A law that is not enforced is not a law.

That said: This was discussed the last time he claimed to be doing this. There are theoretically loopholes that boil down to “Say you support X and I’ll give you money. This is not legally binding as a vote” which likely would not hold up to a just court but…

No. Right wing politics is 100% about “personal liberty”… for them.

It is the problem with trying to implement theoretical socioeconomic and political models in reality. Because WE can all agree “nobody should be enslaved”. But… who actually WANTS to dive into the sewers to break up the fatbergs?

Because personal liberties inherently conflict. You want to be free to let your dog roam wherever he wants. I want to be free to let my cat out on her catio without fear of neighbor dogs attacking her. Which of us get our personal liberty respected? And so forth in terms of religion and speech and choice of labor and so forth.

I actually think it is incredibly important to understand these distinctions. There is an entire generation of people who grew up with “I want weed and to not pay taxes. I guess that makes me a libertarian?” just like we have a generation of people who grew up with “I think it is stupid that I will be in debt forever because of college. I guess I am a communist?”

Understanding these distinctions is important.

Just because someone aligns with socialism doesn’t mean they are a libertarian socialist or a communist. Just like how someone can also be a libertarian but not be a socialist. The reason there are two words in that term is because it is a merging of multiple ideologies.

We see it all the time. Leftists become tankies because they listened to the equivalent of a facebook post at a drum circle and don’t want to actually understand their own ideologies. So rather than being a socialist democrat or a libertarian socialist or any other flavor, they become full on tankies because “Well. I like socialism and socialism is communism so the CCP never did anything wrong”. And that is used by right wing governments because… the vast majority of communist governments were evil and corrupt fascists (also many had stopped being communist along the way but…)

And same here. You and others are insisting that it was “co-opted”. But if you actually go back to the roots of the movements and even look at how the left uses it, it is one aspect. And yeah, right wing politics did push to use the term… because the idea of “tear it all down and make it better” aligns well with youths. But… just because they “won the branding” doesn’t mean that their pseudo-anarchists aren’t libertarians.

And I also very much argue it is worth making people look themselves in the mirror to actually understand what they are advocating for with “libertarianism” regardless of if it is “polite anarchy” or not.

I already addressed all of that in the other branch (its cool, you probably started typing that before I posted) but, the super short version:

As you yourself acknowledge, the “libertarian” part of that is related to the “anarchist” part of “anarcho-communism” which came out of the anarcho-capitalist movements of the era.

And, over the past 150 years or so, modern libertarians have continued to embrace ideologies of personal liberty that align more with the anarchist movements. Whereas modern socialists have largely decided that The State needs to provide for its people (with lots of arguments as to what The State should actually be).

Insisting that “libertarianism” should somehow be used by socialists because they came from a similar root movement is like insisting that all socialists should ACTUALLY call themselves feudalists because you can draw a line from the various philosophers back to concepts from feudalism (and beyond). It ignores WHY different philosophies and forms of government were constructed but it sounds much better, I guess?

And if the argument is that you consider yourself a libertarian because of your pseudo-anarchist leanings and don’t like that other people ALSO consider themselves a libertarian becuase of their pseudo-anarchist leanings… tough titties?

Yup.

Although I would definitely argue that “Liberal” probably IS more accurate for what the American left is. Even going back to bush era republicans… we as a country tend to be right of center. With the American Left being fairly center-right/center-left and still prioritizing liberal politics to protect donors.

The left/right distinction is just one axis and makes all these discussions complicated (hence the confusion over where anarchy and libertarianism actually falls or the belief that socialism/communism is fundamentally left wing). But it is also important for people to realize that overton windows actually are very important to understand when discussing regional politics.

I elaborated on that in the other branch and why, even historically, “libertarian” is MUCH closer to the modern libertarian than the modern socialist. But if the entire argument is “that sounds cooler and we should take it back”… that is a really stupid point.

Americans like to vote Republican. Let’s just call the Democrats “Republicans” and be done with it (bonus points for people who get the historical irony of that).

Both have their roots in anarcho-capitalist movements and the idea that The State must be abolished.

The root anarchy and libertarian aspect of that is the idea that The State must be abolished. The difference is that (libertarian flavored) socialism is largely based on the idea of small communities to replace The State (and if that sounds contradictory…). Whereas (modern) libertarianism, is that the idea is that you replace The State with individual enclaves with the remnants existing solely to protect those rights. The “libertarian” aspect fundamentally boils down to the idea of individual liberty (hence the name) at the cost of The State and the distinctions between that and anarchy is, to put it bluntly, questionable.

