Best of Unstuck

BestOf · October 17, 2019, 7:04pm

With as many active threads and posts as we have here some are bound to get lost in the shuffle, and one today was so good that @eyebooger suggested compiling the best posts into a thread, so I started this account to do just that.

To tag a post you think is deserving of being highlighted, just reply to it with “@BestOf”.

You can also quote the post as a reply to the thread if you don’t want to blow up people’s notifications.

Depending on how many posts end up getting tagged, this will either be a weekly or monthly thing where I’ll collect all the best posts and post them in this thread. To start things off I’m going to wait until October 31 to make the first compilation post, so feel free to go back and tag any that you think may have been overlooked by the community. Any forum can have a great post so don’t feel limited to just Politics.

spidercrab · October 17, 2019, 8:04pm

I am clearly a moron, but I can’t find a link to the actual post that prompted this.

BestOf · October 17, 2019, 8:10pm

You’re not a moron, I am because I was saving it for the first big update but you’re right, it should be in here, so here it is:

Who will run in 2020?

The economics on the question of public option vs true single payer are not complicated. For profit healthcare has looted and pillaged this country at least since WW2. We spend 6% more of GDP on healthcare than the next developed world competitor, and that’s worse than it sounds like because in real terms our GDP is significantly larger.

That 6% goes a lot of places, but ultimately it’s pure rent seeking and buys us a system with worse results than the rest of the world gets. We are doing absurd amounts of unnecessary medical work while simultaneously not doing huge amounts of massively +EV medical work because of insurance coverage… because the unnecessary puts money in the pockets of the rent seekers.

This is the big economic issue of our time. That money could be used to improve our schools, rebuild our infrastructure, do massively more basic research (including drug research into… cures. Something drug companies aren’t generally too keen on because the ROI isn’t as good as having a pill you need to take for the rest of your life), and generally make life better for everyone.

People ask how we’re going to pay for stuff. Reclaiming the 6% of GDP we’re wasting would be a damn good start. If you claim you’re a liberal/progressive/sensible person and think that we need to keep for profit healthcare you’re kidding yourself.

This issue is more important than any of the other issues (except maybe climate change) combined. It helps drive every bad thing in our country. It matters more than LGBTrights, racial justice, or making the tax code more progressive… because getting raped by healthcare costs is having a bigger impact on LGBT Americans, POC Americans, and poor Americans than literally anything else. It’s not just the fact that they are disproportionately affected by the terrible quality of our healthcare system, it’s that the 6% we are wasting could be spent on literally anything else.

So yeah Pete is a complete piece of shit. So is Joe Biden. So is Amy Klobuchar. Their stand on that stage at the 4th debate taking shots at M4A for the benefit of their own personal careers is literal proof that they are selfish assholes who don’t deserve to be elected dog catcher. Really any Democrat who took health lobby money to fight against public healthcare in this country falls into the same category. I know it’s a lot of names and includes pretty much the entire GOP. I could forgive some of these people, but if there was an option to have them all drummed out of public life with a snap of my fingers they’d be gone in 5 seconds or less.

This probably seems extreme and I’m sure skydiver is going to be really mad at me about it. I don’t particularly care. This is the issue I care the most about because it’s the biggest issue full stop. If our next president got nothing at all done but M4A they’d be the best president of this century probably through 2100.

I don’t care even a little bit how many eggs they have to break to get that done. And I don’t give even a microscopic amount of shit about the mostly administrative employees who will lose their jobs as a result of M4A. They need to find new jobs for the good of the country.

This issue is very black and white and very big. It is causing an unbelievable amount of human suffering when you zoom all the way out and look at the real impacts of both getting worse results in one of largest countries in the world’s health system + the loss of 6% of GDP in the supposedly wealthiest country in the world. It’s just bigger than any individual person. This thing is macro important and the only reason it didn’t get done in the 50’s, 70’s, 90’s, or 2000’s is just corruption plain and simple.

As to the incrementalist approach… we haven’t beat the healthcare lobby once yet. Even though we’ve tried god knows how many times. So let’s not pretend like planning on beating them more than once is a viable strategy. If we let them live they will do everything they can to weaken the healthcare system for their own profit until we are right back where we are today. This thing needs to be uprooted, burned, and completely replaced. We can’t keep any aspect of the current system because the current system is a cancerous tumor on our nation. You don’t keep pieces of tumor so that they can regrow. You cut them out completely.

