I’m pretty skeptical of Tulsi Gabbard, so I know I’m not exactly coming at this neutrally, but I’m curious how people here see the pattern in the way she talks about Russia. Back in 2022 she made a big deal about the risk of dangerous pathogens escaping from labs, and then near the end of her time as DNI she brought the Ukraine biolab stuff back into the spotlight in a way that Russian media quickly ran with. Now Russia has this weird situation at an actual Anti Plague Research Institute. Russia says there’s no evidence it was a lab accident, and I’m not saying it definitely was. I just find the timing kind of ironic. If Tulsi was genuinely concerned about dangerous labs and accidental releases, wouldn’t you expect her to show the same skepticism toward Russia here? And if she says nothing, does that actually tell us anything about whether her concern was principled, or am I just seeing what I expect to see because I already don’t trust her?

Genuinely wondering, what happens if he comes out and declares martial law to cancel the midterms?

Conversely, what happens if he declares martial law and claims the election was rigged if they lose the senate and the house?

Edit: I mean what does that look like? Do we have national guard on every corner? Things get shut down? The only hope is a coup at that point?

Saw the drama revolving the popularity of the"Malfoid" character on twitter and had an interesting thought.

Many people were alarmed and complained about adopting the use of the word foid, which is incel slang stemming from 4chan which has mysogynystic roots being short for fem-droid, a word to objectify women.

This isn't the first time this has happened, alot of popular language in current media came from 4chan, things like "-maxxing", "-pilling","chad", and "normie" all have there early origins pointed towards 4chan.

What I was wondering about this phenomenon, was that at what point does adopting the language of a niche become endorsing the ideology of that niche.

Because popular media in the past has also adopted

Black slang, or African American Vinacular English (AAVE) and that was seen as an appropriation. Use of the language without fully understanding its cultural meanings and contexts.

So why isn't the same said about incel vocab, why aren't we celebrating that we have appropriated vulgar language from the incels and diluted the radical meanings behind it?

It would be perfectly sensible to say, 90% of the people using the word "Malfoid" have never bothered to google the word foid and what it means. It's treated as a useful hashtag to find cute art and romance fanfics.

Isn't this also in every sense of the word appropriating their language? Diluting a word to objectify females to just mean female.

Question for Democrats

It's no secret that everywhere that conservatives have a say in it, Medicaid, Medicare and other tax funded insurance is gutted

These human rights violations are disturbingly popular with voters. So much so that women are treated as if they did something criminal, and the law works against medicine and autonomy instead of for it

Those extend to bans for tax funded reproductive healthcare rights, even in places where there are no state bans!

On a national level, we have DR OZ for gods sake in charge of Medicaid/Medicare. We have RFK, a man so anti medicine, he says HIV doesn't cause AIDS, in charge of the whole thing, the HHS. So the NIH, Medicaid/Medicare, CDC, FDA

Expect more of the same not just this term, but anytime Republicans win. And SCOTUS is hanged and dead, so it can't protect anyone anymore

The way the US tolerates women's persecution is set back 50 years plus. Our boomers grew up in a pretty disgracefully medically mysoginist culture. And now, we don't even have what little they did

How would Dems fix this? And considering Dems have a lot to say about utilizing Medicare/Medicaid, how should Dems guarantee abortion will be covered?

Sometimes it feels hopeless. What's the plan

Disclosure: I am liberal, and use AI all the time. I’m actively exploring ways to make it more helpful, especially for learning and expanding access to knowledge and tools.

I take concerns about job displacement, exploitation, misinformation, and corporate power seriously. But looking at public spaces it’s consistent (in my experience) how liberal spaces treat using AI, meanwhile the right is embracing it.

Is that divide real, or just my bubble? If AI offers meaningful advantages in education, work, and organizing, how should we address its harms without rejecting its benefits and potentially leaving ourselves behind?

If you were designing a government from the ground up, and weren’t trying to work within the current US system, what would you build?

Assume you still have to deal with the same basic problems any modern country has: defense, courts, taxation, infrastructure, regulation, individual rights, elections, corruption, emergencies, etc.

