WoodScientist

Let's look at these undecided voters:

Brady, 30, Wisconsin, leaning Trump - I don’t want to go through another four years of a Trump presidency.” "But his vote is largely contingent on his personal financial situation, and he noted, “Things have gotten more expensive.” He cites inflation, but he is completely unaware of the relation between the pandemic and the supply chain disruptions that caused that inflation. He doesn't understand that this inflation was caused by the pandemic, and what Trump did to exacerbate that pandemic. He just blindly maps economy to president in office and puts zero thought into whose policies actually do what.

Lee, 59, Wisconsin, leaning Trump - "Lee did not like how ABC handled the debate, specifically the fact-checking. He felt the moderators “teamed up on Trump.”"

"He felt Harris did almost too well, saying it was “almost like rehearsed.” But he said he “never got any message from Harris” and said she “skirted issues,” including the Biden administration’s “inability to stop the flow of migrants” and the economy.

“Trump stuck his foot in his mouth multiple times,” Lee said, though." "He voted for Sen. Bernie Sanders, the progressive independent from Vermont, in the 2016 primary and is now leaning toward Trump, independent Cornel West or the Green Party’s Jill Stein (not from an environmental standpoint, however, because he thinks the Green New Deal “went too far”)."

This man has no idea what he wants in a leader and is just voting on vibes.

Woman, declined to give name, 68, Oregon, undecided "Trump, on the other hand, she said, it was like “something was in his water,” and he wasn’t his usual self."

">She said this of her ideal ticket: “If RFK [Jr.] was on the ticket with [former Rep.] Tulsi Gabbard [of Hawaii], it would have been a slam dunk for me.”"

This woman has not been paying attention. Trump was his usual self. This is simply how he always is when the media isn't sane-washing him.

These are not serious people. They are low-information voters who do not have any consistent policy positions and vote based entirely on vibes. They don't take serious looks at the capabilities, policies, and worldviews of the candidates. Their political compass is a random number generator.

This election will not be decided by "undecided voters." Anyone who is still undecided at this point is simply unreachable. You had four years to actually live in a country governed by Trump, and four where Harris was the VP. You saw what kind of policies each would enact. You don't need to take their word for it, you can assess each candidate's actual record.

I'm sorry, but in short, the only people undecided at this point are complete morons. You could try to convince them to vote for your candidate, but they're just as likely to change their mind completely on the way to the voting booth because of the shape of a cloud they saw in the sky on the way there. They're random number generators. They don't have any capability to actually assess issues or candidate capacity. They're the kind of people who are only allowed to vote because trying to screen out the true morons from the voter rolls would cause more problems than it's worth.

No. This election will not be decided by the 1-2% of people who are actually undecided at this point. First, most of the 5-6% who claim to be undecided actually aren't. They've already made up their minds deep down, but they just want to pretend to themselves that they're enlightened centrists who are withholding judgment until the very last minute. Those who are truly undecided at this point are simply morons. They cannot be reached in any meaningful way, as their vote is effectively a coin flip. The real world doesn't affect their judgment process, and they will just flip a coin on the way to the voting booth.

This election will instead be driven by turnout. Everyone except the true morons already knows how they are going to vote. The real battle for candidates isn't to persuade people to support them. Instead, the real battle is to persuade people who support them, but maybe don't support them enough to bother getting off their ass and going to the polls to vote. The real battle is for the lazy voter, not the stupid voter.

Sure. But when I say, "professional hit man" I don't mean a gangster, a mobster, or a spy. I'm referring to more of the professional hitman as seen in popular culture: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ProfessionalKiller

Think the trope in fiction. Someone wants someone killed. They find the shadiest person they can, like their tweaker cousin's dealer. They then ask this shady person if they can put them in touch with a contract killer. Through the grapevine, they meet with someone who is literally a professional killer-for-hire. The usual trope is some extremely well-put together gentleman; he probably wears a 3-piece suit and black leather gloves. He probably views killing as an art form. He takes professional pride in it. He's probably obsessed with expensive firearms and their various accessories, and he personally owns an arsenal big enough to take down the government of a modestly-sized city. Killing is his passion; he only charges at all because he has bills to pay like anyone else. The usual trope is to imagine someone as professional and presentable as the most formal lawyer or doctor you can imagine, except their business is killing.

While the real world version of a professional killer wouldn't be so extreme, the core should remain if they are to be a professional killer. They don't need to dress in a suit, have a private arsenal of rare expensive weapons, and speak in a British accent. But they should still meet the minimum definition of professional to count as a professional hitman. A "professional" is generally someone who offers a specific service to the public as their primary occupation. Lots of people know first aid. But only a doctor or a nurse makes medical care their actual profession. Most people can replace a light switch, but that doesn't make them a professional electrician. A professional usually sees some higher purpose or artfulness in their services and seeks to provide them to all that can afford them.

