Definitely

4/21/2020 9:18:26 AM

Like...stay away as a general rule, not just during this lockdown.

4/21/2020 9:29:50 AM

Did the for-real preppers stay home?

Cause these people are prepper poseurs.

4/21/2020 9:47:39 AM

What I took from that Tim Robinson joke video was the first two people were some how crazier bitching about their yard and their hair. Amateur hour

4/21/2020 9:56:08 AM

I don't think that was posted here.

But yea, "pick which of these 3 is fake"

4/21/2020 10:30:21 AM

It's hard to keep away 100% when your child goes outside and plays in the yard then just kinda randomly wanders over there when you turn your head for 3 seconds.

4/21/2020 10:44:22 AM

Sounds like your child is the real asshole here, dude.

4/21/2020 11:09:53 AM

Quote :

"Colorado is moving from Safe-at-Home to Safer-at-Home, not all the details have been released yet but it looks like they are allowing elective surgeries, retail stores to do curbside take out, etc while still maintaining a bunch of restrictions. It doesn't look terrible"

They're allowing non-essential businesses (offices, factories, etc) to operate at 50% capacity, allowing personal services (salons, barber shops, massages, personal trainers, etc), and relaxing social restrictions (but still expecting at-risk populations to follow them). And it's no longer a stay at home order - just a strong suggestion. This is right after the astroturfed protest at the capitol in Denver where people complained about not being able to get haircuts. I think because we have a lot of red counties, Polis caved to the pressure. I hope Denver will extend the restrictions, but I don't think conservative areas like Colorado Springs will.

Quote :

"As long as people are wearing masks and not interacting with other people too much, open public spaces that don’t require a lot of support staff SHOULD start to reopen."

Parks in Colorado get insanely crowded on the weekends, I don't know how this is going to work.

[Edited on April 21, 2020 at 11:22 AM. Reason : .]

4/21/2020 11:18:25 AM

^ that’s parks in a lot of places

But people, at least around where I live in Raleigh, are taking this seriously. I’ve seen many people walk out in the streets to stay away from another walker. People are wearing masks everywhere. People are smart enough to know to maintain distance from other people.

4/21/2020 11:33:37 AM

Lockdowns were never justified. Sensible restrictions are what we need, nothing more. People need to figure out how to go about their lives without spreading the virus. People that can work from home should keep doing so. People that cannot, need to find out how to make their work-places reasonably safe. Close break-rooms entirely, isolate work-spaces and tools, lunches in their cars, masks if you cannot be apart from your co-workers. Organize the work-force into work units, so that if you must be near co-workers, make changes so at least it is the same co-workers everyday.

Such was the suggestion months ago. Businesses should make their own covid plan and be implementing it. It would have been nice if local health officials had the man-power to help with these plans and check they're being enforced. But I don't believe such manpower exists, so probably the best we can do is just ask businesses to make a plan, any plan, and post it where the workers can read it with a phone number for public health, then leave self reporting to direct health official manpower to the businesses that get reported as either having dumb plans or not enforcing the plan.

In this way, I suspect nearly all businesses should be able to re-open in some form.

4/21/2020 10:36:39 PM

Quote :

" People need to figure out how to go about their lives without spreading the virus"

even a quote from a fictional movie from the 90s about aliens sums that up

Quote :

" A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it."

a not-insignificant number of people in this country can barely breathe without throwing trash on the side of the road, screaming for a manager, and using the wrong form of their/they're/there. the most powerful (and more importantly now - influential) person in the country can barely speak in coherent sentences and is more worried about his tv ratings than tens of thousands of citizens dying from a virus that he convinced a frighteningly large percentage of the rest was no big deal and would go away on its own. and people -love- him for it.


[Edited on April 22, 2020 at 12:07 AM. Reason : ]

4/22/2020 12:05:54 AM

^^ lockdowns were required to get people to take things seriously. Your 2nd paragraph makes sense to do NOW, but even that is not even really understood from what i've seen. Some fastfood workers are wearing masks but most arent. The people at my local zaxbys, taco bell, and jimmy johns wear gloves but they touch everything with the gloves including customers.

