It makes me feel like theyâre trying to minimize or discount my own feelings (of disappointment, anger, betrayal etc) to present themself as a victim. To me, an apology doesnât really mean much. Itâs just words. If you apologize, then continue to do the same thing that elicited the need for the apology in the first place, then youâre not really sorry. Youâre just apologizing to get me to stop being upset/confrontational/etc.
Say âsorryâ once, but demonstrate youâre actually sorry by changing your behavior. Otherwise, youâre just repeating false platitudes in order to dismiss my own feelings.
Yes, itâs possible. Any system built by people can be destroyed by people.
Now, of course, there would be a reaction. What specifically that would be I canât say. Iâd like to think it would cause serious blowback, but Iâm also pretty jaded and donât really have that much faith in people all the time.
Great example! These little turns of phrases and wordplay that reveal the incredible right-wing bias of our media are all over the place if you learn how to look for them.
Another great example you see all the time is âoffice involved shootingâ whenever someone is shot by police. Itâs always something like âJohn Smith died after an officer involved shootingâ or âa gun was discharged in an officer involved shooting that resulted in the death of Jane Smith.â Where it should be âOfficer Joe Blow murdered John and Jane Smith.â
At the Tesla protests, yes. itâs mostly standing there with signs and chanting. At the one I attend, the dealership is on a major road with a TON of traffic. People line the street on either side stretching for about 1/2 a mile. The first protest had a bunch of people at the front door of the dealership, but police came and arrested one person. Since then, there has always been a police presence right at the front door. The cops tend to leave us alone if donât go up to the door of the dealership. A couple of times every hour a group will organize to try to block the road. Theyâll usually hold the space for about 5 minutes before the police come and force everyone back to the sidewalks. The point here is to challenge authority.
On a broader scale (I attend a LOT of protests), it depends on the protest. At those that are planned and coordinated by a larger organization (think the Womenâs March, March for Science, etc) thereâs usually a stage with a series of speakers âpreaching to the choirâ to energize the crowd. Thereâs lost of people chanting in unison various slogans/chants. Usually thereâs a single rallying point where the speeches happen, then there will often be a march from that point to somewhere else. Along the route the crowd shuts down the streets, chants, carry signs, etc. The point here to make connections with like-minded people and demonstrate that there is popular support for whatever issue/concern there is.
At less coordinated protests without a central organizing committee (think the 2017 airport protests, the 2020 uprising) thereâs not as much of set âschedule of eventsâ. Itâs more of a way for a community to express their collective anger/fear/outrage/etc. The specific goal will depend more on the specific event. For example, the 2017 airport protests were against the first version of Trumpâs Muslim Ban. People entering the US from the countries he had tried to ban people from were being held in holding rooms at airports. A large number of activists showed up at airports where those people were being held and the sheer numbers and anger we were expressing got the people working at the airports to let the people go. There were also immigration lawyers who showed up to those protests. When the people in holding were released, they had legal representation right there waiting to support them. The 2020 uprising events were about showing that people werenât afraid of the police and wouldnât be silenced by police violence.
At every protest Iâve ever been at, there are always people from various organizations walking through the crowd trying to get people to sign up. Sometimes itâs just collecting names/emails/phone numbers for a fundraising list. Sometimes itâs staffers for politicians raising signatures to get on a ballot, or to get a referendum on a ballot. Sometimes itâs activist organizations trying to get people who might be willing to take further actions.
As virtually every protest winds down, thereâs usually a group of people, almost always not affiliated with the âofficial eventâ who organize to continue taking action, typically less sanctioned, and dubiously legal actions.
Most protests donât achieve their immediate goal. Thatâs how itâs always been. The way we tend to talk about it, any given movement or event has 3 sets of goals: short-term/immediate goals, mid-terms goals, and long-term goals. We usually fail at the short-term goals (although not always). But weâre almost always successful at the medium- and long-term goals. These Tesla protests, for example. The short-term/immediate goal is to shut down the specific dealership weâre protesting at. That has only happened where police presence has been light and where protesters are willing to take illegal action and get arrested (which is always a minority of protesters). This goal has largely been unsuccessful. The medium-term goal is to destroy the Tesla brand so much that the stock price plummets. This is already happening. After the election, Tesla stock prices skyrocketed. Since the protests started, the stock price has already dropped back to where it was before the election, wiping out all that value added since the election. Keep this up, and weâll hopefully force it even farther down. If weâre lucky, theyâll have to start closing dealerships. The long-term goal is to remove Musk and Trump from power. Obviously, that hasnât happened yet, but thatâs why itâs a long-term goal.
Governments were formed and exist to protect property rights. As much as they can be said to have an underlying purpose, itâs to protect property rights, and those who own more property will always have a greater level of protection.
The thing the liberal revolutions of the 19th century, socialist revolutions of the 20th century, and the development of social democracies in the 20th century taught governments is that there comes a point where wealth inequality gets so extreme that it threatens the stability of government, which poses the largest possible threat to property rights. Governments learned that they need to have some form of wealth redistribution in order to prevent a violent revolution. To the degree that governments do address wealth inequality, itâs focused on doing it just enough to prevent the system from collapsing.
Thatâs why thereâs really nobody focused on complete wealth equality. They donât want that. They want to maintain status quo property rights.
Iâd call it âteasingâ or âplayâ rather than âtrollingâ. Trolling has a bit of a mean connotation to it where as teasing/play is more, well, playful.
But, yes, after a certain point babies/infants do understand teasing play. Thatâs essentially what games like peek-a-boo are. Babies donât have real object permanence until theyâre 8-12 months. That is, they donât fully have the ability to recognize that a thing still exists when it is not within their site/sensory perception until theyâre 8-12 months. (It gradually develops, so theyâll gain more and more object permanence as they get older rather than just turning on all of a sudden.) When you play peek-a-boo, youâre using this lack of fully developed object permanence to tease them. They wonât recognize it as teasing at first, but they get it pretty quickly. Thatâs why they laugh and have fun with it.
This completely contradicts your earlier point:
People that donât want children usually think of the potential wellbeing of a future human. People that do want children, usually do so for selfish reasons.
Are you choosing to not have kids (which is a perfectly fine and morally defensible decision to make) because youâre thinking of the potential wellbeing of a future human, or for the selfish reason that it would make your socioeconomic situation more difficult?
Again, simply saying âI just donât want to have kidsâ is perfectly fine. But you tried to moralize it by saying people who do have kids are selfish and those who donât are altruistic. Yet the reason you gave for not having kids was selfish.
You were correct in your initial assumption. The show The West Wing only focused on a core of close advisors, but you often got reference or hints at others that were just never featured much on screen.
Traditionally, a President has a very large staff. They have panels of experts on all kinds of different things (The Presidentâs Council of Economic Advisors, the Presidentâs Council on Physical Fitness, etc, etc). A quick (and not at all thorough) web search shows that the Executive Office of the President of the United States typically employs ~2,000 people.
The current administration is run by neophytes and morons who have little-to-no experience in government and donât really know what theyâre doing. Theyâre running the government like the mob, where they value loyalty and ideological purity over experience and expertise. So they only give important jobs (like making their tariff list) to very loyal people who will do whatever the President wants. As such, the people doing the work have no clue what the fuck theyâre doing, so they look for shortcuts. Thatâs why we keep seeing things like programs being cancelled which include the word âbiodiversityâ as a result of them just ctrl+f âdiversityâ and hitting delete. Thatâs also why they turned to ChatGPT to figure out their tariffs, because they have no clue how else to do it, and have nobody with intelligence and experience to ask.