Sammy Gravano was a mobster, a terrible human being, and a ruthless killer. But he was a mobster first, and a killer second. He committed numerous other crimes on behalf of the mob, not just murder. And he didn't commit murders that weren't at the behest of the mob. You, as a random stranger, couldn't just knock on his door, hand him a bag full of cash, and get him to off someone for you. In fact, he would probably kill YOU just for trying.

Per OP's original question, Sammy Gravano does not count. There was no way for some random person back during his day to find him, hire him, and have him take someone out for them. He was a mobster, not a professional hitman-for-hire. And that is a crucial distinction.

Nah, I know how to really piss 'em off. The definition of 'white' has always been cultural, not genetic. Look at how the Irish or Italians weren't considered 'white' for many generations. So I propose we modify the definition of 'white' to deliberately exclude people with strong Southern heritage. Maybe we can justify it with racist psuedoscience. "No one whose ancestors who have lived in such a hot and humid area for so long can really be white." If you have ancestors who have lived in the American South for more than three generations, you are now a person of color by default, regardless of your skin color. You no longer get to live in the 'white' club. If the Irish can be excluded from being white, so can the Southerners. Only people whose ancestors fought on the right side of the Civil War will get to call themselves white from here on out. We'll even add a question to the Census that asks how long long your ancestors have lived below the Mason-Dixon line. Anyone who says three or more generations will automatically be classified as non-white, regardless of what they list their stated race as. We'll take the thing from them that they value above everything else, their very whiteness.

Burn the witch!

Professional hitmen don't actually exist. It's a 'business' that you can't possibly advertise for and has no way for the customer to assess the quality of the provider in advance. Sometimes killings do happen in exchange for money, but they don't involve someone that is a professional killer that works with the public as their primary source of income. It just doesn't exist. But there are some cases where killing does happen for money.

Sometimes two people will conspire to kill another for profit. Maybe one spouse hates another spouse. They ask a close friend or relative to kill their spouse, and they offer a portion of proceeds from life insurance as a payment for their risk and trouble. Or they're cheating on their spouse with someone else, stand to inherit all their spouses assets upon their demise, and promise to marry the person they're cheating with, thus sharing all the assets with them. In this case, it's not a stranger being hired; the killer has known the person 'hiring' them for decades.

Some killings-for-hire are gang related. A gang wants someone killed. They don't hire a random person to do it. They get one of their own members, who they've already known for many years and is a full member of the gang. In compensation for the huge risk the person is taking on to perform the deed, they offer a large sum of cash. Again, an unvetted stranger is not being hired. This person has likely already committed numerous crimes on the gang's behalf in the past. When you've already committed enough crimes on a gang's behalf to get you years in prison, a murder isn't such a stretch.

Some killings-for-hire are done at the behest of nation-states. Spycraft. The KGB or CIA hire someone in a foreign country who is already sympathetic to them to kill someone the intelligence agency wants taken out. The intelligence agency doesn't just select anyone, they go through a long vetting process just like they would any other intelligence asset. In fact, the potential assassin has likely already provided good intelligence and assistance to them for years, already risked extensive jail time or worse. If you're a US military member that's been providing intelligence to the KGB for a decade and have already participated in sabotage efforts, you're already looking at treason charges if you're caught. Offing someone for the KGB isn't such an escalation. And when a nation-state hires someone to perform a killing, they also offer the person a plausible way out. The CIA can hire someone to kill someone for them in a foreign country and hand that person a US passport along with a few million safely in a US bank account in their name. Hell, they can make sure the assassin's family has been given US citizenship and is already in the US before the deed is done. The CIA assassin can perform the killing, and as long as they can get to US or friendly territory before the foreign cops catch up with them, they'll be completely free and clear. And regardless, their family will already be set for life in the US.

These are the kinds of scenarios where killings actually do occur in exchange for money. No one hires someone to kill another that they haven't heavily vetted. If a random civilian is going to hire someone else to kill someone, they won't hire a professional assassin. They'll hire their brother or their lover. Otherwise contract killings only are done by organizations like gangs or national intelligence agencies, and they only hire people to do so that they've worked with for years and who has already committed numerous less severe crimes for them in the past.

In short, there really is no such thing as a professional assassin that serves the general public. Maybe if you are the spouse of a high-level violent gang member, you might be able to convince them to use the gang's resources to pay one of their trusted members to kill someone in exchange for cash. But if you're just a random average person? Forget it. There simply are not professional contract killers hiding in the shadows that a random civilian can hire if they have the cash. Anyone claiming to be that is simply a cop. Any person who DID try to start a career like this would be caught very quickly and have a very, very short career.

Are you high?

