Did they say anything inaccurate or does reality just make you uncomfortable?

Actually when you live in a democracy it is. Or at least, if you don't you still get the consequences when these kids start voting.

The difference would be that presumably we'd be holding that prisoner despite Russians wishes not because of them. We paid for them (are paying?) to hold this guy. He's not their prisoner, he's ours. The whole situation is fucked but that analogy isn't quite accurate.

Some damned foolish thing in the Balkans

Seems like a great opportunity for an actual televised protest. Line the parade route with opposition

Yeah I'm confident I could learn to run a cash register pretty dang well in less than a month. No way I'm learning plumbing that quick. Also, I'm confident I could teach myself to run a cash register. If I tried to teach myself plumbing (like, no books, internet, etc) I'd be at pretty high risk of a literal shotshow

Yes but compare that to a 'skilled' profession. 4 year degree, 5 years training under a licensed professional, series of examinations, and continuing education requirements.

It's not that one is 'unskilled' in a vacuum, it's that it has relatively less time/effort investment to reach 'acceptable' performance

Let me ask you this. Would you rather your surgeon deliver your food or your waiter perform surgery on you?

In my mind you go to a protest to sign 16 petitions, add your signature to people who want to run for office, and register to vote/join a party/etc. I'm always a little discouraged when I go to one and see none of this. There's a reason they group these rights together in the constitution, they are meant to go hand in hand. DSA has a decent presence where I live but I've never seen the actual democratic party out talking to people. Protests are filled with people asking 'whats next', and the Democrats keep failing to show up and answer the question.

One of today's lucky 10000! Search YouTube for jabroni always sunny for the source of the term being used outside wrestling

There never was. Pretty sure that's the joke. No one elected him. No one nominated him for anything. No one confirmed him.

Yeah remember that being an inflection point where I stopped being excited about updates and started dreading them.

Honestly dude I don't know what they are teaching in history classes these days, no one knows anything. How do they think the Hebrews fended off the hittite reptilian calvary?

I don't understand. If they don't recall why can't they just open up their personal phone and check?

They are arguing that a real progressive would try to fix democracy. Overturn citizens United. Get money out of politics. Push for an alternative to first past the post. Remove the electoral college. You do those things and fascism becomes much easier to defend against.

Not just different things, but whether those things even exist

Like, I'm all about debating the best approaches to fighting climate change. I'm not about debating whether it exists.

You can't debate solutions when you disagree about what the problem is

I think you're missing their point. They aren't saying they are going to do that, or that it's a good idea, they're saying enough people are going to react that way for it to be a problem. It's not good enough to be correct, you need to be convincing. Just because I can hold my nose and vote for the lesser evil doesn't mean I'm not concerned that not everyone will.

So dumb. Also insanely naively hopeful/optimistic.

I remember when I was a teenager and starting to question religion I talked to my sister about it a little. She was certain that if we didn't have Christianity that everyone would just be going around raping and killing each other. I was super confused at the time (cause I was a child) but a little later realized oh, she has no empathy or morals, no internal sense of right and wrong....and she doesn't know that other people actually do. The convo was confusing because at the time I didn't understand her at all when she asked things like 'without hell what would stop you from killing people?'. A little later I started thinking about how many people thought this way and if it was possibly enough to f up a democracy. Anyway here we are

I accepted it when I was a teenager. What's difficult is getting people that grew up in loving families to comprehend that I'm not anti family, and would love to have a family I could talk to, but the one I was born into are unempathtic narracisstic Nazis.

'Have you tried x? Have you tried y? I don't think you're trying z enough'

One close friend recently married into a similar family and it's been super eye opening for them.