If it’s not corporations then it’s PACs astroturfing. It’s nothing new.

Just be skeptical about it from both perspectives.

Bad actors do exist but they’re not to blame for everything despite almost any organization or movement these days attempting to scapegoat any poor publicity they experience as bad actors.

Can we not act like this?

If someone is misinformed then you educate and correct them, not mock them. Especially when the person in question is clearly open minded and willing to learn.

Fuck that. Eat the rich, eat the rich!

It’ll happen eventually surely? You can’t keep standing down from them. They will continue to take more and more if you do. At some point you will have to tell Russia no much more firmly and risk a confrontation or nuclear war. It’s inevitable.

Can’t tell if you’re being ingenuine intentionally or just misunderstanding.

This is far from a middle path. This is the path of aggressively standing between Russia and Ukraine. No where did I ever say that I blame Ukraine for fighting back either. They’re doing what is necessary, but the fighting shouldn’t have ever been necessary if other countries from around the world were willing to put their troops down and tell Russia no.

As for Putin and the nukes, I really don’t get it. It’s always going to be this way with Russia. Are you just going to let them take more and more? If Russia invades the rest of Europe are they just not going to fight back because Putin has the capacity to nuke them? At some point there will be a confrontation between Russia and other countries from the world. How much are people going to be willing to give up out of fear that nuclear weapons will be used?

Are we not in a proxy war with Russia already by providing Ukraine with aid?

If Russia truly refuses to back down when the other major superpower of the world getting directly involved, then that says much more about the future of our world.

You’re right that we’ve done a great deal of damage to Russia. We’ve decimated their birthrate for generations I imagine, but that came at the cost of Ukrainian blood. If we can take preventative measures then we should take them whenever possible, and even if it causes a major war it will possibly prevent more in the future.

It’s possible yes, but you also have to consider that perhaps Russia might not have ever invaded if we had shown that we were willing to fight.

A large part of the invasion was the fact that they knew they could get away with it. They know that we’re just going to watch on the sidelines, providing some support from time to time. The people scared of a World War seem to forget that World War II started while the major powers at the time allowed Poland to be conquered before doing anything.

Republicans doing typical Republican things to no one’s benefit.

That said, I don’t think aid in the form of sending more arms over is right. The proper humanitarian course of action would have been to send a coalition of troops over to Ukraine to forcefully shut the situation down. So many lives would have been saved had we done this earlier.

Instead we have chosen to let the war drag on by sending weapons and supplies, letting both Ukrainians and Russians(many of which who aren’t there by choice) slaughter each other.

Her parents are incredibly wealthy.

It’s a complaint many have with her. She comes from the same class of people that are responsible for most of the problems of the world. It’s genuinely off-putting but there’s really not that many choices out there for people with this amount of influence and money who are willing to take up this fight.

More like when you Google and half the solutions you find contradict themselves, with some of the responses to the solutions discussing the dangers.

I consider it more so authoritarian in this context due to the expectations of those demanding it.

Joke candidates/blank ballots would not stand with them. Part of voting is being able to withhold your vote, to utilize your vote as leverage to ensure your representatives work for you, and that’s a big freedom that’s would be stripped away here. You’re right that it probably wouldn’t change much though. You’d potentially do more damage by having uninformed voters who wouldn’t otherwise show up submitting ballots.

You summed up most of my feelings rather nicely though.

Personally, I don’t believe the moderates truly hate Trump as much as they say they do. In fact, they appreciate him. He is the perfect looming threat that they can use to coerce us into voting for them without them having to compensate or do any meaningful work towards addressing voter’s concerns.

Either that, or they are genuinely tone-deaf and out of touch. Take your pick I suppose.

Let’s be real, this isn’t about people not voting anymore.

Those of us who have resolved to vote Biden despite much of our displeasure towards the handling of Israel/Gaze were going to do so anyways. You won’t convince those who have decided not to vote this way either.

Screaming at people to vote will not make them want to vote. Worst case scenario you piss them off enough that the spite vote against you. People aren’t puppets for you to control by telling them what’s in their bests interests and demanding they follow through. You have to work with the in a pleasant manner if you genuinely want to convince them.

But again, I don’t think this is about people not voting anymore. This is about being an asshole for the sake of being an asshole. Some people are genuinely unhappy that others are unhappy with their options for candidates. So many people on the moderate left can’t be satisfied with the fact that they have intelligent voters who understand the status quo by the balls. It’s not enough for them to know that our options are bleak and that we have to vote for someone supporting genocide, versus letting someone who would openly participate in genocide get in office. You genuinely want us to shut up and stop complaining.

Also, the amount of people I’ve seen discuss implementing mandatory voting as if it wasn’t a trait of an authoritarian government is insane. Maybe if our voting process had more options it wouldn’t be authoritarian, but as it stands now making voting mandatory would be little more than coercion.

People frame it as an either/or because the reality is that voting doesn’t hold the personal power you think it does.

Due to how our elections work your vote just might be worthless. Add on all of the other issues at hand, and the prospective of voting is absolutely depressing for some of us.

This still doesn’t really make it an either/or situation, but one situation gives you the ability to potentially make a positive difference in the world, whereas the other, not so much.

Should have said while approving/enabling of a genocide.

The current administration has vetoed multiple UN drafts for a conflict resolution over Gaza as well as other UN resolutions proposed. We’re still sending the Israelis weapons. Neither congress nor the current administration care.

Oh absolutely. You’re right, framing it that way does seem to ignore the current issues we face as a society.

I believe that our mental health as a society is problematic, but it’s not the individual’s fault due to neglect. There are root causes in the background that are responsible. People don’t need therapy, but rather living conditions need to improve.

I don’t mean to sweep this under the rug, but I think that just stands as another case for the fact that an enormous amount of people in this country have mental health issues. It’s normalized at this point.

Besides that, news outlets that report on this only do so basically of the drama and the views. The solutions are in front of us, always have been, but that’s not what anyone truly cares about.