Peterkin

Nevertheless, vertical organization and top-down control is fundamental to both doctrines. There are very clear chains of command. The harshness of the stratified system is somewhat mitigated by democratic governance, wherein the common people elect representatives to protect their interests. That's why laws are enacted against various kinds of abuse... but those protections can also be eroded by subsequent administrations. Democracy in the west is less than two hundred years old, and it's already crumbling in everywhere. Why which? Why was it set up way? Why does it work? Or why is it not to be questioned? It's set up this way on the pattern of monarchy and aristocracy. The ruling class is clearly defined; it owns everything and controls everyone. The population does what it's told, from paying poll tax and working for whatever wages are offered to serving in the army. It works, because the arrangement makes for a stable, pyramid structure of society, until some major shift in the economy causes internal rearrangement of layers. But the new aristocracy - clerical, military or financial - soon settles everything back to the old arrangement with a change of cast. In the church, it's not to be questioned because it was so ordained by God, and you simply have to take it on faith. Questioning can have dire consequences. In capitalism, money talks; penury shuts up, if it doesn't want a police baton upside its head.

That may be the future of space colonization - assuming** - but it does nothing to relieve the crowding and privation here on Earth. ** - that anyplace within reach can be terraformed; otherwise, why even bother? What's the point in taking 150,000 years to seed a plastic dome? - that we had the resources to spare for such a huge frivolous gesture Unless what you mean is a last gasp effort to save some remnant of humanity from extinction. There's been a lot of talk about that. But it's not what the OP is about.

It's in the doctrine of capitalism, just as monarchy is in the doctrine of Christianity. These things are not to be questioned - ever.

And how many bad ones did they endorse. Brexit springs to mind... Of course, we may have very different definitions of rubbish.

Not necessary to collude. Voters quite often get enthusiastic about rubbish policies. And it doesn't matter which rubbish Republican candidate most loudly bruited which rubbish policy. They would all do something repressive that hurts poor people and benefits their sponsors. There are no only Democrats who want to ease the burden on people who work by taking back a little of the resources seized by people who do not work. Nor are the right-wing Republican who enact repressive religious doctrine adhere to those doctrines; they simply cater to that faction for its political and financial support. Nobody's going to prevent the Russian trolls (all too real, btw - and thirty other countries run them, including China) through legislative measures - it can only be done by the owners of the social media. Which beat the hell out of fascist states to live in.

Which had nothing to do with the Wright brothers, who did nothing in rocketry. You'll have to credit the Sung Dynasty via Robert Goddard. But even the few people who can get to the moon can't survive there for very long. You can bet your fake cowboy boots the passengers won't be a babies their parents can't feed.

Did they take anyone off planet, or just set off a huge contribution to climate change?

Not at this time, in this fascist-leaning climate. train-wreck

The man is genuinely and legitimately old. Of course he gets tired and has down days and occasionally forgets things, stammers or gropes for words. This was never a secret. That debate was a PR disaster. And the media ran with it like a pack of hounds that just held up a butcher shop. Meanwhile, Trump gets immunity for all crimes committed while in an office he disgraced, and there's hardly a ripple. Everybody's used to his legal crap and the Supreme Court's 'activism' - it's not really news. Almost no one in a position to influence the situation is about to do the smartest or most ethical thing available to them. However this turns out, it's a disaster.

Yeah. But they're not. The more it echos, the more people wonder, waver and maybe desert. Including the party. But they're not decisive enough to pull the plug on their candidate, pick someone else and get on with it. They vacillate and procrastinate and pretty much insure the big neon TRUMP on top of the White House and the end of the constitution.

The rest of the world is not far behind. Guess who's new president of the EU? Pretty much a bedfellowship made in heaven.

He has to do it himself - his aides and bodyguard don't have immunity. Still, he has time to travel the country, ostensibly campaigning, and take a few side-trips with an automatic. It just doesn't quite seem to be in character somehow.

They wouldn't. They would scrutinized endlessly for all the wrong things - their sexual orientation, their hairstyle, their stature, their attire, their manner of speech - not for their record, their integrity or their policies.

Yes, but a lot of that ersatz mud sticks. People are gullible and these days, inclined to cast great big gobs of blame at the federal government for everything that goes wrong in their lives from hailstorms to bad breath. The more ruckus the media kicks up about Biden's minor failings, the less anyone hears about Trump's glaring faults. Besides, the whole western world seems to be in a let's-go-fascist mood.

The system has a few little weak-points.... Well, now, with the Supreme Court decision, Biden had better get busy bumping off the opposition while he's strong enough.

They can look, but they can't transport anybody. Endgame!

I wonder whose poll that was. If true, which I doubt, the majority of Americans are sleepwalking to the slaughterhouse.

Make the planet uninhabitable faster, so that we have no choice but to get off it or die. Elon Musk will get off... but I don't think he'll get very far.

Well, for one thing, it's hard to breathe in space. For another, there are too many of us. Anyway, we're far too busy blowing up our own and one another's assets in wars.

No, but young voters, especially the female ones, not happy with the idea of either the abusive or the indulgent grandfather figure deciding their future, might pin their hopes on a sharp, energetic youngish aunt.

The party didn't have the foresight to groom a plausible alternate from the beginning of the campaign. The DNC is not real big on foresight at the best of times, which these are not. What the party workers need to do now is light a fire under young voters, wake them up to a their realistic prospects under a Trump administration - lure them out to vote for the Biden-Harris ticket in the expectation of getting Harris for most of the term.

That's what I'm hoping. He needs to make a really strong comeback in September. Next February, once this horribly messy election is over, we'll see what happens.... ...always assuming Putin doesn't hurl a nuclear missile, in which case, all wagers and life insurance policies are void.

Scramble as they might, they're not going to get anyone electable in the time. I love Sanders but he's old, too. Unless Trump self-destructs (we keep praying and thus proving there is no god) it will be close and close means hotly contested and that means a giant mess. I don't think the world can really afford a giant mess in US leadership. If Biden can't hold out till January, this could be the beginning of the global meltdown.

But will they judge him on the one debate itself or on all the media commentary afterward? The talking heads have way too mush political power in situations like this. I don't know what their coverage of Trump was in the same debate - just one article on the number of lies he told - what I've heard and seen was how poorly Biden performed. It's quite true, people don't vote rationally, taking all aspects of the situation into consideration. If they did, we (by which I don't just mean the USA; it has very far-reaching consequences), would never had the disaster of a Trump presidency in the first place. But the Democrats haven't been all that sharp in selecting their candidates, either. Whom do you see as credible?

It was probably one of those panel discussion shows where experts dissect a debate they didn't attend between people they never met. IOW, speculation, conjecture and opinion. There have been hundreds of medical opinions about Trump's mental condition. None of them said anything we couldn't all see just clearly. He's been obviously losing memory, vocabulary and syntax. He lost any grip on reality a decade ago - it was already loose a decade before that. I watched a couple of episodes of The Apprentice as I might watch ten minutes of Nightmare on Elm Street - too rigid with horror to change the channel.