Woah, 40 more pages? PRF, I didn't think you still had it in you.
Regarding Law and Order bullshit, I don't think being a prosecutor is any worse or better than being a defender or a judge, is my point. Sure, the VP is obviously somebody who believes in working within the system. All the candidates are.
I don't buy the idea that being a former prosecutor would make you callous, or think that you can solve the world's problems through punishment, or whatever the implication is there. I do think it probably means Harris has seen some horrendous shit, including a lot related to family harm and has spent time working with victims of crime. And I do think being a former prosecutor is a fuck-ton better than being a corporate lawyer - those guys are ALWAYS on the wrong side. But anyway, she's all-but got the nomination now, as was obvious from the moment that Biden stepped up to the debate podium looking like he'd just taken a sip from the wrong grail.
Regarding New Zealand, it's somewhere small and remote enough for people to treat it like a fantasy place. Because nobody has any idea what actually goes on here and nor do they care, and that's fine. But it is a real place and we're not out of touch with the world.
Also as noted, the cost of living is outrageous here. We have pollution, poverty, and corrupt politicians. The same pricks who are funding Project 2025 have ties to our current government. The very same pricks. None other than Peter Thiel bought himself New Zealand citizenship. American techbros want to convert the country into their libertarian apocalypse bunker. The fuckery is happening here, and now. We just don't talk about it because nobody cares to know what's happening in New Zealand.
We have some of the worst statistics for family violence and suicide. We have gangs, and they're doing so well they're now establishing themselves in other countries. It almost does me proud to see the Mongrel Mob are now terrifying people in the UK. They started up in my home town. They aren't actually neo-nazis or a biker gang, they just have swastika tattoos and bikes, but they do kill people.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/f ... r-32101735
Public transport is shit and all our infrastructure is falling apart. But the birds are nice. Parrots, and penguins too. Nobody gets eaten by bears here. And we have MMP which is a proportional representation system which is much better than the outdated FPTP systems in the UK and US. Seriously, tactical voting in the UK is such a mess, and the results are so skewed... Labour's "landslide" victory was only with something like 40% of the vote. Ridiculous. The last thing you need in the US is a third party messing things up even more. Jill Stein is a joke anyway. Why do they bother running for president? Why don't they try to elect a single Green Party member to congress first?
Under a two party system you can expect the two parties to split public opinion roughly down the middle within 5% or so. They will naturally form these positions in order to be competitive with each other. The parties will adjust their policies accordingly. In the US the political advantages enjoyed or exploited by the right means that the balance of power sits a ways further to the right of public opinion, which sucks and hopefully that will start to change if Republicans lose more elections.
You may not like her; you certainly may not feel that she's the ideal candidate, but I get the impression Harris has made the race competitive again, and she has an opportunity to build momentum from here, while a visibly withering Biden was going nowhere but down. And she has been much better on abortion and Gaza than Biden. So maybe it's not all doom and gloom.
And Zenu might have been on to something... he didn't know it, but he was really saying, " gee, somebody really needs to invent calculus so we can deal with this here"