There’s a staunch libertarian view on Lemmy, wherein people will advocate for personal liberty ahead of technological progress. The Country Mouse has it better than the City Mouse, because he can own a gun and drive a big truck and smoke weed without the neighbors ratting him out to the cops. The lack of basic amenities - subways and school systems and high speed internet and big medical centers - is worth the increased personal autonomy.

The “Serfs had it better” trope takes this to its logical conclusion. Rolling back the technological frontier 500 years is worth it, because the surveillance/police state and the corporate oligopoly even on the fringe of society is seriously that bad.

I don’t agree. But I can’t really argue against it. This is just a personal preference. Its not any kind of objective truth.

So you’re not really a serf if you’ve got plumbing? The labor relationship with your employers isn’t the issue?

The dark cowboy rides again.

the GOP has gotten more extreme in many ways

They ate the Dixiecrats, who were already openly white nationalist. But it’s the same extremism, just migrated from one party to the other by way of the oil and automotive industry barons.

Looking back at what the John Birch folks said back then, it’s a lot more mainstream.

The Birchers were mainstream. They got Goldwater in '68 and Reagan in '80. The Tea Party and the MAGA movement can trace straight lines back to Bircher organizers and funders.

I’m just not as confident that the anti democratic sentiment isn’t just rhetoric meant for political theatre.

The problem is that most of the damage is already done. The VRA has been shredded. House seats are heavily gerrymandered. Systematic disenfranchisement is institutionalized. Media is captured by corporate interests loyal (or at least amenable) to the party. There’s not a whole lot left to dismantle. Republicans have heavily entrenched, functionally unassailable state level majorities across the country.

The real threats the GOP face are from within - business and paleocon wings feuding over orthodoxy like 12th century Popes.

And democracy at least keeps this kind of fighting civil. Which is its purpose. Give people a non-violent outlet for civic participation, but limit the terms of debate to what the elites desire.

Nobody currently winning wants that system to change.

Dems asking everyone to respect the process and continue with an orderly transition to a full fascist government. Please remember to respect our institutions, honor our brave Stasi interrogators, and Back the Blue so that our collective liquidation can occur in an efficient and budget-conscious fashion.

Do you think the GOP - and trump’s camp specifically - have gotten more or less extreme/vengeful in the last four years?

I think I heard this line back in 2004 when Bush beat Kerry. Today is always The Worst and history is always not so bad in hindsight really. But so much of the modern shit show can be traced back to the right-wing gerrymanders from 2005, pushed through under DeLay’s “Permanent Republican Majority” plan alongside his K-Street project.

After the 2020 loss, have they gotten more or less friendly toward the norms of a democratic system of government?

Given how brutally they bludgeoned the Dems this year, I’d say they’ve gotten significantly better at winning democratic competitions. I don’t think they’re going to be shy about running the exact same Musk-powered scheme in 2026, fully convinced they have the numbers to win the old fashioned way.

they’ll run the election Russian-style

Why didn’t they just do this in 2018?

Going to put all my chips on President JD Vance to restore democracy

Trump’s going to put a bunch of social media grifters and narcissists into his cabinet and really get things done. The GOP is simply too competent to fail.

We definitely won’t have municipal elections in 2025 or state elections in 2026. And nothing will go so wrong that people abandon the Republican Party like they did in 2018.

Elections will be cancelled, just like they were after 2002 and 2016, when Republicans had a three branch monopoly. And no liberal will ever be so popular as to threaten establishment conservative politics.

you can often get them for free

The maintenance cost of a “free” horse is anything but

I’m also intrigued by the “costs $1000 and $750/year to maintain” claim, as the horse people I know spend closer to 20x that.

Don’t forget all the extreme weather eroding away the peninsula. I’m less worried about sea level rise over the next 50 years than I am of a 20’ storm surge happening over the course of a few hours.

she wanted to keep him as someone she can spend time as a person and not a sexual object?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but you can do both. That’s the entire idea of having a boyfriend/girlfriend.

American culture is still seen as something to emulate in many parts of the world. Hopefully less so after the next four years.

We used to export our culture to our satraps in Mexico and Germany and Japan and Korea. But now we tend to import more than we export.

I don’t see this as cultural though. It’s just a money thing. People ask because they know their customers will say yes. That’s all there is to if

Tipping doesn’t exist here BTW, because it’s idiotic

Idk where “here” is, but I’ve seen plenty of foreign countries’s restaurants adopting tipping, particularly at higher end establishments, as business owners realize they can just ask for extra and get it.

Thinking we’ll still have electricity for computers in 2034, and it won’t all be diverted to the AGI Factory at the center of town that handles all the meme generation/posting/aggregating is kinda optimistic.

The men at the top maintain their position by deflecting the consequences of their exploitative policies onto the lower rungs of the ladder.

These points are only achievable by voting for candidates who advocate for such policies which is admittedly a long shot

Politics is the art of the possible. The entire job of political leadership is to advocate for policy change.

No need to invade when their economy collapses internally and Beijing can step up to buy the whole island out from the bargain basement bin.

Unironically what we’re going to hear Trump say. But also, there’s so much money in imports, I can see this plan getting bottled up and strangled in Congress very easily.