It would be like insisting that those in favor of socialist democracies rebrand themselves as anarcho-communists because it sounds cooler and there IS a direct line between libertarian communists/anarcho-communists and modern socialist democratic thought. Which ignores that there is a reason that said thought evolved.

You… should really educate yourself on what libertarianism actually is. Just because the root word “liberty” is in there does not mean it is a socialist concept.

In fact, libertarianism is kind of anti-socialism as one of the founding principles is individual autonomy. That is in direct opposition to the idea of social ownership of the means of production.

Ironically, you are highlighting what led to a LOT of people self identifying as libertarians in the early 00s. You hear a word that sounds nice to you and figure that must be a good thing. When it is actually in direct opposition to your implied claim of being pro-socialism.

Now, I COULD go on a long rant about how the vast majority of modern socialists ALSO don’t actually understand the political ideology they claim to support. But that just makes people pissy.

On the one hand: Fucking A

On the other hand: We have a trump admin who is already pushing to get rid of elections and a Democrat Senate minority leader who actively refuses to fight. It is hard to care too much when we actively won’t use the seats we have TO fight until it is way too late.

FOIA has nothing to do with this.

These are discussions of military operations and our relation to foreign nations. It would basically instantly be considered sensitive for quite some time. Think “years” and it would be pretty trivial to get that bumped up to decades.

This was solely about the convenience of not needing to use a VTC room or the fancy computer in their office (that they probably leave the door unlocked to but…) and possibly being able to show it to russia.

It varies, but a general rule of thumb is that any personal insurance (home, life, auto, boat, whatever) will pay out for a terrorist attack but commercial policies (property insurance, loss of revenue, workers comp, etc) won’t unless they specifically pay for terrorism coverage. That said, even the personal insurances will generally have exceptions for war and mass scale destruction (e.g. nukes).

Which mostly boils down to the reality of any kind of insurance policy: In isolated cases, they’ll pay out. The bigger the incident, the more they will fight it and the more likely they are to pull out of a region.

Which is kind o a moot point since many/most auto insurers already refuse to deal with teslas due to their high repair costs and other fun stuff that they pretend isn’t a factor but totally is (the tendency for a car on “full self driving” to plow into oncoming traffic milliseconds after “full self driving” was logged to have been disengaged by the user).

Which is the other “secret” in all this “Won’t somebody think of the tesla drivers?!?!!?” stupidity. Yeah, teslas were often very competitively priced in their categories (in large part because of government subsidies that only musk was eligible for) and were very much an option for the people wealthy enough to buy a brand new car. But the moment you try to get insurance for the tesla you are going to take ownership of in one or two business days? You suddenly are shunted to a special insurer with higher rates and anyone with half a brain would raise DOZENS of red flags at that.

Whoa now. Some people bought their teslas an indeterminate period of time ago and are now afraid that people will look down on them for it or they’ll have to file an insurance claim. And even putting a “I bought this before he went crazy” bumper sticker on the back to show ANY form of solidarity is a personal attack on them.

And that is obviously the real issue. Not the people who chose happiness and transitioned to their actual gender identity and are now afraid that they’ll be violently assaulted for it. Or immigrants who are afraid they’ll have their visas or permanent residencies revoked and get deported to a random country. Or, you know, anyone who cares about any of those issues and are worried that the rest of the planet will hold them accountable for the horrific crimes coming out of our government.

But nah. This shit is the real issue. Gotta protect those purchases. Protesting is good so long as it doesn’t impact anyone who matters. And this is the kind of shit where people will complain that it is a waste of government resources and how it only serves to protect musk’s interests. All while they quietly are happy because it makes them feel safe and snuggly.

Cue schumer saying that we shouldn’t be hasty and should focus on bipartisan bills instead.

… What tesla are you fitting 7 people into these days?

Because they only have one vehicle that isn’t a sedan and… he was a full mask off hatemonger long before the cybertruck actually hit market.

A lot of that is why I have kind of always resented the tesla marketing even before we k new musk was a hateful sexpest. My uncle had one of the early models before they added a lot of the safety features and it was REAL fun to go basically have instantaneous acceleration… and he would probably have died from that if he didn’t die from cancer instead.

