Even if the US suddenly lost all its fighter jets, naval force, missiles and bombs. How likely would an invasion be in the next 10 to 50 years?

It is quite a big country with a big population, with a practically uninhabited and difficult to cross country in the north, and a poor drug war ridden country with significant amount of jungle in the south. To the west and east are oceans with some thousands of kilometres until the next sizable and properly inhabitated landmass.

So purely in geographics terms, invading and conquering the US is a huge pain.

Now add to it all the issues of the US dominance in global trade and the ramifications such an invasion would have.

The US doesnt need that army or MIC for defense. It is offense focused and it needs to keep murdering people all over the world to keep its wheels turning.

So much this. In my country my parents generation could afford buying a house on two middle class incomes when they were end of 20s early 30s. In my generation that is only possible with generational wealth.

The same shit happens in systems with more than two parties. You also have the problem to think about rallying behind the main party on the left or right side vs. one that is closer to your ideals but probably wont become part of the government coalition. In Germany, where i am from, we had 12 out of 16 years under Merkel with a “big coalition” of the conservative CDU and the social democrat SPD. All that happened was the SPD moving more and more to the right. Now we had a coalition that was supposedly progressive but collapsed hard as well as the Green party and liberal party FDP also moving strongly to the right. We now in 2024 have policies among the supposed center/center-left that used to be fringe far right by German standards. This is why voting “tactically” or for “the lesser evil” fails. It gives a false sense of what is demanded by the people.

Also for the narrative control just take the win of Biden in 2020 as a counter example. Despite Trump holding office the Dems managed to win.

Well, they would get my vote if they changed their policies and behaviour. If you vote them no matter what they dont have to fight for it. (Note i am not a US citizen but the same principles apply. I have similar dissapointment with the formerly progressive parties in my country moving to the right)

And we can also observe this empirically with the current election. The Dems were so tone deaf that they thought to compete over Reps not too happy with Trump, fielding people like Dick fucking Cheney as their advocates. Meanwhile they lost a lot of votes they expected to just have secure because they expected the voters to be blindly loyal hence irrelevant to their strategy.

I like to think of it in a “market” way. By voting there is a signal into the market, that their is a demand for a certain political direction. So “stocks” with that profile increase in value. This might be individual politicians, specific laws, parties, or general ideology/values.

Politicians want their portfolio to be attractive, so they get more votes. As a result they will adjust their portfolio of political positions accordingly.

If you vote “tactically” you send a false signal into the market. So instead of getting more politicians to represent the ideas you like, you reinforce them in the ideas you don’t like, as that had more buy signals. On the flip side if you send your sell signal, by removing a formally loyal vote from them, you can show them that their portfolio has gotten lopsided.

The difficulty is to think these things longer term. It is not just this election cycle, but 8 years, 12 years maybe even 20 years ahead. The way media and politicians like to represent elections got more and more pointed towards just this single one being the one and only. This is not just a problem in the US, but also countries without FPTP. Also the reporting got less about the specific policies and more about the how and who, turning it into a show of game of thrones, rather than a fight for the best ideas.

All you do by consistently voting the “lesser of two evils” is kicking the hangover down the road by keeping to drink more alcohol. You know every time that it will get worse and the sooner you get through the hangover, the sooner you could actually move on, but in fear of the hangover you grab the bottler another time.

With the measures you mentioned the problem is in particular that the current Democrats are not caring about them. They assume they will get the votes nonetheless and if they don’t it is fine because the Republicans will cover most of the donors interests anyways. Making noise only works, if it is followed by consequences. Leaving political violence aside, the only consequence a normal person can realize is not giving the vote if they aren’t heard.

This is a lie spread by corporate elites that want to make sure both parties align with their interests instead of having Democrats create a popular platform and win on that basis.

Did you learn nothing from hanging on to Biden until even the billionaire donors got scared by his dementia?

Voting for non evil is the way to go. By keeping to vote for the lesser evil, you get it to become more evil while keeping non evil out of power. This is how the system games you.

So if you don’t vote for the lesser evil it gets salty and joins the evil? Yeah i am not voting for that psycho manipulating abusive shit.

