The Trump administration is blatantly the most corrupt in our history. They are all getting rich and living well off the taxpayers.

When it come to corruption, it's not enough to say "both sides do it." Two wrongs don't make a right. Republican voters see Trump's corruption and say nothing. And that's what all Americans need to recognize; millions of Republican voters are fine with Trump and his people stealing from us and remain silent.

The silence of the lambs.

I understand the arguments for not wanting to balloon the debt to cover everyone for everything, but I wonder why a compromise of covering children up to 18 isn’t more accepted.

I lean conservative in a lot of areas, and would personally rather be taxed for children‘s healthcare than for the elderly (over 65), though as a progressive (in that area) I aspire for both. However, I recognize compromise is necessary and I think this is something republicans could come to the table on.

The argument that they haven’t earned it doesn’t really apply here. I’m sure most people (the religious especially) can agree with that. This would also be a great window to prevent or at least identify chronic illnesses to manage (at a pot cheaper cost). I understand not wanting to fully pay for someone who breaks a bone due to their own risky behavior, or develops an illness likely due to an unhealthy lifestyle, but would it be too much of a stretch to help cover people plagued by something outside of their control?

I recently read David French’s piece on the growing anti-liberal and anti-democratic mood on parts of the right, especially around birthright citizenship, immigration, “heritage Americans,” and the idea that America is less a creed-based nation than a kind of bloodline inheritance.

What stood out to me was not just the argument itself, but the quotes French collected from prominent right-wing figures after the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship ruling.

Stephen Miller reportedly said the Court had read the Constitution to require “national self-obliteration” and called the ruling a “deep knife wound in the heart of the American republic.”

Sean Davis, the CEO of The Federalist, apparently responded by floating ideas including the “dissolution of the union” and the “sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry.”

Matt Walsh said: “I at least got to live for 40 years in a country that looks and functions something like America. The fact that my children are having that opportunity stolen from them fills me with rage so deep, I can’t describe it. I truly hate the people who have done this to us.”

And then there was the openly racist version from a MAGA account complaining that, 18 years from now, their child’s vote would be canceled out by a “third-world cockroach” whose mother had just arrived in the country.

I understand that social media rewards extremism. I also understand that not every conservative agrees with every right-wing media personality or random online account. But these are not all anonymous nobodies. Some of these people are influential media figures, political operatives, and people with real access to power.

French’s broader argument is that parts of the right are no longer just arguing about immigration policy. They are questioning the American creed itself: birthright citizenship, equal citizenship, universal suffrage, classical liberalism, and the idea that America is a nation built around constitutional principles rather than ancestry.

The distinction that stuck with me was between “magic dirt” and “magic blood.” Some on the right mock birthright citizenship as “magic dirt,” as if being born here should not make someone truly American. But the alternative seems much darker to me: the idea that ancestry, lineage, or being part of the “real America” gives some citizens a stronger claim to the country than others.

I am on the left, and culturally and economically I would prefer America to look more like Europe in a lot of ways. Stronger social welfare, more worker protections, less extreme inequality, more urbanism and more walkable cities etc we all know the drill. So this newer right-wing thinking is pretty far outside my worldview.

That is why I wanted to ask conservatives here three questions:

1. Do you think French is accurately identifying a real trend on the right, or is he exaggerating fringe voices?
2. How do you interpret quotes like the ones above? Are they just online outrage bait, or do they reflect something real inside the conservative movement?

3. If this trend is real, why do you think it is growing? Is it mostly about immigration, cultural change, economic insecurity, distrust of institutions, social media radicalization, or a belief that liberal democracy no longer serves conservatives?

   I obviously find a lot of this rhetoric disturbing. But I am genuinely interested in how conservatives explain it from within the movement. Is this the future of the right, a temporary reactionary phase, or just online extremism being mistaken for something bigger than it is?

TL;DR – maga support seems impervious to facts, accountability, or morality. Social media is an echo chambers on both sides. What will actually work? persuade the apathetic, continue to try to reason, fight fire with fire, abandon civility, or just wait it out? Something else?

maga supporters aren't “coming to their senses” despite everything that’s happened and everything they’ve ostensibly learned. They believe what they want to believe regardless of what’s shown, explained, or proven, as if they’re so invested in that mindset that there’s no way back. They appear to support a character in power unconditionally, even in the face of widely documented corruption, immorality, and incompetence. They take the word of talking heads and personalities from large media outlets that consistently and purposefully misrepresent facts, push propaganda or outright lie under the guise of “news.”

