eyeroll

I agree with most of what you say, and holy shit it would be absolutely amazing if we un-tethered health insurance from employment, but I also know that M4A is dead on arrival until you get a 55+ seat majority in the Senate. I think that’s the reality Harris sees at this point, and [baseless opinion forthcoming] I think she (and others) had more flexibility arguing in favor of it in the 2020 primary because they had reason to believe that the pandemic health scare might potentially swing a sizeable Dem majority into Congress the same way the GFC did in 2008. Once that didn’t happen, I think the reality of our situation settled in and they started to grapple with the fact that Obamacare is about as far out on a limb as they’re going to get in the short term.

I’m sure you intended for that to sound more erudite than it actually does.

And if Trump gets to appoint Thomas and Alito’s replacements, we never will again.

If you believe we haven’t made progress since Emmett Till and Stonewall, then you’re looking at the arc of history through a drinking straw.

Here is the abstract of the study you cited (Guth et al 2020):

Recently, epidemiological studies have suggested that fluoride is a human developmental neurotoxicant that reduces measures of intelligence in children, placing it into the same category as toxic metals (lead, methylmercury, arsenic) and polychlorinated biphenyls. If true, this assessment would be highly relevant considering the widespread fluoridation of drinking water and the worldwide use of fluoride in oral hygiene products such as toothpaste…based on the totality of currently available scientific evidence, the present review does not support the presumption that fluoride should be assessed as a human developmental neurotoxicant at the current exposure levels in Europe.

Emphasis mine. Let me rephrase with a made up example:

Recently it’s been suggested that carbon dioxide is poisonous. If true, then the fact that humans are breathing carbon dioxide is worrisome. We reviewed the research, and carbon dioxide is not poisonous in the concentration to which humans are normally exposed. They would have to inhale 80-100% CO2 for an extended duration, and that scenario is highly unlikely because that concentration can only be achieved in a laboratory.

Your study is not saying fluoride is a toxin. It’s saying people have claimed it’s a toxin, they looked into it, and that conclusion is bogus. The study that’s routinely cited as claiming it’s a toxin is this one. Here is Guth et al’s analysis of that study:

In this publication, the authors cited one of their previous studies, a meta-analysis from 2012 of 27 cross-sectional studies investigating children exposed to fluoride in drinking water (Choi et al. 2012). There, a decreased IQ was observed in ‘fluoride exposed’ compared to ‘reference populations’. However, Choi et al. (Choi et al. 2012) also discussed limitations of their findings, e.g., that critical confounders were not considered and age adjustment of cognitive test scores were not reported in most studies included in the meta-analysis. Nevertheless, in the Lancet Neurology review (Grandjean and Landrigan 2014), the authors concluded that fluoride is a human developmental neurotoxicant, although no novel data and arguments were presented. Moreover, it was stated that ‘confounding from other substances seems unlikely in most of these studies’ (Grandjean and Landrigan 2014) without supporting this statement with data. Besides this questionable reinterpretation, further limitations of the meta-analysis have already been discussed in detail by other authors (Feldman 2014; Gelinas and Allukian 2014; Sabour and Ghorbani 2013; Sutton et al. 2015), e.g., the use of non-validated IQ tests (Feldman 2014), exposure of the children to a relatively highly polluted environment, the subsequent risk of possible confounding substances (Feldman 2014; Gelinas and Allukian 2014), and an overall low quality of the meta-analysis (Sutton et al. 2015). Moreover, in the time period after the introduction of fluoridation of drinking water, IQs in general have increased (Feldman 2014). This may be due to secondary factors, such as improved education.

The study you’ve cited does not say fluoride is a developmental neurotoxin. It very explicitly says it is not. Do not claim that it is.

Removed as misinformation. Additional rule violations will prompt a ban.

Removed for clearly misrepresenting health research findings.

We know. We’ve tried to tell them. If he wins, Palestinians will be exterminated and their supporters jailed for “supporting terrorists” or “threatening national security” or “antisemitism”, or some other such bullshit.

But sure, take a stand to teach Kamala and the DNC a lesson. That’ll really show those awful Democrats…juuuuuust before they lurch to the right and completely abandon the far left for the foreseeable future.

Is it just or fair? Shit no. Will it happen if Trump wins? You fucking betcha.

I didn’t say you are, nor was I responding to you. I was giving them the term they were trying to define.

It’s called “presupposing a frame”, and Innuendo Studios did a really good piece about it here.

Per Rule 1, do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

Per Rule 1, do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.

There are just under 200,000 registered Republicans in Wyoming. If ~200,000 Democrats moved there long enough to establish residence, they could get a Democratic senator in 2026. Doesn’t seem insurmountable.

That only makes sense if you view the electorate as though on a linear spectrum (and are standing squarely on “the left”). If you view it more like this, then it helps explain phenomena like this where ~15% of moderate/liberal Republicans routinely vote for Democrats, as opposed to ~7% of conservative/moderate Democrats going the other direction. It also helps explain issues where Trump outflanks Democrats on the left, which tends to attract Sanders-Trump voters.

edit: I’ll add that the downvoting on perfectly matter-of-fact comments in this thread (and quite frankly, most others on Lemmy/Reddit) is a really crisp display of the left’s toxic intolerance that Trump so readily and effectively leverages with middle America. Hammer that button, folks. In an infinitesimal way you’re proving Trump right every time you do.

100%. It’s fucking weird to empathize with people I’ve hated for so long, even if only microscopically. I still don’t know how to reach them, but I feel it.

I’m not sure where I made that assumption?

Yeah I completely agree. Implicit bias is a universal human trait, and I’ve consciously tried to be aware of the times it rears its ugly head. That’s why I was so caught off guard, because I’m usually on the lookout for stuff like that. My best friend is a director at a media company, and he’s spent nearly 2 years carefully documenting his interactions with a black, female subordinate of his. She’s generally a really bad employee, a poor worker, antagonistic to colleagues, and all around a sour human being, but he can’t discipline her the way he disciplines his other employees because she and her sister (who works under another director) readily claim that they’re being discriminated against, no matter how innocuous the interaction or how mundane the offense. They’ve had to fire white, cis male employees with better track records because they’re afraid that if they fire her she’ll take them to court. He’s a lifelong Republican who registered as a Democrat after 2016 and voted straight-ticket Dem this election, but he regularly confides in me that he’s deeply frustrated with the way he has to interact with these sisters. He has to constantly look over his shoulder, he has to treat her with kit gloves, and he has to document every word he speaks to her so there’s a detailed record of their conversations. I’m not saying she’s not actively discriminated against in her daily life because I’m sure she 100% is, but I’m also not saying she’s not taking advantage of this cultural moment to re-construct the power dynamic with the white male supervisor below her, no matter the needs of the business. This is why blue collar Trump supporters so routinely crow about people “playing the race card”, because some people actually do.

We’re not in a healthy place as a society, and extremists/activists on both sides are really bad at self-reflection.

I needed that Nate Silver article. Thanks for linking.