If that’s the case, then surely there’s nothing wrong with police have military weapons and using military tactics, right?

…Except that gold, like the dollar, and like bitcoin, has the value it does because people believe it does. Sure, gold’s a great semiconductor. But if that was all we used it for, the price of gold would be a tine fraction of what it is. Diamonds are great as abrasives and in certain cutting applications, but that’s all synthetic now. Natural diamonds only have high value because of artificial scarcity and advertising.

You cant deal with or compromise with them

You kind of have to, since government relies on the consent of the governed. When enough of them will no longer consent to being governed, your government will fail. But if you really want to address that problem, you look at the reasons why people turn to fascism; it’s not something that happens in a vacuum.

In this case, the dems are handling it badly; they’re trying to move to the right in order to give the fascists the things that they say they want. But what they say they want isn’t really the root issue, which means that dems can never go far enough right to win their vote.

They are absolutely civilians, although they no longer believe they are. Technically the military is supposed to be under civilian control as well (e.g., the governor is supposed to have control of the national guard in their state, the president is supposed to control the six branches of the military).

Look at it this way: the military is not supposed to be used for civilian law enforcement. That very, very strongly implies that police are not military, and are hence civilian.

All of politics is a compromise. You can’t actually accomplish anything if you have a dogmatic approach to it. That’s why Sanders, who I very nearly wholeheartedly support, is so rarely able to actually get anything done. And bless him for it!, he’s the moral compass we need! But to get things done, politicians need to make deals, sometimes with shitty people.

I don’t like everything that Buttigieg represents. But I like him a lot more than Newsom, who throws trans people under the buss without provocation. I certainly like him more than Joe Walsh, the ‘former’ (?) Tea Party conservative that now claims to be a Democrat.

What, they’re enjoying the outdoors? And that’s somehow bad? If that offends you, maybe you should avert your eyes.

Then I came to my senses.

Except you didn’t. You rationalized, and thought that someone else would save you, instead of you and the people you care about saving yourself. The floodwaters are rising, and you’re on the roof; you either have to get your own ass to safety, or drown, because FEMA’s been defunded, and no one is coming.

I think that the left should absofuckinglylutely be getting strapped.

The good news is that leftists have been strapped for years. The bad news is that, 1) they’re mostly using Mosin-Nagants and Makarovs because they’re red fudds, and 2) most people that are politically left of center are not leftists. (I’m a leftist; I do have a Mosin-Nagant, but it was a gift, and I hate shooting it. I prefer my AR-15 and AR-10.)

US here.

I think that if the police are allowed to have it, everyone should be allowed to have it. Police are not the military; they’re civilians. So all other civilians should have the same access cops get, or cops should get the same access that everyone else does.

I never had a chance to try Earthdawn, but it looked like a lot of fun.

Have you tried just not exploding? Like, maybe turn your emotions off so that instead of exploding in rage you just feel a vague annoyance? It’s called alexythymia, and I highly recommend it; it makes shitty things much easier to deal with.

I’m a fan of old-school Shadowrun (2nd ed.); it didn’t matter how bad-ass your character was, you could get killed by a lucky shot from a punk with a zipgun. It kept the grime of Cyperpunk, and added fantastical elements to it. IMO, it required more role-playing than is strictly necessary in a lot of D&D games, because going in guns blazing all the time was almost certain to lead to death; properly played (IMO), the GM should be brutal in how they handle stupid players.

The downside was so many six sided dice.

That’s so wonderfully tacky. I kind of love it. It needs to be in a room that has a circular bed that slowly rotates, and has mirrors on the ceiling. Oh, and a hot tub, right next to the bed.

Finland first, New Zealand second. Both have gun rights. Finland has a lot of empty space in the north, and Finns are, in general, not super interested in being highly social, despite historically having pretty solid social safety nets (although I hear the right is rising there, and that may not last). The largest barrier is that Suomi is a very difficult language to learn.

Any sitcom or comedy.

By that ‘logic’ everyone needs a taste of white supremacy, Christian nationalism, Nazis, and so on.

Certain opinions aren’t worth giving any consideration to because they’re so stupidly, pig-headedly wrong. The street corner preacher frothing at the mouth over LGBTQ people is one, .ml and the former hexbear (world’s smallest violin plays a sad song for their passing) instances being prime examples.

Arrive to raids […] out of uniform.

…This is already happening.

The beauty of such subtle magic is that you would be happy to be changed in such a way. :)

I’ve read history books that aren’t full-blown propaganda. If you had read any, you would know that oppression and violence is the foundation of ALL western countries, and most non-western ones as well. The difference being that countries in the EU are more comfortable forgetting that their wealth was built on things like the exploitation of the Congo, the British East India Company, et al.

The founding document of the US though, which is what I was clearly referring to, established certain civil rights that the gov’t isn’t supposed to infringe. Religious liberty is one of those. This is notably not a right in most non-US countries; many EU countries have state-funded religions, and citizens are often taxes by the gov’ts to pay for those religions.

I’m an atheist and a Satanist. I agree that these people are, by the measure of what the Jesus Christ of the Christian Bible is claimed to have said, hypocrites. At best. And yes, Jesus said that you should pray in private, and that people who pray in public so that they can be seen to pray have already received their reward. (Matthew 6:5 - “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.”)

But it’s still a foundational civil right.