We should just ship all the religious crazies from every country off to go live in Antarctica. Don’t worry, their gods will protect them.

The truth is that the strength of a democracy has little relation to the birth rate. If you live in the US, for example, you only live in a democracy if your income is in the top 10%. This has actually been studied. The opinions of the poorest 90% of the population have absolutely zero bearing on what government policy is implemented.

The US and China actually have similar levels of democracy. China forms all its policies from the CCP, an organization of about 100 million people. The share of the population in China that has any impact on policy is actually quite similar to the share that does the same in the US.

I killed someone. It’s a called a dead name for a reason.

These laws are written deliberately broad to enable mass censorship. They don’t just ban sexual material, but use vague statements like “objectionable material.” Actual real-world news is being censored and kept from the eyes of teenagers. Pretty much anything on the Gaza war is considered objectionable material and inappropriate for children to learn about.

Nah. It’s not an age issue. It’s a social media issue. This stuff is bad for everyone. If you want to protect kids from the dangers of social media, start regulating how social media works for everyone. Why is it ok to start poisoning someone’s mind the minute they turn 18?

Yes. The societal level solution is the parents of the society choosing to do their jobs.

No.

How does one determine if the killer killed the woman because he hated her and not just for fun?

What have you read on the legal basis of hate crime laws? What have you done yourself in order to answer your own questions?

No. You are just susceptible to right wing issue framing.

I’ll come burn a cross on your lawn and then insist I can’t be charged with anything other than violating local fire ordinances…

Ah yes, I remember reading in history class about that time Stalin and Hitler signed a secret treaty to divide up the territory of the Portland metropolitan area. :D

Foreign terrorist groups can be prosecuted, and the president has a much freer hand constitutionally going after foreign than domestic groups. There is no actual federal law to designate and go after domestic terrorist groups. But there is for foreign.

Here is the plan:

1. Designate a handful of foreign branches of antifa as terrorist groups.

2. If anyone in the US is a member of an antifa group, arrest them for being member of a foreign terrorist group, even if the group they are a part of is completely unconnected to the European groups.

3. Make the defendants spend thousands of dollars and years of their lives fighting anti-terrorism charges, and get “arrested for terrorism” as part of their criminal records.

No you are confused. You can prosecute born US citizens for being a member of a foreign terrorist group.

Who said anything about foreign action? I just told you exactly what the purpose of this rule is. It’s to maliciously prosecute domestic peaceful protesters. This isn’t some farce or distraction. It’s the core purpose of the thing.

The point isn’t to actually go after these specific tiny foreign groups. The goal is to brand any organization that’s labeled “Antifa” as a foreign terrorist group. There could be some non violent antifa group in Portland, with no ties to any foreign organization whatsoever. The DOJ can go in, arrest all members, and charge them with terrorism for being members of a foreign terrorist group. Would these charges actually stick in court? No. After years and tens of thousands in attorneys fees, the charges will be dropped. But the process is the punishment.

All technologies have military and civilian use. Just because you can’t think of a civilian application for precision gyroscope doesn’t mean others can’t. Precision surveying immediately comes to mind as a potential application, plus civilian inertial navigation devices.

And no, there is not some magical level of precision that only the military has use for. If something has military applications, it also has civilian ones. Hell, there are potential peaceful applications of nuclear bombs. If those can be a dual-use technology, anything can be.

Yeah, let’s voluntarily lower the quality of all of our lives simply to give some minute advantage in the geopolitical chess game.

I think a simpler way of pointing this out is that the median US household income is $80k. A $100k household income is only 25% higher than average. It’s a pretty normal income. We just have “a six figure salary” as part of our cultural memory as some huge amount.

There are none. That doesn’t stop bigots from pretending trans women on estrogen have any advantage.

Can you show any examples in other countries where rallying around the controlled opposition party was sufficient to reverse the tide of fascism?