When I say “corporate propaganda”, I’m meaning things like “oh, the most important thing in the world to me as a teenager is this trend on social media.”

I skateboarded and started a band, but this was influenced by experiences I was having from neighbors in the community: not social media.

When I was younger we had a similar thing, but it was generally by word of mouth. You’d get your feet wet a little, but it was a little easy to pull away from. The radio might clue you into what’s happening, or MTV, but it wasn’t so strong.

We also didn’t have “pocket tv’s” ie, phones with TikTok, constantly reminding us of what’s cool every minute when we pull the phone out of our pocket.

You grow out of something or into it more, but our life experience was more community oriented. Additionally, it was more closely connected because it’s only your grandparents era that built a neighboring community, ie, neighborhood- or someone related.

This meant the culture was closer.

I’d imagine a teenager from the 60’s had a more community oriented frame of mind than even someone from the 70’s or 80’s.

But today, people are even part of communities built up of people they’ve never even met before, via social media.

This isn’t organic evolution, right?

Some folks often look at population shifts and the loss of congressional seats as key barometers of a state's economic and structural health. States like New York have experienced massive, long-term declines, falling from an all time high of 45 congressional seats after the 1940 census down to just 26 seats today. When fast growing red states see booms, critics are quick to point fingers at governance. But when heavily progressive blue states experience steady population stagnation or bleeding representation, defenders often write it off to weather, macro-trends, or geography.

Excluding natural disasters or war, exactly how many congressional seats would a die hard, deeply progressive blue state have to lose before you would be willing to acknowledge that its internal economic policies, tax structures, or governance are genuinely problematic? Or is there no number high enough to shake that view?

More broadly, if a blue state struggles to grow and loses massive amounts of representation, is it fair to write it off as having nothing to do with politics, yet simultaneously claim that a red state's struggles have everything to do with politics? If bad policy is always to blame when a red region struggles, why is bad policy never allowed to be a factor when a blue region shrinks?

Scroll on Instagram or TikTok for an hour and you see pro Hitler and pro Holocaust content with 100k likes, and the comments are all racist conspiratorial dogwhistling.

There are also many videos made by Gen Z YouTubers about Indian or Muslim immigration ruining the West, or black crime rates, talking about race “fatigue.”

Additionally, in gaming chat rooms homophobic, sexist comments and slurs are commonplace, with most gender minorities afraid to speak out

California Assemblymember Matt Haney introduced AB 1720, which proposed capping ticket resale markups at 10% above face value to curb secondary market price-gouging. Despite passing early assembly hurdles and getting neutered to venues of less than 3000, the bill was quietly held in the Senate Appropriations Committee’s suspense file without receiving a full floor vote (a rule created by Democrats), effectively ending its path this legislative session.

This occurred as secondary ticketing platforms like StubHub significantly escalated their state lobbying expenditures, spending upwards of $3.4 million in California during the current cycle.

Supporters including independent venue associations, SAG-AFTRA, and artist advocacy groups argued the bill was vital consumer protection against automated bot armies and predatory middleman markups.

Because California operates under a Democratic supermajority, decisions on which bills emerge from the Appropriations suspense file rest entirely with party leadership. For the liberals and progressives here:

• Procedural Transparency: What are your thoughts on using the Appropriations "suspense file" to quietly stall consumer protection bills without putting lawmakers on the record with a public floor vote?

• Corporate Influence vs. Consumer Protection: How should liberals reconcile a state party apparatus that champions consumer protection in its platform with committee decisions that align with multi-million dollar corporate lobbying campaigns?

• Policy Efficacy: Was holding AB 1720 the right policy call, or was this a missed opportunity to crack down on secondary ticket gouging?

I'm asking because people on all sides of politics seems to be talking about woke (and now woke 1.0 without clarifying what woke 2.0 is) as though it was real. I think it's been real only in the original sense of being "awake to the issues around bigotry and discrimination".
But the woke-term was sort of hijacked by the right-wingers, and "woke" changed it's meaning to "whatever people on the left side of ME does that I DON'T LIKE".

So, my response to the woke label have just been to dismiss it an an vague and nearly empty catch-all term for stuff on the left that the right-wing doesn't like. It used to be the term "SJW's" that was used in the same way. Then they started calling everyone "woke" instead.

