Crazy Year

Oh, okay. It’s Crazy Year in the US, again. Happens every four years. Probably something to do with the extra day, or something.

Some thoughts for Crazy Year:

1. It doesn’t make sense to make abstract arguments about people you have no personal experience with, as a vast generality to justify systems you’re proposing imposing on a whole country.

2. There are a lot of things that sound true, but aren’t actually facts.

3. Even if something is true, that doesn’t mean it’s important.

4. There are people with billions or trillions of dollars on the line in political decisions in the USA. If you think they won’t try everything in their power to deceive or manipulate you in order to be voted into power (or have their shills voted into power), then you’re naive.

5. When people ask, “But how/why is [some political thing] different in the US?” the first thing you think of should be point #4 above.

6. There are more than two sides to almost everything. In some cases, there are infinite “sides” to an argument. When somebody forces you to pick between two sides, it’s because they want to force you into picking one of those two choices and not any of the other choices. It is a method of manipulating you.

7. When somebody uses their power and platform to demean or attack somebody else, and the person being attacked isn’t an actual criminal, that’s an act of hatred. It’s just a mechanism of manipulating you. They are using it because it showed up in marketing surveys as a successful marketing method for the demographic they were trying to reach. But if you’re a person who values peace and opposes hatred, it would be hypocritical to support politicians who vigorously attack their fellow human beings.