Just about the only good news about the current system is that, like a tumor, it is starting to kill its host. Everyone can see it and everyone wants something done about it. If we fix it partially and push it back below the water line we are making a devils bargain that allows it to keep feeding on us to 50-75% of the current extent, and guarantee that our children/grandchildren will be facing an identical situation to the one we face today. That option is literally worse than doing nothing. At least the status quo is obviously terrible and is generating political will in favor of really changing it. We need to take this pain until it becomes so excruciating that we can justify doing the right thing. We do not need to remove 50% of the tumor so that we can be more comfortable while it regrows so that we can move on to smaller/easier things.

eyebooger · October 17, 2019, 9:33pm

I’m not the biggest fan of that for two reasons:

Some stuff that gets 10+ likes are jokes, which imo do not belong in the same category as the boredsocial post that prompted this thread
There might be an outstanding post in a low traffic thread that would go under the radar.

LouisCyphre · October 17, 2019, 11:52pm

The existence of such a plugin does not preclude anyone else from nominating that post for the BestOf thread.

6ix · October 21, 2019, 2:58am

Lol this proves my conjecture that Nobody Actually Reads The Posts. This is BoredSocial’s flashpoint and he’s made this same venting soapbox scream from the rooftops post at least a baker’s dozen times. So, great, finally people read it, it IS good.

tabbaker · October 21, 2019, 4:20am

Why can’t jokes be posted here?

RiskyFlush · October 21, 2019, 4:39am

What about outstanding jokes, boogie. When will this radical prejudice against the eighth estate stop?

BestOf · October 24, 2019, 9:17pm

Quick week 1 check in

I think it’s fine if jokes are included in this, but

This was kind of the point of the thread: highlighting posts that are very good but are made in threads that not everyone is active in.

With that said, so far I’ve received a total of…
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zero recommendations

hokie · November 8, 2019, 7:08pm

Bump.

Was traveling for the last couple weeks and was hoping for a treasure trove of awesome posts I could skim through here to catch up. Womp womp.

BestOf · November 8, 2019, 7:39pm

Thanks for the bump! Since my last post, I’ve received
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one recommendation!

Here it is:

I do have this tip for skimming threads and only seeing well liked posts for you:

RiskyFlush · November 8, 2019, 8:20pm

This is easily the best satire we could hope for

RiskyFlush · November 8, 2019, 8:22pm

LOL one of my most liked posts since Oct 1 is me bitching about everyone talking about Bill Gates in the Trump thread AS THOSE SAME POSTERS CONTINUE TO TALK ABOUT GATES

BestOf · November 22, 2019, 3:11pm

We’ve had quite a few submissions so let’s get to them. JT already posted his but I’ll post it again anyway:

https://unstuckpolitics.com/t/defend-billionaires-like-bill-gates-and-offend-centrist-whiners-who-love-money/588/3

That last one really needs to have the gif embedded so here’s the quoted post:

RiskyFlush · November 22, 2019, 3:57pm

Haha happy to have made teh cut

RiskyFlush · November 22, 2019, 10:18pm

King Trumpo beat them all tho

Wizards.gif

TheDuker · November 22, 2019, 11:01pm

Not on list for some reason. System obviously biased against TheDuker. #RIGGED

tabbaker · November 24, 2019, 4:24am

gg rigging the stats for himself

BestOf · December 6, 2019, 6:12pm

We’ve had a lot of submissions, so thanks to those tagging posts.
Still trying to figure out the best way to make everything readable ITT, bear with me.

ITV: Impeachment Television

ITV: Impeachment Television

So what exactly are the Dems supposed to do? It’s been said numerous times that impeachment is a political process not a criminal process.

For starters, if the roles were reversed, the GOP would be blanketing the airwaves with pro impeachment ads. Like where the fuck is Tom Steyer now? #NeedToImpeach

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what comes next. I thought about making a new thread, even. But like he’s going to be impeached, then he’s almost certainly going to be acquitted in the Senate in like February. This gives him the total green light to do anything he wants in the 2020 election with zero ramifications until 2021, and if he wins zero ramifications until 2025. We all know what that means.

So we’re about to enter this new phase of just all out political war. The Dem nominee WILL be investigated by the DOJ. The president WILL use the office to pressure foreign countries to investigate the Dem nominee. The president WILL try to get foreign countries to hack for him, to cut deals to help him, etc, etc. Money WILL be funneled from Russia, Saudi Arabia and Israel to the Trump campaign. Facts will be totally disregarded. The amount of mud that is flying from the right will be orders of magnitude more than we’ve ever seen.

