The two people are just two people, as you say. What we’re actually talking about is how thousands of relatively famous Republicans and tens of millions of other Republicans react to the actions of those two.

Nobody is attacking your father here. At least I hope they aren’t. My questions were about your knowledge and beliefs.

If I told you that your assumptions about my background or wrong, and if I told you that I wasn’t confused, what would you say?

… It’s kind of sad, because you could have been part of an interesting discussion, but you got careless and decided that you would go into attack mode to protect someone who wasn’t being attacked from … I have no idea what you think you were protecting them from. Clearly they were trying to get a sense of why people have various intuitions, and presumably they are willing to be somewhat introspective about the things they grew up believing, too.

People often make bad judgments based on incomplete information. As you know, it’s a sad fact that some parents do horrible things to their children. If those children leave, never come back, and never send money, good.

Some things are common within a culture, but even in places where most people are inclined to help their aging parents, like various countries in Asia, there are still children who reasonably choose not to do so. Cultural tendencies are simply that, tendencies. If your country doesn’t have a law requiring you to provide support, it’s because lawmakers know that in some situations it might be reasonable not to do so.

Did you notice how you wrote that you would be seen as downright evil, but you didn’t say by who? I feel like that’s something you ought to consider more carefully.

You gave an example of sending your father money, but you haven’t seen him for 17 years. This raises many more questions. Does he need your money? Is your money helping? If you found out that he didn’t need your money and it’s not helping, would you stop sending it? Are you sending the money to make yourself feel good, even though it’s not helping him? How do you think he would feel if you found out you were sending him money even though you’re jobless?

Finally, you used the word “unnatural” knowing that it’s just not true. That was certainly an antagonistic approach to the issue. Is that what you intended? Was it accidental? If it was accidental, what word did you actually mean instead?

She worked hard to look older!

Except that’s not how it works. If you let more people bring weapons into schools, you will definitely see increasing amounts of weapons being used in schools, even if you’re pretending that the weapons are supposed to be only for self-defense.

If you’re serious about reducing mass shootings, the globe has shown us that you can do so by reducing the number of guns available in society. It really is that simple. Simple, but not easy, because many Americans love their weapons.

I’m not sure about that, but it has been clear for the past few decades then education funding in many areas of the country has dropped. Annoying paperwork and class sizes have gone up, resources have gone down. On average, it’s less appealing than it once was.

So we can’t point out racism and make jokes about how pathetic these racists are because other racists might get violent?

… I’m not with you on this one. It’s a weak stance.

Define “counter-narrative”. It’s what you wanted, right? But you didn’t. Instead you’re blaming is for mocking absurd racist claims because … checks notes … other racists might or might not get violent.

And look, I’ve already read a handful of articles on the hoax just from whatever shows up in my subscriptions here or on RSS or whatever. People are addressing it head-on. That is happening, even if you don’t see it. So, do you have any data to back up your claim.

• Shawshank
• The Great Escape
• Beyond the Clouds
• Groundhog Day

I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t agree with your claim. In North Dakota for a very long time there was no voter registration, but then the Republicans insisted on creating it because they claimed there were eight cases of voter fraud, and they changed the law which made it harder for college students and Native Americans to vote, and not a single person was charged with voter fraud in the end.

If any voter fraud had actually occurred, you can be sure that state leaders would have charged people for it, because it would have been free political points. But they didn’t, because there wasn’t any voter fraud. I think they knew that beforehand, but even if you want to be unreasonably generous, at least you would expect that some of them would apologize later for wasting everyone’s time and getting the issue totally wrong, and at the same time disenfranchising Native Americans and college kids. Of course no one did so.

If something is in the public domain, there is no copyright covering it, so you should make as many copies as you feel like. Many public domain books are posted on the Internet Archive, where you can easily download them in various formats. Then you won’t have to work hard to get the data. Public domain artwork, likewise, is often available on Wikimedia Commons.

I feel like blogs are small and relatively stand alone, and nothing like large corporations or Lemmy. Visibility is a question, but that just raises more questions. How many viewers do you want each month? What if you only have a few but they really care what you say? How many views do you get here? Do people hear even care what you say? What if you started a blog but cross posted links to it here? Maybe that would take advantage of both worlds, or maybe it wouldn’t, and all of that depends on your goals and whether you have anything to communicate and whether you do a good job of communicating it.

What’s being held back, and what’s being freed? Certainly my thoughts aren’t being held back or freed.

It’s only partly American. There are basic failures in police systems and departments all around the world. Although it’s theoretically possible that your country got it right when so many others have failed, it’s interesting to note that you didn’t actually say what country you were praising.

If you feel confident, name the country and open up the door to other commenters who also live or have lived there to chime in with their opinion. I’ve lived in several countries in my life, and I’ve seen a fair amount of incompetent or bad policing in most of them. Of course the details vary by place.

My example is not the most terrible, but it’s still so strange to think about…

20 years ago, before the Iraq War began, there was a bunch of fake intelligence, aluminum tubes and the CIA, and Colin Powell got on TV saying the war was necessary, but it was all a bunch of lies, and any smart informed American would have known. I did my part and protested and spoke with dozens of people trying to convince them that they were getting played. Unsuccessfully. That’s not the strange part.

The strange part is that after the war started, it was revealed that all of the stated reasons were wrong. The facts came out, and my position was vindicated. Obviously it wasn’t just me, but I’m focusing on my personal experience. So you might expect that some people would be embarrassed or upset with the government or the media. After all, that war killed large numbers of people. But no one that I spoke with before the war started ever showed signs that they understood that they had gotten it wrong. Why not make an about face, why not blame the media or the president? It would be so easy to find some integrity, but apparently it’s easier to pretend that the past didn’t happen.

I think it is pretty entertaining because they said they were going to driving school, so why are they asking here, and they knew they would get text when what they really want is visual instruction.

Presumably they could go watch YouTube or listen to their driving teacher, but they chose to post here, because I think they wanted to see what kind of nonsense would show up.

Far be it for me to tell you the setup of your home, but it’s quite possible that if you do the laundry more frequently then you could hang it up indoors. If you wanted to drive faster, you can aim a fan at it. Of course this depends on your specific setup and on the humidity in your location, but it might be an option that you could use in the meantime, because it’s a fairly cheap way of drying clothes.

Of course that depends where you read and post on Lemmy. I don’t really agree with the premise of your question, so I can’t give you a good answer except to say look around. Depending on the topic, you can find people who are going into great detail about their own thoughts and presenting arguments and facts and whatnot, all as might be appropriate to the topic at hand. I’m not really sure what you’re looking for. It sounds like maybe you want to start a blog, and if you want to start a blog, go start one. You can even post the links here, for an extra touch of irony.

Will the US military or commander in chief worry about an anti-war activist dying? Pull the other one.