341–350 of 970 posts
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> So a crisis was invented. Are you saying that the millions upon millions who died (not to mention the untold millions who are suffering long-term health problems), didn't actually die? Or that what they died from (a highly contagious and infectious novel virus) was engineered?
It's a proven fact that COVID was bio-engineered, is it not?
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Are they still a minority? https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/joe-bidens-approval-... Yes, there is a clear political tribal alignment between the current "out-group" and skepticism of institutions, but the rise of that iconoclasm on the right seems to be correlating with its growth as a whole.
They aren't a minority. As of 2021, there are more Republicans than Democrats. https://news.gallup.com/poll/388781/political-party-preferen...
Things collapsing has been a predominant sentiment in every modern generation. It's unprecedented because of our collective amnesia, that regards the familiar as a stable starting point rather than a random moment in a volatile reality. Journalism was a tawdry, un-respectable business since its conception, but experienced a brief period of valor around the mid-twentieth century when industry concentration, Cold War e…
Yes, the 60s was far, far, far more disillusioned than this.
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I think your summary is obscuring some of the nuance in that data. What it shows is that independent voters self-identify as "lean rep"/"lean dem" based on their approval of the current president, which is low right now. Historically though, self-identified independents lean dem more than they lean rep (data in your link). Consider that the last time a Republican presidential candidate won the popular vote was in 200…
You break out a poll to cast a group as fringe. Other people bring up other polls (more recent ones) to counter that argument, and then you shift to a different line of evidence citing "historical trends." Please, take this advice to heart, you are clearly trying to justify a conclusion with whatever evidence you can grab at hand. Take a step back and ask yourself if tribal loyalty is clouding your judgement. We are…
I'd argue that the greater risk of things falling apart is economic rather than political. We've built our society on two near-ponzi schemes that are in danger of falling apart. The first is pension funds which are paid into by current workers to pay out for past workers. Pension funds inherently depend on population growth to avoid shortfalls. They rely on the fact that more people pay into them then take out from t…
US real estate has gone up significantly in _desirable_ markets. There are plenty of cities in the rust belt where neighborhoods are in decay, you can buy a home for 20k if you wanted. What we’re going to see is either govts incentivize people move back to these places. Or more housing in desirable locations. I think the former will happen more than the later.
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Why did he think the paychecks would stop coming?
A large number of folks think the world already ended, and we're just waiting on the collapse. That now both on the right and left.
On a cosmic scale.
Ain't entropy grand?
I'd argue that the greater risk of things falling apart is economic rather than political. We've built our society on two near-ponzi schemes that are in danger of falling apart. The first is pension funds which are paid into by current workers to pay out for past workers. Pension funds inherently depend on population growth to avoid shortfalls. They rely on the fact that more people pay into them then take out from t…
Optimizing the economy for the retirements funds (creating favorable conditions for existing big companies) has eliminated the paths to prosperity for the new generations (you cannot run your own shop to outcompete Loblaws or Walmart, and a cashier job there will never afford you anything more than bare survival). This is discouraging people from starting families and having kids, so the government began outsourcing population growth by importing people from other cultures with lower standard of living. This ignites political division in the society where the far left sees anything beside a shared room a privilege and the far right wants to deport anyone who isn't a 3rd-generation local.
Keeping the real estate bubble from popping has served somewhat well the real estate investors, but made property ownership impossible for many people. The political response is unsurprising: many question the whole concept of owning real estate, it's becoming increasingly hard to evict a bad faith tenant, and aggressive homeless people actively disrupting the life of nearby real estate owners are seen as victims and not malefactors.
The corporate media is doing their best to steer the discussion away and people are buying it. "Fair" isn't somehow when the median salary can reasonably afford a single-income household comfortable to raise 2+ children. It's now about how your fellow minimum-wagers should use the pronouns and how promotions from toilet scrubber to shelf stocker should be granted based on the skin color and historical oppression points, while the actual oppression of the former middle class by the corporations is happening right now.
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>The catholic church has stood largely unchanged for the 1600 odd years That's a bit of a myth, thrown around a lot but not quite true. It has existed in some form, but by no means remained changeless. The doctrine is substantially similar but then we can say the same thing about Judaism. Here, we're really talking about the organization, which has many issues: -The East-West schism in 1054 tore the Catholic Church i…
I did stipulate until Vatican II , and my point is rather how little the preceding millenium of reformations and Avignon popes and so on actually changed the church. It undeniably had some impact, like the reformation created a need for educating priests to be able to actually argue their case. But the shape of the organization was largely the same through all of this.
I don't think we can cite 1600 years of stability for the organization at all. We may do so, somewhat, for doctrine, which is an achievement, but it's also equalled or exceeded by a few other religions.