The problem with asking businesses to make these plans is the people running the businesses are dumb/ignorant, they don't know what the purpose of gloves/masks are, they don't know how to teach their employees how to properly use these things, the employees on their own don't care about these things, and if any of these people buy into the President's idea that this is a hoax, then you have a cluster outbreak.

looking at the south korean numbers compared to our numbers and it's clear 40,000 Americans didn't have to die, we were just too inept to stop it. It's staggering when you think about it.

This was a massive failure of American government starting at the top and trickling down to most state and local governments. We're months into this now and i don't get the feeling any officials knows what they're doing and why, and they're not getting any guidance from the Trump admin.

On a sidenote i went to sassool (middle eastern food) and they were doing everything right. Workers wearings masks, social distancing markers, and register workers separate from food serving workers.

The idea that putting more responsibility on the individual from the beginning to know what to do in a once per century pandemic is completely laughable, at least if your goal is to minimize deaths.

4/22/2020 2:09:57 AM

Quote :

"The idea that putting more responsibility on the individual from the beginning to know what to do in a once per century pandemic is completely laughable, at least if your goal is to minimize deaths."

I don't think that can be the goal. I still believe the only sensible goal is just to flatten the curve as best we can with the minimum of dislocation, but the area under the curve is unchanged. This is not China, so we don't have the totalitarian state capabilities they do to imprison their citizenry. Given we're free people, our ability to respond to pandemics is limited. We aren't going to weld people's doors shut, we aren't going to arrest people for needing groceries, we aren't going to set up checkpoints with police officers arresting anyone with a fever. China sent suspected infected to hospitals not because they needed medical attention, but as prisons to enforce the quarantine with predictably bad outcomes (some went in healthy and caught Covid19 there; the close quarters and already embattled immune systems caused other diseases to spread wild with predictable deaths).

Any of what passes for a draconian lockdown here in the US isn't actually going to stop the spread, they're just slowing it down. Once the lockdown ends, the spread will roar back. Given that we cannot be in lockdown for 6 to 12 months until a vaccine can be rushed through, most people are going to get the disease one way or another. Therefore, the lockdowns have always been stupid. That people aren't behaving how you say they should doesn't matter in the long run, the same number of people are going to die, only question is when.

Only hickup in my beliefs is that maybe it is conceivable that test and trace can work. However, I don't think it will. Most people that catch it have no use for medical attention, so the majority of infected aren't going to present themselves to department of health officials for testing and tracing. Therefore, it is going to spread on, invisibly, indefinitely. Some vectors will get tracked down and voluntarily quarantined, many will not. Even when told to quarantine, it is invariably in your own home at your own recognizance. So the spread will continue until the labor force dedicated to tracing the spread gets overwhelmed and they will overall be making it worse (sending healthy people to interview the infected just produces more infected people).

As time passes, and the virus makes the rounds, herd immunity will finally slow it enough for tracing to stop it. Even if immunity is not permanent, something I doubt, it will at least carry us on long enough for vaccines to take over with booster shots.

4/22/2020 10:03:03 AM

How dumb are you? This isn't about stopping the spread it's about spreading out (slowing) the spread, hence flattening the curve. The point is to not overwhelm our already shaky health infrastructure. The lockdown has now gotten (most) people to take this threat seriously, and incremental reopening can further limit the curve.

We currently have extremely limited testing infrastructure and an even further limited tracing capabilities. Every day the lockdown is kept in place is another day these things can gear up for eventual reopenings.

There's also little-to-no credible data showing that a person gains immunity after infection, so your claims of herd immunity are definitely placing the cart in front of the horse. Not to mention at this point it could mean death for thousands more people.

Lots of convictions here with practically no science-backed data to back it up...so which MAGA were you out there yesterday?

4/22/2020 11:36:05 AM

Exactly. The more testing you have and the greater your healthcare system’s capacity the more feasible it is to relax restrictions.

Unfortunately our country has shown a complete inability to improve testing availability or to increase healthcare capacity.

