Hardkill

I genuinely wish that the United States would adopt many of the collectivist principles found in China. I also wish more Americans believed that government, in general, is good. However, as you know, China is still nowhere near as developed, wealthy, or powerful as the United States. Not to mention, of course, the significantly reduced freedoms and voting rights for Chinese citizens compared to Americans. Additionally, China's economy is currently in far worse shape than America's due to factors such as weak private consumption, comparatively limited social safety nets, and an intense cultural fear of personal debt, despite being burdened by considerably higher levels of corporate and governmental debt than the U.S. Furthermore, China's financial system heavily favors producers and local governments rather than consumers, while the U.S. financial system provides substantially greater support for consumers—quite ironic given China's collectivist orientation. Nevertheless, I think it's possible that China and US could become equal superpower nations one day, whereby the USA would be the greatest Western superpower in the world while China would become the greatest Eastern superpower in the world.

Will most people care about this?

He also doesn't seem well educated.

After reading Leo's blog post on "How Right-Wing Dominates Social Media" I was contemplating again on what seriously needs to be done to combat the dominance of the right-wing media. Here are more ideas I have for that: The majority of people are still Stage Blue (order, tradition) or Stage Orange (success, logic). If you speak only in Stage Green language, you’ll sound confusing, weak, elitist, or alien. But if you code-switch — using language and stories that resonate with Blue/Orange values — you can open doors for them to evolve upward. 💬 Example: Don’t say “late-stage capitalism is causing ecosystem collapse.” Say: “Big corporations are screwing your kids’ future just to pad their profits.” Same truth. Different language. 2. 🏗️ Stage Orange Is Necessary for Building Infrastructure Orange energy is strategic, productive, money-savvy, ambitious. You need Orange for: Running organizations Monetizing without selling out Scaling operations Playing algorithm chess Hiring creatives and coders who can compete with Silicon Valley 🔧 Green alone can't build the machine — Orange knows how to build systems that work. 3. 🔵 Stage Blue is How You Reach the Masses Emotionally Blue understands loyalty, family, patriotism, morality. You can reach people who seem MAGA by speaking to their values — but reframed. 💬 For example: “You love your country? Then make sure every American has clean water and a decent job. That’s real patriotism.” This is framing justice as moral duty, not just policy preference. 4. 🟢 Stage Green Sets the Compass Green brings the vision. It holds the ethical standard, the humane perspective, the inclusive worldview. Without Green, you risk becoming another hollow corporate media company. But Green needs Orange and Blue to carry the vision to the masses. 🧭 Green = compass 🔨 Orange = builder 🔊 Blue = amplifier 🔄 It’s a Spiral, Not a Hierarchy Each stage plays a role: You don’t mock Blue — you uplift its healthy expressions (loyalty, sacrifice, faith). You don’t shame Orange — you steer it toward long-term impact over ego. You don’t isolate Green — you embed it within the language of the people. And eventually… you graduate to Stage Yellow — which integrates all previous stages and thinks systemically. TL;DR ✅ Stage Green brings the values ✅ Stage Orange builds the strategy ✅ Stage Blue delivers the story

Look at the video on it on a new post that Leo made yesterday on his blog. Unfortunately, the decriminalization of drugs in Oregon has caused a serious spike in homelessness and joblessness in the state.

If the legal marketing of recreational use of weed was a mistake, then I'd say that the marketing of alcoholic beverages has also been a terrible mistake for our society. Obviously outlawing alcohol failed miserably before, but there should be rules and regulations that enforce great restrictions on marketing alcohol to the public just like how there are for all nicotine-based products. I usually don't like shaming or judging others who are not bad people, but perhaps stigmatizing recreational drug use and regularly drinking alcohol is one of those things that needs to be done.

I think that they should be decriminalized/legalized for only medical or spiritual uses. I didn't realize beforehand that decriminalizing/legalizing psychedelics for recreational use turned out to be a mistake until I found out what's been happening in places like Oregon. That being said, I still believe that the penalties for drug offenses on black, brown, and poor people in America are still too harsh and unjust.

He performed excellently in terms of substance and ran the perfect message for the country in 2008. However, he didn't push far enough, as he didn't want to transition into a more aggressive, fire-breathing populist and partisan advocate, unlike TR, Truman, FDR, LBJ, or Biden who all did during their presidencies. In fact, Obama became more pro-establishment and more non-partisan as time went on which is not what the people were hoping. If Obama had grown more of a spine by leveraging his exceptional charisma more boldly during his first term as the incumbent president, then perhaps a broader majority of Americans would have developed greater faith in our country's institutions, liberalism, and the Democratic Party.

True.

However, there’s a reason why the solid majority of high propensity, highly informed/educated voted against Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024.

Yet, even authoritarian leaders such as Xi Jinping or Putin don’t impose tariffs on other countries unless they got hit with tariffs from that country or countries. Trump could’ve just sit back and not touched Biden’s economy and would’ve gotten a major amount of credit for the prosperity and strength of the US economy under him while he just plays golf at Mar-A-Lago.

