It has to say something about a political party that, after four years of complaining some of its members didn’t vote the last time, its answer is to basically run a very similar candidate to the last nominee, one who clearly doesn’t support the policies those members want, one who isn’t generating any excitement as…

I’d say it’s more complicated. FDR was basically a class traitor who also benefited from a stronger union movement, a positive outlook on the government’s role in people’s lives, and a more positive view of socialism and social democracy. Moderates and the right have had, what, sixty years of anti-New Deal, anti-social…

The incremental change argument and parallels to FDR’s policies are troubling because I think they ignore the elephant in the room, that they likely wouldn’t have been adopted, or adopted in the way they were when they were without the Great Depression. Republicans controlled the House and Senate from 1919 to 1931 and…

I think you misunderstood what I wrote. Biden would certainly do better than Trump when it comes to hiring someone like DeVos, because he likely wouldn’t. But you could say the same for Sanders, or Warren, or Bloomberg, or, very likely, even your local Democratic representative.

I agree. I don’t think it would’ve happened under a Sanders presidency either, but, to me, a leader with vision and aspirations is a more compelling proposition than one who says we can’t have that and simply promises to take the country back to October of 2016. Especially if the argument being made is that we need…

Bringing us to the status quo ante doesn’t solve anything if it’s the status quo ante that brought us Trump to begin with. This righting the ship narrative only works if you think Trump is a fluke and not a symptom.

Pretty low. This looks like the box design from the late 90s/early 00s. The cardboard was pretty strong, and they were better at keeping CDs in place than jewel cases.

Well, I disagree with your premise. I think you’re recalling the perceived regional divisions of 2008 in a way that isn’t reflective of reality, the desire for reform was certainly there. Moreover, there’s this perception that, were it not for “the politics”, more would have or could have been done, and I think that…

The indictment of Obama is that he ran promising structural change when the country was especially eager for it, and then, poof, he was pretty close to a Third Way Democrat. Maybe that can be explained away as an eagerness not to alienate more conservative members of his own party, but I think his unwillingness to…

I’ll have to check it out, thanks.

If games are art, we must treat them that way. ... The broadening of an audience means accounting for shifting tastes and sensibilities.

I can understand it in the sense that it’s kind of a cynical money grab designed in part to capitalize on that childhood and the nostalgia it entails.

You doing ok there buddy? Having a bad day? Hopefully your week will end well and you’ll have a chance to, you know, relax.

Eh, if repeat viewing was part of the scoring criteria end of year best lists and award shows would have very different entrants.

I don’t really see how that video displays a juvenile view of politics, care to expand? My read of it is that they were originally going for an ultra capitalist faction versus a socialist or communist one. As for saying things with his philosophies, I tend to think that Bioshock Infinite in particular is less about…

Power asymmetry isn’t static, yesterday’s oppressed can be today’s oppressors, there are certainly historical examples where authoritarianism took hold and massacres were perpetrated under the banner of equality and democracy. Even though Infinite is kind of notorious for previewed or otherwise mentioned content being…

That’s fine to believe, I suppose, but I don’t think it reflects broadly accepted thinking in any real regard, and I think it might even conflate concepts or get into semantic knots.

The money and resources were there. Eastern Europe had, at the end of the Cold War, pretty advanced heavy industry, advanced agriculture, a good amount of natural resources, and a very highly educated workforce. The shift towards economic inequality and, in some examples, plutocracy wasn’t a result of money or…

Which part of Eastern Europe? On the whole, the region has experienced a rise in economic inequality, reaching a level that even outpaces the rest of Europe, with the sole exception probably being the U.K., all while starting with a level of inequality lower than western counterparts. It also shifted so far to the…

The majority believed that it’s “unjustified or unduly burdensome” because court precedent requires that disclosures must remedy a harm that is potentially real and not hypothetical, which they believe the state legislature didn’t do. And even if the harm was real, the majority considered it a burden on protected…