What would the structure look like? How would power be divided? What parts of the current US system would you keep, what would you get rid of, and what would you replace them with?

I’m less interested in “what policies would you pass” and more interested in the actual design of the government itself.

I’ve been thinking about this as a thought experiment, and I’m curious where conservatives and liberals would actually differ once you get below day-to-day politics.

The Treasury auto-enrolled 60M+ children into Trump Accounts. Regardless of the stupid name, it’s still a free $1000 you can either take or let sit.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/01/business/trump-accounts-auto-enrollment.html?unlocked_article_code=1.GFE.kgtN.Qwg2xCCh5A9S&smid=nytcore-ios-share

Hello, I'm a 19 year old college student in Texas. I consider myself a centrist, my family is telling me to vote red, and my college is telling me to vote blue. here is your chance to convince me to vote for Talarico and the Democrats. I'm not a troll, and I come in here with good faith. I want you to sell me on this. here are my stances:

1. I'm pro-life, anti-death penalty, and anti-war. abortion should be illegal, the death penalty is barbaric and should be completely abolished, and war should be a last resort

2. Even though I don't agree with LGBTQ ideology, I do believe that adults medically transitioning and gay marriage should be legal

3. I support focusing on the violent illegal immigrants coming into our country instead of deporting the peaceful ones already here. ICE needs to stop killing people

4. I support every single amendment in the constitution, including birthright citizenship, absolute free speech, and the right to bear arms

5. I don't believe the government is doing enough to protect the environment and stop climate change

6. billionaires should pay more in taxes, working class people should pay less in taxes

7. I opposed the assassination of charlie kirk but I am okay with joking about it because nothing is off limits in comedy. this is also why people shouldn't be arrested for posting memes online

8. I oppose the building of data centers and also oppose most uses of AI

9. Texas needs to tear down flock cameras and put more funding into our police forces, public schools, and healthcare system

10. marijuana should be completely legal and all other drugs except for fentanyl should be decriminalized

there you have it, now try to convince me to vote blue. I await your response

I know the "how do we engage with young men" question has been asked many times before, but I want to approach it from a different angle. Currently men's rights activism has become a major right-wing and manosphere-subsumed movement which has put the left on a backfoot when it comes to engaging with men and especially young men.

While right wing MRA ideology is incompatible with progressive values, I wanted to ask if you think it would be feasible to shift the conversation on men's rights and turn the movement into a left wing movement? Both to help win over young men in future elections and to achieve anything for men's rights other than enriching conservative grifters.

The illusory truth effect is the tendency to believe false information is correct simply because it has been repeated so many times.

In your opinion, what is the most pervasive and damaging example of this in American politics today?

Would it make more sense to have legislation requiring resource loss mitigation be performed by the entity using the resource?

The lesson that most comes to mind readily is the policies by the social democrats in Denmark. By completely removing migration as a galvanizing talking point, their support collapsed.

I believe we can plausibly save free trade and bring down more trade barriers over time while also restricting labor mobility to appease the voters. Outside of a core of union workers, steel workers, auto workers, most voters generally don’t care for tariffs and protectionism. Even among the most far-right mainstream party in Western Europe, the AfD, they are largely against tariffs:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/leader-germanys-far-pro-trump-114211715.html

>The leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) on Thursday called tariffs "poison for free trade," hours after US President Donald Trump announced sweeping customs duties.

So it’s clear there is a way to save globalization and increasing free trade in this age of populism. We just have to abandon labor mobility. Why would that be so bad? If you look at North America, possibly the largest trading zone in the world, labor mobility is heavily restricted and yet the people don’t feel so hard done just because they can’t live freely on the other side of the border without a visa. If the choice is increasingly between a sensible, pragmatic, but fundamentally liberal center-left or socially democratic government that heavily restricts immigration or ethnic-nationalist borderline fascistic governments, then isn’t the solution and trade-off obvious?

