Reason 1 of 1000 why I despise Reagan.

Here's the definition of a crowd: You know one when you see one. Instead of splitting hairs, here: ONE person living on the street is too many.

My type currently occupies zero roles in the federal government. Trump is a liberal to me.

Uh, yeah. I'm a rightist. I object to liberal policies I see as inflicting + exacerbating urban decay. I don't see garden-variety conservatives as being much better, but they don't often get the opportunity to govern SF, Detroit, etc. so it's kind of a moot point.

Why? I don't want people living on the street, because it's bad for them and for everybody else. Somehow this is the callous perspective?

There's a clear correlation. Why pretend otherwise?

Ergo, it's acceptable to have crowds of vagrants living on public streets? What are we doing here?

My solution is to get these people off the street and sort them into prisons, hospitals, asylums, rehab, etc. on a case-by-case basis. Involuntarily. Would love to hear a better idea.

Far more than the rest of the population: somewhere between a quarter to half of them. Others suffer from some manner of mental illness. Many are afflicted by both. Anyone who CAN be functional but isn't needs to be rehabilitated. Either way, people shouldn't be living on the sidewalks.

Prison? Perhaps. They definitely need to removed from public and barred access from narcotics. I think that's a better way of addressing the issue than letting them live and die on the street while being a nuisance to everyone else.

Uh, yeah. Don't camp on the street and shoot up fent. These people need to be institutionalized, not set loose on the street to destroy themselves and trash the commons.

Which policy was that?

If you actually think people object to your preferred policies because they're "too compassionate," then you completely lack a theory of mind for your opposition. Like that's just not a serious claim to make.

You look like Sam Hyde got molested.

Statewide data is hardly compelling when many of these states consist of blue urban cores surrounded by red rural areas. The governance differs.

I'm not here to defend conservative policies, but progressive policies aren't self-evidently miraculous, are they?

This is localized mainly in Salt Lake City, which is a very blue spot in Utah. We all see the decay indicated here, hence the skepticism towards progressive policies. What's your argument? That progressive governance is demonstrably, obviously good? It's hardly self-evident.

It's actually quaint that you think I'm a conservative, or that only a conservative would point out urban decay.

RURAL Utah. That's Salt Lake City, and it's rapidly transforming into San Francisco. Believe me, those of us outside the city are aware and leery of this.

I HAVE visited San Francisco! There are more drug addicts on the street than I imagined possible! Do you how many tents I see on sidewalks here in rural Utah? Zero. I would like to keep it that way. Actually, I would like to see zero tents in SF as well!

Are people being unreasonable when they see this and don't want to replicate it in their own communities?

Social repression with regards to one's sexuality and reproduction. Pointed disregard for the environment. Disdain for public services.

I have no problem being honest about any of this, probably in part because I am not a conservative.

I'm not gonna defend the conservative media ecosystem, but when ordinary conservative people look at liberal/progressive policy, all they see is urban decay, race riots, and dependency schemes. I live in Utah, and the state of places like San Francisco looms large in people's minds.

They've been failed and betrayed by polite society in terrible ways, but they're such beaten little slaves that they still bow and scrape and chant the stale phrases of power. They lack the pride of the Zoomer, who looks at this world, frowns, and checks out completely.

I have too loose a grip on things to really *hate* any group, but if I have an unprincipled exception, it's Millennials. I despise Millennials. They're painfully unfunny, they're permanent teenagers, they're sleazy, but not transgressive, and they reek of weed, pharmaceuticals, and nostalgia.

I absolutely will not cosign anything said in the low-rent wet markets of normie conservatism, but as a rightist (the herbivorous, nihilist sort), I don't share any priors with liberals. More than happy to be challenged on this.

I agree they deserve it for being collaborators and credulous dupes.

It's super funny to me that both sides of the political polarity disavow libs and try to pawn them off on the other side like the wheelchair kid in a dodgeball game.

This is not the message being received.

Ironically, a vote for Trump has typically signaled the opposite: "I don't like the status quo and would prefer it to be destroyed."

It probably gets a lot of clicks (which is why some people do it), but nobody comes off as smart and reasonable when they're wailing about the antichrist. I don't even get the appeal; there are better, stronger critiques out there!

I was forward-deployed when COVID hit, and the synthesis of being deployed + a near-global shutdown made it easily the worst experience of my life. It kinda rubs me the wrong way to hear people's wistful reminiscence about sitting at home collecting checks.

I was forward-deployed when COVID hit, and the synthesis of being deployed + a near-global shutdown made it easily the worst experience of my life. It kinda rubs me the wrong way to hear people's wistful reminiscence about sitting at home collecting checks.

I'd tweak the Palantir manifesto in a few places, but my general impression is: "Very cool - IF you mean it." Take solace in the fact that nobody ever means it.

I mean, transnational corporations spent much of the last decade broadcasting progressive orthodoxy. Their pfps still become rainbow-themed in June. If the critique here is that corporations shouldn't adopt transgressive political stances, that ship has sailed.