If one side wins, handling of Coronavirus will be based on science and medical advice. Relief bills will be passed, allowing people to pay rent. Thousands more will live. That will make a huge difference in daily life.

The last time Democrats had any real power, they gave health care to people with pre-existing conditions. That has changed my life and the lives of millions of other people.

Maybe your daily life would be the same either way. Don't try to generalize that to the rest of us.

Yes, I disagree strongly. For what sense of "closest" do you think this is true?

There is one I can see right away Biden is not gloating about his family side hustles.

They are both turds, sides of same coin, and both are evidence that current system is broken.

If you are given choice between two thieves and you are arguing that one stole less in the past so its better choice, then you don't see the irony of your 'free choice'.

Sure voting biden is clearly better outcome but the system is intact.

But in the end, if your candidate isn't popular, you vote is wasted.

So I guess what I'm saying is that in any democracy, anyone who isn't toward the middle is probably going to have to compromise (possibly a lot).

I was trying to explain to her how tik tok, Instagram etc. will try to influence her thinking, and she was basically like “Uncle Ryan yes I know. It’s an algorithm that wants to make you mad. We learned about it in school.”

I was proud.

My problems with social media are that they aren't transparent about the rage-inducing nature of their algorithms and that they are monopolies. Those of us who want to opt out of the rage are also forced to opt out of our online friends and families.

Look at the incentives and the outcome is obvious. Nobody wants to do things that might draw the ire of their boss's boss's boss.

I would hazard to say that it's in the bureaucrats' best interest to have politicians unpleasant and unqualified, of the "both worse" kind. Interestingly, quite often election candidates tend to resemble this description, at least if their opposition is to be believed.

However, it was an atypical catholic school. It that taught the dark ages honestly: “We let the Catholic Church run Europe for a few hundred years... It turns out that’s a terrible idea”. They also had a few months of “how to avoid cults” in religion class, and a separate, well-done world religions semester.

They had a Spanish language “if you want justice fight for peace” poster up (the officially sanctioned Catholic US translation is “work for peace”) and covered multiple instances of the Catholic church working to overthrow corrupt dictatorships, and also covered the abuses of global captialism in a semester on social justice.

That was all mandatory.

I also remember a talk a holocaust survivor gave proudly proclaiming that the Catholics in Germany overwhelmingly voted against the Nazis.

Don’t get me wrong; even that school was offensively conservative in many ways, just as the rest of the church is.

I think the obvious cognitive dissonance mostly just helped most students develop their BS detectors.

It’s been shocking to hear which right wingers from that crowd are voting for Biden this year.