Nevermind that the economy was better than it’s been in decades

Passports are needed to fly abroad regardless of the country, Canada included. Passport cards exist too, though, which aren’t useful for flying abroad, I believe, but can be used for land border crossings. However, if you’re just looking for an ID that conforms with REAL ID laws within the U.S. and domestic…

I have to love this quote:

It’s a very fascinating topic, that’s for sure, but I think it left out a very important influence: Catholicism. There was debate about it for centuries, but the Vatican started to believe in life at conception firmly around the 19th century, leaving no more room for debate.

To further your sidenote, it’s interesting how easily the “origin myth” in Genesis (a term which I don’t use with any particular hostility; every old culture has one) can be dissected. We’re supposed to believe that God created a chosen people who essentially existed at the beginning of time, but meanwhile we can,…

Oh, the Rust Belt isn’t much of a fan of the South/Sun Belt either. Before NAFTA, they were shutting down union factories in the North for cheap, non-union Southern shops.

I think you also tend to run into opposition from those who, say, make $15 an hour, which isn’t very much, and have bought into the idea that raising the minimum wage will just raise the price of everything, while their wages remain the same. A lot of these people—the “employed, but insecure”—went for Trump in this…

Oh, I know you’re not kidding. The problem is that Democrats have been going along with it, perhaps out of fear of offending the multimillionaires and billionaires in their donor base. They have not been taking this issue as seriously as a lot of their base would like them to.

Yup...people in the Rust Belt want the kind of jobs that pay $20-30/hr.+ again, not minimum wage retail service jobs. They’re not so attached to manufacturing or coal mining specifically as much as they are using these professions as a point of reference that they are familiar with. The real question we need to ask…

Ultimately, both Republicans and Democrats are responsible for NAFTA—the former negotiated it, while the latter agreed with it.

And the reason they won’t go this route is because it is far too peaceful and painless for their liking. Execution-zealous politicians won’t admit it directly, because that’s a one-way ticket to getting the Supreme Court to rule it all unconstitutional, but reading between the lines, they actually want executed…

Heh...you wouldn’t be the first to note that potential contradiction between Americans’ anti-monarchist views and the increasingly monarchical role of the presidency. The ancient Romans acted similarly, though; having deposed its monarchy, they created a republic only to have an “emperor”—very purposely not a…

Well, I think it’s an awful lot like how you described it. In the U.S., the President is both Head of State and Head of Government, so it’s a bit more difficult to imagine a scenario where they are separate roles. In the UK, the Monarch is the official Head of State, while the Prime Minister functions as the Head of…

I think being British royalty has been compared to being in a “glass cage”—a real cushy lifestyle, but your entire life is under a microscope, especially in a society where a good portion might take the role of the monarchy seriously while others are looking for excuses to abolish them. I imagine Monarchists are apt…

Yeah, I’m skeptical of both those languages, because it will not be fundamentally difficult to find native Spanish or Mandarin speakers in North America, due to immigration, and so a company who needs fluent Spanish or Mandarin speakers probably won’t have too much difficulty hiring someone native. They also don’t…

American prisons are about punishment and profit, and a “tough on crime” cultural mantra means it’s very easy to get the public to go along with the former, thus making it very easy to sneak in the latter.

I was thinking more about the prospect of impeaching Sessions, rather than Trump. I find myself imagining that they would find it easier to impeach a president rather than one of his lackeys, for whatever reason.

Impeachment is a partisan process. Since the GOP controls Congress, they will never remove one of their own. If Democrats regain control in 2018 (unlikely, due to our equally partisan state redistricting process), they could impeach him, but would likely hesitate out of fear of the GOP doing it to them in the future.

I get it, but apathy is the absolute worst response to disillusionment. The key is to organize activism and gradually force change through primary challenges and electing new politicians more amenable to your goals. That is how we emerged from the corrupt and inequitable Gilded Age of the late 19th century to the…

Frankly, yes, there has been, and a lot of that has been a result of the “culture wars” of the last 30 or so years. Both parties have been extremely comfortable using the filibuster, cranking it up a notch as they switch from the party in power to the party in opposition and vice versa. McConnell, in 2009, basically…