Excellent news! Slava Ukraini!

I highly recommend reading Ezra Klein’s latest book “Abundance” for a look at why the DNC has been losing the working class. It also offers some optimistic ideas for moving forward.

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?.. The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation… We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956

I just finished Ezra Klein’s new book and I thought it was great. It illuminates the history that has brought us here and gives some hopeful ideas on how we can fix it. That is, if there is anything left to fix by next year.

I hear that you’re not anti-immigrant and that your focus is on encouraging higher birthrates among the existing population. That’s a valid position. But I’m still unclear on something: you say “substituting locals for immigrants won’t work”, but what does that mean, practically?

We’re already seeing immigrants and their children working in essential industries, serving in the military, paying taxes, starting businesses, and contributing culturally and economically in every measurable way. In that sense, it is working, not as a perfect system, but as a very real and ongoing contribution to national strength.

So if your point is that we also need pro-natal policies, that’s great, many countries are trying that too. But that doesn’t invalidate immigration as part of the solution. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

If you believe immigration “won’t work,” can you explain specifically what metric or outcome you’re pointing to? Otherwise, it feels like the disagreement isn’t about whether it works, but about whether we’re emotionally comfortable with who is coming in.

You’re right that immigration brings complexity, it always has. But what you’re describing isn’t a reason to reject immigration. It’s a reason to invest in integration, civic education, and community infrastructure, the very things that made past waves of immigration ultimately successful. The challenges Irish, Italian, and Eastern European immigrants posed didn’t prove immigration was a failure, they proved that assimilation is a process, not a plug-and-play switch. And they eventually helped redefine the idea of who counts as “American.” That doesn’t mean there weren’t tensions, but it does mean people changed, adapted, and became part of the whole.

What I hear in your argument is a belief that culture is static, and that outsiders are always permanent outsiders. That’s a dangerously pessimistic view of human beings. It treats people as incapable of growth, and societies as too fragile to absorb change. But that’s not how culture works, not unless you let fear do the steering.

And yes, importing labor from poorer countries can create tension, especially if the host society is structured in a way that stratifies opportunity. But then the issue isn’t immigration, it’s inequality. The problem isn’t that “the poors” look different. It’s that we’re failing to create systems where they can become something else.

Extremist sentiment is rising in Europe not because immigrants are inherently dangerous, but because politicians and media figures are stoking fear and resentment instead of investing in cohesion. We’ve seen this movie before. It never ends well.

It’s not xenophobic to be concerned about cultural change, but it is misguided to assume that culture is a fixed object that only flows in one direction. America, and much of the West, has always been shaped by the beliefs, values, and adaptations of immigrants. People change, adapt, and contribute in complex ways. Immigrants don’t arrive with a USB stick labeled ‘final values.’ They raise kids here. Their kids go to school here. They vote here. And yes, they bring different perspectives, but so did Irish Catholics, Italian immigrants, and Vietnamese refugees. The melting pot doesn’t mean erasure, it means evolution."

Also, beware of confusing correlation with cause: conservative religious values exist in all societies, not just ‘third world’ ones. We’ve got plenty of evangelical pushback on rights from people born and raised here too. If we’re going to have a conversation about values, let’s do it honestly and not use fear of ‘the other’ as a smokescreen for deeper social anxieties.

Immigration isn’t ‘outsourcing childbirth’, it’s investing in the future of our country. People who come here, build lives, and raise families contribute just as much to our communities as anyone born here. Their children are American in every meaningful way. That’s not a loophole, that’s the foundation of our nation. If we start drawing lines around who counts as a ‘real’ solution based on origin, we’re moving away from what has always made America strong.

Don’t worry. Trump is gonna remove taxes on tips. That’s like, so much money! /s

Also, it’s a terrible idea.

How long do you think the Supreme Court is gonna wait to wipe their ass with constitution again and overturn the ruling? Any bets? I say about 2 weeks.

Check out the youtuber “Neural Viz”. Using multiple AI tools, he has built an incredible universe of consistent characters. As @tjsauce pointed out, it ultimately comes down to how much you care about what you publish. You can spend hours trying to get AI systems to produce the exact effect you’re aiming for—but few people are truly searching for something specific. That’s where the artist becomes a designer: someone who not only creates, but curates with intention. Most people aren’t thinking that way.

As far as I can tell, it seems that way. But take that with a grain of salt. I haven’t contributed anything of my own. I only speak as an experienced user.