4/22/2020 11:48:27 AM

Quote :

"Lots of convictions here with practically no science-backed data to back it up"

Hilarious. Nearly everything you said is not only unfounded, but provably absolutely false.

There was no evidence of a shaky healthcare system. Not even New York, where evidence suggests MOST of the population is already infected, did not run out of facilities. The Navy deployed a hospital ship to New York which went entirely unused because New York managed to scramble together more than enough capacity to handle the situation as well as could be hoped. For the rest of the country, hospitals are below average utilization rates, because normal patients are delaying treatment to avoid the virus. So, even with a raging pandemic, hospital utilization rates are below seasonal norms.

Testing is not currently a problem. Most regions in the US for awhile now have no shortage of testing capability. The shortage is of people to test. Most people are not seeking testing. Only those turning up at hospitals are being tested. The study based antibody testing has shown that fewer than 1/10th of the people that catch Covid19 are turning up at hospitals to be tested.

And there is tons of evidence that humans gain immunity. Namely, the vast majority of known virus to have ever existed that people actually recover from (exceptions being viruses that we don't recover from, such as HIV and Herpes). Immunity can be short lived, as little as a few months, but that is rare in the viral kingdom. That you don't find "how these things nearly always work" credible evidence is rather ridiculous, borderline anti-vaxxer mental gymnastics. I guess you don't bother with vaccines? After-all, the very concept of them in predicated on the belief in immunity.

4/22/2020 12:23:27 PM

I don't know how you can say 'WE DON'T HAVE A SHAKY HEALTH CARE SYSTEM' when people were turned away from hospitals (some dying afterwards), health care practitioners were reusing PPE or making due with shit like Yankee ponchos, or any other of the myriad of issues made evident in the past few weeks.

4/22/2020 12:39:46 PM

I understand a lot of people are underreacting but a lot of people (especially MSM) are overreacting and adding a lot of hyperbole.

CNN last night was saying that the lockdown should stay because 60% of the country approves of it and only 32% disaprove but doesn't that mean there should be no lockdown and let the 60% who want to stay home stay home and let the 32% who don't want a lockdown out as they please?

I'm sick of hearing "if you go out and get a haircut, you aren't just putting yourself at risk, you're putting people you don't know like me and my kids at risk"

Its not true. There is no mechanism for you and your family to be infected if you stay at home and wipe down incoming packages. People who go out are only putting the people they come in contact with at risk.

4/22/2020 1:14:33 PM

Quote :

"I'm sick of hearing "if you go out and get a haircut, you aren't just putting yourself at risk, you're putting people you don't know like me and my kids at risk" Its not true. There is no mechanism for you and your family to be infected if you stay at home and wipe down incoming packages. People who go out are only putting the people they come in contact with at risk."

My SO is a hairstylist who might be forced back to work on Monday. She works in a salon with 10 people and they collectively will come into direct contact with 100 people a day. These people still need to go to the grocery store, gas station, childcare facilities, etc. And without a stay at home order, you can't guarantee that they won't do other things.

4/22/2020 1:33:58 PM

^ Don't even bother. horosho's stupidity is a feature designed to waste your time. It's incurable.

4/22/2020 1:41:27 PM

At this stage, we should behave as aggressively as we could and put business and daily life back to normal. But in the meanwhile, be very cautious.

4/22/2020 1:44:52 PM

Of course theres never going to be a solution that works for everyone and I'm sorry if something I didn't forsee specifically applied to you and your SO. FORCING people back to work was never part of what I implied. Have they been getting paid to stay home all this time? I ask because I'm wondering what would be the difference between them staying home now and staying home after the salon is open.

It seems like there would be a way to mandate a transition time of businesses not being able to terminate people for staying home. Ie let the people who want to work work and the people who want to stay home to stay home but still have a job to go back to in 2021 or whenever there is no more chance of getting it.

and i get it. theres all sorts of problems with people staying home and getting paid vs not getting paid vs the government paying them but not being able to pay everyone. There are no easy answers I just don't think the answer should involve forcing anyone to do anything.