So what should the Dems do and what will the Dems do? There’s no way they do what they should do, imo, which is to match the fervor and intensity but do so legally. They should already be preparing now, and they’re not. They should be going for the transcripts of every call with MBS, Netanyahu, Putin, etc. They should be going through the courts now to enforce subpoenas so that maybe it plays out in time to have major public testimony about various misdeeds in June through November of 2020. They should be lining this stuff up now. Make sure the headlines are not like, “DOJ Investigates Biden/Sanders/Warren/Pete for _____________.” Make sure the headlines are about explosive testimony that’s damning for Trump. You have to win that battle, or the Comey letter is going to look like child’s play.

What else should they be doing? They should be making sure Trump is charged by NY and other states shortly after he’s acquitted in the Senate. Is he indictable? Well we should sure as shit find out, let’s make SCOTUS rule on that in 2020. Why wait? Is there any doubt the GOP would have charged Obama in like Alabama for some state crime if they had the chance???

You need the shit you’re slinging back at him to be a level more serious than the shit he’s slinging at you. If it’s an indictment in a court of law, hey, that’s not partisan politics that’s a GRAND JURY OF HIS PEERS. It’s a nice bonus that it’s ACTUALLY in the pursuit of justice as well. That it’s all legal and above board.

Meanwhile, as you keep turning the screws on him, you increase the number of unforced errors he’s going to make. All of this should be going on while the nominee totally ignores it and hammers HEALTHCARE AND JOBS AND HEALTHCARE AND JOBS AND MONEY AND JOBS AND HEALTHCARE AND MONEY AND HOPE AND YES WE CAN AND LIFE IS GOING TO BE SO GOOD FOR YOU WHEN I WIN.

Let House Oversight, Intel and Judiciary go in on him. And, while we’re at it, clear those committees of anyone who isn’t up to the task and load them up with total bulldogs who do not have future presidential ambitions. I want Maxine Waters chairing some of these hearings, so move her over or find a way to put them in Financial Services. In fact, change the house rules to bring in lawyers to do the questioning and bring in the best, most cunning, most assholic lawyer possible. Or let Robert de Niro do it, that’d be fun. This is fucking political war, democracy hangs in the balance.

On 11/4/20, there should be no dry powder anywhere within a mile of these Democratic investigations. Fire it all.

And obviously there should be targeted ad campaigns to suppress Republican turnout. There should be Super PACS that are not at all connected to the candidate that are being run by people like Tom Steyer that are running ads painting Trump as an out of touch scummy elitist who’s scamming the good Christian folks of God’s country. Has he paid for abortions for his mistresses? Who can be sure? Many people are saying it! Let’s dredge up some of the disparaging shit he’s said about Pence that ties into religion. You think Obama’s line about clinging to guns and Bibles was bad? What about this other shit Trump said?

But I have a feeling the Dems are about to walk into a fight like this…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCWjo1ymhGs

Expecting to play thumb war. One, two, three, four I declare a… Sorry, my dude, you just got hit in the face with a trident. Why’d you bring nothing more dangerous than opposable thumbs to a street fight with tridents and swords?

Source

Fall LC thread

Fall LC thread

Look, I am not so hot take that I don’t understand differences in passed down beliefs steeped in organization, tradition and culture vs a relatively new dumb ass theory. That said, it is hand in fucking hand. The rejection of science in order to protect religious beliefs is partly what fuels this phenomenon. If you are going to reject evolution you can just as easily reject the evidence that the world is not flat.

The percentage of people who believe in evolution for valid scientific reasons is vanishingly small. A lot of intelligent-design type arguments against evolution are basically sound arguments that just happen to be wrong due to the mindboggling fact that the earth has been in existence for billions of years, which is nuts.

Evolution is even a bad example, because the theory itself is basically plausible. Think about what well-informed people believe about cosmology, which is broadly speaking this:

The universe is extremely old (OK!)

The universe didn’t always exist, and it started out smaller than a single atom. (Wait, what?)