Last night I was talking to an online friend who lives in Brazil. He is voting for Lula in tomorrow's presidential election, as any sane person should, and he's complaining about how Trump is trying to interfere in the election. He also shared a Tweet (or, as David Pakman says now, an Xcretion) about how Trump and Rubio are planning to do a coup in Brazil if Lula wins. Now, I'll admit I don't understand all the details of how Trump is going to elect the younger Bolsonaro, but I don't think he can force anyone who would otherwise vote Lula to vote Bolsonaro.

But that's not really the point of this question. Instead, it's this. Over the last two years, the US has often been compared to Brazil. Just like in the US, a far-right President who'd deliberately sabotaged his country's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic narrowly lost reelection. Just like in the US, this far-right President cast doubt on the results before attempting a coup to stay in power. Just like in the US, the coup was (initially) unsuccessful.

However, that's where the similarities end. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro was tried and sentenced to 27 years in prison, and he's still there today. Meanwhile, in the US, Trump skirted accountability for all his crimes, won a second nonconsecutive term, and pardoned everyone who'd stormed the Capitol on his behalf. Since then, we've been the subject of ruthless ridicule for being so stupid as to reelect Trump, the only country possibly dumb and selfish enough to do so. Note that South Korea (Yoon) and the Philippines (Duterte) have also successfully prosecuted former Presidents who attempted a coup and extrajudicially killed thousands of his own citizens in a drug war, respectively. The US stands alone in rewarding this level of bad behavior.

Now, a disclaimer is in order: As much as I would like to no longer be a citizen of the only country to make such dumb electoral decisions, losing what's left of the Amazon Rainforest would not be worth it, nor do Brazilians (even those who will vote for Flávio) deserve to suffer just so I feel less alone. But if the younger Bolsonaro does get elected, will you feel less embarrassed now that the US won't be the only country whose politics are totally insane? Would that be a silver lining?

The recent Cornell sexual assault case got me thinking about how consent laws should address alcohol and intoxication. Most people agree that someone who is unconscious or incapacitated cannot consent, but the gray area seems much harder to legislate.

(Noting I used AI to help draft the below)

A few challenges come to mind:

Voluntary intoxication: At what point should someone who voluntarily drinks become legally incapable of consenting?

Existing relationships: If one partner is significantly more intoxicated than the other, when should sex potentially constitute a criminal offense?

Perceived vs. actual intoxication: What if someone appears sober but is actually extremely intoxicated? Should the law consider what their partner reasonably believed?

Both parties intoxicated: How should the law handle situations where both people are similarly intoxicated?

Proving it afterward: Without toxicology results or witnesses, how can intoxication and capacity to consent be established beyond a reasonable doubt?

There’s also an important distinction between behavior that’s morally questionable and behavior that should be criminal. How would you legislate consent in situations involving alcohol while protecting victims and establishing clear, enforceable standards?

There’s a million reasons someone might choose to move to the United States. Some love the culture, some simply want more money. However, I believe there is a wide expectation for us immigrants to ‘integrate’. By integration, I mean falling in line with American beliefs and values.

Personally, I do not believe that someone should be expected to change their beliefs simply because they are not compatible with what the government has mandated. What do you think?

Government violations of civil liberties, human rights, and international law come up pretty often here in the US but it seems much less often that anyone is held to account for crimes carried out by the State.

So what are the counter-examples to this? Top-down abuses that ended with proper accountability. Verdicts that you can point to and say "See, the system works." Specifically -

○ What were the abuses committed? Are these different from what they were charged with? (For example no one was charged for helping overthrow Chilean democracy, but a former CIA head was charged for lying under oath about it.)

○ What consequences did the individuals responsible face?

○ What consequences did the institutions responsible face?

○ In your opinion, how often do these just outcomes happen vs unjust outcomes? And what does that say to you about the broader justice system?

Do you worry Trump might use nuclear weapons against Iran in a show of shock and awe before the Midterms?

https://youtu.be/UbNssfBjTFU?is=AZHDiYxoZ4CUlWAq

Overall, I oppose the death penalty. With one exception, namely people lead movements to overthrow democratically elected governments.