4/22/2020 1:50:02 PM

Quote :

"Namely, the vast majority of known virus to have ever existed that people actually recover from (exceptions being viruses that we don't recover from, such as HIV and Herpes)."

Do we even know whether it's possible to fully recover from SARS-CoV-2?

4/22/2020 1:56:16 PM

Quote :

"Of course theres never going to be a solution that works for everyone and I'm sorry if something I didn't forsee specifically applied to you and your SO. FORCING people back to work was never part of what I implied. "

I was replying to the example you used in your post (haircuts) with a personal anecdote. If you allow a subset of businesses to open, they are going to open. That's just how that works.

Quote :

"Have they been getting paid to stay home all this time? I ask because I'm wondering what would be the difference between them staying home now and staying home after the salon is open. "

They're getting unemployment right now. If salons open, they'll have the choice of going back to work or staying home and losing unemployment.

Opening personal services this early is irresponsible and dangerous.

Quote :

"There are no easy answers I just don't think the answer should involve forcing anyone to do anything."

Are you a libertarian now? I can't keep up.

Quote :

"Don't even bother. horosho's stupidity is a feature designed to waste your time. It's incurable."

True, just wanted to give a perspective on this one for other people to read since it is personal.

[Edited on April 22, 2020 at 2:06 PM. Reason : .]

4/22/2020 2:03:44 PM

[Edited on April 22, 2020 at 2:06 PM. Reason : double post]

4/22/2020 2:05:53 PM

Quote :

"Do we even know whether it's possible to fully recover from SARS-CoV-2?"

By now probably a billion people have had it and recovered, in the sense that they were infectious and now the virus itself is so far undetectable on or in them. Laboratory testing has shown the virus does very poorly in neural tissue, so it is extremely unlikely for it to have a life cycle that involves penetrating the blood/brain barrier to lay in wait like some viruses do.

Quote :

"My SO is a hairstylist who might be forced back to work on Monday."

By forced, you mean, chooses to go back to work on Monday. No one can force them. NC has eliminate the work search requirement from unemployment insurance. Plus, you're not required to accept any job offered to you. If working as a hairstylist in a Covid19 world is unacceptable to them, then so be it, their unemployment payments will continue. Even if it wasn't going to continue, it is still a valid choice to refuse a job you don't want.

[Edited on April 22, 2020 at 2:38 PM. Reason : .,.]

[Edited on April 22, 2020 at 2:38 PM. Reason : ,.,]

4/22/2020 2:34:25 PM

some businesses (who don’t give a damn about public safety) re-opening will give landlords a reason to start charging businesses (who prefer to stay closed for health reasons) rent, causing those who chose health over profits to close

4/22/2020 2:50:15 PM

^^
Idk what NC is doing as we're in Colorado, but her unemployment is job-attached, meaning if she doesn't return to the salon, she doesn't get unemployment. Even if that weren't the case, if she wanted to do the right thing and not work, she'd lose clients to stylists that are working.

^
This too, which especially applies to a lot of the personal service industry, who are often 1099 contract workers and rent spaces.

[Edited on April 22, 2020 at 3:00 PM. Reason : .]

4/22/2020 2:57:26 PM

Quote :

"NC has eliminate the work search requirement from unemployment insurance. Plus, you're not required to accept any job offered to you."

But what if you get fired for choosing not to work, or quitting rather than work in an unsafe environment (six in one half dozen in the other). Do you still qualify then?

4/22/2020 4:07:08 PM

Quote :

"Are you a libertarian now? I can't keep up."

I've always been libertarian and if you only read my posts you'd know that. The only reason its hard to keep up is because people keep mixing my quotes with things Earl said to make me sound like a MAGA conservative while constantly addressing me as Earl. It works because two powerful people amplify it over and over everyday until it sticks and picks up more people. You've been gaslighted.

