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I don't know if that's exactly a Venn diagram that's a circle, but I think if you lose all the conservatives you also lose the capitalists. Whoever you'd have left would be amenable to change.

I took a like journalism 101 course in college as an elective, and we had a couple lessons on this. One of them, the teacher gave us a bunch of websites and was like "Tell me which of these are legitimate." Some were crackpots, some were satire, some were just weird news. When we went over the assignment in class, we talked about strategies for figuring it out.

I think a lot of people never had that class, or they slept through it.

Sometimes I'm really optimistic about humanity, but sometimes I remember the stupidest kids from school. No attention span. No curiosity. A lot of them are probably out in the world making decisions right now.

Group membership matters to all of us. It's like one of the primary drivers of belief. We might think we're rational and cool logical people but that's a lie. We trust people we see as being in-group, and we trust facts from them.

For some people, like many republicans, it's also the only thing that really matters.

This may have been a viable strategy in like 3000BCE when you had to stick with your group of idiots, because otherwise you'd be left for dead or worse by the enemy tribe. It's not really a solid strategy in 2025CE.

But that's really the whole problem. People (often but not always republicans) put their group membership ahead of everything else. This is happening like deep in the emotional part of their psyche. There's no easy fix. You'd probably have to get them to join some other group and see that as primary, like maybe appeal to their sense of being American, but it's going to be hard when there's a lot of them. It's like gravity, they all pull each other into the group.

I don't know how to fix this.

One of the frustrating things is the people responsible for this brain drain, the conservative idiots, will never really suffer for this. Not in a way they understand.

If we get through this, every conservative needs to go up against the wall.

Anyone who says they are a "free speech absolutist" is a liar or a fool.

It might come to that. People should organize and arm now. Even though that's kind of hard and scary and I don't know where to begin.

"Why should I care about other people?" is a question that comes up a lot, and I am deeply suspicious of people who don't care about others.

Feel like we should not make disposable plastic anymore.

I'm inclined to agree, that might be a problem. I don't think it's the only problem, but the capitalist hell scape of "trust no one everyone for themselves" isn't helping

Any plan that depends on "and then the common person develops discerning taste" is doomed to fail. Especially considering that even people who are usually picky might enjoy something basic from time to time

Why is that valid but "the US should have no qualms about footing the bill and doing it" not?

Eradicating infectious diseases (that don't respect borders) is a net positive for everyone.