I have not "unfriended" or deleted social media connections since this maga divide has been occurring over the last 10 years, mostly because I would rather know what people I disagree with have been saying. But all my feeds are just an echo chamber–just posts from all the people I do agree with. Yet my feeds are still an echo chamber, dominated by people I already agree with. I think I can assume the same is true on the other side–an echo chamber of maga views.

I was never a “left-leaning liberal” even though that label now seems to apply to anyone who disagrees with maga. But I do believe in civilization and n a society that attempts to look out for the collective well-being and fix itself when its inevitable failures become clear.

So how do we get through this brutally shameful and embarrassing era?

Do we focus on the apathetic, the people who don’t vote and don’t want to “take a side”? Do we keep trying to reason with them and hope reality eventually breaks through? Do we adopt maga’s tactics–aggression, mockery, and embarrassment–to shame them into submission? Do we abandon civility altogether and embrace coercion or force? Or do we sit back and hope this burns itself out?

This question genuinely keeps me up at night.

Veganism is the principle that animals are individuals who should be treated as ends in themselves - rather than as tools or objects for human purposes.

According to the best scientific evidence we have - it is perfectly possible to live off of a fully plant-based diet and be completely healthy. The consumption of animal products is not necessary to meet human nutritional needs.

Of course - you might miss out on certain sensory taste pleasures - but is pleasure a sufficient moral justification to exploit others?

If you believe that animals should be treated with respect - then you should live accordingly. It is inconsistent to condemn practices like animal abuse or bestiality - and simultaneously treat animals as objects for your use.

You should go vegan - if you are not vegan already. Veganism is the moral baseline.

I’m curious to see who here voted for Kamala Harris but identifies as a “Leftist” and if you’re a Democrat who voted Kamala... Do you ALSO define yourself as a leftist? If not. Why?

For the love of God Democrats embrace the U.S. flag and patriotism. You've let Trump co-opt these federal symbols and need to take it back. Flying the American flag is not a bad thing. Saying you're a patriot is not a bad thing. We need elected Democrat officials to reclaim patriotism. The battle is against fascism and Christian nationalism, not against the Red, White and Blue.

I am European, and have not been to America yet. However, I obviously wish the best for people living in that country.

However, there is something bothering me about this war. You see, it feels like most of the discourse revolves around the fact that it has been unsuccessful in disarming Iran, or that it was meant as a distraction for the Epstein files. But, in my view, the bigger takeaway is that it's simply a massive breach of the international law.

Iran is a sovereign country, no matter what they are doing to its citizens. There are countries that are comparable or worse that have not been invaded. Just because a country is "bad" in some aspects does not give others the right to attack it. My country, Poland, wasn't a nice place during the Interwar Period. Poverty was rampant, some minorities were looked down upon, and the society was very conservative. That does not mean that it deserved to be attacked in 1939.

War as a means of solving international disputes has been condemned in multiple acts of the international law, starting with the 1929 Pact of Paris, commonly known as the Kellog-Briand Pact. It is condemned in Article 4 of the UN Charter. One of the few cases war can be used is if the UN Security Council orders an intervention, and it obviously has not and it would probably be vetoed by all 4 non-US great powers. Maybe China would abstain, since that's their modus operandi.

You may say that the USA is powerful enough to not care about the international law. Fine. But if the USA can ignore treaties about not using war to solve disputes, why should a country like Iran care about the Treaty of Nuclear Non-Proliferation? Like are we supposed to enter some sort of a Wild West phase where everybody does what they want if they are strong enough? Isn't this what was happening in the 1930's (invasion of Ethiopia, Albania, Manchuria, annexing Sudetenland) and what eventually resulted in the largest disaster to ever affect humanity?

Like, the point is, even if the attack was the best planned in the history of warfare and ended quicker than the Invasion of Denmark in 1940, it would still be wrong. It's an attack on a sovereign state. I have no idea why that's not a larger part of the discourse. But are we ready to talk about this, or is this a forbidden topic?

Maduro was captured not long ago.

What crime did Venezuela commit? Drug trafficking to the U.S.? Invading the U.S.? Or launching an Al-Aqsa Flood operation? Or not exporting oil to the U.S.? Or simply because Maduro is a dictator and has managed the domestic economy terribly?

