Dave Lane @lightweight@mastodon.nzoss.nz

@alrs unfortunately, the conservative right of the US has so intellectually inured to good arguments by their pastors (mostly) that they'l die before they let that "socialism" stuff happen (because they're ignorant of political systems and don't know the difference between social democracies and communism).

@alrs sorry, I'm convolving intelligence with ignorance, because I'm angry at what the US has become... When I'm calling people stupid/dumb, they're not really intellectually inferior... but they are provincial and ignorant, in part due to a dysfunctional educational system.

@alrs heh - rest assured, I'm not recruiting - NZ's full :) - but let's face it, despite everything Trump has done in 4 years, turning the once broadly admired US into a simpering object of pity around the world, 70 million (nearly half!) still voted for Trump. There's no way that can be considered intelligent.

@alrs I'm not very familiar with the political history of Argentina, although I know it's very unpleasant. I'm more familiar with Oz, due to my proximity here in NZ... and I must say, AU is rapidly following in the US' footsteps. It's built on a similar history of unconscionable exploitation (actually, genocide) of its indigenous people... politically, it's a cesspit of corruption. It's only saving grace, so far as I can tell, is that it's way less religious than the US.

@alrs I'm a committed opponent to the TPPA - which is a corporate power/sovereignty-grab, but I'm not convinced that Trump lost many votes. There's a whole lotta dumbfuck among US voters today. Like 70 million of them.

@alrs I should expand on my rationale for moving to NZ: having visited here, I realised that it was the place that the US *could've* been if it wasn't a) cursed with the burden of "blind faith as a virtue" (religiousness), b) corporate domination of the 'faux-democratic" system, combined with c) multi-generational exploitation of large portions of the population. The US was, in my view, screwed. NZ, on the other hand, was - though far from perfect - rightfully optimistic.

@alrs Trump as like an auto-immune disorder. The US body politic was tricked by its own cultural defences to attack its best source of healing while poisoning itself from the inside, hastening its demise. I hope it's not too late for them to realise it.

@alrs the blame falls squarely on US multinational corporations, aided & abetted by the US federal gov't they've run for decades, hollowing out the country. That's the problem. Trump gained power because his supporters don't have sufficient intellectual tools to appropriately allocate culpability.

@alrs misallocation of blame here. I live in NZ because, having grown up in the US, I could see the social/political trajectory made the current situation likely (I left the US in '94). The people who voted for Trump (there were a LOT of them) should've voted for Sanders. He was the one who would've made a material difference for them. But, I suspect, many of them don't have the intellectual perspective required to understand that. They were exploited by Trump.

@alrs I think disaffected poor white folks who've fallen on hard times (who, having dropped out of highschool/got no uni education have few rewarding employment opportunities) looking for someone to blame for their lack of prosperity are, sadly, aligned with privileged (but also ignorant and sometimes psychopathic) white folks who're keen to use hate/fear to rally people looking for someone to blame. Trump was one of their leaders. Together, they're the ones that I believe got him elected.

@lwriemen that said, also to blame is the construct of the public corporation, which inevitably tends towards evil - https://davelane.nz/megacorps

@lwriemen and, of course, it's ultimately the fault of the Microsoft Corporation, which should be shunned for its entire history of abusive exploitation and other unethical behaviour.

@lwriemen yes, to a great extent I agree... although I fault the gov't & business entities who've failed to recognised the existential threat this situation poses. It's a failure of leadership. Here's more detail: https://davelane.nz/mshostage and https://davelane.nz/procurement

@alrs I don't know what any of those things are.

@alrs no. It means uneducated. That could be due to lack of personal application or lack of opportunities. It's not judgemental, it just reflects a lack of personal awareness and the right intellectual tools to rise above it.

@alrs I'd say it covers poor suffering uneducated white folk who feel that the system has let them down and who now seem to feel like they're oppressed.

Something that's been bouncing around in my head a lot during the past few months is a quote (attributed to Franklin Leonard - https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/17718606.Franklin_Leonard) “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” Which, I think, goes a long way towards explaining why the US is imploding right now.

(from the Wikipedia article) How good is this idea? " In Finland, planners are known to visit parks immediately after the first snowfall, when the existing paths are not visible.[6][unreliable source?] The naturally chosen desire paths, marked by footprints, can then be used to guide the routing of new purpose-built paths."

If you're not sure what a desire line is, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path

#idlethought urban/community planners really really need to take more notice of desire lines.

So many municipal paths are undermined by "short cuts" and alternative paths because the people who designed them.. made them not connect the places where people want to go. In which case, what's the point?