Wouldn't that make sense from an evolutionary perspective? Through human history and prehistory, think of all the common tasks people did on a day-to-day basis. I would say the vast majority of them would involve looking at things below eye level. With the exception of picking fruit from trees or hunting birds in flight, most of the tasks we evolved to do involved looking at things below eye level. Most work with crops involves looking at things below the height of your eyes. Tracking prey involves looking at things below the line of the horizon or tracks on the ground. Crafting objects involves working with your hands and looking down at your work. Raising children involves looking down at their shorter stature.

Why wouldn't our back and neck structure be evolutionarily optimized to look at things a bit below eye level?

Seriously. Remember that whole, "the tree of democracy is watered by the blood of tyrants" line? That's what this refers to. Democracy is a peace treaty. People lament that democracy does not produce the ideal policy outcomes they would like, or even always the outcomes that the majority would like. But that really isn't the real point of democracy. The real purpose of democracy is as an alternative to civil war. We all agree to accept elections and their results. This gives people a means to enact change in society without resorting to violence. People will always want to enact change in the world. And if you do not give them a peaceful means to do so, they will turn to violence. Democracy generally works because it's actually usually a lot easier to make change in a democratic system than it would be to enact change through violent conflict. If you have enough of the population behind you to win an all-out civil war, you likely don't need to start a civil war in the first place. Starting a civil war to enact policy goals is almost always a very bad idea. If you don't have enough of the electorate behind you to enact your goals democratically, you will be very unlikely to have enough people willing to fight and die with you in order to triumph in a civil war.

Sometimes in democracies, a group of people forgets this fact. They come to realize their views are an increasing minority and will have zero success in the future. This is what happened in the US Civil War. The South saw the writing on the wall. They realized that slavery was becoming ever-more unpopular, and that every year that passed, more and more of the population recognized it for the moral abomination that it was. The election of Lincoln made it clear that their long-term success in protecting slavery through democratic means was doomed. And so, they turned to violence.

It's one of those harsh facts that this is just something that happens from time to time in democracies. The support of Trump is based on one fundamental worldview - that white straight Christians are the natural leaders of society, and that they deserve special rights and privileges. They fundamentally do not believe in the principal that all human beings are created equal. White people, and especially white males, deserve special privileges because of their sex, skin color, and religious beliefs. In the 1860s, we had reached a point where the premise that slavery was acceptable was a politically doomed idea. Now, through changes in culture and demography, we are reaching the point where the premise that straight white Christians are the natural rulers of society is becoming politically nonviable. Trump is fundamentally a reaction to an inclusive and diverse society. And the old America that gave special privileges to people simply because of their sex, skin color, and religion is on its way out the door. We are becoming a pluralistic democracy, and that is fundamentally anathema to many people, in the same way that the end of slavery was fundamentally anathema to many people.

And if these people turn to violence? Well, so be it. The last time a group of regressives tried to overtly rebel against the government (not counting January 6th here), we had to burn Atlanta to the ground. We had to come down like the Hammer of God upon them, and grind it into their skulls saying, "we are done with your shit. Slavery is over. We will kill as many of you as necessary to end this bullshit. Give it up, continuing to fight will only make things worse for you."

We forget just how intransigent the bastards in the US South were. They were stubborn mother-fuckers. They fundamentally believed that democracy did not matter, and that their right to slavery was above democracy. It took putting a gun their head and saying, "slavery is done, and we will kill every last one of you if we have to in order to end it." THAT is what it took to end slavery. The South wasn't convinced of the error of their ways, they were given the choice between Emancipation or death.

I really, really hope that Trump is defeated resoundingly, and that this breaks the back of the modern Christian Nationalist movement. But if they actually do take up arms? Well, we've been here before. We had to turn Atlanta into a heap of ashes to stop these guys the last time they convinced themselves that God gave them more rights than other human beings. And if we have to do something similar again? So be it. There is a reason that soldiers swear an oath to defend the Constitution from enemies foreign AND domestic. Democracy is a peace treaty. We agree that we will fight each other in elections, and try to enact our will upon the world through peaceful democratic means. But when you decide that your views are more important than democracy? When you decide that elections be damned, your preferred world must be made? When you decide to roll the iron dice and take up arms against your brothers and sisters? Make no mistake. You have broken that peace treaty. And you will be put in the ground where you belong.

The correct response to, "The South will rise again!" has always been, "fine. And I will be the first to shoot your traitorous ass. And we won't be so forgiving the second time around."

It's really rich. The same party that six months ago was apoplectic because a handful of Jewish students were blocked by protesters from using one of many doors at a few buildings when they attempted to march through barricades, decrying it as Hitler returned? That same party is now trying to start a pogrom against Haitian immigrants in Ohio.

At first I read this as "the next generation of buffets." I was getting excited that someone had figured out how to make a buffet that isn't a food safety nightmare, then I read the rest of the sentence and was disappointed...

Gather up your neighbors and have them come and strategically park their cars on the church yard, physically blocking the kid's path. If he can trespass, so can you.

They're Know-Nothings, in every sense of the word.