But very quickly they made the argument that people need giant batteries and massive range. And that still permeates today. And the reality is that, no, people don’t. The vast majority of driving is commuting which tends to be more stop and go than not and just making charging stations in parking lots more ubiquitous would go a REALLY long way. No, not the super chargers. Just simple slow as hell level 1 and 2 chargers. And that would cover basically everyone 6.9 days a week outside of the folk with REALLY long commutes.

Where long range and super fast charging DOES help is for people doing long road trips and… folk think they are gonna be in their 30s and 40s driving 12 hours straight with only a stop to dump their piss bottle at a gas station. The reality is that by the time you are even considering a “new” car, you are probably also going to be more likely to stop for lunch or have kids to deal with where 30-40 minutes for a full recharge makes a lot more sense.

But instead we got into the mindset that you need a massive battery so you only charge up once a week and when you do it is a 10 minute recharge because even that is too long to wait.

I occasionally think of an alternate timeline where we realized that was stupid and instead L1/2 charging stations were a lot more popular and pretty much every major manufacturer switched to plug-in hybrids. Yeah, their battery tends to be shite compared to a “real” EV but people vastly underestimate how much you get from regenerative braking under real world conditions. Couple years back I had a rental toyota sedan and ended up driving all around Ontario for the better part of a week on like half a tank of gas and it was insane. And the needle literally did not move the entire time I was in Toronto or even frigging London.

All major companies have blood on their hands. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

To my knowledge, only one company’s CEO is publicly heiling hitler and actively destroying a government and killing children by defunding aid programs in a manner that violates the constituion.

And, personally? I do make it a point to avoid giving money to the REALLY bad companies. In a lot of cases that is just not possible because of the late stage capitalism hellscape we live in. But when I have the choice between some Popeyes and some chikfila? One of those companies openly funds MUCH worse things than the other and walking a block farther is, quite frankly, the least I can do.

But, instead, we need to celebrate people supporting evil through apathy and then actively defend them when protests are happening? Y’all were the ones who were talking about how kyle rittenhouse is a bad person but he had a point about being worried about the guy who owned the Target on 5th street, huh?

Because what does this say to our LGBTQ+ friends (assuming everyone involved has some…) or the people being illegally deported and sent to internment camps when the biggest pushback is “Whoa. Your protesting might inconvenience me and is thus bad”?

Okay? Then don’t expect me or anyone else to research the political affiliation of the owner of the tesla we see on the street to decide if they are a hateful pro-nazi prick or not?

Google says you can sell it to a dealer or a used car service like carmax.

Is that going to be a bit of a hassle? Yeah. You know what else is going to be a bit of a hassle? Needing to pretend you aren’t the gender you are because the government has painted a target on your head for choosing happiness. Or hoping nobody decides to take away the green card you worked your ass off to earn.

And is the value going to be dropping? Yeah. So get on that. Plenty of us are getting on finding ways to emigrate to countries that are less horrifically fucked and speedrunning their way to gilead and we know those slots are gonna dry up. And we are the privileged ones who even have a chance at doing this.

So “it is hard and I might lose a bit of money and it isn’t my fault I couldn’t be bothered to care until now” is a load of horse shit. And people wonder why I, and so many others, just laugh-cry whenever people talk about how this upcoming thing is totally going to flip the switch and get America to riot in the streets.

All owners that they can find in various leaks/databases when I checked last week.

And musk has been a known evil dipshit since at least 2018 when he threw a hissy fit because the divers who rescued those kids didn’t use musk branded products. He accused one of the divers of being a pedophile and actively devoted resources to “proving” this.

Let alone the countless stories of musk being a sex pest (remember having to buy a woman a pony because of whatever he did to her?)

So, at best, people can argue “I didn’t care enough to do any research on what I bought and accidentally enabled a nazi.”. At which point… I really don’t give a fuck? Its the same as the people who couldn’t be bothered to do any research and were surprised to hear that biden apparently wasn’t on the ballot.

Their apathy is causing untold horror to at risk groups and the global economy. So they can go fuck themselves.

And, totally anecdotal: I have seen fucked up teslas in parking lots next to un-fucked ones that just had a “I bought this before he went insane” or “I hate him too” bumper sticker.

Ah. I see. Your entire point is that a completely ineffectual group that will do nothing will be unhappy. So there is absolutely no reason for trump et al to care just like they haven’t cared about anything else.

I “love” the “I am technically correct” reddit crowd.