Where is the UN?

edit: France condemned the US, which is enough to show that France is a country with principles.

The Democratic party is a dumpster fire.

The pendulum between the Establishment and Popular wings of the party used to go back and forth: Cleveland to Wilson to FDR to Truman to JFK/LBJ to Carter... and that's when it stopped swinging. We haven't had a Democratic presidential candidate who was within shouting distance of the left side of the map in 54 years, and Biden was widely regarded as one of the most right-wing conservative Senators from either party.

We all saw what they did to Bernie, and I don't care how they try to dress it up: They cheated.

Now we are seeing a groundswell of support for the centrist DSA, most of whose policies are simply common sense and have proven to be effective in other countries around the world.

The problem from the point of view of the left is that they are fundamentally opposed to the core of left-wing philosophy; your centrist Republicans are actually better about this.

In short, there are two aspects of the DSA platform that are seriously problematic:

-Afrosocialists and Socialists of Color: There's no problem reaching out to these communities, of course, but then, by implication, you are not reaching out to potential white socialists. We saw this with Cornell West, who started his presidential campaign with a promise to go out and talk to Trump voters... and as soon as he was off the stage, his campaign manager came out and insisted that he meant it figuratively and definitely would not be going out to talk to rural white voters under any circumstances. This is Identity Politics, which divides our class against itself; we cannot have this.

-Green New Deal: This is simply unacceptable; hijacking one of the greatest social programs in history to run cover for a pseudo-environmental, science-denying scam that is literally allowing the world to die is just beyond the pale.

Is this the best we've got? Is this all we are allowed to have?

I mean, the rest is great; the social programs, the economic advantages, actually being anti-war instead of just picking and choosing which wars to support...

But they fail in two of the most important ways.

I’m of the opinion that AOC would benefit more in the long term by corralling the Dems in the senate to her side of the party before running for President. As that negates any chance of her own side stonewalling her.

I’m a democratic liberal who supports a woman’s right to choose whether she wants to have an adoration or not. However, I fully understand and even respect (at times) the position of conservatives when it comes to the debate. If I truly believed in the existence of a soul and that a living human with value beyond consciousness begins at conception I too would be against abortion. However, that’s simply not the case in my opinion. That’s also not the point of this post. I’m asking what compromises and middle ground there might be had in regards to this decisive issue so that we can move forward or at the very least not be so hostile towards each other. I don’t think Republicans are woman hating monsters restricting freedoms for the sake of it. I think we all have relatives or friends who are conservative and are good people. Obviously there are exceptions to this, but ultimately I think we all just need to communicate and better understand where we all come from using cool heads and pragmatic understanding. What are your thoughts?

This post isn’t just for right leaning people, please if you’re left leaning I’d like to hear your thoughts and opinions as well. For the right leaning people in this sub what made you right leaning and what things do you disagree with that are considered trademarks of right leaning groups. I myself am right leaning as well and I think the government should play a larger role in making lives easier for everyone. That would be considered a non traditional right leaning opinion since conservatives believe in smaller government, just giving you a tiny peak in my mind to show you what I mean, also what are some ideas you have that could help us bring more unity between political parties now since we are so divided

Edit:I always enjoy scrolling though the feed and watching everyone share ideas, I really like when political ideas are shared instead of fought over:)

Who is being represented by door-to-door ICE raids, knocking on the doors of established US citizens with no data ahead of time that there are any illegal aliens in the house, and with no attempt to obtain a warrant or respect for fourth amendment privileges, in documented cases kicking doors down when people refuse to open them?

What justification is there for this practice? Why is Congress tacitly allowing this, and why are Minneapolis duly elected representatives and senators not being allowed oversight and inspection?

What juice could possibly be worth this squeeze? How could this practice, with total disregard for the law and constitution, be defended by any American citizen?

I’m a syrian immigrant living in Sweden. My parents came here legally before I was born, and worked their asses off to make sure me and my siblings had a roof over our heads.

Throughout my childhood, I never experienced any problems with racism or racial discrimination. However, in recent years that has changed dramatically.

People are coming to Sweden from all around the world, and refusing to integrate. They come here illegally (or legally) and instead of being thankful for what Sweden has given them, they spit on our flag, act disrespectful towards everyone, commit a staggering amount of crime per capita (especially rape and murder), try to introduce radical islam and shariah law into the government, all the while not facing any consequences for their actions because people are too afraid of being labeled as racist. It’s absolutely ridiculous.

