President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

It's having no reason to get up in the morning that populated al-Qaeda and Isis, among others.

 

Angry, feckless, hopeless young men bring the biggest set of consequences with them by far. One of the core ideas behind toxic masculinity are those consequences; angry, feckless, hopeless young women don't, by and large, commit mass shootings. Now, you can restrict the guns - and I most certainly would - and address some of those issues, but young men drink and abuse drugs and commit crimes and die by suicide far more often than women do. They're also voting for Trump a lot more often, which I'd describe as acting out rather than some deeply developed outworking of Trumpism, but still a concern.

I agree that some of it is manufactured anger.

 

Oh yeah? Then why don't we have Nuts and Gum yet?

 

A sure sign we need to take mental health care a helluva lot more seriously than we do in this country. Particularly in the age of targeted silos and technological isolation. Unfortunately, a whole lot of people use the stereotype that it's weak and not masculine to get help.

 

Young people need to get out of the silos created by their phones. How that happens, I have no idea.

 

I think about this quite a bit. Because I'm pretty addicted to my phone too. But I think it helps being at an age where there was life before smart phones. I KNOW when it's getting to be too much. I KNOW when to put it down and "touch grass" as the kids say.

But even for me, it's like a reflex now. And it's a habit that I'm really trying to lessen. I've been fortunate to take a few trips this year that took me places where it was easy to avoid looking at my phone all the time. Sure, the fact that I was on the trip made me happy. But that was coupled with, to a lesser extent, the fact I wasn't staring at my phone all the time. And where news is presented in calm, facts-only matter and not the firehose of anxiety that it is here.

I think for a lot of people, it's an addiction that's as hard to break as drugs and booze. The mandate the companies have to create engagement is pretty similar to what drug dealers do.

 

Young people need to get outdoors.


I hate... hate ... loathe with every fiber of my being constantly within people's reach, and that includes my wife. I usually respond to the sound of a random text or phone call with profanity turned up to 11.

 

Their hero:

 

Hooking up with RFK Jr. isn't going to tamp down the "weird" label for trump and Vance. RFKJ is cocoa for coocoo poops.

 

WEIRD

 

Young people, and also and especially old people, need to learn to be more judicious with what news sources they're letting Microsoft Windows show them in that Widgets menu at the bottom left corner in Windows 11. Much garbage showing up in that source list, and it would help if Microsoft would be pickier about what sources it chooses for Microsoft Start. I've spent a lot of time at work trying to clean that shit up.

 

OK now, this is ...

Something's Going On With JD Vance's Hair

... weird.