It’s not the best argument; Generic Democrat has no personal baggage. I’m in favor of finding a better nominee (maybe even partially due to your advocacy), but unfortunately we can’t run Generic Democrat.

Well, I don’t know that it’s even possible to force Biden out without his consent. Certainly, it would be prohibitively difficult and contentious. Still, “If the GOP isn’t doing it, why should we?” is a terrible argument, by any metric. The line of reasoning that says Biden should step aside, and support another nominee, looks like this:

• It looks increasingly like he’s going to lose.

• If he loses, the country will—based on available evidence—likely descend into a pure kleptocracy, with fascistic and theocratic tendencies.

• Based on his own statements, he doesn’t fully grasp, or properly weigh, the consequences of losing this election. He’ll feel fine about losing, as long as he does his best.

• Given the above, maybe we’d be better off with someone else.

I’ll stipulate that I was on the #binarychoice train myself until recently. The sad fact is, he’s just that bad. And it’s not too late to change course.

I’m sure that the mainstream coverage has been terrible—I avoid it these days for precisely that reason—but I don’t think switching candidates is guaranteed electoral suicide. Plenty of smart and reasonable people are looking at Biden’s performance—and his polling—and thinking we’d be better off with another nominee. Biden himself—setting aside the glaring problem of his advanced age and obviously reduced mental faculties—doesn’t seem to grasp the dire consequences of a potential loss, based on his post-debate statements.

At this point, I (and lots of other people who are neither stupid nor crypto-fascists) think we’d be better off with another candidate. 4 months is tons of time in today’s media environment.

Vichy Twitter

This is such an accurate description of X, thanks for that! W/r/t getting people off of corporate social media platforms, I think this is one area where celebrities could really do some good. The Fediverse isn’t on most peoples’ radars—and while there is a vague, burgeoning awareness that social media might be problematic, people are accustomed to their feeds, and frankly have more pressing things to worry about.

What’s more, even people who are acutely aware of the situation continue to use these platforms, because the artists/journalists/content creators and what-have-you that they follow are still on these platforms. I’ve seen a thousand comments to this effect here on Lemmy. I listen to a ton of podcasts, political and otherwise, and all the hosts are left of center to varying degrees. I’m constantly gritting my teeth when they talk about their instagram feeds, and ask me to follow them on Vichy twitter.

I understand that social media in general, and twitter in particular, has been a really useful tool for people to communicate with their audience, and build a following. I tell myself that it isn’t reasonable to expect all these people that I respect and listen to daily to hold themselves to a higher ethical standard, because it might shrink their audience, and thus threaten their livelihoods. We can’t expect the smaller fish to lead the way on this.

But, if someone could get a big name talking about this stuff, it could really make a difference. It’s just too easy to ignore right now.

Yeah, you’re right. I guess it’s just a matter of where one falls on the Kinsey scale. But again, that also undercuts the original analogy.

That’s totally fair; I was under no illusion that it was. That doesn’t make it a good analogy. Anyone who is active on social media and has an ounce of introspection would have reason to question whether or not they might fall somewhere on the autism spectrum. Indeed, in many online spaces, embracing non-neurotypical status is seen as positive, and participants have a social incentive to espouse autistic traits.

Whereas straight people (the group referred to by the analogy) do not, I believe (this is obviously just conjecture, and not at all scientific), generally have cause to question their sexuality, nor are they socially incentivized to do so, unless their peer group is unusually weighted toward non cis/het individuals.

I don’t think that’s a good analogy at all. Via the power of social media, we are all on the autism spectrum. Everyone, neurotypical or no, shares some traits that can be deemed autistic. There’s no particular metric or attribute you can point to that rules it out. Meanwhile, it’s pretty easy (in my experience) to figure out who you’re sexually attracted to. Nobody has to tell you.

You’ve articulated my concerns here better than I could have—thanks. I don’t know what’s to be done about it at this point.

I honestly don’t know who you think needs to hear this. Nobody wanted Biden in the first place. Everyone knows he’s too old. The people downvoting you probably did it because Biden and Trump are our only options in this election. Yeah, no shit he’s too old. What the fuck are we supposed to do about it now? Once he decided to run again, that was it. It would have been nice if there had been another primary, but nobody wants to challenge a sitting president in a primary, and historically it hasn’t gone well.

Ayy, I was up north in '03, but I ran some Sadr City patrols in '04. Vivid memories of watching Cheaper by the Dozen in full kit while we listened to the mortars walking in. And a complex ambush on the way back to BIAP. I was on a 240 in the second truck. There was some musical car horn that seemed to signal it—not La Cucaracha, but something like that; I think one of these days I’ll hear it again somewhere and have a legit ptsd flashback—and a fruit stand or something on the right exploded, and a car behind me somewhere as well, I believe. Then some dudes came out on a balcony behind and to the left and started licking rpgs at us. Good times. Csm got some shrapnel in his ass, which didn’t improve his temper, but at least we got a lot of jokes out of it.

I used to live in GA, and there was a one-way street that google maps was constantly telling me to turn the wrong direction onto. It really bugs me that I switched to Waze because it was better than google maps, then google just bought them. Long past time to bring antitrust suits against big tech. At least we have an FTC chair at the moment who’s trying to make some progress.