Quote :

"Amongst the people in the green quadrant. Bottom left- dtownral, tanzarian, adultswim, moron, tulsi, the goodlife Upper right- Mongo, ncsusoccer, grimreaper, treetwista Upper left- exiled, stowaway Bottom right- el gimpy Note that all of the major politicians were in the blue quadrant but fall along a positively sloping trendline (y=x). That trend seems to continue for TWW users with stowaway being the only outlier. He's unusually authoritarian given how left he is. It seems that the more left you go the more libertarian you are and the more right you go the more authoritarian you are. Of course the entire red and purple quadrants are also outliers but this is an interesting phenomenon how everyone lines up on this same trendline. y=x"

and its not like I just deny everything. I'd love to hear actual critcism of my points but it never happens because a few people can't and rather just derail the whole thing

[Edited on April 22, 2020 at 4:24 PM. Reason : instead its just "OMG EARL TRUMP MAGA" everytime i disagree with democrats]

4/22/2020 4:08:34 PM

Quote :

"Don't even bother. horosho's stupidity is a feature designed to waste your time. It's incurable."

4/22/2020 4:31:56 PM

ok i think i've figured it out

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_contrarianism

4/22/2020 4:36:12 PM

I don't know why people have such a hard time conceptualizing "libertarian-left" and act like its a contradiction. I get that theres not many nation-level examples but theres plenty to show that authoritarianism isn't all that popular amongst people on the left. I blame it on the binary nature of our education and society.

[Edited on April 22, 2020 at 5:07 PM. Reason : exactly why its not a good idea to get bogged down in labels]

4/22/2020 4:58:16 PM

jw did you charge rent this month

but yeah this crisis is a perfect example of why both left and right wing libertarianism are inadequate and Marxism and historical materialism are the way forward

[Edited on April 22, 2020 at 5:24 PM. Reason : .]

4/22/2020 5:12:34 PM

Even though this deflection from the actual point is accurate, its still a deflection geared towards ad-hominem attack instead of actually making a point. Incremental progress I guess...

Participation in a system is not an endorsement of that system. You should know that first hand. yeah, I did collect 60% rent this month just like every month from a person who makes more money than I do and did not lose income. I have been pretty lenient during a tough month between jobs in the past and that is why my tenant is satisfied with the transaction and wants to pay while continuing to save up.

4/22/2020 5:35:21 PM

Quote :

"Don't even bother. horosho's stupidity is a feature designed to waste your time. It's incurable."

4/22/2020 5:51:09 PM

Quote :

"But what if you get fired for choosing not to work, or quitting rather than work in an unsafe environment (six in one half dozen in the other). Do you still qualify then?"

I'm not an expert on UI. What I know is, your employer already approved you as laid off, they cannot now appeal and claim you quit. When you fill out your weekly certification, it is going to ask you if you turned down work for the week. This is implicit on "work I'd approve of." No one thinks you should answer yes to this question if you were offered an illegal or otherwise inappropriate job (porn). Therefore, I'd answer no to this question even if the job I turned down was my previous job, I just didn't want to do it any more for reasons.

Quote :

"if she wanted to do the right thing and not work, she'd lose clients to stylists that are working."

They already lost clients to those that worked from home or otherwise ignored the shutdown order. What of it? It is a free country, your SO doesn't own their clients. Act accordingly.

4/22/2020 6:10:51 PM

For what it’s worth, I have no influence over anyone or anything here.

If call him Earl simply because he is the same user. Which is fine, of course, as many users on here have gone through many usernames. Or The E Man if you prefer. Who, by the way, was a Ron Paul fan in 2012 who also was complaining about biased media and Don Lemon (this is the weirdest part of his entire persona tbh) on this here website. Go figure.

And I regularly engage him in good faith arguments when I feel they are warranted even though I know he’s a contrarian troll at times.

[Edited on April 22, 2020 at 6:19 PM. Reason : X]

4/22/2020 6:17:56 PM

Saying the goal isn’t to save lives is close minded. It’s a sad, defeatist attitude.

South Korea is the clearest example. They didn’t have to close down like we did, but they kept deaths to a minimal amount and aggressively work to keep things contained. They had to sacrifice a small amount of privacy but it doesn’t require draconian measures.