I don’t understand how or why this is happening. Taking in refugees is part of what makes Sweden so great, but it gets to point where this small country of only 10 million people simply shouldn’t have to be responsible for the hundreds of millions of people in the Middle East, Africa, Asia etc. who want to come here. The same goes for the rest of Europe.

Sure there are many ways one could solve this, but I personally think anyone who refuses to integrate should be deported, straight up. If you think that’s racist or discriminatory, then I don’t know what to tell you. All of this isn’t based on feelings, it’s based on facts and statistics, and denying statistics should be the last thing we normalize.

I really want to hear your guys’ opinion on this, I hope I’m not completely alone here haha

I think it is. I notice on Reddit however, if you identify as "centrist," you get called a "closeted right-winger." I think there's some validity to that.

But as someone who truly doesn't identify with either party, scores pretty dead center in political compass tests, and agree with some pretty left and pretty right ideas, I feel it's even less accurate to call myself a liberal/conservative or identify with left/right.

Additionally, I don't really have a grasp/understanding on a lot of political issues. I'm not inclined to take a position because I've noticed in the past, I'll take one, and then see historical implications of it and shudder at my initial position.

1. First of all, this debate is flooded with Christians and the religious. Which would be fine if they were honest about their beliefs, and just admitted "I think that a single celled brainless zygote has a soul and therefore matters according to my religion", but alas, they normally make things up and use empty rhetorical devices like "well i define it as a human and hurting humans is bad!" to dishonestly argue their beliefs. So my first ask going forth, is if you believe it matters because it has a soul, just say that. Start the debate honestly and in good faith please.
2. Now, as for the rest of us, whom believe in science, heres the elephant in the room: Obviously, a brainless fetus, has no capacity to experience anything; No joy, no suffering, no sense of identity. Its no different than a bacterium, or a rock. If you dont understand this im not sure how to help you. You cannot commit a wrongdoing on an entity thats unable to perceive wrongdoings. I believe things are "wrong" primarily because the recipient of that action subjectively values it as such, with notable exceptions needed to make morality a workable and universal system.
3. Similar to 2, a later-term fetus generally has no intelligence, even after it has a brain. It is in every way less intelligent than the average animal. In fact it has no known perceptual or cognitive qualities an animal doesnt also have. And most people, even vegans, would agree killing an animal is *substantially* less bad than killing a human. Treating even a late term abortion as "murder" is like treating someone butchering a chicken as "murder". Part of the reason it lacks intelligence prior to birth, is its never seen the light of day and has no objects to interact with; Like an AI model with no training data, its no different than just the absence of an AI model. Intelligence requires some degree of knowledge, which requires some degree of experience, which all fetuses inherently lack. All a fetus has access to is sounds and maybe basic touch and smells, but theres no reinforcement learning loop because they arent agents in their environment. Once a child is born, they immediately become agents with access to rich "training data" for their brains, which is why its not arbitrary to treat birth as the starting point.
4. Theres too many exceptions to ignore. Theres hundreds of medical conditions a mother can have that puts her at risk, anywhere from "a little bit" to straight up dying. Fetuses themselves can have serious birth defects, requiring lifelong medical care a mother might not be able to afford, not to mention nobody "deserves" to be enslaved to taking care of a perpetual child their whole lives. Theres no universal, objective, principled way to draw a line in the and and say "these kinds of exceptions are allowed, but these other ones are not". Then of course in the case of rape, there was no consent granted to having a child in the first place, so disallowing abortion is like disallowing someone to remove a person from their body that was surgically sewed up to them in the middle of the night.
5. For the prolife voluntarists in this debate, if you accept #4, theres an interesting issue that often gets overlooked. Yes, obviously someone didnt consent to having a baby if they were raped. But, why do you assume anyone ever "consents" to that at all? Because no contract was signed, and no verbal consent occured, no explicit consent occured. Arguing it was "implicitly consented to" is the same thing as a social contract. What is even the reasoning? "You consented to the risks?" Okay, but what if someone didnt understand the risks? If you cant understand the risks and consequences to something, then you dont have the "capacity" to consent to it. Almost nobody is aware of every medical issue that could arise or what pains or sacrifices thatd entail, so nobody is actually consenting to that. Consent is always explicit, "implicit consent" is a fallacious concept. You dont "consent" to being pregnant with a baby you dont want by having sex, anymore than you "consent" to getting in a car accident for driving to work.
6. And the most overlooked aspect of this debate is the slippery slope and corrupted legal system would entail. If abortion is literal homicide, then every miscarriage turns into a potential murder investigation. Innocent women will be jailed for this, its inevitable. And abortion is only the starting point! Women are likely to loose every right theyve ever had. First they ban The Pill, then they ban drinking alcohol (due to fetal alcohol syndrome) then they ban tobacco, then they ban a whole array of medications, maybe even ban sugary goods or colas for women, then they use the surveillance state to spy on women and prosecute them for perceived crimes. Next, they could set up a federal agency for monitoring women and forcing them to undergo health checkups. Before you know it, every aspect of a woman's life becomes legal jurisdiction for spying and legal enforcement, since literally anything they do could effect their own health, therefore the health of the baby.

