Rusty Shackleford

dispair despair

For many, the fear of the “other” supercedes the imperative to negotiate and collaborate collectively.

“I am willing to lose so long as this leader makes the people I profess to hate lose more.”

They are, relatively.

I thought O’Leary was Canadian? Did he emigrate to the U.S.?

If smartphone use is global, why is the strongest evidence of surging teen anxiety mostly in English-speaking countries and not in their less-English-speaking neighbors?

My answer is that although mental illness is global, the experience of mental illness cannot be separated from culture. If there is a surge of Anglospheric gloom among teenagers, we have to study the culture that young people are consuming with their technology. In the past generation, the English-speaking world, led by the U.S., has experimented with a novel approach to mental health that has expanded the ranks of the “worried well,” while social media has surrounded young people with reminders to obsess over their anxieties and traumas, just as U.S. news media have inundated audiences with negativity to capture their fleeting attention.

As an American citizen living in Europe since July of 2022 and maintaining dual residency, I posit that “quiet desperation is the English way”, but we Americans do it “loud and proud”.

I’m not racist if I say I hate Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Religion is not a race, it’s fundamentally an assertion of an ontology based upon the primacy of the god of Abraham/Ibrahim, Yahweh/Jehovah.

The belief in the existence, omnipresence, and infallibility of such a being as described by their texts is a detriment to our species and may ultimately catastrophically destroy civilization.

One chooses to believe or continue believing this. One can’t choose their ethnicity. If I say I hate those religions, I’m saying I hate their ideas on how reality works, not where they’re from or what they look like.

Hello, Dale! I see that you are a man of culture as well.

it cannot be voted in

Technically, it can.

simply ask a billionaire to not be

One doesn’t have to ask; under the very same Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, the legal argument would be, theoretically, that the vast accumulation of wealth and its legal and political ramifications violates the life, liberty, and property of other citizens.

The dissolution of the union and the United States government is also possible with the ratification of a constitutional ammendment of a 2/3 majority of the states.

Communism isn’t Communalism.

Yes, that’s true.

Advocating for Communism

… is legal, under the 1st Amendment.

attempting to implement Communism at a national level is illegal

By force, yes. Theoretically, with a broad enough consensus, it could be voted on and enacted.

All pedantry aside, it’s important to differentiate between theory and practice or ideology and an organization.

Who makes that distinction?

Anyone versed in basic political theory.

An ideology and a political organization are obviously different. Just like republicanism and The Republican Party, democracy and The Democratic Party, socialism and The Socialist Party, etc.

destroying the state

That’s technically sedition, so, yes, illegal.

Capitalism

Nowhere in U.S. jurisprudence is “capitalism” (verbatim) explicitly protected as an economic system. The 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause prevents the state from taking someone’s life, liberty, or property without a proper justification under the laws of the land. The Constitution protects individuals from the government. Freedom to contract is a principle that underpins the basis for a free-market economy.

After the Great Depression, the Court began to treat the freedom to contract as less than absolute, asserting that such freedom may be limited by the State’s interest to protect its citizens. Capitalism is a right guaranteed by the constitution but limited in scope to protect individuals against the dangers of laissez-faire capitalism.

class divides

There are no explicit laws in U.S. jurisprudence (that I know of or have turned up on brief internet searches) that enforce “class divides”.

money

Be it resources, precious metals, or legal tender, money is protected by the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

So we can conclude that the advocacy or practice of communism isn’t itself illegal. Forcing people to practice it or overthrowing the government and dissolving The Bill of Rights in order to force people to practice most certainly is.

In my opinion, that’s a good thing.

No, it’s not.