All it takes is smart leadership who make plans based on expert knowledge and follow through on them. It does require a central authority to spin up testing and coordinating with all the other pieces needed to make this happen. I think it’s well within the grasp of a society like ours but specifically among the right wing, we’ve nurtured too much the idea that people’s gut feelings and beginners luck and outsider perspectives are better than expertise.

4/22/2020 6:25:02 PM

You've said it yourself, South Korea did not do lockdown. Their restaurants never closed. Their hair-stylists never stopped styling. I believe we should copy South Korea and end the lockdown.

Will it work here like it did in SK? Hell no. Our government is borderline evil. South Korea immediately engaged private industry to produce what was needed to engage widespread testing. Our government banned such activity and threatened to arrest those that attempted to make testing available or use those tests to trace the spread.

I suspect America is the bastion of capitalism not because there is something inherent about this land that makes capitalism better here, but that there is something inherent in our Government that makes capitalism the only way to actually accomplish anything.

4/22/2020 6:41:11 PM

South Korea's government had a mandatory app that everyone had to download to track people with COVID that you couldn't opt out of. Good luck getting every American citizen on board with that.

4/22/2020 7:09:22 PM

^^you said this when I mentioned increased testing half the page up:

Quote :

"Testing is not currently a problem. Most regions in the US for awhile now have no shortage of testing capability. The shortage is of people to test. Most people are not seeking testing. Only those turning up at hospitals are being tested. The study based antibody testing has shown that fewer than 1/10th of the people that catch Covid19 are turning up at hospitals to be tested. "

[Edited on April 22, 2020 at 7:10 PM. Reason : Increased testing and increased healthcare system capacity are the only way to open up]

4/22/2020 7:09:23 PM

Can you not see the foreign policy overlap between Ron Paul, Tulsi Gabbard, Tucker Carlson and folks like me on the left? We all agree that these conflicts are harmful to the country because they are immoral, a waste of money, and make us less safe.

-The Iraq war
-The Syria war
-Aggression towards Russia

Just because we don't agree on many other issues, doesn't make that single issue agreement paradoxical. I think the biggest issue is that you guys focus on who is making the point more than the point that is being made. You've said it out loud a lot. That is why once you determine you don't like the person making the point, you can immediately disregard it. Its the only explanation for bringing up Ron Paul by name when in reality all that means is that I was anti-intervention back in 2012.

It plays out over and over. If I mention a great point made by Tucker that has nothing to do with white nationalism, I'm "signal boosting white nationalism".

"Attacking the person, not the idea" completely affects how you see everything else in the world as well as TDS. You start connecting experiences you have solely to specific people which leads you to making false conclusions like thinking I'm the same person as Earl. Not earl and didn't even create "the e man".

Who started everyone posting earl memes and telling people not to reply? Synapse. Mods set the tone on any board and people generally trust the mods, and go along with their leadership. You can't be a mod and say you have no influence on a board where people get canceled or suddenly suspended all the time. You have total power and influence.

4/22/2020 8:33:29 PM

https://harpers.org/archive/1941/08/who-goes-nazi/

Quote :

"Mr. G is a very intellectual young man who was an infant prodigy. He has been concerned with general ideas since the age of ten and has one of those minds that can scintillatingly rationalize everything. I have known him for ten years and in that time have heard him enthusiastically explain Marx, social credit, technocracy, Keynesian economics, Chestertonian distributism, and everything else one can imagine. Mr. G will never be a Nazi, because he will never be anything. His brain operates quite apart from the rest of his apparatus. He will certainly be able, however, fully to explain and apologize for Nazism if it ever comes along. But Mr. G is always a “deviationist.” When he played with communism he was a Trotskyist; when he talked of Keynes it was to suggest improvement; Chesterton’s economic ideas were all right but he was too bound to Catholic philosophy. So we may be sure that Mr. G would be a Nazi with purse-lipped qualifications. He would certainly be purged."

4/22/2020 8:50:49 PM

Holy cow that entire article is amazing.

4/23/2020 6:05:54 AM

that was an incredibly good read.