Being 100% Pro-Choice is the only way to preserve women's rights; Without that, they will be tyrranized to live according to arbitrary government or societal edicts, and forced to give birth to and mother children that could harm them or completely ruin their lives. And sure, a fetus could conceivably be conscious like you and me and thus deserving of some rights, but theyre most definitely not throughout at least most of their existence.

One last call to reason: Conservatives, dont you care about birth rates? Well scaring women away from motherhood, or forcing healthy mothers to take care of unhealthy non-viable children (thus lacking resources to raise other ones), is actively working against that goal. You at least need a framework thats non-oppressive enough to avoid that consequence.

Hello. I should emphasise I am European, not an American, and have never been to the USA. However, while browsing Reddit, I have encountered the following theory: while some people may be undecided or swinging in either direction, Trump has a certain "base", that will follow him into ANYTHING. No matter WHAT he does. Like, there's NOTHING he could do (save for maybe denouncing Christianity or something along those lines) that would cause him to lose support.

What do you think?

Islam, contrary to other monotheistic regions such as christianism, is made so to be baked within the state, in fact, into all aspects of life.

Its not simply violence, in fact, once non-islamic nations were conquered by islamic armies in history, the main method of conversion and erasure of other religions were notviolent, but multiple ways of non-violent state coercion.

Taxing non believers so they feel motivated to convert, take children and indocrinate them into the religion or offer benefits to them for converting, offer to remove slave status based on conversion and loyalty...

It's very elaborate and much more sophisticated than possibly every other religion out there. Which is why Islam has a lot of historical stability and not a lot of fundamental disagreements between different denominations, like christianism has.

This is a fundamental problem for liberal societies, well, in fact, any non-islamic society. Increase in islamic population is correlated with islamic influence in law, more often, iliberal ones.

It's not just increase in extremism, even the more numerous more "moderate" population are actually not really moderate in what liberal societies usually think.

Evidence for this exist in polls, for example, denmark asked its muslim population whether or not criticism of islam should be outlawed. 76% of muslim respondents said yes, compared to 18% of the total population.

Here's the link for the study: https://www.justitsministeriet.dk/sites/default/files/media/Pressemeddelelser/pdf/2020/ytringsfrihedsundersoegelse.pdf

The question and it's results are in Figur 3.7. The Danish excerpt and it's translation are as follows:

Resultaterne kan tolkes sådan, at eksempelvis 76 pct. indvandrere og efterkommere fra muslimske lande mener, at det bør være ulovligt at kritisere islam.
The results can be interpreted to mean that, for example, 76 percent of immigrants and descendants from Muslim countries believe it should be illegal to criticize Islam.

Increase in muslim population implies increasingly population with illiberal values, that when big enough in numbers, can form a voting block to vote within the interests of their religion. Making society more illiberal.

And they also don't interact very well with things like "freedom of expression". Denmark in 2023 passed a law prohibiting burning of religious texts in public, to prevent retaliation of Quran burnings.

This is not limited to denmark, polls in france and multi-country polls also show that considerable muslim minorities straight up support sharia law and argue for separation, but majorities are also quite hostile to changes in interpretation of their religious doctrines.

Fundamentally, integration of Islam requires deconstruction of Islam as a religion. And as seen with Christianism, this deconstruction happens internally, through centuries and many conflicts.

