Curious Canid

Various factions would like us to feel isolated and helpless so we can be manipulated more easily. All of the things you mentioned still exist and have meaning, but there are alternative meanings being pushed at us. And we not everyone has a community or family in the traditional senses anymore.

If you want to be a member of a community, you can. There are many available in most places, and there are more on the internet that are not limited by location. Find a group of people with common values, common interests, or anything else that ties you together and participate in it. Humans evolved to be social animals.

Human interconnections are a threat to the power that be. Individuals are easy to deal with via manipulation, intimidation, or incarceration. All of that becomes harder with groups, and the larger the group, the harder it is. That is also why we see so many efforts to subdivide us by race, culture, nationality, generation, education, income, religion, gender, gender preference, sexual preference. The less unified we feel, and the more we view the people around us as “other” instead of part of our community, the less able to we are to band together to form an effective threat to the ruling class.

I think your assumption that personal gain being the main driving force behind everyone’s behavior is flawed. That may be true of humanity in general, but it is not true of a great many individual humans. Mental health is a multi-axis spectrum and very few of us are right in the center. There are many factors that can push people to do things against their best interests.

That’s a very good list. I just threw out the first couple that came to mind, but it is worth calling out the organizations that are still trying to do real journalism.

I give small sustaining donations to NPR, ProPublica, and The Guardian. I hope to add a few more when I can.

NPR and the BBC still aren’t doing that.

Lots of little tools. Various kinds of pliers, drivers, cutters, magnifiers, lights, and a couple of marlin spikes for good measure. Also, a ruler, a tape measure, and a caliper, for even better measure.

I don’t think that acting like third-rate Republicans is going to help us beat the Republicans.

This is both hysterical and terrifying. Congratulations.

The Democratic Party desperately needs to be disrupted. Their social agenda is generally decent, but they don’t seem willing to really push for it. Their economic agenda has mutated to where they support the oligarchs over the workers every time. They are still a lot better than the Republicans, when that’s the only choice, but we deserve better choices. And we can have them. Hogg is not only doing the right thing for the general public, he is also doing the right thing for the Democratic Party. And by that I mean the Party, not the people running the Party.

The world needs fewer cynics and more skeptics.

Don’t threaten me with a good time.

If there were any trust in the DNC to preserve, this would be a different discussion. They look after the interests of Democratic incumbents, not Democratic voters. Hogg is doing the right thing and I hope he succeeds.

I am American and I would support a ban on American social media in my country.