WatDabney

Or maybe more accurately, the illusion of a two-party system.

Between the House and the Senate, there are currently 258 Democrats in Congress.

And 224 of them are fascist collaborators.

I presume yes.

Trump's US and Putin's Russia are natural ideological allies - both oligarchic and autocratic kleptocracies dominated by quasi-religious moralism and repression, militaristic imperialism and white supremacism and both warped and corrupted to the benefit of the wealthiest few.

Western Europe, with a greater (if still less than optimum) focus on egalitarianism, social welfare, equality of justice, international cooperation and respect for the law, is the natural ideological enemy of both.

So yes - I believe the long term goal is for a US/Russia alliance to go to war against and devastate western Europe, to destroy the EU and NATO and essentially bring Europe into the fold, to build a globe-encircling empire of corruption, oppression and malfeasance -a modern-day feudal system with the wealthy few (individuals and corporations) as the new nobility and the people - American, Russian and European alike - reduced to the status of serfs.

Huh.

What I get from this is that you're so determined to counter my "thesis" that you've stooped all the way to broadly hinting that I'm mentally ill, and I have to wonder why - what it is that compels you to respond to a broad statement about a nebulous group of people with a specific, demeaning and wholly unsupported broadside aimed at a single individual you don't even know.

No matter though - I stand by my "thesis" such as it is - extroverts are for all intents and purposes emotional vampires - and I not only don't think your objections are convincing - I don't even think they're particularly relevant.

The concept is that people in their day-to-day lives, and particularly when dealing with stressful situations, find themselves emotionally drained and have to "recharge."

The exact distinction between introverts and extroverts is that introverts "recharge" by being alone, while extroverts "recharge" by being around other people.

Or more precisely, introverts not only don't get their emotional energy from others but can't get it with others around, while extroverts not only do get their emotional energy from others but can't get it when they're alone.

And what that means is that introverts gain emotional energy by manufacturing and stockpiling it, while extroverts gain emotional energy by draining it from others.

Or more simply, that extroverts are vampires and introverts are their cattle.

Which is exactly what extroverts are, essentially by definition.

Sleight of hand.

It goes even beyond that.

Extroverts are for all intents and purposes vampires.

They aren't "rescuing" you. They're capturing you, so they can feed on you.

Weird that it seems every time I turn around I see one of two things - voters telling the Democrats that we want them to move back to the left or Democrats telling us that that's not actually what we want.

I'd actually be a little more tolerant of that if the fuckwads would just come out and say that the truth is that they don't care what we want - that their corporate donors want them to stay as far to the right as possible, and that that's the only thing that matters.

And a reminder that to the current right-wing establishment, "privatization" isnt even actual privatization.

Actual privatization would be the government divesting itself of authority over and responsibility for some service, and thereby turning it over to the private sector.

But current American "privatization" is a wholly corrupt and destructive hybrid process by which the government still funds the service, and the only thing that changes is that instead of the money being given to a government agency, it's given to whichever private contractor offers the best bribe and kickback program.

But isn’t it more important to ask what the problem is and how it could be improved across society

Yes, and that's exactly why I hold the position I hold - because I believe that the problem is people failing/refusing to exercise their own abilities to control their own lives and their own choices and instead simply going with one flow or another, then blaming the flow when it carries them somewhere problematic.

Of course there's a cultural component involved.

But that doesn't make a person into an asshole - it just establishes a path and some amount of pressure to follow it.

Pressure that can be resisted and a path that can be not followed.