4/23/2020 9:17:22 AM

These protests are prime examples of astroturfing. WRAL reported that the organizer has been in contact with Dan Forest quite a bit, so in a sense this is an extension of his campaign in addition to the backing on a national level. The Raleigh demo on the 21st was littered with Cult 45 Trumpers, antivax and 5G conspiracy nuts, and entitled "Karens" who just want their services from low wage employees no matter the risk. It is disgusting and ridiculous.

4/23/2020 9:55:09 AM

We'd all like to think we wouldn't be nazis. Everyone thinks they would run back into the burning building to save a trapped child but until it happens, no one really knows what they would do. You didn't have to be SS to be complicit. I know this is the internet and everyone will pretend to be the ideal person but most people are just lying when they say or imply they would fight the nazis as a german citizen. Either that or they aren't empathizing with the gravity of the choice.

I feel like most people would not risk the lives and safety of their own family and self to save a stranger, regardless of ideology. How do I know? They aren't doing it right now and everyone who has ever done it in the land of the free is in jail, dead, or lucky enough to be in exile. You didn't have to be SS to be complicit.

Everyone else is putting up with the bullshit that takes place in this country and world everyday. I look up to people like Fred Hampton more than any but even if I had the talent to be a great leader like that, I wouldn't do it. I'm not fucking dying just to have my work reset and be remembered as a terrorist by half the people I was trying to help. You didn't have to be FBI to be complicit.

I could come on here right now and talk about how my privileged history of activism makes me better than the next person and leave off the part where as soon as police told us to disperse, or fired a teargas canister, I was always headed home. When we were dropping off water near the border and they told us we could be fined up to 10k, I left and never went back. I know they could shoot me right then and there and no one would be surprised. so I cower. People are still dying down there. You don't have to be CBP to be complicit.

Daave may think owning 1 house is an unacceptable, hypocritical move to the right, but he's just drawn his line somewhere marginally to the left of mine. Perhaps because of already-existing security or perhaps because of less concern for his own security. Anyone who benefits from this current system, pays taxes, or doesn't dedicate themselves to overthrowing the government and system is complicit in some way.

People practice self-preservation especially when its life or death. This is why you have to understand alienation to understand how capitalism ties into fascism. Alienation is designed into the system and it gets people to participate in a system they don't believe in. We are all victims of alienation. No one wanted to pay to support kids in Yemen to be blown up but they did it because they felt they had to for their own survival. You didn't have to pilot the drone to be complicit. When given the choice of surviving and providing for your family or living the right way, most choose to survive. You have to empathize with the gravity and alienation involved in that choice. Germany is in the midst of the great depression.

From my experience, all people believe leftist ideals are "the right way" but conservatives have just been alienated so much that they believe its not possible in practice period and this way may suck, but its the only way. You will even hear them say things like "in a perfect world".

Then theres people like me who think that "perfect world" isn't possible within our current system but would be if we dumped the system. This is why the only path I see is letting the system expose itself while convincing people theres a better way forward. A way where everyone at a minimum knows they will always have a place to stay, food, education for their children, and healthcare. As long as that path is as improbable as it is now, I chose to maintain my safety within this system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHmbO6s1DmU

[Edited on April 23, 2020 at 10:47 PM. Reason : the more you realize you are complicit, the more alienated you become. ]

[Edited on April 23, 2020 at 10:58 PM. Reason : context]

4/23/2020 10:43:53 PM

^not even worth a response because its clear you either didn't read the essay from 80 years ago or you don't even begin to understand it

4/23/2020 10:57:11 PM

These people are making me so angry.

I went to the grocery store for the first time in probably a month because our online shopping and curbside pickup just wasn't yielding what we needed. I didn't want to do it but I did my best to stay away from folks and I wore my mask. But I could just tell so many people didn't give a shit. On the last aisle, the frozen aisle, I was behind this elderly couple who were both in those electric carts provided by the store. So many assholes just walked right by them.

I realize that not all of those close-proximity assholes are the same as the #ReopenNC type, but I'm lumping them all together.

This isn't some dumb conspiracy of our government trying to see how far they can push things. It just isn't.

/rant

4/23/2020 11:00:22 PM