by mindslight | 2025-06-11 16:13:21+00:00
> Typical. Diminish the other person by claiming that everything they say are talking points.

Your comment was better before you edited it to have this. The criticism isn't of you personally, it's of using a cookie-cutter argument that sidesteps talking about the actual topic. Do you not see how it's a non-sequitur to talk about now-out-of-office Biden's mental incapacity as a response to Biden being mentioned as the nominal figurehead for a set of policies?

> I have had the experience of being in fear for my life while detained by military thugs as a teenager

Is the problem here not the military thugs and the lack of individual rights and freedoms, not whatever political narratives are being professed by the people ruling with the thugs?

> I have seen and lived the economic and cultural destruction the left loves to use to control societies

Why is it just "the left" ? Why not all authoritarians ? It seems to me that authoritarians will use any ideology as a backbone for driving hypocritical "do as I say" power.

> To be sure, the extreme right is just as destructive, yet that is not a reality in the US at all

This is the crux of your bait and switch, where you've heavily focused on how bad the power-descendant "leftists" could be, but now give a pass to the different flavor authoritarians that are currently attacking our society. By my own analysis of seemingly undisputed facts, we have or have had:

- Tariffs further destroying our economy, implemented and dialed back with seemingly no actual rationale or goals besides shaking down other countries for personal enrichment.

- Significant destruction of the US bureaucracy which had been somewhat constraining authoritarian power. The problem with bureaucratic authoritarianism wasn't the bureaucracy but rather the authoritarianism.

- Destruction of US scientific research capacity because the communities doing the research had the wrong politics. And for what remains, the implementation of a right-flavored Lysenkoism.

- American soldiers in an American city pointing guns at American citizens exercising their first amendment constitutional rights, against the express authority of that state's government.

- International isolation through alienation of our long-term allies by telling them we might side with their adversaries instead, or even outright attack them ourselves.

- A weaker Dollar based on political instability

- A massive deficit spending bill on the table, continuing the long trend of Republicans complaining about monetary inflation while actually being the worst offenders.

If and when "leftists" get back into power, all of these liberty-destroying trends will be gleefully embraced and expanded under the banner of leftism "fixing" what rightism did, just as they're currently being justified as rightism "fixing" what leftism did. In reality it's all just individual-liberty-destroying authoritarianism. What has changed is that you are now gleefully supporting it.

> If California does not scare the shit out of the rest of the nation

How is this not just another cliche talking point? I've spent some time in LA a while ago. It wasn't for me - self absorbed, entitled, group-performative politics as a coping mechanism for societal problems. Affluenza where all the white people don't even know which end of a screwdriver to hold because they pay an immigrant underclass to do anything beyond changing a GU24. Oh, and you actually find yourself getting sick of sunny days because there is no damn weather. I could go on!

But "scare the shit" ? If you don't want to live in that culture and environment, don't go there? Despite my distaste, individual choice seems fine to me.