In part, sure. But it’s also a failure of the voting public - primarily by not showing up to vote. The historic trend of low voter turnout got us to where we are today since it has enabled a minoritarian party with interests contrary to the vast majority of their constituents to win elections and shape the political landscape in ways that favor them.

It’s also a systemic failure since the US makes voting about as difficult as they can - but, again, that is mainly the fault of Republicans who have crusaded for years to repress the votes of minorities, women, and basically anyone who isn’t old and white.

It’s easy to blame the dems because they should have defended better, backed more pro-worker policies, etc. But if all eligible voters voted, basically no Republicans would ever win elections in this country. Maybe then we could have some actual progress attacking dems from the left.

That isn’t really how the judging worked though. First they had a huge panel of judges - 9 of them. And they judge them on 5 criteria: technique, vocabulary, execution, musicality, and originality. It is qualitative, but it’s a comparative rating system with actual guidelines - so they each simply have to decide who did each thing better:

Maintaining physiological control while focusing on athleticism, form and spatial awareness.

The range of moves that display variation and the quantity of moves, ideally with minimal repetition.

The ability to land and perform moves smoothly, without falls or slips and while maintaining consistency and flow.

The ability to stay on beat, syncing movements to the rhythm of the music.

The capacity for improvisation, creativity and maintaining spontaneity with style and personality.

I don’t think breaking necessarily needs to be in the olympics, but we’re past the point of only allowing sports (looking at you, dressage) and we do have other artistic events (rhythmic gymanstics and synchro swimming). And, the scoring system for breaking was reasonable and able to determine valid winners.

If the strawman fits, burn it when you come to it. That’s what my grandpappy always used to say

“Ancient Wisdom” applied stupidly can indeed lead to shit takes. In this case, you’re criticizing this politician because… he didn’t give halloween handouts proportional to his income? His halloween candy bars weren’t a sufficiently significant sacrifice? And then you’re knocking this commenter because their opinion that your take is shit means they are blinded by the “systems of exploitation” they create as an engineer and their lack courage to share your moral views about the virtue of dispensing halloween candy proportional to ones wealth? You’re like a charicature of a cringey philosophy major - and I was a philosophy major. Stop pontificating and think logically about your argument.

Look at Protestants in America “interpreting” their “ancient wisdom” in all sorts of wacky ways. The Baptists’ “ancient wisdom” tells them they’ll go to hell if they dance. The pentacostals’ “ancient wisdom” says that the Holy Spirit will possess you and make you speak gibberish if you believe hard enough. The “christian science” people’s ancient wisdom tells them to pray cancer away - and if they fail to, it’s because they aren’t righteous enough.

Just because you can loosely relate some “ancient wisdom” to a situation doesn’t mean that it’s applicable or that you’re correct.

My wisdom would tell me that this guy’s halloween handouts don’t really say anything about him other than either that he: just likes giving out halloween candy, sees it as a smart political move, or both.

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That is a fair point. My only counterargument would be that due to the way cities are set up, a large portion of those emissions come from commuting. The reason people commute is they have to earn money to pay bills so they can feed their kids and keep a roof over their heads.

So, asking people to drive less could mean asking them to give up their employment, which could be much more than “giving up the comforts of their lives” like the OP suggested - again, it could really put their livelihoods in jeopardy. And, without an organized cause, clear goal, a call to action, and clear communication about why their specific sacrifices are necessary, people will not take such huge risks.

The problem is: what does it mean to do that? Right now, we don’t have an organized revolution or movement. There needs to be a specific call to action. If you want people to “give up the comforts” of their lives, they need to know what doing that will accomplish, what the specific goal of the movement is, and how “giving up the comforts” will help to achieve it.

What you might actually be asking is for people to risk their jobs by going on general strike, their homes by not paying rent, etc. This is really more than “the comforts of their lives”, it is their ability to survive and feed their families.

The other problem is, any cause that only requires people to “give up the comforts of their lives” likely won’t be highly impactful. For instance, general strike and protest might help the climate crisis, but giving up plastic straws and driving less or whatever really won’t make much of a dent compared to the massive impacts of global capitalism.

Kind of like being under a bridge on one’s knees orally pleasing a vagrant while simulataneously drinking liquified meth through a dirty rag. But in a good way though - definitely give it a try