Why not just continue down? Lots of people post long panel comics. Something like this:

Conservatives love to say Trump keeps his promises and, in a way, that’s what makes him so dangerous. Weaved between the nonsense, there are times he is true to his word. But far too many people never really listened to what those words meant. They didn’t question the promise to ‘run America like a business’ because they never questioned the man making it. They embraced The Art of the Deal not because it was a good book with any actual wisdom, but because they believed a rich man must be a smart man. That success equaled wisdom. That wealth was proof. But the book was never a blueprint, it was a warning. A gospel of ego, smoke, and debt. And now, with trillions wiped from the market, we’re living the consequences of their taking that promise seriously. Promises made. Promises kept.

Amen. At least half the voting public did something—showed up, voted, protested, filibustered, and fought every step of the way. Democrats and countless others have been in the trenches, blocking, delaying, and overturning what they can.

This meme? It does nothing. No encouragement. No solution. Just cynicism and blame. Maybe OP should take a long look in the mirror before calling everyone else out.

One button. Endless possibilities.

Why would they discuss classified military plans on an app where outsiders could just “add themselves”. That argument isn’t helping their case…

Nevermind. I need to stop thinking about things. The sheer stupidity hurts my brain.

Oh I think it did as well. Sorry about that!

I think I fixed it

This is absolutely staggering. I’m still trying to process the fact that senior U.S. officials—people at the highest levels of government—were casually texting war plans over Signal, an app that’s not even approved for classified communications. Not only that, but they accidentally added a journalist to the group chat. And then? Just carried on like nothing happened. No one noticed. No one asked questions. They dropped operational details, discussed strategy, named targets, and then capped it all off with high-five emojis.

It’s not just irresponsible—it’s surreal. This isn’t a parody or a leaked TV script. This happened. They talked about military strikes the same way people coordinate a fantasy football draft. And then, as if to hammer home just how broken our national security culture has become, they celebrated the bombing of a foreign country with emojis. Fire, flags, praying hands, muscle arms. Like they’d just won a pickup basketball game.

What’s worse—what really makes my blood boil—is that nothing will come of it. Nothing. There won’t be hearings. No one will be fired. There won’t even be a slap on the wrist. The fact that a sitting Secretary of Defense might have violated the Espionage Act by leaking sensitive war plans over an unsecured app to a journalist should be a full-blown national scandal. Instead? Silence. Shrugs. Maybe a Fox News segment praising how “tough” the response was.

It’s the normalization of absurdity. It’s government by group chat, with the fate of lives—American and otherwise—being tossed around like a Twitter thread. And the most horrifying part? They all seem to think this is fine. Routine. Standard operating procedure.

This is bigger than partisan politics. This is about the breakdown of basic standards—of competence, of professionalism, of decency. If this doesn’t trigger national outrage, if this doesn’t result in real consequences, then we’ve officially accepted that chaos, recklessness, and emoji warfare are the new norm.

I’m furious. And if you’re not, you should be too.

This is absolutely staggering. I’m still trying to process the fact that senior U.S. officials—people at the highest levels of government—were casually texting war plans over Signal, an app that’s not even approved for classified communications. Not only that, but they accidentally added a journalist to the group chat. And then? Just carried on like nothing happened. No one noticed. No one asked questions. They dropped operational details, discussed strategy, named targets, and then capped it all off with high-five emojis.

It’s not just irresponsible—it’s surreal. This isn’t a parody or a leaked TV script. This happened. They talked about military strikes the same way people coordinate a fantasy football draft. And then, as if to hammer home just how broken our national security culture has become, they celebrated the bombing of a foreign country with emojis. Fire, flags, praying hands, muscle arms. Like they’d just won a pickup basketball game.

What’s worse—what really makes my blood boil—is that nothing will come of it. Nothing. There won’t be hearings. No one will be fired. There won’t even be a slap on the wrist. The fact that a sitting Secretary of Defense might have violated the Espionage Act by leaking sensitive war plans over an unsecured app to a journalist should be a full-blown national scandal. Instead? Silence. Shrugs. Maybe a Fox News segment praising how “tough” the response was.

It’s the normalization of absurdity. It’s government by group chat, with the fate of lives—American and otherwise—being tossed around like a Twitter thread. And the most horrifying part? They all seem to think this is fine. Routine. Standard operating procedure.

This is bigger than partisan politics. This is about the breakdown of basic standards—of competence, of professionalism, of decency. If this doesn’t trigger national outrage, if this doesn’t result in real consequences, then we’ve officially accepted that chaos, recklessness, and emoji warfare are the new norm.

I’m furious. And if you’re not, you should be too.