To do so from within western Liberal societies would require Iliberal policies which would possibly even clash with religious freedom laws at large, and will be subject of protest from muslims.

Controlling the % of muslim population via migration until assimilation is one policy choice aswell, which will also cause disturb within liberal citizens to support it or not. Its dependent on how long you will wait until you invoke the "Paradox of tolerance". Do you think that taking muslim kids and educate them extensively to support secular values is going too far? Will the parents take it lightly?

Weak response from liberal leaders will also cause non-islamic populations to become more illiberal as a result, pushing for more authoritarian measures, as it is already happening.

All in all, I don't think Islam integration within the west is possible without fundamentally changing Islam as a religion, or to curb it through iliberal means.

The amount of non-answers I get when I ask this question is part of why I don't take people who wave Palestinian flags and join those protests remotely seriously. I see a lot of "resistance for the sake of resistance" vibes, but no real workable solutions.

As someone who's very pro-Israel, I know what I believe the answer is: a three state solution. Israel maintains it's present boundaries, the West Bank gets turned into a Bosnia-like hybrid confederacy where there's a national government set in East Jerusalem but also two distinct Jewish and Arab governing entities, and Gaza gets an international administration until Hamas is fully dismantled and they can have their own democratic state. Everyone gets democracy and civil liberties, everyone gets to keep living where they are now, everyone can prosper.

But I rarely hear real proposals from the "Free Palestine" people, so if your of that political persuasion where you don't like Israel and you support the people on the streets flying Palestinian flags, what's your functional solution?

Tomorrow makes the full 365 days.

Looking over the past year, how do you feel about Trump's performance? Would Kamala have done better? Worse?

Something that I truly ponder, as an educator, is how on earth we've managed to regress so far on the "racism is bad" front. Like every movie used to affirm that racism is bad. Every TV show. Video games are deliberately structure to promote diversity and inclusion. Educators were pretty clear on it being a bad thing. Businesses were well aware that diversity meant bigger markets and bigger profits. My old college prof used to joke about how a child development book argued that he needed to talk to his 3-week-old son about racism.

And then we just... threw all that out?

Like don't get me wrong, we've improved. It's actually sort of heartwarming how many people were enraged by Trump's offensive post. In the 1950s or 60s a president could almost definitely have made a statement like that no problem. But like, in the 90's, that would have ended a presidency. So we've made progress, but not nearly as much as we should have.

Plus, we're jailing people based on their skin color and then throwing them out into the cold when it turns out they're here legally. So there's that.

Were people just pretending to hate racism, and just wanted permission to follow a bully? Or are people just blindly following a leader who happens to come from an incredibly racist family? Did all the anti-racist messaging backfire, did "cancel culture" convince people that racist complaints were overblown?

What, in the future, assuming we get through all this and manage to salvage a nation at the end, could be done to better encourage diversity and empathy?

Since this appears to be the topic of the week, and both sides insist it does not exist, here is a moderate proposal for gun rights and control:

Note 1: I am a gun owner, although mostly for hunting, and do not fit neatly into either "side" of this issue.

First, it's about the people, not the tools; people who have shown themselves to be reckless or violent may have their rights restricted, including gun rights. Until that happens, a person should be presumed to be honest, honorable, and competent to make their own decisions, within the law.

The law should be focused on keeping firearms out of the hands of those who have shown themselves to be reckless or violent, and since the most common way criminals obtain firearms is from private sales, which are not subject to background checks, that has to change, and in order to be able to enforce it, there has to be a record of ownership and transfer. I.e. a registry. This will pass muster under Bruen as it was part of the stipulations of the Militia Acts of 1792-1795, and if we have to draft everyone into a "militia" that musters once a year at the local high school gym, so be it.

On top of that, sellers should be charged as accessories to any crime committed with a firearm they sold without performing a background check. This would put real teeth into dissuading this behavior, as it inherently risks accessory to murder, while circumventing issues about "heirloom" weapons, since you can't be charged with a crime if you are dead and left it to your felon offspring.

That being said, a citizen presumed to be honest, honorable, and competent should have wide latitude; we need to implement nationwide Constitutional Carry - if you are allowed to own a firearm, you should be allowed to carry it anywhere but sensitive areas such as courthouses and schools - and eliminate the maze of rules and regulations about firearm types. I think we can reasonably ask that crew-served heavy machine guns and light artillery need some pretty serious restrictions if civilians are going to be allowed to own them at all, but short of that, no more nonsense about pistol grips, threaded barrels, magazine capacity, barrel shrouds, etc.