Tragically, the justice system never gets everyone it should. Even if his reputation gets tarnished, I fear that he will be able to get enough people to come back around to him, just like with Trump, especially in this day and age where we live in an era of very low trust in legitimate Institutions, am extremely fractured media environment with unprecedented widespread internet/social media brainwashing, and celebrity level charisma/status forgives virtually everything. This is why I now think that we or some other people out there outside of the law may need to take matters into our own hands by becoming vigilantes.

Having no morals and committing a crime didn’t matter for someone like him. Also, most people in today’s world probably don’t care or won’t believe it. It’s not even clear that it will matter that much for history. All we can do is pray that he faces some kind of justice of comeuppance. So, then what was the whole point of this thread? Also, I really don’t believe that he’s a true mature stage Green. He’s still too much of a degenerate low life to have earned that kind of recognition.

I am not surprised that Russell Brand has been charged with rape even though he’s an A list celebrity with extreme levels of charisma. He has had a really fucked up past including having been a raging addict. Plus, he’s bipolar and I am sure that he has a very deluded sense of self. Not to mention how much he’s been brainwashed by various conspiracy theories, Trumpism/MAGA, and echo chambers/epistemic bubbles that align with his own strange views of the word. Sadly, I am not sure though that enough people in the world will care about him raping women. Too many people in this day and age including those in western governments don’t care about anything else besides their own finances, affordability, financial success, status, power, etc. Hell, they don’t even trust any news information unless it’s coming from their own echo chambers/epistemic bubbles that they are so comfortable in. Just like how a majority of Americans didn’t care about all of the crimes that Trump committed and elected him president again.

The way the tax rates were set up in our country just before the Reagan era were practically perfect.

It’s also because of this broken media environment and the Democratic party’s terrible messaging and spineless attitude.

Yeah ChadT is right about Peter Schiff being a constant doomer on the US economy, particularly when the country is lead during a Democratic presidency. However, I fear that you’re right, Leo. The broad consensus amongst top economists and financial experts now is that Trump’s tariff policies are absolutely beyond stupid and more than likely to cause the US economy to crash for no good real reason. Even Zandi and his team of economists and Krugman, all of whom rightly predicted the 2008 financial crisis and rightly predicted that the economy during Biden’s president would achieve a soft or softish landing, have been saying for a while now that Trump’s policies are not only going to be inflationary, but also could likely cause a recession if Trump doesn’t back off with his tariff policies. Not to mention that Trump’s moronic tariff regime is seriously jeopardizing millions of Americans retirement funds and ruining the stock market. This completely outdated and extreme tariff policy is not how our country will be able to address the unfair practices that have occurred for decades.

Fortunately, Musk failed to buy the crucial Wisconsin Supreme Court race that happened tonight: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/us/politics/wisconsin-supreme-court-crawford-schimel.html

Oh, God! That is very tragic. My thoughts and prayers go out to all of the victims and their closed ones.

You know, I've encountered a lot of Brazilian women who are very forward with me sexually. For years, I've been chatting with an attractive girl who lives in Brazil through social media and not only have we connected with each other well as friends we also have gotten very sexual with each other a number of times without any pay. We actually got very sexual with each other right away the first time we met each other. Another Brazilian girl I met near where I live a while ago, was very flirty with me telling me how cute or handsome I was. We got very touchy with each other before we kissed. Is it more of a thing with Brazilian women to be direct sexually/romantically even though men are generally expected to initiate everything?

Oh, yeah.... That definitely keeps me up at night. I hope that if that happens that widespread civil unrest, protests, and riots in Washington happen.

So, then how much was the idea of Trump and his party taking away your freedoms and opportunities overhyped? In retrospect, I realize that even people in authoritarian countries like China or Russia have a lot of the freedoms that we have.

I generally agree with the OP. However, at the same time, many older people tend to be more stubborn with old world views that are outdated and need to be replaced by new modern-day views.

But aren't millions of innocent people going to suffer and die under Trump if his administration and the Republicans in Congress cuts funding for essential government services like Medicaid, public education, vaccines, and medical research and guts important regulations protecting the environment, the economy, and human rights in our country this time?

Correction: 6 million more people who voted for Biden in 2020 than Harris in 2024. Also, I thought she ran a better campaign than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 and better than Trump's campaign in 2016, 2020, 2024. In fact, Trump's 2024 campaign was the worst ever. He just had a more clever media strategy than she did. Plus, the unprecedented misinformation, the right-wing propaganda machine, the rise of social media/internet, the rest of the anti-mainstream media in this day and age had brainwashed too many voters into believing that Biden/Harris and the Democrats didn't govern the country well. Moreover, racism, misogyny, and xenophobia our country is still experiencing has made it extremely difficult if not impossible for women of color like Harris to win the presidency. The US is still going through a conservative social backlash. Not to mention the historic levels of income inequality and unjust levels of affordability in country. All of those factors combined caused this anti-incumbent party sentiment in our country, especially amongst the less politically engaged and less informed voters out there in the country.