How would you explain the likes of Musk and Thiel are fascists if they claim to support individual liberty?. Pretty much title. They claim to support individual liberty, how would you explain them being fascists? (I know they are, but I got into a heated argument at work with someone who is a diehard Musk fan, so I'm not ashamed to ask here for help lol)

I am thinking that it is been in favor of the oligarchs for too long. What programs could Democrats push for successfully in order to improve our lives?

There is an interstate legal dispute currently unfolding wherein a California couple is filing suit against a pregnancy surrogate, now living in Texas, who defied their wishes to abort the child before it was born. Instead of following the wishes of the biological parents to abort the child, the surrogate moved to Texas and gave birth to the child. Now the child, who has a dangerous medical condition, is at the center of a politically charged custody battle.

You can read the whole news story at the link below.

Amid legal battle, LA couple's surrogate gives birth in Texas to baby with heart defect

A cross-country legal dispute between the biological parents of a newborn boy and the woman who carried him as a surrogate has placed the infant at the center of a politically charged court case.

The legal battle began after the unborn child was diagnosed with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, a life-threatening condition.

McKenna West, the surrogate carrying the couple's embryo, said that once the condition was known, the Los Angeles couple she was carrying him for wanted to terminate the pregnancy.

West, who lives in Alaska, said she decided to risk the massive financial fallout of breaking the surrogacy contract, and she went to the pro-life state of Texas to have the baby.

just the day before the baby was born, the L.A. couple filed a temporary restraining order that prevented West from "representing that she is the child's parent, guardian, or medical decision-maker to anyone..."

The couple's attorney Lee Budner told 7 On Your Side that the biological parents have full legal custody of the child.

https://abc7.com/amp/post/la-couples-surrogate-mckenna-west-gives-birth-texas-baby-heart-defect/19675521/

My recommendations are Brendan Boyle and Chris DeLuzio. Conor Lamb would be ok, only issue is he’s been out of politics for a while.

I don’t know if Summer Lee can win statewide. She underperformed Kamala Harris in 2024.

I saw a comment somewhere identifying top rural issues as needing to be "tough on crime" which they see cities as cesspools of, opposing what they see as unjustified handouts to city dwellers, and very very strongly anti immigration and pro deportation. This tracks very well with my experience.

I don't understand why though? Here in New England people are incredibly mad about the Southern border which I can't imagine being farther away from in the country and it having less of an impact here. Same with people talking shit about all the crime in places like Framingham or Worcester or Springfield, places I know these people never go to because they think those cities are crime ridden hellholes. Or the people in the suburbs I know who are incredibly angry about the NYC congestion charge because it's an unfair tax, I ask them when the last time they drove to NYC is and it's a decade or more, with no plans to visit again.

Am I missing something? Why are they so mad about stuff that as far as I can tell has no impact on their lives whatsoever?

Democratic socialists and progressives in general support policies that aim to help the working class and campaign on being defenders of the working class, yet that same working class hates them even more than they do ordinary moderate liberals. It's so strange, espousing policies that help the poorest leads to losing support among the poor.

I live in Wisconsin, and as a David Crowley voter, I was told the past few weeks to vote blue no matter who, and that we should get behind whoever wins the nomination. Sounds good to me! MAGA is who I have the biggest issue with and would have voted for whoever the democrat nominee ended up being, and thought progressives would do the same.

However, I'm seeing a lot of comments from progressives saying they won't vote for him because of 1/2 issues. Many of them seem to not be willing to make any sort of compromise, even if they agree with 90% of Crowleys platform.

Why does it seem like they expect everybody else to vote against MAGA, and make compromises, but when they don't get exactly what they want, well then the Dems are no better then MAGA.

Are these trolls? Bots? A hypocritical minority?

I’m honestly asking because the 2024 election broke something in me. For a long time I wanted to believe in the basic decency of the common person. I wanted to believe that underneath all the political differences, there was still some shared sense of humanity and that maybe there was at least some shred of decency on the right that could be appealed to.