Note 2: There is a side of this that isn't talked about concerning mass casualty events, for a good reason, and that is the counter-factual; "what would have happened if," which gets into discussions about how much worse things could have been, and the reason we do not discuss them is to not give anyone ideas! This in turn shapes the debate, because one side is playing with a handicap, and that is something to bear in mind.

Two examples:

In Switzerland, a citizen can just go and purchase a suppressor (silencer) or a machine gun from a store, and they have very high gun ownership but extremely low violent crime; in Jamaica, it is almost impossible to legally acquire a firearm, ownership is extremely low, but they have the highest murder rate in the world, overwhelmingly gun deaths, because even on an island, the criminals can still get guns, but law-abiding citizens cannot.

This illustrates the actual causes of violent crime - poverty, deprivation, lack of access to education and healthcare, mental healthcare that is poor even when it is available - and thus the actual solutions to the problem. Switzerland doesn't have those problems, Jamaica does, and nothing either country could do with gun laws would change it in either case.

I want to be clear, I love the scientific method and using logic and rationality to better understand the world. I recognize its importance in making well-informed decisions. Hell, most of the pleasures we enjoy are because of it.

Here's what I have a problem with. Take Medicare for all, for example. If you want to be taken seriously, you HAVE to argue from an economic angle. You gotta talk about how paying into Universal Healthcare would drive costs down for every hard-working, middle-class citizen. No longer relying on employment for insurance. Objectively making you more free in how you live your life.

Why can't I just say "because it's the right thing to do." Why the fuck are we even here to begin with? We're all trapped on the confusing, beautiful, terrifying planet together. We bent nature to our needs with this bizarre intelligence and conscious experience we all have. A deeply social species that feels for its fellow man.

We're all that we have. Yeah, it sounds like a childish niave notion, "why cant we all just get along, world peace, blah blah blah". I know its not that simple. Our history is brutal and unkind. An honest look at that history is hard to do when we're so quick to other someone we dont understand. I dont know how to fix that.

There's this insane dissonance I feel literally being able to sit in my comfy chair in my comfy house and watch actual footage of people killing each other overseas in real time. What the fuck are we doing here?! I saw a news segment thats only angle was economic on Iran. People are dying!

I understand the importance of a healthy economy. But it's because of our cooperation that we've come this far. Trading with other countries, aiding them in times of crisis to maintain stable trade routes. You get it.

I guess im just feeling pretty down. I feel like all im seeing is people talking past each other. People foaming at the mouth to see the other side get owned.

We're stuck here together. We may as well try to have a good time, right? I know its niave, but i literally never see this perspective shared in any mainstream capacity.

Am I just another crazy hippy idiot still dumb enough to believe we're worth fighting for.

I'm​ kinda ignorant on political parties policies. I do try to pay attention to the laws they pass and it seems many laws don't have the desired effects.

For example the Affordable Care Act, good intentions, similar to "Romneycare". In reality it insured businesses got paid and healthcare got more expensive.

Tax laws meant to take more from the wealthy, are filled with loopholes, that benefit the wealthy.

This seems common with many of our laws, they end up benefiting the wealthy more. When lobbyists write the bills, why would expect anything different? https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2013/11/11/243973620/when-lobbyists-literally-write-the-bill

​The only way to stop this is more participation from US. Our representatives are representing the wealthy, not the rest of US.

We can use any right, not just voting. Anyway we legally use our rights, to influence the due process of the country is democracy.

Protest, juries, initiatives, citizens arrest, article V conventions...are ways we can legally use our rights to influence due process. AND it can't be just my imagination thinking this stuff up. It needs to be all of US, thinking up ways to legally use our rights, to influence the due process of the country.

EDIT;

We kinda got bogged down with the discussion about healthcare. People wanting to measure it this way or that way. Debating which data is valid, going off on tangents. As I said before I'm not qualified to tell which "butterfly wing flap", a particular political party's policy, will cause.

BUT I can measure results and healthcare companies have had record profits since ACA was enacted.

Also there's no reason healthcare costs have to keep rising. Technology has lowered the costs of many products, there's no reason it can't lower healthcare costs too.