politics

Probably if he tried to implement UBI or forgive student loans. That would probably lose his base.

They want masked paramilitary to grab folks off the street. As long as the paramilitary isn't grabbing them, they think it is working perfectly fine.

Stock market collapse/bubble bursy and more aggressive recession indicators. That's what it will take to really move the needle.

These things are all bad if you are paying attention and have empathy. But the number of people being DIRECTLY impacted is still too small for it to affect that 37% of consistently stupid, selfish idiots. It will need to take more impact, for millions of people, and more than gradually worsening prices and things.

You gotta account for the bigots, intellectually challenged, sociopaths, illiterate, old and senile, etc. If you've worked retail, you might even be surprised it's only 37% of people who lack critical thinking or empathy.

I'd imagine a lot of those people are on food stamps so that'll hopefully impact that disapproval as well. This is pre-losing snap, it'll be interesting to see polls after.

You've got to remember that for most people living outside of cities, or living in red cities, this might as well not exist. Hell I bet even within big cities you might not be exposed to it depending on the neighborhood. You'd only really know through the news, and they don't get their news from anywhere that would show them the truth.

If by chance word actually gets back to them that something really is happening, it's already been carefully run through the Republican spin machine, where this is all very legal and very necessary to "restore order" - where resisting is the real anti-American thing to do.

What would it take to collapse the fantasy-land Trumpers inhabit on the daily? I'm not sure. You're fighting 50 years of conservative propaganda for some of these folks - Trump is just the latest at the helm. They won't be swayed easily.

Absolutely!

Mr. Mander has entered the chat

he unironically is

He definitely is he's just counting on the numbers being whatever he tells the Russian hackers to make them be. He likely won't be campaigning without the ego feeding crowds. He'll (as if by magic) win the popular vote. I believe this was the purpose behind feeding all of our personal data in the government systems to Russia. They'll pinpoint people to switch their votes and while I don't know the plan on exactly how they'll use the data, Defcon hackers showed exactly how they'll be doing the vote tampering.

but I find it odd to say it’s not journalism if it’s not available for free. Newspapers weren’t free but they were definitely journalism.

As an author, I think it depends on where you think things begin and end. I publish in scientific journals, and its quite literally not possible to do the kind of work that I do if the information isn't available. If I can't access your work, I can't "do science" on it because I can't both a) be critical of it, and b) use it as the basis of my own work. Journalism, is in this sense, all the same; its transformative work that builds on things that already exist which the author themselves did not create.

The beginning of an article on the war on terror doesn't begin or and when the author picks up the pen. That author will draw on sources and writing and journalism which already exists; while it may be transformative, it doesn't exist as an island to itself. If I can’t read your work, I can’t audit it or build on it. Journalism has the same knowledge-building logic. Reporting is transformative work that stands on prior reporting; it’s meant to be checked, contextualized, and advanced by others, and barriers that prevent that from happening.

And to be clear, I spend real money every month on journalists whose coverage I think is good and important and should be supported. But I specifically support journalists who put their work out there freely; I don't support operations that don't put there work out there for all to consume.