Obviously, the Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Mainly movies for me because I haven't read them. Extended editions, obviously.

But also, I adore the mass effect trilogy. Yeah, the rpg elements get gradually watered down, and the third ones ending isn't the best, but it's still an absolutely amazing Trilogy that I replay yearly. And it all came out in 5 years! Nowadays, single games have 5 years of dev time, at least. In my eyes, it's as perfect as it can be....Once it's been modded a bit.

Real leftists understand the principles of harm reduction. Voting for Harris, as voting for Biden would have done, has the outcome of reducing harm compared to trump winning. Sure, there will still be harm, but it'll be less, and that's incredibly important. It's basically the same foundation behind how we need to help drug addiction. Although Harris will likely cause even less harm than Biden.

Chances are that the "leftists" arguing for the purity test of Harris are people who aren't truly at risk in this election. They won't have their basic human rights torn apart if trump wins. They're leftists in name only.

Fuck the New York Times. They have routinely platformed bigots and claimed "well we have to represent both sides." My rights are not something to be debated. Harris has been far more supportive of trans folk than I realized, I don't think she would do this. But with this article and the insistent need for the New York Times to platform transphobic assholes, I think I'm finally going to talk my mother into getting rid of her subscription.

If anyone wants to learn more about Harris and her not so mixed background on trans rights, here's a great article my partner found recently and shared with me. I'm using a Tumblr link to get around the medium paywall and I don't know how to get around the paywall otherwise. Here's that direct medium link if anyone can get around it.

Yes, because it is "quiet" when you feature your hatred of trans people in multiple speeches at your national convention.

They will take away our care, they claim it's about kids, but its not. They just don't think we should be allowed to exist at all.

Well, this past weekend, he talked as if it was his last show, that they were "gonna put the padlocks on the building and close us down" and that he knew they were going to do that because his powers told him so, powers from God. They even did a greatest hits with guests like Roger stone, Steve bannon, and Nick Fuentes and best of all, Flat Earth Dave (not really best of all but it was a hell of a segment). They also had actual clips of past times Alex has been, well, Alex. He also pretty clearly got drunk during the show. But this isn't the end for him. He'll just go work for his dad doing the exact same thing. As Alex has frequently said, his dad is basically his only sponsor now. So whatever happens to infowars, this isn't the end of Alex Jones. Even if it should be.

"Geez, they're not snipers! They're just using the sniper scope as a telescope! They're not for use as actual snipers! We just gotta use them to look at the evil protestors!""

The IDF: "Oh no! They're reading! Only Hamas reads!"

Important note for those who dont want to read the actual article: the ban is essentially saying only some flags can be bought with federal funds and then hung up officially, and the pride flag isn't one of them. It also doesn't prohibit personal displays, so while they can't be on flag poles or bought with federal funds, they can still be displayed. Interestingly, the bill also bans the confederate flag. It's still just bigotry being forced by the GOP but there's always more context than a headline can provide.

Fucking Chemtrails. I have MS and one of the times I was in a physical rehabilitation clinic, relearning how to walk, I had a nurse who believed in chemtrails. She asked if I realized that my MS was caused by chemtrails. I was taken aback. I was actively playing civ with a friend who heard my side of the conversation. After she said that, I had a short conversation with her about how chemtrails aren't real. She said "Well I guess all those congressional hearings I watched were fake." To which I said that we are never going to agree on this and it's better to just stop talking so we don't have an argument. She basically agreed and thankfully she was gone by the time I needed my MS meds that evening. Chemtrails are BS and yet so many people believe they're real, even in professions that should understand they're not real, that it is genuinely depressing.

This article was written by Jeff Charles. A podcaster and political contributor who has appeared on fox News and Newsmax. He's also anti sensible gun control, transphobic and believes being trans is just ignoring biology, believes that schools should ban books that have "ideology" in them (anything queer), thinks kids are being indoctrinated just because it occasionally comes up that there are different ways of being a person, says he's an anarchist but will say libertarian sometimes to avoid "making people think he's crazy" but just doing that shows that he doesn't actually understand what anarchism is (or how crazy some libertarians are), and also talks about how the left wants Americans to be dependent on the state (all social programs). He's also on point for some things, specifically things that most libertarians ascribe to, like fuck cops and anti drug war. But like most libertarians, he only believes in his "do whatever you want and leave me alone" mentality when it lines up with his personal beliefs.

I don't disagree that there are black voters who are frustrated with the dems, but this is not a very good article and is written by an ass who has to push the idea so he can continue to be brought onto Fox News and Newsmax to talk about it and so his site gets new subscribers. Subscribers that have to pay 50 bucks a year for his premium content. Which I'm honestly surprised doesn't cost more. He's also partnered with Doni Anthony who has his own site/substack, which when you're on the landing page, the second article is, well, it requires subscribing and I'm not gonna do that. But it's about a bill called the Inclusive Democracy Act of 2023 which is about restoring voting rights to people with criminal records/felonies who have done their time, the article is about the "hidden" reason the democrats support the bill, which is a far right conspiracy that average voters would never vote for a democrat so they have to make new voters to be able to win. It's all baseless conspiracy stuff and is the same thought process for the "illegal immigrants voting" conspiracy.

The point is that an article is only as reliable as the author is, and this author is just crap.

Highly unlikely this is what the civil war would be like. It's not a state v state thing necessarily although that might be a small part of it. In the first civil war, the south unified and its people largely supported the war, except their slaves. It's unlikely something like that will happen again. It's not impossible but unlikely.

What is much more likely is rural v city. Even in red states, cities are blue and will often vote for blue policies. Rural areas are where things get dicey. They've been largely left behind by the surge in industry and general expansion of the capitalist economy we currently have (they've had a lot of businesses (including grocery stores) close because more people are leaving, and their rural towns are frequently having their hospitals close leaving large swaths of areas where the nearest hospital is an hour away). As such, they've got a grudge against the cities. What's likely to happen is rural counties and their local governments trying to cut off their food supply, starving the cities to win the battle. There's tons more possibilities, but this one I think is the one that's got the highest likelihood.

Another possibility that is scary, but is highly dependent on the party of the people in power, is the government using their power to actually strike the cities, like in Syria where Assad bombed and used chemical weapons on his own people. Syria is actually a pretty good example of what more modern civil wars are like, or can be like. Governments v rebels and militias, and cities v rural (although there's much less rural land in Syria).

If you're interested, the podcast It Could Happen Here has a great first season where they go over possible disasters including a civil war and a pandemic (it was actually made in 2019 so before covid). It's really helpful and can teach a lot, especially for an outsider from across the pond. It also does a lot better job giving an explanation and actual sources.

Hope this helps since it didn't seem like you were getting a real answer.

I have a step grandfather who is super far right but insists he’s a democrat and that he’s the only true democrat in the family since he was elected as a democrat judge in a rather conservative area in Ohio in the 80s or 90s. He has also said the only thing he can do to save the country is to vote for crazy fascist republicans. Insists he knows how to run a government better than everyone in the family as well all because he was a judge.

One of my favorite thing to do with him is talk about something that impacts me and not tell him that it impacts me directly until after he’s been super shitty about it. Once I say it impacts me he then backtracks and tries to say that he still fully believes in the things he believes in but that he didn’t mean me, he meant the other ones. That my situation was different for no reason. He’s a piece of shit who my family expects me to respect, but I have many times purposefully been disrespectful because someone like him deserves negative respect.