I honestly have no idea what point you were trying to make here.

I personally dont attach nearly as much importance to the actual person filling the presidential seat, so much as the organization that backs and supports them. We all know trump literally will say anything to gain republican support and Biden is the spokesman for the democrats to gain support.

The point is that trump and Biden could both pass tonight, and the people who replace them will have the exact same goals and ideas. Its not just about the person who wins president as it is about the group we want to run the country.

So no, its not malaria and stage 4 cancer, its a mosquito bite vs a bee sting, for all the difference it makes between the two. We are voting for republicans or democrats, not Biden or trump.

Do people really think the president sits there dictating what everyone else is doing like some extravagant conductor?

They are fucking salespeople, client relations managers, public relations people. Trump didn’t bring a single original idea to his own campaign and people are frustrated with Biden because he won’t take a principled stance and instead just parrots back how his party feels (see Israel).

Well, Biden doesnt stand alone, he didnt come up with all these ideas himself, he’s just leading the party. Its not really that important who leads it, the ideas aren’t going to change.

If its more likely their party wins with another candidate then fine but it seems just as risky as not changing to me.

We are forced to choose.

So is it malaria or stage four leukemia?

Easy fucking choice to me.

I never said that those factors should be ignored.

The point I’m making is that when people frame this as “some people just aren’t built to handle it” they put people into two groups: the easily addicted, and normal people.

People want to be part of and prove they are in the normal group. Something is wrong with you if you are in the addict group. Those in the normal group feel protected by being part of it. They think they aren’t capable of addiction that they must have gotten lucky.

I think that’s an incredibly dangerous framing of addiction. Everyone is capable of becoming an addict. Just because some never do, doesn’t mean they had some special mutation that protected them. Addiction is an incredibly social disease, and with how little we know about it we should be more cautious rather than callous when discussing it.

To be fair I’m probably being oversensitive to it, but if you want to be technical about it, someone could read your post and think: “I should try street opiates and see if they have an effect on me, and if they don’t like this poster, then I am very likely to have ADHD.”

Let’s imagine for this person, they struggle mentally all the time but can’t afford or get to a doctor or proper care, and so this actually becomes the most reasonable test for them to administer themselves.

I understand I’m nitpicking and creating a scenario in my mind doesn’t make it real, I just personally would choose to play it safe and at least word things more carefully.

Again I’m not saying you can’t day what you said, just that there technically is a non-zero risk to it.

Wall yourself through the process of creating this third party. Let’s say its this leading edge european-style-leftist party that cares about people, for real this time.

This party starts growing slowly, but where do the people come from? Maybe some people who avoided politics altogether until this new party came along, but most people will likely come from the Democratic party.

So the party is building and the democrat party is shrinking, while the republican party stays the same. They may even see some growth from the “fracturing” of the Democrat party. They start winning more and more elections as instead of a race coming out 46% to 44%, it comes out 46% to 36% to 10%.

That ratio keeps building in favor of the new leftist party, but we lose seats and elections every cycle. And then eventually (maybe stupidly hopeful?) The new left party completely takes over the democrat party which ceases to exist.

Now we are back at a two party system, but have lost the country for maybe 5, 10, 20+ years? You could argue this is a better idea than what we currently do, which is try to change the party you are part of slowly over time with voting and campaigning, but I personally wouldnt say that myself.

Or maybe we are stuck with the two parties we have.

For a third party to appear, one of the current ones has to fracture. Neither party is willing to do that because fracturing your own party guarantees the other party wins due to FPTP.

Right now especially, noone trusts the republicans to run the country while the democrats re-sort themselves into their new parties.

Even then, it might be those two Democrat parties splitting their own vote for many elections to come, essentially conceding the country for a decade or more.

If the parties we had now were more moderate and closer together on everyday issues, it wouldnt feel like picking between shit and poop, it would feel like choosing between vanilla and chocolate ice cream, which both are valid and good and have their own merits.

