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Yeah this election is do or die for Trump and I'm sure he knows it. He'll probably make good to flee to Russia if he loses and whatever coup attempt he makes doesn't pan out.

You're going to have so much healthcare you'll get sick of having healthcare!

Trump keeps insisting that he defeated Biden too fast this time: beat him before the votes were even cast by winning so hard in the first debate.

So yes, it's exactly what you said: Trump knows that he never gets to legitimately claim victory over Biden, so he's delusionally claiming it anyway with any rationale he can come up with.

If an HBO dark sitcom had a character that's exactly like Nick Fuentes, audiences would complain that he's too much of an over the top parody to be a believable character.

I think the point is that Republicans detest the idea of being weird no matter what, so they would rage at the suggestion of being a good weird anyway. To them "good weird" is an oxymoron, even though they are actually very weird and not in any kind of good way.

no

You'd be surprised how genuinely nice racists can be towards ladder pullers. It's important to remember that racism isn't really about genetics or appearance at the end of the day but about structures of power and oppression. A black person that helps to reinforce that structure is invaluable and will be treated as such (even if they're never actually seen as an equal or as anything more than a tool to manipulate).

At best this post is letting perfection be the enemy of "not ceding to a fascist narcissist that aims to be a dictator and will do incalculable damage whether he manages to overthrow democracy or not".

At worst this post is bait from a Russian troll farm that's trying to demoralize leftists so we act against our own interests by making shallow ideological appeals.

Either way, get bent.

Campaigning these days is not about convincing anyone to vote for one candidate or the other. Everyone who might conceivably vote will have known who they'd vote for before the campaign season even began.

The campaign is about convincing the people who would vote for you that they actually should show up to vote instead of staying home or just going about their day. As a bonus if you make your opponent look like a big enough clown, maybe you can demoralize the opposition's voting base so they don't bother showing up to vote.

This is a big part of why Republicans always want to make it as hard as possible to vote: The people who tend to vote Republican have perverse incentives (lower taxes, ban abortion, etc) so they're generally much more motivated to get out and vote despite barriers than the typical Democratic voter who just wants a sane government but probably feels like sanity is never delivered on no matter who wins.

I don't know what got your goat but you're projecting an enormous amount of non sequitur into my very innocuous remark.

I was pointing out one itty bitty silver lining of an effort that's doomed to fail. I never suggested that we should be satisfied with that silver lining and call it a day.

I'm fully supportive of all actions, including those outside the realm of politics, to defend against fascism. But that's no reason to stop taking political actions, even those which we estimate to be doomed.

Porque no los dos?

It'll still be nice to get the "small government" party saying in writing that they support the presidency having unlimited power.

I think a lot of our collective notions around "merit" need to be challenged in general. How is merit really measured? A person's achievements? Who decides what qualifies as an achievement? If a person has the deck stacked against them (e.g. coming from a low income household, not as much access to quality education) and manages to get a college degree then it's easy to say they've "achieved" more than someone who grew up privileged and obtained the same degree with similar grades.

But how should these things be weighed? If someone grew up privileged but is also exceptionally skilled, have they achieved more or less than someone who grew up underprivileged and obtained above average skills? Who has more merit? Who deserves greater recognition? And who decides if one skill or another is even meritous? Is the merit of a skillet ultimately just decided by how much the job market is willing to pay for those skills?

These aren't meant to be leading questions; I genuinely don't think there are any good answers here. When I'm in a position of making hiring decisions for my company, I make a point of not thinking in terms of merit. Instead I think about these factors:

• Alignment: Will the candidate be interested and motivated in the work that we have available for them?
• Qualification: Do I have good reason to believe the candidate will be able to competently handle the role we're hiring for after a reasonable ramping on period? They don't need to immediately have all the skills required, but I should see evidence that they have a good foundation to build off of and a willingness to learn what's needed.
• Perspective: Does this candidate bring and new and potentially valuable perspective to the role? This perspective could come from past work experiences and/or their personal life experiences. I don't want a team that's totally homogenous because that will fall too easily into groupthink and miss valuable opportunities to improve.

I think when people talk about merit they fixate on qualifications, but I genuinely believe that alignment and perspective are equally important. I would much rather take someone who is highly motivated but less qualified on paper than someone with amazing credentials who won't really care about what our team is trying to do. I would also rather have someone who is going to challenge our team's assumptions and bring insights from other fields and experiences than someone who will very competently agree with our status quo.

I think people who complain about DEI are totally missing the value of diverse perspectives, to say nothing of the moral concern of systematically reinforcing social divisions and the inequity that naturally follows from that.