I also wonder if they’ll make sure the red states aren’t hit as hard. I know the way the bill is written, we assume it’ll be enforced equally, and since red states receive more federal assistance they’ll be hit the worst. But what’s stopping them from selectively fucking blue states?

That wasn’t a strawman, it was a direct challenge to your claim that non-voters decided the election.

I’m gonna need a source on that.

Thank you for expanding on that point. I meant it to be a “here’s how we got here” before the rest of my “this is where we are today.”

You’re totally right, and any conversation about men’s behavior at large should include the experiences you just described. Even though we didn’t get ourselves into this situation - in that we didn’t raise ourselves - we’re the ones who will get us out.

I’m a therapist who works almost exclusively with men. Here one pattern I’ve seen often:

• Man is conditioned from a young age not to identify, process or express his feelings
• Man doesn’t share his feelings with anyone - friends, family, partners - for years
• Man sees woman as safe, caring and validating
• Man confides in woman only and continues not sharing feelings with others
• Woman becomes overwhelmed, resentful, dismissive
• Man gets the message that he never should have opened up in the first place

It can be true both that men need to open up more and should not treat their partners as therapists. We all need support systems because no one person can always be available to give us everything we need. It’s not wrong to confide in a partner, but if that partner is the only confidant it’s precarious for both. And I want to emphasize this is not the fault of a man, or men as a community. This is the result of generations of conditioning from both men and women, and both men and women play a part in the solution. I also want to recognize that many of us don’t have a network of people we could open up to even if we wanted to, and many more can’t afford therapy.

If anyone reading this can afford therapy, I highly recommend it. It’s a place to undo some of that conditioning, to sit with someone who’s committed to listening, caring, and not judging.

young people feeling depressed and isolated is the least of your problems.

Children are the future of EVERY country. The future is looking bleak for young people in the US. Where do you live? Are young people unaffected by social media or what?

Out here in actual civilization though, tik tok youth drama is not representative of reality whatsoever.

That’s the thing though. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around sometimes, but for lots of young people, social media IS their reality. This became even more true during the pandemic. We asked young people to go to school on a screen and pretend it was the same as doing it in person. Why wouldn’t they have the same mindset about chatting, hanging out, flirting, dating, etc.? They don’t see it as simulated socializing, it’s just how they socialize.

911 dispatcher: A kidnapping? Those kidnappers need our help!

Well said. Thanks for writing this.

I feel sick watching it. As others have said, because of J6 and past accusations of fraud from the other side, it will be hard to discuss this with a lot of people without sounding insane.

From a different article:

A New Hope police officer happened upon Boelter in his black SUV, which he had outfitted to look like a police cruiser, and thought he was another officer dispatched to the scene. When the officer tried to speak to him, he did not respond and drove away.

I haven’t read whether they pursued him after that, but that is absolutely wild.

People tend to get activated once they feel they’re personally being threatened. Voter suppression notwithstanding, I’m sure there are plenty of people who couldn’t be bothered to vote but could definitely be bothered to physically defend themselves and their neighbors.

I agree that this is a sickening amount of e-waste, and companies should be responsible for processing/recycling their own waste, but what’s the alternative in this case? Mail the faulty batteries back to Anker?

He’s not giving up on politics, just the DNC. Which could turn out to be exactly the right move.

Now do pharmacies!

To be clear, I voted for Harris, and I implored everyone I know to vote for Harris, for exactly the reasons you mentioned. I will always vote for the farthest-left candidate in the general, full-stop. I’m not arguing that both sides are the same, or that Harris wouldn’t have been a better choice for 100 reasons outside of the genocide issue. I’m arguing that Harris gave no indication that she would defend Palestine or even recognize the genocide at all. She might well have done those things, but she didn’t campaign on that, so I don’t know why anyone is defending her on the issue. Establishment Dems can’t seem to get it through their heads that progressive policies are popular, so we keep getting general elections between an absolute monster and a neolib Dem saying, “Vote for me or you’ll get the monster!” That might be the reality, but it’s not a platform.

I live in a blue state, and I had people around me arguing that whether they voted third-party or didn’t vote at all, they would be able to sleep at night knowing that A. they didn’t vote for genocide and B. the state would go blue anyway. I don’t agree with that position at all. I want third parties to be represented in the US, but that starts at the local level and in the primaries. By the general election it’s too late and we realistically have two options. I also believe that shutting down any criticism of the Dem candidate (e.g. a now-banned user told me to kill myself) is a good way to alienate people and discourage them from engaging with the process at all. The right has banned nuance from their discourse, and I refuse to allow the same thing to happen around me.

1 million upvotes for you. “Hope you’re happy Trump got elected. Palestine is doing great now” etc. is such a tired cliche at this point. I’m astonished that it gets upvoted every. single. time. Harris literally said she wouldn’t do anything different from Biden. She would have allowed/financed the genocide all the same, but she’d be calling the “tragic loss of life” a “very complex issue.” I have no idea where this fantasy comes from that she would suddenly be the hero who stands up to Israel.

Oh I don’t at all support what Meta has done, and I don’t trust any company not to harm and exploit users. I was responding to your comment by saying that talking to a chatbot doesn’t necessarily indicate that someone has “bigger problems.” If they’re not in a crisis, and they have reasonable expectations for the chatbot, I can see how it could be a helpful tool. If someone doesn’t have access to a real therapist, and a chatbot helps them feel better in the meantime, I’m not going to gatekeep that experience.

I’m a real-life human therapist (honest!) and while I don’t think it’s a substitute for talking to a real person, I’m happy that some people get some benefit from chatbots. I had a client who used Rosebud Journal in between sessions and found it helpful. I tried out Rosebud myself and I was very impressed with how it replicated the basics like reflective listening and validation. It was even able to reframe my input using various therapy models when I requested it. I didn’t use it for long because I’m not big on journaling, but I wouldn’t dismiss it completely as a tool.

Yes.

I’m sure she was a model Christian before Trump got to her.