disagree that voting Democratic is the one step ahead… Well, no, that is probably correct, so long as the modifier is that the ONLY thing you do is vote blue. That would, to your credit, not necessarily push change. Like, if, for whatever reason, the Republicans suddenly were incredibly progressive, voting for them would be better than Democrats. It wouldn’t happen, but purely hypothetically, voting Democratic in that instance would be bad. But, I think in order to get there, you have to primary or caucus out the worst choices. That is like two or three steps ahead. That choice can get better and better the more steps you do, like joining or starting a mutual aid organization, getting involved in your community, etc. That is like multiple steps. And each one is just their own sum to contribute.
What I will grant you is that we probably have been at a one- or two-step thinking for a long time now. And the hard part about accepting that is that it is difficult to get people out of that mindset. We are quite insular. We are quite individualistic. We are quite lonely. And telling people that it is their responsibility to change that is gonna get a lot of pushback. But, well, I think it is!
So, you are right, and your reasoning is right, but I think it concludes to something that might be wrong. I do push for voting Democratic because the alternative is worse, but I only push it until the alternative is better. And I go to the caucuses. I go to the primaries. I go to my local Democratic meet ups. I question my local representatives and senators, ask why they don’t push progressive policies, and then if they fail to do better, I keep pushing for better, annoy the shit out of them, and then eventually, they get switched out or they get better. It looks like one-step, and sometimes (or often), it feels one-step.
So, right now, I criticize the shit out of Gaven Newsom. I criticize the shit out of bad Democrats. I push for better in primaries. And then… I vote the Democrat. Because the alternative is the Republican, and so far, they are worse.
There is no contradiction. That 3 million number is bad, but it is still better than the 1.5 million number because of the methods used. Because prisoners didn’t go down under Republicans. The prison system didn’t get better under Republicans. Police killings didn’t get better under Republicans. Like, I know it’s gauche to try to compare hurt, but I do not see any Republicans calling for a rehabilitation system instead of a punitive system, but I do see some Democrats call for it, even if very few.
Like, it’s sort of like telling me to pick between 1000 thefts being committed vs 100 murders, and, like, yeah, obviously I’ll take 1000 thefts over the murders. I don’t want either, but I have two fucking choices.
Which would you pick? Remember, there’s quantitatively less crimes with the murders! Oh, you didn’t pick? That just means someone else gets to pick for you.
That doesn’t make sense. If people kept voting for any Democrat, then the Republican party would cease to exist. A new major party would pop up to take its place. I mean, that’s sort of how we got the Democratic and Republican parties. We didn’t start with them.
But, like, there’s also the fact that if the Democratic party took over, it would likely fracture into it’s progressive and centrist factions. That would push the Overton window further to the left. That’s how it works, and also how it has worked, and until some form of ranked choice voting is implemented federally, it’s how it will continue to work.
As a counter to your example, imagine your algorithm, but it’s an infinite tree. You can seek every possible sum Sn to some number n. Doesn’t matter what n is, but it can never see the entirety of the tree because not only does our view of the future get fuzzier the further we see, but the number of possibilities will become unmanageable to measure. There will occasionally be some sum Tn+k that’ll outcompete Sn. But, that doesn’t mean S won’t converge to an even better sum later on. Because we can only see so far down the tree. That’s why a greedy algorithm is used. You have so many resources, and it’s just a debate on how much big you can make n. You would have to determine exactly how your T sum is better, and right now, history doesn’t really agree with you.
Harm reduction doesn’t always mean harm. It does eventually mean that things that do nothing are better than harm, and things that do more good are better than less good. But right now, harm is being caused no matter how you choose. So if you are forced to pick, you should pick less. Every time.
The problem with your logic is that you are saying knowingly gets a Nazi tattoo, but you’re against anyone having a Nazi tattoo, knowingly or not. So, let me take a slight detour before I get to the point.
The problem I have with an absolutist statement like that is that there are plenty of reasons someone might have a Nazi tattoo, even knowingly, that wouldn’t make me immediately not support them. Now, given that statement, the circumstances are probably gonna be pretty stringent, but I don’t think it’s necessarily unforgivable or even disqualifying… BUT I think it mostly is, especially because you’re right that you can probably find someone that is just as good as whoever I could find that fits the bill, but does not and has not ever had a Nazi tattoo. So, like… I guess the point is simple.
You’re right. And I am wrong.
I think it’s worth noting that many of the people who supported him did not do so out of idiocy. They were taken advantage of, their willingness to forgive exploited. They knew all of these things and were wary of them, but chose to ignore them because they were lied to about the kind of person he was. They trusted him. And they were scammed.
It is easy to say in hindsight that this was easy to see. I was willing to forgive the tattoo at first and the military service at first (though, not the mercenary work, nor the reddit comments, and definitely not the fucking rape) because, well, in some ways I am kinda gullible, and in other ways, I kinda give a lot of leeway to certain privileged people (mostly rich white men) who make mistakes that ruin lives because they never considered the consequences of their actions because society allows them to do so with little to no repercussions, and that subconsciously affects my opinions.
For the record, I wasn’t a Platner supporter before this, but I understand how many of them got there. He said a lot of things that people desperately wanted to hear, and that is how people get scammed. They aren’t dumb, even if they did act like morons. They’re desperate. They’re hopeful for anything that can make their lives better. They’re even gullible to believe a man with a Nazi tattoo who was a Blackwater mercenary that assaulted many women was a good candidate, and responsible for perpetuated a culture that allows these horrible decisions to continue not being as bad as they should rightfully be. But, even though I understand why you think so, I still don’t think they’re stupid. And maybe that’s another thing on me.