But what really redpilled me was the impeachment farce where he literally was impeached for investigating his predecessor for crimes we now know occurred. That sends a very chilling message.

This is like accusing those in the 50s for being apathetic about polio, because they didn't upend their entire life to protect their children from this incredibly deadly and disfiguring disease. When humans are confronted with a problem they simply cannot meaningfully prevent, they tend to ignore it and get on with their lives.

VC as it is today is absolutely toxic.

'Freedom of speech', however, is not the 1st amendment. It is an ethical precept, not a law. It's like how 'don't cheat on your wife' doesn't mean you get thrown in jail, but you'll generally be seen as a 'bad guy'.

I think we need to make a distinction -- as the US Supreme Court did -- between large, publicly held corporations and small closely held corporations. In Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court said that only closely held corporations (those held by a small, definable number of people) had freedom of religion and association. That is their justification for why Hobby Lobby did not need to provide BC coverage. Because it was owned only by one small family, forcing them to take the revenue (which they own) to pay would directly violate the religious beliefs of that small number of people.

On the other hand, Amazon does not have freedom of religion, because Amazon has thousands of shareholders with no universal religious inclination. A fundamentalist christian owner of Amazon stock cannot reasonably ask Amazon to stop paying for birth control.

But, I've only thought about this for a few hours. I'm interested in what other policies can be implemented to serve both the rights of hosts and the rights of content creators.

I actually have supported with many actions of Antifa / BLM (probably wouldn't guess that from my post history), including the protests at Pelosi's and McConnell's houses, and the disruption of the globalist meetings you mention. I don't agree with them in their destruction of property, especially that of small mom-and-pop businesses, or even big business if it affects small businesses (by raising insurance rates for example). And obviously, I disagree with anything actually threatening lives.

Yes, I'd rather have a social democrat that rejects Stalin than a fiscal conservative that embraced him.

Unlike the various 'what-ifs' of policy issues, anyone can examine the actual record of Stalin and his policies. And, in my opinion, anyone who finds him a source of inspiration, regardless of their stated policy preferences, has a severe lack of judgement.

No, no party is better really. The GOP is the same. It's run by the same kinds of old farts. My main source of good feelings towards the GOP is that I tend to agree with their unelected members. But more and more I'm seeing those members also hate the GOP establishment. I wouldn't be surprised to see the party fracture heavily soon. I hope the democrat party also has the same split. There are good, decent democrats that share common principles and who I'm sure cannot stand their party leadership. I mean, the DNC is so bad, that I actually feel sorry for my left-leaning friends who also seem unable to get any representation.

On the democrat side, see the treatment of Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard (Both non-traditional democrats in different ways) by their party.

Honestly, after seeing both how the GOP and Democrats treated Trump, Sanders, and Gabbard, I find myself supportive of all three of them despite them having a very different views. I simply like that they're not either party.

It increasingly seems that both parties are becoming incredibly dogmatic, and anyone who doesn't fall in line is simply barred from public discourse or elected office. It is increasingly true that in order to even get to elected office you need the support of a party.

In my state of Oregon, the democrats and republicans actually mandated that you be part of a party before being elected to office. You can no longer run as an independent. It's so bad, some people made an 'independent party' just to be able to have non-democrat or republican candidates on the ballot, but this suffers from the same issues as parties, in that those individuals still need to be 'nominated' by a select group of people annointed by the party organizers, which means even the independent party has a bias, even if they try to minimize it.

We need major electoral reform, nationwide, but it doesn't benefit any party to do that. What I would like to see are protesters from both BLM, Antifa, or whatever and the capitol protesters (not the rioters of any group please...) band together for a change and demand a better means of governance from their legislators. The people need to band together on common principles, instead of being divided by stupid policy points.

Like I've said before around here, in 2016, I couldn't stand the man, but the way the media treats him, I find myself rooting for him. Every problem about Trump is their own creation.

Beliefs change. We see it in the senate taking up the cases into twitter and facebook. The party is shifting. Trump was not a traditional pro corporate republican. His doj is trying to punish monopolies. Many in the gop base, including myself, cannot stand congressional Republicans embrace of corporations (although many of us are seeing the democrats embrace big money too -- biden had more bank donations than trump -- and are equally disgusted). And honestly democrats who agree should reach out now to the shifting base. They might gain voters. That's the point I'm making.

They said they would have taken the case but, even if they found pa to be wrong, they would not give the resolution asked for. That's eminently reasonable to me. This ensures that if they ruledagainst pa, then what happened there won't happen again while ensuring that thousands who voted in good faith are not disenfranchised

How do you square away that fact with your simplistic characterization of conservatives as okay with anything big business does?

Edit: haha downvoteas for an honest question

No it's not though. Texas is asking the Supreme Court to answer the question of whether the constitution allows the governor to make up election rules or whether it's just the state legislature. The Supreme Court has ruled that how other states conduct their elections affects other states. By precedent, they should have answered it.

Moreover, similar challenges to PA law by PA voters, PA candidates, and Trump himself were dismissed also for standing. Perhaps you can argue Texas has no standing to tell PA what to do. But shouldn't a PA voter have standing to question whether his governor can make up rules? How come absolutely no one has standing?

> I'm not sure you can argue they're bad actors when the clear and obvious reasoning for those measures across the country are to limit the spread of a deadly pandemic.

But they violated a court order. Sure, it's to stop a pandemic. But a judge ordered that order to be violated. Court orders supersede gubernatorial edicts.

> The governor's in charge of enforcement

I'm sorry... that's not good enough for an election. Can a governor allow votes to be made up even though it's against the law, because the governor is 'in charge of enforcement'. Can Trump use the national guard to stop the Biden electors from meeting because he's 'in charge of enforcement'.

At some point, the government needs to be held responsible for lack of enforcement of basic civil rights -- election integrity is a governmental duty. You can't just choose not to enforce it.