Well, she was primarily famous in the UK, for one, so I’d say it’s quite possible to not know who she is if you’re not from there or are not the kind of person to go out of your way to look for new music. I just tend to be a bit of an Anglophile when it comes to music, so I suspect that’s why I know and love her…

Yeah, SLS is a major gum irritant that seems to bother some people more than others. And it’s entirely useless, really. It only exists to generate lather to make people feel like their toothpaste is doing something more than it already is.

It’s the same in New Jersey, but it’s really hard to complain when New Jersey’s gas is consistently the cheapest around.

Considering the longevity genes in that family, I feel like all us adults are going to be dead before he reigns as king...heh.

Texas—and the entire South, for that matter—is more complicated. Prior to the Civil War, the Democratic Party was conservative while the Republican Party was more liberal (by 19th century standards, of course). During Reconstruction, though, Republicans became synonymous with “the North,” while Democrats were “the…

Oh, Democrats have been making this mistake over and over again. Kerry’s signature campaign strategy in 2004 was “I am not Bush,” while Hillary’s in 2016 was “I am not Trump.” Quite notably, it didn’t work either time.

It’s frankly time to end this game altogether, because gerrymandering just ensures that the entrenched party in power can wallow in stagnation and corruption. If you’re from Massachusetts, as your name implies, you’ve certainly witnessed some of that firsthand—even Democrats can go bad if they don’t face credible…

And so, out of fear, we do nothing, and I believe voters penalize us for that too. By contrast, the GOP has been doing downright terrifying things for years, taking on platform positions that appeal to their base while being described as “political poison” by pundits—and now they have the Presidency, Congress and…

There were no surprises, I guess. We’ve known for weeks that the GOP was going to force Gorsuch’s confirmation, we knew Democrats were going to filibuster, and we knew the GOP would use the “nuclear option” if they had to. Everything happened as expected, so I guess it’s not a priority.

This has really been the state of American foreign policy since Truman, though. Considering Trump’s rhetoric leading up to the election, I was wondering if he might be the president to break precedent, but now we know that he will continue it just like his predecessors. And we also know that Hillary Clinton would…

I feel like this happens altogether too often, not only from religious institutions that otherwise preach social justice—and Catholicism, in particular, has a long tradition of it, despite problems elsewhere—but also even otherwise pro-union, left-wing state or local governments who put up the biggest fight ever once…

My issue with that, though, is that while these goals may be a marginal improvement within the prism of American politics, we live in an incredibly global world, so a lot of people, particularly liberals who have a greater openness to the outside world, are very likely to say that the steps offered by the Democratic…

100% agreed. There’s a certain “joy” to Japanese video games and anime that is always missing from the West. That being said, I feel like the neither side does a particularly great job with live-action adaptations, even if it’s for very different reasons.

That’s really quite nuts, honestly, but that’s how the vaccine has been marketed. It’s insanity.

This seems to be a common theme in many countries, not just the U.S.—it’s often not covered for males, which is ridiculous, because not only are men a vector for HPV infection and cervical cancer in women, HPV can also cause penile and throat cancers (from oral sex) in men, not to mention anal cancers in both men and…

I think that focusing on Trump was one of her key tactics, though. By putting out a barrage of ads highlighting just how “awful” Trump was, Democrats thought they could win votes. John Kerry thought the same thing back in 2004 too, and it didn’t work either time.

I agree with all that, but I would also add that we need to do more in terms of “soft skills” with this part of the country. They don’t trust a lot of Democrats anymore, and they think that these “coastal elites” are either being condescending to them or talking past them, when what we really need to do is get back…

This is where campaigning/marketing comes into play. It was never seen as a high-enough priority from the Clinton campaign, so Middle America didn’t think she was sincere. Bernie ended up being seen as the champion of the working class, but he failed to do sufficient outreach with non-white voters, which, by…

I can’t speak to any exceptions, but the issue is usually that you need a passport to re-enter the U.S., not so much to necessarily leave it.

There’s distrust and skepticism, mind you, not to mention that powerful existing interests will resist any sort of change/new competition that may leave them less well off, and it doesn’t take much these days to unleash a fearmongering ad campaign to get the masses on board, even if it is against their interests.