I see you getting a lot of “well ackchyually” responses from Americans in denial, but this American agrees with you. They can split hairs about the election results, but the fact of the matter is 234 million eligible voters had an opportunity to vote against Trump and the majority of them didn’t do it. That is shameful. Every damn one of us should be ashamed of that.

I’m a determinist so, yeah, I agree, I don’t think you can change the future. But I don’t think it does any good to be depressed about it. We don’t know what the future’s going to be, but I don’t think it’s guaranteed to be a dystopian nightmare. I think there’s a good chance the future could be hard, but hard times can bring about a lot of important changes.

This country is an extremely dangerous combination of cruel and stupid.

My wife is doing her part to keep that demand up.

I don’t think you really understand what “woke” is. Being woke is about critical analysis of traditional, established power hierarchies. Hierarchies like white supremacy, patriarchy or class. Maybe some neoliberals, to their credit, want to abolish traditional racial and gender hierarchies, and that’s good, but they certainly do not want to abolish the hierarchy of rich over poor, or capital over labor.

Is it, though?

Neoliberalism isn’t everything I don’t like, but it is a big one.

Look, my point is that they have options. If legitimate criticism of the genocide being carried out by Jewish Zionists makes them uncomfortable, they do not have to stay here and listen to it. I’m not saying they can’t stay here, I’m not saying they should be expelled or forcibly deported, nor am I condoning or advocating for discrimination or harassment against Jewish people in general, I’m saying those Jewish people who are uncomfortable here, for whatever, reason do not have to stay here. No slippery slope or reading between the lines, that’s it.

Well, that’s why the state of Israel was formed, so Jews all over the world would have a place to go if they feel unsafe where they are. All the genocidal colonialism was for nothing if they’re not even going to use it for what it was intended for.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took to the United Nations General Assembly podium to accuse him of supporting Hamas and making Jewish New Yorkers feel unsafe

Those Jewish New Yorkers can always move Israel if their life is so bad here now.

Are we finally going to get some god damn answers?

But instead, we are simply very far behind on infrastructure and building.

We are.

We should be building

We should.

…dense housing, clean energy, transmission lines, etc…

I agree, but who’s going to initiate all of this development? I suppose the idea is that without the obstacle of unnecessary regulations, private capital will flood into these developments, but I don’t buy that regulation is what has been primarily holding private capital back. Investors will cut through any and all red tape if the potential for profit is high enough. Where’s the profit potential in building out electricity transmission infrastructure, for instance? Aren’t most infrastructure projects publicly directed and funded, anyway?

I just think people like Klein place far too much faith in the invisible hand of the free market.

to make up for decades of intentionally slowing down development, mainly intended to protect homes and communities that were already built.

Not to protect communities, to protect individual wealth. The vast majority of American households have the vast majority of their wealth in their home. It is by far their most valuable asset. For many Americans, it’s their retirement plan. For many others, it’s the only inheritance they have to pass on to their children. That’s why they vote for restrictive zoning laws, they’re trying to protect what relatively little wealth they’ve been able to accumulate in their life.

That’s ok, we just need to keep growing the pie. Forever. If we do that, eventually even the poorest will be living like the average millionaire today. At least I think that’s the theory those ‘Abundance’ people, like Ezra Klein, are pushing: just keep growing until we’ve converted so much of the Earth’s resources into profits for capital that there’s just so much god damned wealth that inequality no longer matters? I guess.

Not.

Democracy: Greek, dēmos krátos, ‘people’ ‘rule’ or rule of the people.

The people do not rule in the US so it’s not a democracy.

It’s hard to define what the US is. It has some democratic elements. The people are allowed to elect representatives, both at the state and Federal level, and many people are allowed to vote directly for or against certain measures through ballot initiatives at the state level, although this varies from state to state. However, our Federal representatives in the House each represent well over 700,000 people. That is a very large number of people, especially compared to most other democracies. And because we have a winner-take-all system, people who did not vote for the winning candidate may feel underrepresented or not represented at all.

I think the classification that best fits the US is Plutocracy: ploûtos krátos, ‘wealth’ ‘rule’ or rule of the wealthy. Not only do the wealthiest have a significant amount of money to invest in political causes, lobbying representatives and directly influencing elections, but they also often have significant private corporate ownership interests and control, giving them a great deal of power over the economy and access to critical resources. Even democratically elected representatives tend to be quite wealthy, or at least much wealthier than the average American voter. And even if they don’t start out much wealthier, they often end up much wealthier after their time in office.

I will vote for the people who represent me, and they are the people who believe that every human being deserves to have their material needs met.

Liberals only care about the rights of rich people. The right to their life, their liberty and all the property they can hoard. The rest of us have the right to be poor, the right to be hungry, the right to be sick, the right to be ignorant, the right to be homeless, the right to be destitute, the right to be exploited, the right to be misinformed, the right to be left behind, the right to suffer.

Under current policies, median projected global warming reaches around 2.6°C by 2100 (range 1.9–3.6°C).

This is what we need to focus on. What’s most likely based on where we are, and where we are likely to be in the near future, instead of some hypothetical scenario in which rapid, almost miraculous change happens for essentially no discernible reason.

Based on what is, instead of what could be, we see a projected range of between 1.9C and 3.6C. personally, I think we should be preparing for the upper end of that range, both because I think it’s generally best to prepare for the worst, but also because I wouldn’t be surprised if those projections ended up being somewhat conservative. We don’t want to prepare for 2C and get 4C, we want to prepare for 4C and hope for 3C. I would say hope for 2C, but, idk, I really think that ship has sailed.

Regardless, we need to be reducing GHG emissions as quickly as possible. The heating estimates are for mitigation and adaptation planning, but when it comes to GHG emissions reductions, we just need to be focused on cutting as much as possible as quickly as possible.

Where’s the rest of 'em?

Over 77 million Americans voted for this. They looked at Donald god damned Trump and said, “yeah, that’s my guy.” TWICE! Albeit it was non-consecutively, but I don’t know if that makes it better or worse.

We live in a shit hole country, y’all. Shit-hole.

I don’t want that change either, but I think the right kind of change is not only acceptable, it’s absolutely necessary. I don’t think liberals should be expected to embrace just any change - like change that would make things worse - but they should be open to positive changes, even if those changes seem relatively “radical.”