The Banshees of Inisherin

i watched it in a theater, because i’ve heard the movie was good. Didn’t read up much on it beforehand and enjoyed watching it, albeit not fully getting it i guess.

It felt worth going to a theater for. Contrary to the last 3 or so Marvel movies i’ve seen in theater because friends dragged me and i ended up falling asleep every time.

Social harm is much higher with alcohol. There used to be a graph plotting both social and physical harm, but it got replaced with the one you criticise, effectively stating the same thing. Alcohol in its effects for both the individual and society is a hard drug, like coke, heroin or meth.

But the way you get defensive makes me wonder why aconowledging alcohol to be a serious drug with huge damage both to individuals and society is so difficult.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/wr/mm7308a1.htm

180k/330 Mio = 54 Alcohol related deaths per year and 100k people in the US.

https://www.spiegel.de/gesundheit/diagnose/suchtbericht-alkohol-und-tabak-toeten-jedes-jahr-zehntausende-menschen-in-deutschland-a-19d17c83-3439-4291-8034-a6f32325e8a7

60k / 80 Mio = 75 Alcohol related deaths per year and 100 k people in Germany.

More people per capita die in Germany from alcohol abuse than in the US. I have no idea which numbers you have there. They are way off.

Yeah, not drunk, just a little tipsy, its just to take the edge off, just to relax a bit…

See my comment here: https://feddit.org/post/4625794/3061984

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

and “its just one glass of wine” can be equally said with “its just a small bump of coke” or “its just half an oxy”

Alcohol is a hard drug. The opiod crisis not being such a thing in Europe is a result of opiods not being downplayed and casualized like in the US, so the reason why the US has an opiod crisis and we have such an alcohol problem are similar. But you drew a line from casual alcohol abuse to somehow work against opiod problems. But more alcohol abuse doesnt lead to less opiod abuse or the other way round.

So did you also do other hard drugs because they were hidden from you? Heroin, Coke, Crack, Meth?

The opiod crisis has an entirely different basis to them, as tons of Americans were made addicted by reckless prescriptions first.

And again, seeing my and other parents drink regularly did not stop us from being reckless around alcohol. Instead what it does makes clear signs of alcoholism not be taken as warning. “Dad had two beers every day, whats the harm in three?”

There is things the US does badly, like not allowing alcohol until 21 and then giving access to vodka and beer alike, where many European countries have different ages for booze and lower strength alcohol. But the idea that people in Europe are more responsible around alcohol doesn’t hold to reality. The US had about 120k alcohol related deaths per year, which jumped to 180k with the pandemic. Germany is at a stable 60-70k a year. But Germany has less than one fourth of the US population.

And then you miscalculate your sip, or you have to break suddenly, so you spill hot coffee all over yourself. Now you are in pain and take both hands off the wheel and your eyes off the road, because you want to take your hot clothes away from you.

Voilá you are driving uncontrolledly and are a mortal danger to anyone within the possible paths your car could take for the next ten or so seconds.

I was almost run over by a driver at a crossing who was busy eating fries or something. She clearly didn’t know or care to pay attention and drive accordingly. Given her speed i most likely would be dead or in a wheelchair if i hadn’t stopped in the middle of the road. I will never forget the stupid expression on her face as she looked back up and didn’t bother to slow down.

It doesn’t matter the kind of distraction. If you dont have both hands free to operate your car and you have to look at anything except the road and mirrors, you are distracted and have no business of driving. This kind of behaviour should always lead to people getting stopped and at least made to walk the rest of the day, getting longer bans with repeated offenses.

Given that alcohol is a hard drug with severe social and personal consequences when abused i find that sentiment a bit shortsighted. We rightfully don’t accept casual consumption of cocaine or heroin around children. We shouldn’t set the model that alcohol is just a casual thing to consume on any given afternoon.

Me and many friends as teenagers wen we got shitfaced in unhealthy and dangerous ways just laughed at our parents critizising us, because of how normalized their consumption was.

So between responsible consumption and casual consumption is a huge difference. Especially when there is small kids around, who might end up just drinking from the jar right in their reach.