If "America deserved 9/11" is "fairly moderate leftist", all the more reason why the Democratic party should be distancing themselves from even the "moderate leftists".

I'm not sure most people even participate more in politics: for example, down-ballot Republicans do significantly better when Trump is on the ticket which indicates that there are a huge number of voters that only come out to vote for him and don't care about the general Republican party.

A lot of ships transiting the Bab Al-Mandeb have been doing that the last couple of years in the hopes that it would deter the Houthis.

I tried sharing it with some leftists who were insisting that it was all about Epstein. It looks like the left has become as anti-intellectual as the right- an expert is only trusted if they say whatever confirms their priors.

Oh, I'm not dismissing college at all! This was less "college does nothing" and more "there is research that supports what you're saying regarding hard skills from college and usefulness in the post-college job market"

I emailed one of the people who researched this once, and the response was that it's less that "college teaches the skills" and more "the people with the skills were more likely to go to college in the first place"

There have been studies that have shown that the most impactful part of a college degree in terms of usefulness in the job market is "being someone with a college degree". Not that skills aren't important, just that they're a relatively minor part of it.

Have you considered that "opening fire on protestors with machine guns" created that consent all on its own?

The only period of the last 2,000 years when Jews weren't a plurality of the residents of Jerusalem was during and right after the Crusades, because 200,000 Jews *in Israel* were murdered during them.
How were there 200,000 Jews there if we're somehow all from Europe?

I think "Western" as a term can be pretty loose, because I would consider Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan to all be "Westernized" in the sense of "adopted a Western basis for how the state functions". I don't know enough about Mongolia or Nepal, though.

A lot of it comes from how I conceptualize "Israel as a Jewish state in the religious sense"- a lot of times people don't realize how ingrained their own states incorporated Christianity into their versions of secularism so when they see it down Jewishly it looks overtly religious.

New York City puts up a Christmas tree, and blocks a major highway to transport it.
I understand that to many, Christmas is secular, but to others, it's very much not.

This is a sort of "Christian secularity", it's secular when you come from the position of being Christian. But to a religious Jew, being told "sorry, the post office is closed today because of a Christian holiday" doesn't feel very secular.

To its credit, it's one of the closest countries the world has ever seen to a secular country, but it still has a ways to go.

Hell, name an actually secular country. Even in America everyone's expected to celebrate Christmas.
People get confused when I say "I don't celebrate Christmas because I believe that to do so violates my religion" but it's a federal holiday. America is a Christian country.

I was thinking specifically of a time when a coworker asked ChatGPT to "answer as if it's a feminist" (just to see what it would do) and it spat out the most generic caricature of a radical feminist. I don't know exactly how the model got there, but it was interesting that it did.

Fun fact, many Bosnian babies were named after Tony Blair for stopping the genocide of their people.
So yes. It does matter to people on the ground. The people who intervene are not viewed as some nameless force-of-nature.

Name me a single secular country that isn't Western. And no, Communist countries don't count, in those Communism functions as religion.

Whenever you say "answer as if you're an X", what really happens is "what does the average person expect X to sound like, that's what I'll mimic"

I mean... "rights for LGBTQ individuals is a Western ideal" is accurate. I personally don't mind saying "okay, so there is at least one Western ideal that is wholly superior to others."

Aww, what happened, did Joe Rogan hang out with too many Nazis?

I am personally very urbanist, but I like cities because I like the advantages of "everything close by" more than the disadvantages of "open space" and "potentially long commutes". But you're not going to convince people of urbanism by paternalistically claiming all suburbanist sentiment is fake!

I wonder if the OP has kids. Having a yard of your own is a very big draw.
Oh wait, I forgot that "having kids" is ideological too to some people.

It's fascinating how many "punch fascist" people are going to bat for someone with a Nazi tattoo

I know it can be hard for "our side" to hear, but: there was, for a period, some amount of hunger. This is something extremely pro-Israel reporters reported on, based on sound analysis by pro-Israel analysts.
The annoying thing is "hunger" and "famine" are very different things, but are conflated.

THE GUN IS GOOD
THE PENIS IS BAD

Literally "I just want to grill" politics

I remember reading once that there were Russian Marxist groups that praised the invasion, but then got arrested anyway a few months in for being Marxists.

"Trapped in your own terror tunnel" should catch on as a modern "hoisted by your own petard".

Gonna go listen to some jazz music just to spite Sayyid Qutb.