I definitely don’t have it all figured out, but I wanna know do you ever think about stuff like what it took for the civil rights movement of the 1960s to succeed? Do you think it was a matter of pandering to the interests of centrist liberals or do you think that a big part of it was criticizing status quo liberalism and refusing to settle? I really think that you should read theletter from Birmingham jail by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because the archetype that he addresses in that work is replayed out every single time somebody ever deigns to criticize the Democrats for their political strategy.

You know it’s pretty outrageous to insist that you know what I think better than I do, especially after exchanging only a few sentences

Take a marketing class. If you think that politics is about pandering and not about convincing people, then you’ve lost the game already

Do you wanna explain to me where you’re seeing me “advocating against a united left and democracy“?

Can we stop pretending like voting for the Democrats as they exist now stops the Republicans from winning? It only makes them win more slowly. It is literally why everyone is so disillusioned and why the Democrats were unable to sell their message to enough people. And can we also take for granted that me saying this doesn’t mean that I didn’t vote for Kamala Harris?

I don’t wanna blame anybody. I want to criticize the people that I think have the best chance of actually being influenced to do the things we need them to do. And guess who that is?

You’re right, and I didn’t notice the first time I skimmed the article that this is only mainly affecting commercial roofing, so thanks for the perspective!

That’s great, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s easier to sell a roof to a person when you can point out all of its flaws from the ground.

You know I just thought about this for a second longer. Maybe you could just get them to stop by convincing them that people are more likely to replace a lighter colored roof sooner because defects and wear are more visible

Maybe they’re also selling HVAC systems lmfao

Cows are so cute, it’s a real shame what we do to them

I actually think this is a great idea. It really smooths out a lot of the graphical jank that makes the game really hard for me to play in 2025

I definitely don’t want to make it sound like it would be easy or anything. But I definitely think it should be a lot easier than what the Incas did when you consider what they had available to them and that it’s basically some of the rockiest, most rugged terrain on the entire planet. And also keep in mind too that the altitudes are so high that their growing season wasn’t even very long either! Pretty much the only thing that Inca had going for them that made their life any easier was volcanic soil. In basically every respect Appalachia has a 100+ times advantage over them so again I’m just saying that I have confidence that we really should be able to do this if we put our minds to it.

As for nightmarish logistics, that’s actually kind of another reason to do this in the first place because people live there right now and it’s very expensive to get food into all of these very isolated communities. It would be a very empowering thing if a small little hollow that spends a ton of money on food because of the nightmare logistics could just grow its own legumes and grains right there (and I also just want to point out that grains and legumes don’t require refrigeration either after you dry them.)

I also want to address something you said about an agricultural business having to do this. Yes, that is true, but only if we literally do not think that we have some kind of moral responsibility to remediate the destruction of the coal industry in Appalachia. Otherwise, the way I see it: if we have a social problem, we as a society have to find a solution otherwise, it will make everything worse for everyone, even the ones directly experiencing the problem. In solving problems usually will cost us something. So the effort costing us more than the labor involved doesn’t necessarily seem like a problem to me. And in fact, when you really think about it, wouldn’t it be actually insane if it was possible to actually solve the destruction wrought by the coal industry without having to spend more than we would save?

And one last thing I would like to address other things you’ve kind of mentioned in general about like the people they’re not wanting to and stuff. You have to understand that Appalachia was literally like one of the greatest strongholds of labor politics in the history of the United States and a lot of the reason why it became like that was because of ambitious New Deal-style economic projects just like this one. and we’re literally having a conversation on an article talking about strategies for how the Democrats can appeal to voters in places like Appalachia. I just don’t really see a good reason to think that if you give basically any group of economically exhausted people something to believe in that made sense, even if it’s a long shot, why we should expect them to respond any differently this time around.

The irony is terrace farming is in large part a strategy that is designed to literally improve the quality of soil and reduce erosion.

Do you ever think about how if the Incas like 500 years ago were able to turn the Andes Mountains into an agrarian paradise with terrace farming, that it should definitely be possible to do in the humble hills of Appalachia with a bunch of unemployed miners who have excavation experience and who literally know how to drive bulldozers?

https://www.wired.com/2002/05/follow-that-sign/

Do you think that the more important the product is the less responsibility the marketing company has? Like if you’re trying to sell democracy instead of an air fryer, do you think that means that the marketing company for some reason should be held to a lower standard? Because I don’t know about you, but I think it should be easier to convince people of democracy than to buy an air fryer. So if your marketing company can’t even do that…

And you don’t think the majority of the fault lies with American voters?

I don’t know, did I actually say that anywhere or are you just assuming this?

What I think is that it’s extremely emotional and self-centered to be more interested in assigning blame than on figuring out where we can most effectively put pressure to actually make change happen.

I think at this point, the danger has crystallized pretty thoroughly. Even if you somehow stopped everything that was currently happening, I don’t really know why anybody would want to come here anymore for university. Getting a degree is already stressful enough without having to worry about whether or not the institution will legally be allowed to keep you enrolled for the entire duration of your program.

I’m not telling you to not do that, and I think you should. It’s important. I just am trying to get you to realize that the person you’ve been responding to is not actually standing in your way at all, and in fact you seem to have at this point acknowledge what they’re saying, which is that the Democrats have constantly failed to successfully play the political game and all this person is saying is maybe we should demand more of them. But for some reason, even just saying that gets everyone to accuse you of a lot of horrible things even though literally all you want is for the people who are supposed to protect you to do a better job.