who said we had to do that? i just don’t like dehumanizing.

the best dream i ever had, i had superhero powers. very effective ones, i could at any time reach into hammerspace and pull out (or put away i guess, but i never actually did it) a kitten. and i could psychically control/order the kittens to do things and they’d do it.

i also got kidnapped by Alan Rickman, who himself had been kidnapped by The Big Evil and we were having to use my kitten powers to escape.

i just made up a conspiracy theory that they saved kissinger’s brain and that is what powers grok.

get your shit done dude, then party on

i guess the point i’m trying to make is that a few people are very very effective at what we’re calling evil (not entirely sure how broadly we’re defining that) and have, due to their positions, shaped the rules of The System to their advantage.

i think we’re looking at different ends of The System, though. probably just differences in our experience. some of the rules, yes, function as limitations. some are more aspirational. stuff like research or public service grants. there are a lot of societal functions where charitable organizations are filling the gap left in government services. they often get grants from the government to run said services, in essence making them quasi-governmental corporations.

essentially there’s the part of The Rules (both written down and socially implied norms) describing what the folk running the system should be doing if they’re acting in good faith. then there’s the part punishing people if they aren’t engaging with the system in good faith. it all kind of breaks down when a significant portion of the population starts engaging with the system in bad faith, especially if those people are in positions to write or enforce The Rules governing the system.

my dude my brain. you have thinged my brain. please spoiler this, we don’t have to thing everyone’s brain

gotcha. it’s more of a hippie speedball occasion for me

dude if you wave your agenda around in public like that you’re going to catch a public decency charge

i miss when kissinger was the big villain.

because i was not alive. i did not have to worry about politics.

discuss? one of them is in the legal record as blowing bubbles. bubbas. whatever.

we have one that we swear they got out of the dumpster behind the Chicken Sicken Taco. i always imagined her pouncing from behind a stack of pizza boxes

look i’m sorry i’ll wash the lettuce from my garden better okay ain’t gotta keep rubbing it in

yeah, i like this method (have a special primary to replace a withdrawn candidate) better than just appointing someone. although ranked choice voting would have solved the problem already.

i’m mean i’m allergic to lead too

krasnov is cleaning house and starting at the top to show off

i mean back in the day (when i was young and naive. i swear things were really different then though!) conservatives from liberal states and liberals from conservative states had a lot in common. a hell of a lot more than they do now at least.

you’re not entirely wrong but not entirely right. there are people who seem to be both causes and symbols of the dysfunction in society. without a few specific evil people, a few specific evils wouldn’t have occurred. we’d have different evils, but there’s no guarantee they’d be better or worse. the people just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and took advantage of it.