Americans aren’t stupid, we are frustrated, and in some states there is still a strong pressure from religion, school, and government that causes people to learn the wrong ideals, and in some cases complete falsehoods. My favorite is the states that contradict themselves or avoid logic at all turns.

We recently had a state pass a law including the ten commandments in every classroom in the state, but the approved list they are putting up is ELEVEN items long.

I was probably all over the place in this reply but I hope I made some sense towards your post.

I think it could work if the third party sets reasonable goals and steps to achieve a difference in America.

I like the idea of focusing on local elections, it could start out as a network of local communities that grows and grows, and when it becomes big enough for a national conversation, if it does, then we start on the federal politics.

We might find its not even necessary to continue on to federal government, as enough small communities change and it becomes the norm, the federal government will reflect that.

I prefer 270° myself, its something about just how gorgeous that set of numbers looks, but also probably how close it looks like pacman about to absolutely chomp down on some ghost ass :)

What’s your favorite angle?

I can’t force people to do the things I think they should. Noone can. People draw inspiration from all sorts of things. Like you right now seem inspired to protect China from racist western policies.

I dont pretend to speak for my country, or its government, but I can do two things:

1. Walk the walk, if you believe something then follow it. Examples: de-googling, disengaging with social media, following a vegan lifestyle, research companies before giving them your money.

2. Talking about all of this stuff in public places. With my family, coworkers, or here on Lemmy, anything we say has the potential to inspire someone to change. You never know what will be the thing that triggers change, but for all the things I listed above I had someone share that information with me in a public forum, which caused me to change.

I’m sure we can argue the efficacy of this strategy all day, and even some of the examples you gave like Amazon are no longer the behemoth they used to be.

Or just maybe you shouldn’t share information that could cause someone to harm themselves.

“…appear to have diminished or zero response whatsoever to opiates.”

I still think its dangerous to post things like this on a forum without any sort of actual citation.

I understand its your personal experience, but there are so many compounding factors, it’s nearly impossible to say why you had that experience, or if it would happen again if you tried some street fentadope thats available now.

Boycotting is a collective action, it spreads like a virus, so you are wrong on its effectiveness.

You sound like someone who wants hand waive away the real costs of their actions by saying there’s nothing you can do to change things.

I hope the people who read your post aren’t demotivated to effect change because of it.

What’s wrong with voyager? Its already ad-free.

Seems so strange to choose to inject adds over top of lemmy by choice.

Dang that was a quick reply.

I can’t tell if you want to talk or not, seems like you do cause of how eager you were to respond, but then you didnt answer my question :( I just want to have an honest conversation about something I find interesting, why do you gotta make me feel bad?

For me it was only a problem when I had to drive two cars:

A pickup with the shifter on the steering column (makes me sick thinking of it, horrible design)

A jeep with an absurd shifting handle which made the gears miles apart.

Well I just figure I’ll come back like once a day and check on you.

Hey so why’d you choose racemaniac for your handle anyways? Is it just like generic thing-feeling or is there like some sort of story there maybe?

To be fair nearly all my concerns about manuals are from stories others have told me. We have had two manual cars for maybe a decade now and haven’t had a single bit of trouble with the transmissions or clutches.

I even taught myself to drive stick driving one of them home from the dealership. Plus I didnt become proficient at it for a bit of time after that.

I really prefer manuals at this point. Feels simpler.

It takes a little time to get on the ride at first. If you never used two days in a row then its not crazy you never got hooked. Even with recreational opiates, taking home a 20 bag one weekend isn’t going to end your life. There are actually weekend warriors who only use on weekends and do relatively fine, if they can stick to the limits they set.

Also opiates properly prescribed (the least amount needed for relief) are actually not too tricky to kick. I’m talking about 7 day or 30 day scripts that are take as needed or taken daily. You will likely experience nothing more than what feels like a minor cold or flu, symptom wise. You might have a few rough nights sleep.

There are variations to things, there are many additional gears left to shift into, so to speak, I’m just warning you shouldn’t test them out because first gear didn’t scare you.