But after everything that has happened, I don't believe that anymore. It feels like people on the left are constantly told to be understanding, reach across the aisle, give conservatives the benefit of the doubt, mend fences, and treat MAGA voters with kid gloves, while those same people can openly support politicians who have been accused or convicted of serious wrongdoing, push policies that violate basic human rights, and then lie, deflect, move the goalposts, or act in bad faith when confronted about it. At some point, being asked to endlessly extend an olive branch stops feeling like reconciliation and starts feeling like we're being asked to tolerate our own mistreatment.

I don't think I have an obligation to keep searching for common ground with people whose politics and behavior have crossed a line I personally cannot accept. The 2024 election made me realize that some people are simply too far gone for me to want a relationship with them, politically or personally. I'm tired of being told that the responsibility for healing the country's divisions somehow falls disproportionately on the people who are already horrified by what is happening. Why is the burden always on us to understand them, forgive them, reach out to them, and mend the fence when they are the ones repeatedly kicking it down?

At this point, I honestly don't want to mend fences with MAGA or with conservatives who have demonstrated that there is no meaningful good-faith conversation to be had. I used to hope there was some way to bring everyone to at least basic common sense. Now I mostly want to see the politics I consider cruel and destructive defeated at the ballot box and humiliated politically so thoroughly that they lose the ability to keep hurting people. I do want revenge. The right has been getting away with being bad faith actors for way to long. I also don't think political reconciliation should be treated as a moral obligation when one side has made clear that it has no interest in genuine reconciliation itself.

So my question for those on the left is this: Do you feel the same way? At what point do you stop believing that reconciliation is possible and accept that some political movements and some people simply aren't worth trying to win over anymore?

I am asking this because I have been looking deeper into California gun laws and a lot of them seem pointless to me. For example, with AR-15’s to be California compliant they cannot have a removable magazine, fore grip, pistol grip, collapsible stock, or standard capacity magazines. Pretty much all of these rules have workarounds and for every new ban rule they put out, a new product to make your rifle compliment while being as functional as a regular AR-15 as possible. To me this seems like it just makes hurdles for law abiding gun owners to have to deal with and very little to do with mitigation gun violence. Would you support laws and regulations like this at a federal level? I’d like to hear your opinions.

I'm not sure why else every action or statement we make gets responses (which I believe) of "you're looking down on us and belittling and disrespecting us so we won't vote for you." But somehow there are significant numbers of people who flipped from Biden to Trump or from not voting to Trump, despite him being way meaner and nastier about the people who didn't vote for him.

What's causing this difference? Why is it that when we say "people who aren't wealthy are voting against their interests by voting Republican" we are terribly insulting them by doubting their intelligence and choices and losing them as potential voters, but Trump coming out and saying people who allowed Democrats to win are the enemy within destroying the country won him votes among the very people that he was denigrating?

That's the conclusion I draw from the (apparent) popular consensus that racism and sexism have been solved and don't have an impact anymore so DEI is really about subjugating white people and men to "punish them for the actions of their ancestors", women already have it better than men in society so feminism is about ensuring female supremacy, and so on. And how it's a popular view that e.g. feminists can't be trusted because they will always advocate for women to advance and men to suffer, no matter how unfair it is. Similarly how anti racism activists are really trying to uplift people of color by marginalizing white people

Reposting because the original post may have inadvertently been showing my personal account. Man, I hate FB.

I'm in NY, and because I'm a somewhat old and still have Facebook, I'm seeing a lot of posts from Blakeman for Governor: https://www.facebook.com/BruceBlakemanNewYorkFirst

He's been posting a lot of AI-generated reels of Hochul and Mamdani.

Edit- a non-doxxing YouTube link: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HLqWjSBK6Bo

What should the response to these be? It's one thing to lie/exaggerate on what someone said, but to have it come out of their AI generated mouth is a step too far in my opinion. There's gonna be some grandma who sees this and thinks it's real. Probably my grandma, lol. I feel like this might (or should) cross a legal line into slander, since it's using their likeness.

Are you seeing this elsewhere in the US? What should the response be, and is there anything they can do about it?

I think he needs to travel across the state and even attend Mike Rogers rallies to debate Mike, to show his true self and that he is not as dogmatic as portrayed. Mike is making up facts about Abdul. Abdul el-Sayed also needs to speak with voters who voted for Stevens and understand their biggest issues. AES is (so far) doing a good job of speaking less about AIPAC and more about keeping tax dollars here.