Virtually instantaneously (i.e., expansion time: human lifespan << human lifespan : total age of the universe), the universe expanded to something close to its current size due to something called an inflation field (Don’t ask what an inflation field is, because no one has any idea)

After that, the universe evolved according to the normal physical laws we see on earth, although the scales are very different. (Whew, glad that weird shit is behind us)

Except also, the only kind of matter we have any direct experience of is basically insignificant, and a solid majority of the stuff in the universe is invisible fairy dust that no one has ever seen or has convincingly explained the nature of. (…)

Also, there is a mysterious energy that permeates the universe that makes gravity work backwards for no known reason. (You’re the guys who say that flat-earth makes no sense?)

Again, I’m not saying that fairy-dust theory is false, it’s apparently true (or true-ish, or a stand-in for the truth). The point is that virtually everyone who believes this crazy shit doesn’t believe it for well-justified empirical reasons. The explanation for inflation has to do with a mathematical property called “anisotropy” that can be sussed out only through an exhaustingly precise examination of the static you see when you tune an old-fashioned radio or television to a dead channel. (<-- This is precisely true!)

What actually happens is that people’s empirical beliefs are obtained, in almost all cases, by ingesting the pronouncements of authoritative figures. There are many excellent reasons why science guys are a much better source to obtain scientific beliefs from than the Pope, but it’s a serious error to assume that a person’s choice of epistemic authority figure tells you much about that person’s character. For the most part, people just follow the authority figures that their social context tells them to follow. The only people you can really get some information about is people who were born into one social context but chose to adopt the epistemology of another–people who deconverted from a serious religious sect (not Episcopalianism) or joined a cult.

Flat-earthers are remarkable not because their beliefs are weird (the earth does look flat!), but because they are unsanctioned. The strangeness isn’t what they believe, it’s that they came to believe something that is unsanctioned by all elements of society.

Source

And here’s the most liked posts since the last update:
https://unstuckpolitics.com/search?q=in%3A%20likes%20after%3A2019-11-22%20order%3Alikes

BestOf · December 20, 2019, 8:14pm

Another fortnight gone, time for another Best of Unstuck update.

Our first multiple posts nomination

Fall LC thread

Fall LC thread

Maybe, but if your theoretical is only theoretical, is it really the model of mental health? I have yet to meet a person who is both sophisticated and impervious to the perception of others. We can perhaps wax poetic about how great it would be to be so, but I am unconvinced it is attainable. I would argue instead that mindfulness, along the lines of "I am aware of my feelings of feeling judged, and those feelings are negative. There are things I could have done better (x, y, and z), but on balance, I have achieved well, notably (a, b, and c). "

Fall LC thread

Re the pyramid, I think anything ordered around “needs” is essentially bullshit, because humans create more “needs” whenever their current ones are satisfied; “needs” are inherently an egotistical way of approaching one’s place in the world. A less egotistical way is approaching the world in terms of ways of interacting with it, there are any number of ways you can break that down, but one I like is Emily Esfahani Smith’s “Four Pillars of Meaning”:

Smith organizes her research into four pillars of meaning:

1) A Sense of Belonging , meaning relationships “where you really feel like you matter to others and are valued by them, and where you in turn treat others like they matter and are valued.”

2) Purpose , or “having something worthwhile to do with your time,” says Smith. “It’s this pursuit that organizes your life and involves making a contribution to others.” Smith writes and speaks about the best ways we can find purpose in our own lives. This includes locating our strengths and talents, what our unique perspective on the world is, and bringing that all together to give back.

3) Transcendence , “those moments where you’re basically lifted above the hustle and bustle of daily life and you feel your sense of self fade away.” Transcendence, for a lot of people, is part of a religious pursuit, experienced through meditation, prayer, and other expressions of faith. But you can also experience it in nature, or at work, explains Smith.

4) Storytelling , the final pillar “surprised me in a lot of ways,” Smith says. “Storytelling is really about the story that you tell yourself about your life, about how you became you. It’s your personal myth.”

Note that, aside from perhaps the fourth one, these are not “what do I need to extract from the world” but rather “what are the modes in which I need to interact with the world”. Ideally you want something to put in all the columns here, but you need at least one to keep you going.

Fall LC thread

One of the breakthroughs I had in the treatment of my depression was realizing that we aren’t supposed to be happy and most of the things I thought I needed/desired (which in turn drove my feelings of failure/worthlessness that were central to my depression) were created by the external world, they didn’t originate as part of some actual need or desire, rather they were there because that’s what the world I grew up in and interacted with told me I need/desire. Seems silly/obvious in retrospect, but it was a big deal for me at the time.

original post

And finally, the most liked posts since the last update.