HelixDab2

If the unconscious mind is making the decisions prior to cognition about the thing, how could our will alone affect it? It seems more likely that things outside of our direct control are changing how we are acting, and then the conscious part of ourselves creates the reason that we acted in a specific way.

This is both true, and not entirely accurate.

Israel spends something like $24 on their defense. The $3B that the the US gives them (and it's $3B, not $4B, based on what I can find) is largely in the form of military materials: ammunition, bombs, air defense systems, etc. So what we give them is about 20% of their total defense spend, and yeah, that's a lot.

But the flip side of that is that American workers in American factories are the ones building the bombs, missiles defense systems, making the bullets, etc.; the money that the gov't gives Israel ends up creating a benefit for workers in the form of work that wouldn't otherwise exist. I'd have to see a real economic analysis, but this might be a case of each dollar that the gov't spends creating more than a dollar of effect. (And yeah, I know that a lot of that effect is going to e.g. Raytheon shareholders rather than line workers. But still.)

BUT

The fact that we see an economic benefit in terms of jobs and growth by giving Israel aid doesn't mean we should. Because we're directly funding the genocide of the Palestinians.

No, he paid $200,000 for that piece of shit. Right now a new one should be about $70k, which is still $70k for a turd floating in a punch bowl, but is also $130,000 less than what he paid.

No. Last I knew, PET (?) scans appear to indicate that decisions are reached by your unconscious mind before they're made by your conscious mind; the implication is that what you believe is you making a choice is actually you rationalizing a choice that's been made through processes that you can't directly see or affect. IF that's correct, then people are quite deterministic, as long as you know all of the inputs.

But on a practical, day-to-day basis, calling it 'free will' is a convenient fiction or shorthand. While free will may not exist, we largely believe that it does, and our perception of that in turn shapes our perception of reality. So it ends up not really mattering, strictly speaking.

First: I gave you numbers for the US, so you're pivoting to the UK in order to avoid addressing the salient point. But okay, here are some UK numbers. The numbers weren't great to start, and they've been getting worse; people in the UK may be okay with allowing adults to get gender-affirming care, but they're not okay with the NHS paying for it, and they broadly opposed gender-affirming care for minors. And paying for your own health care in the UK ain't exactly cheap.

If the plurality of people are broadly unsupportive of transgender equality (it's not a strict majority because there is a percentage of people that don't have an opinion), then the MPs that voted against transgender equality were doing what their constituents wanted.

If you have hard data showing that this the polling on this is incorrect, now is a great time to present it.

And yes, all of the scientific data that's credible demonstrates that trans people fare better with social acceptance, with access to gender-affirming care, when they aren't discriminated against. But that doesn't significantly sway public opinion on the matter. The majority of people that have an opinion on the matter as simply wrong.

Meh.

IMO, the problem is that Dems aren't focusing on the economy in the correct way. Yeah, Biden did some good things. But you've still got massive wealth inequality, high rents and home prices, venture capital firms buying up small companies and jacking prices way the fuck up, executives raking in huge profits and salaries while laying off workers, etc. Dems keep saying, "the economy is great!" while working class people--the vast middle class in the US, which includes mid-level white collar jobs--are feeling like they're working hard for less. Ever since the crash in '08, jobs have been less stable, and people have been turning to gig work to make ends meet, or to have anything extra in their budgets. Sanders is the only left-leaning politician that's really banging on that drum.

Dems used to be out there running for good jobs for hard working people, work with dignity that you could live on. But they've been ignoring their roots for the last 40 years, and have been bought and sold by corporate America. The liberlization/globalization of the economy [EDIT] has largely been a disaster for working-class people, as they've been forced to compete against lower-wage workers, while the capitalist class gets even larger profits. (OOH, the liberalization of America's trade policies has resulted in millions of people outside of the US being able to live in something other than grinding, abject poverty.)

In addition to that, Biden's debate performance was a fucking disaster, and made it very, very clear to everyone that he was absolutely not fit to be president. Harris should have put some distance between herself and Biden, but she couldn't, or wouldn't; she was suggesting that we continue the same policies that are squeezing the working class, rather than calling for systemic reform.

Meanwhile, Trump was promising that he'd make foreign companies pay, and that he'd bring good jobs back. If you're a low-information voter that doesn't understand how tariffs work, and don't think about the logistics of bringing all the manufacturing back, then this sound great.

Meanwhile, you've got the whole right wing media machine telling people--mostly men--that they're right to feel screwed. And yeah, they are. It's just that it's not 'libs', women, typical immigrants, etc.; it's corporate profiteering, trade globalization, the loss of power from unions, importing highly-skilled labor to displace higher-paid American workers (e.g., H1-B abuse), outsourcing everything, etc.

If Dems want to win, they need to get serious about good jobs that pay a living wage for middle America, putting a choke-chain on corporate profiteering, and rebuilding the power of labor.

Okay, people in the US generally didn't though. How is the information going to get to them, when mail took months, phone calls were not realistically possible, and telegraphs were incredibly expensive? Unless it's getting reported by the major news outlets, the majority of people in the US simply didn't have access to that information. Given the propaganda that was coming from both sides at the time, reports might not have even been very believable to the average citizen.

Yeah, no, it's not. Multiple polls, from multiple different polling firms, shows that people broadly oppose things like allowing minors to have gender-affirming care, or allowing equal participation in gendered sports (e.g., having transwomen compete in women's divisions). It doesn't matter what the political leanings of the polling firm are. This is why Republican attacks on Dems regarding trans rights were so effective in the election. It's irrelevant that Dems are on the morally right side, because the majority supports the immoral position. Here's one source for you; raw data is here.

Under a direct democracy, transgender people would absolutely lose rights in the states that now protect them. 40 years ago gay people would have had it even worse under a direct democracy.

Here's a thread on Reddit that mentions Tarot; sounds like YouTube might be feeding you bands from Tasmania. Tarot doesn't appear to be Nazi shit. I'm not finding much of anything solid about Gloomy Reflections.

I'm more of an ð-head.

Generally okay, but they shouldn't necessarily do the will of the people, when the will of the people is wrong. (Which is, BTW, an objectively slippery slope as well.) We can look at history and see that Bernie Sanders in the US has consistently been working for the LGBTQ+ people to have the same rights as cis- and het- people, even when it was wildly, deeply unpopular. (Which I'm old enough to remember; there used to be strong public sentiment against allowing people that were LGBTQ+ to be teachers.)

A good leader, IMO, is someone that is intellectually curious and honest, willing to change their beliefs when given new information, is able to incorporate new information appropriately into their worldview, and knows people that has the expertise they lack in order to get good direction. E.g., I don't expect all leaders to be experts in every bit of policy, but I do expect them to find people that understand the things being legislated, and can evaluate options as objectively as is reasonably possible.

But.

No system is infallible. Every system can be broken and abused, or function outside the intended parameters. The goal, IMO, should be to create systems that are highly resistant to being broken or abused, while still trying to serve the people as a whole effectively.

That's an incredibly stupid take, esp. since RIGHT FUCKING NOW the majority of people in the US and UK are opposed to transgender people having equal rights, and it wasn't until less than 10 years ago that the majority thought that gay people should have the right to marry the person they chose. If you polled in Sweden, Denmark, et al., you'd probably find that the majority of people are opposed to Muslims immigrating to their country as well.

The tyranny of the majority is absolutely alive and well; what you're talking about is a utopia, which is literally 'no place'.