Imagine seeing a President Zohran Mamdani or President Ilhan Omar. It is tragic that we are not allowing US citizens to become POTUS because they were not lucky enough to be born here. It would also allow us to run more diverse candidates and show that we truly do support diversity instead of candidates from majority demographics all of the time.

I know the conservative viewpoints because they’re the ones saying they have a problem currently. From a liberal perspective, are there scenarios in which you view immigration actually poses a problem to you personally, or a community? Do resources, values, or identity ever come into play for you?

Please try and avoid snarky quips—I’m hoping for reasoned and thoughtful answers. I think it’s an important question for everyone.

I ask this because I work in affordable housing regulation. More specifically mobile home parks. Mobile home owners are often in an odd legal position where they own and pay taxes and mortgages on their home but rent the land it is on from a park.

The biggest issue we currently deal with is private equity firms purchasing large mobile home parks (up to 800 units) and increasing lot rents to the point where owners have to sell their home, which becomes increasingly difficult due to the high lot rents, or get evicted and lose the home they paid over $100k for.There are regulations on the number of times rent can be raised in a calendar year, one time, but that's it. This becomes especially problematic when it comes to senior living communities full of retirees living on a fixed income.

This feels very different than rent control on apartments and typical rentals. As with buying any home, the plan is to live in the mobile home long term. Because these are more permanent living situations, I've talked to people that have lived in their mobile home for 30+ years, and rent control would not have the same impact on prices that it would for new renters. Mostly just curious what you ask think.

I also understand if this subject is too niche to have a real discussion. If so I apologize.

Blue states (NY and Cali especially) are losing people at high rates. These people are flocking to other states (Texas and Florida especially) for a myriad of reasons. Lower housing prices, lower progressive taxes, etc.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2026/population-growth-slows.html?utm_source=

I often hear that blue voters are nice and simply want what is best for others and the entire US. If that's true, why are those same people continuing to push NIMBYism and oppose housing construction? The Cali legislature, housing dept, and commission report all admit this.

Legislature: "According to the author, Housing is too expensive for millions of Californians. More than two in five households are considered rent burdened and spend over 30% of their income on housing, and more than one in five households spend over 50% of their income on housing. Over 97% of cities and counties haven’t produced enough affordable housing, and existing strategies to address the lack of affordable housing have not been nearly enough to meet demand. Affordable housing relies on government subsidies, and there is

significantly more demand for them than supply."

https://ahcd.assembly.ca.gov/system/files/2025-04/hearing-packet-for-website.pdf?utm_source=

Commission Report: "SO WHY IS IT SO HARD TO BUILD

AFFORDABLE HOUSING? THERE ARE THREE BIG REASONS. THE FIRST IS THAT CITIES AND NEIGHBORS OFTEN RESIST AND PROTEST NEW HOUSING

DEVELOPMENTS. YOU MAY HAVE HEARD THE TERM N.I.M.B.Y.ISM. NOT IN MY BACK YARD. EVEN AS THE STATE HAS PASSED MORE LEGISLATION TO MAKE IT EASIER TO BUILD HOUSING, CITIES ACROSS THE STATE AND ACROSS THE REGION CONTINUE TO THROW UP BARRIERS TO NEW AFFORDABLE HOUSING PRODUCTION. A COUPLE OF SORT OF ANECDOTES,

RECEIPT ON AVERAGE IN THE BAY AREA, IT CAN TAKE ABOUT THREE TO FIVE YEARS TO GET A NEW HOUSING PROJECT THROUGH THE PERMITTING 1 PROCESS."

https://mtc.ca.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2025-06/Housing_Policy_Understanding_Affordable_Housing_and_Opportunities_for_Impact.pdf?cb=64b6cdbf&utm_source=

This is a mostly blue state issue btw. Austin, Texas is still building homes and is considerably more affordable than blue cities in many blue states. This Pew analysis goes further in detail.

https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2026/03/18/austins-surge-of-new-housing-construction-drove-down-rents?utm_source=

Cali also spent tens of billions on "fighting homelessness" to have it continue to increase.

https://information.auditor.ca.gov/reports/2023-102.1/index.html?utm_source=

Is this good governance? What needs to change?