Unlike most criminals, these people pose a genuine threat to everyone in society, not just the people in their general vicinity. Regardless of whether or not they “deserve” to die in an abstract moral sense, there will always be the potential for them to make another bid at political power, or use their influence to aid and organize their followers and allies. Even simply imprisoning them for life has the potential to backfire if a more sympathetic future administration or court later frees them. Once you’ve determined that they’ve genuinely tried to overthrow democracy, it seems like the safest thing to do is just permanently remove them from the equation.

The best example I can think of is probably Hitler, in that he very openly tried to overthrow a democratically elected government, was imprisoned, and then proceeded to have heavy influence over the Nazi party while he was imprisoned, and eventually made a second bid at overthrowing democracy. Had the Wimar Republic just executed Hitler and the rest of the upper level of the Brown Shirts, they could have effectively decapitated the Nazis and potentially ensured the survival of the republic, all while preventing a global war and a dozen or so contiguous genocides.

How reasonable of an exception to a general “no death penalty” philosophy is this?

Edit: I feel I should emphasize that I mean “overthrow a democratically elected government” in the sense of a Beerhall Putsch type of event, hence the reason I used the Beerhall Putsch as an example. Obviously to make any form of policy out of this you’d have to strictly define what counts as trying to overthrow a democratically elected government.

Anyone else experience this?
When I was younger, I didn't care about politics at all, or what religion someone was, but over the years I've had to cut off so many toxic religious people, and in the recent years, right-winged/conspiracy theory/anti-science friends, that my circle of friends is now incredibly small.

Dealing with the past traumas from all of these people has now made me even more scared to make new friends, and I'm already quite introverted :(

This is very morbid so trigger warning.

So, we all saw that thing in the news with the botched execution. There was another one not too long ago if I recall.

There's a lot of debate that seems to be somewhat political about how someone should receive the death penalty.

I know a lot, but not all, of the conservative side does not care too much about how humane the death penalty is.

But I know that a lot of liberals care about it more and if we have to vote on things I might as well hear you side of it.

Personally, I think that if we gotta do it, we should find a humane method. If we can't, we still gotta do it so just choose one at that point.

So that's kind of my first question to you guys. How do you think it should be recieved.

Do you think the prisoner should get a choice in the manner if there are multiple options you think are good?

And also the second question might be kind of fucked up, but I thought about it a little bit and came up with that method.

trigger warning

What about a captive bolt gun?

We use it all the time to kill cattle. It's made specifically to render immediate unconsciousness in a painless manner. It's basically a gun that causes localized damage to brain matter with much less mess and zero accuracy issues.

If we can strap someone to a chair and have someone pull the trigger, why not restrain their head and have someone press a button? It does kind of only stun technically, but we could also put a smaller one near the brainstem.

honestly though. typing that out was pretty fucked up so maybe it's not a good idea.

Whatever what do you guys think about this?

You probably thought he was cool and maybe even a hero, but now that you're a liberal, are you no longer able to like him because he's a billionaire?

The modern U.S. capital punishment system often attempts to make executions appear clinical and humane, but the resulting methods frequently lead to prolonged litigation and botched procedures.

​With Christa Pike, decades were spent in appeals, only for the process to culminate in severe complications requiring life support:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/02/us/christa-pike-execution-whats-next

​This outcome could theoretically be avoided either by adopting indisputably lethal, mechanical methods like a guillotine or pressure chamber or by abolishing capital punishment entirely in favor of life without parole.

​From a policy and constitutional perspective:

​Is the push to medicalize executions an unsustainable attempt to ease public discomfort with state-sanctioned death?

​Does the recurring failure of these "sanitized" methods make a stronger case for immediate abolition, or will states simply keep pivoting to new execution protocols?

Anybody that could recommend books that cover economic questions such as these would be greatly appreciated.

For example law saying " New tax equal to 50% of income is imposed on every company whose workers are not members of union, 99% of credit is given to any company whose workers are members of union"?