impartialobserver

I learned at a very early age that arguing religion to be thoroughly pointless. The first time I heard, "because the bible says"... I rolled my eyes and moved on. Why someone argues religion with a zealot is beyond me? It tells me that you are bored, masochistic, or toying with them. Back to the topic, Stating that a nation's decay is tied solely to them not being religious enough is simplistic. Its like saying that the Boston Celtics lost the eastern conference finals due to them not being good.

It was europeans and americans who were the final purchaser of slaves. You can deny this but then you have no way to explain how Africans ever made it to the Americas (north or south). Just because something is on the shelf.. does not mean that you are forced to buy it..

You could say that about most of the West. Without air conditioning.. no one dares live in southern Nevada, southern arizona, southern California, or southern Utah.

Big swing and a miss again. I am ever so happy that you do not work in my office. Your passion/bias gets in the way of you saying anything rational. By the way.. I said nothing about this growth in auto sales being due to "Biden's awesomeness"... you know this but you have to stay in character.

To each their own. I can be out on the Nevada desert with no one around for 50 miles in any direction and I do not find it ugly, unappealing, or intimidating. I am glad that most people do not have the will power or desire to find the various oases or green spots in the mountains. It leaves myself (or myself with my two kids) alone with the whole place to ourselves. That wide open emptiness is not found in FL as far as I can tell.

What africans did before being forced onto slave ships and brought to America is irrelevant to this topic. Rebound's example was meant to be viewed in the most general of terms. the concept is that someone is a victim of a crime (exact crime is not relevant) and what should be done, if anything, to someone later on after the victim and the criminal have both passed.

That is not the point.. but I do not expect you to understand that. Someone could say, "Denver Nuggets are playing in the NBA Finals" and you would reflexively give them an hour long diatribe about covid.

Your zealousness gets in the way again. Rebound never stated or asked about a slave owning a valuable painting. It was meant in general with no regards to time, place, or context.

You like it and I do not. I do not romanticize the beach. I would rather be in the mountains in a place like Western Montana. Humidity, bugs, insufferable heat... hard pass.

And your amnesia does not serve you. I was there from Friday at 6 pm to Monday at 4 pm and there was one instance on Saturday. 0 on friday, 0 on sunday, and 0 on monday. That is not constant. "Cool story. IF you hear about it every other day without intending to then yes - you can say you're constantly being bombarded with the subject." Oh.. and get this.. I use ChatGPT every day so yes I am bombarded.. I will not let you off the hook on this one.. though. So show me explicit quotes where I said that "trans people come and go". Now show some character and show me explicit quotes not reading between the lines or giving me opinions

one instance is not constant.. no matter how much you whine/complain. I could play your silly game and whine about how I could not get through a whole weekend without being exposed to advertisements about AI and high tech. I saw at least a dozen bilboards on our trek from San Jose to San Francisco about this topic. There are some issues that are constant.. homeless people, dry climate, high home prices and some that are not.. trans people. You can keep on engaging in your hyperbolic ways and I will go about life. There is no use in having my radar up for things that are rare if not nonexistent.

Homeless people... Reno has quite the problem with them (more so than other cities out west) . I have laid this out in the past. This issue I see everyday.. hence constant. I just traveled to San Francisco and the only trans item that I saw was the flag at the Amnesty International booth. If there is one place on earth that I expect to see such a thing, it would be at an Amnesty international booth. However, spent two full days in downtown San Francisco and never saw anything.

I do not know that there is a hard and fast definition of woke. It is a subjective term and so context is everything. My guess is that it will either fade into obscurity or society will just get used to it and it will no longer be new or novel.

Honestly.. have zero interest in ever visiting Florida, Georgia, Alabama, or South Carolina. The politics is not the big issue. I do not like humidity and they have none of the outdoor recreation that I am used to finding in NV, ID, OR, WY, MT, or UT. Places like this (below) are what draw me to your state.. FL has none.

I was on the road in 2021 with my kids. The only terrestrial radio option north of Winnemucca, NV was some christian radio. They were covering this "symposium". I was laughing so hard that I had to pull over. Listening to the commentators fumble over themselves as this event kept getting delayed was simply awesome

May 2022.. 13.043 millin April 2023... 16.453 million Simple math shows that 16.453 > 13.043 therefore auto sales are increasing in the short term. Auto sales at some point in the past.. irrelevant

No, its just a general conceptual framework. However, you knew the answer to your question so why ask it in the first place? What is your solution for places that never had slaves? Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana... never had slavery. I guess they could have had slaves off the books but relying on random guesses seems no way to do it.

The mediocre economics in Hungary allows for the items that you lay out to manifest. Competition over dwindling resources (real or perceived) combined with the prospect of their language/culture being diminished motivates xenophobic policies like Orban in Hungary. Those conditions do not exist in the US. Yes, Americans complain about them darn hispanics but their actual impact on the economy is minimal compared to what they face in Hungary. Also, hispanics in the US mostly assimilate and follow laws. Hungary.. the outsiders that come in are fiercely nationalist unlike random Guatemalan that arrives in Los Angeles. The warning signs in Hungary are the result of certain realities. Realities in which are not happening in the United States or Canada.

decided to listen to a canadian band, Metric, today

first, how and why has Hungary became less Democratic? First, they are not a homogeneous population like what you find in the United States or Canada. And they have various distinctly different ethnic groups coming in from all sides. Second, economically they have not done all that well. Combine mediocre economics with the existential threat of multiple distinct ethnic/national groups and there gets to be the feeling that if they do not stop this.. they will backslide into poverty. Poverty being the real thing not like in the US where poor people live a better quality of life than so-called middle class in most other nations. They use Greece and Bulgaria as examples of what happens when you let outsiders in.. except that the contexts are not the same.

the idea of reparations (regardless of context) is thus: Person A could have earned 10,000 in a lifetime however something forced Person to only earn 7500. So you would pay $2500 to correct the imbalance. If Person A is still able to work/produce and the event diminished their ability to work/produce in the future then you would calculate this and correct the imbalance.

If you judge an economy's health based solely on auto sales then I would say that things are going ok https://www.factorywarrantylist.com/car-sales-by-state.html

Hungary is an interesting topic. Comparing it to Canada is a bit of a stretch though. The historical contexts are not even close. Hungary is bordered by Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Romania, Ukraine, and Slovakia. Most of which have had political upheaval and civil war in the last 40 years. Canada is really bordered by the US which has had no civil war or anything close to that. Also, Hungary as of 1989 was communist and under the thumb (indirectly) of the USSR. There are going to be severe growing pains involved in coming out of that. Canada nor the US was ever communist or ruled by an autocrat as were most of the Eastern European nations.

The decline of a nation due to it not being religious enough. Where have we heard this before? Hmmm.. thousands upon thousands of times over the countless centuries that humans have populated the earth. In short, nothing new here.

folks did terrible things to one another in the past. Slavery being one of those terrible acts. That being said.. reparations only work if the victim is living today and therefore can show lost earnings/income. The last surviving slaves supposedly passed away in the early 1970's.. 50 years ago. Slavery has not directly impacted the earnings potential of any living African American. Indirectly...yes. Directly would be where they were forced into slavery.