Swagnarok

Holy cow, I thought he said he could have up to five more years to live. This just came out of nowhere.

Okay...? Why does this matter? Somebody like him will never be in a position to act on his convictions in regards to how gays ought to be treated. The overwhelmingly Christian USA did away altogether with the death penalty for homosexuality in the mid 19th century. There's zero evidence to suggest that modern Christians as a whole are in any way, shape, or form more hardcore than their 19th century ancestors.

-Is Sheol in Judaism equivalent to Hell in Christianity?

-What is the purpose of man? For what was he created?

-Is there an end of days in Judaism? Or do Jews merely look forward to the eternal continued existence of the nation of Israel? Do Jews believe that their nation is destined to one day assume some kind of superpower status? Do Jews believe that eventually the rest of the world shall look to their success and adopt their faith in G-d?

-What is the orthodox Jewish position on the Messiah?

-How would Judaism handle modern issues with no equivalent in the Torah? Can the writings of, say, Isaiah be used to help establish precedent? Or is the Mosaic Law the only thing that can be reliably drawn upon? Are there books in the Christian Old Testament that are no longer considered canon in mainstream Judaism today?

And now, there's this article by Matt Bai, displayed prominently on the Yahoo news website and also not marked as an opinion piece.

The tone, rather than merely speculating on what might happen from this point out, is quite blatantly anti-Trump, accusing him of, among other things, having a Caligula-esque personality.

At one point he inadvertently acknowledges the truth we've all known: what liberals really want, far from being patriots who only want justice and rule of law, is to call into question the legitimacy of Trump's election and presidency. And yet he still has the audacity to say that Trump is the "bully" here.

Any economic benefits to mass immigration are temporary. After a certain point they'll be numerous to tip elections in the favor of the Democratic Party, and after that they'll just start siphoning off all our national resources for themselves.

At the gym near my college today I sat down and ate a sandwich, and right there was a TV playing Fox News. The woman on there appeared to be ripping into Trump over Cohen. And at the time of writing on the Fox News website the thing most prominently displayed presently is about Manafort. So the idea that they're flat out ignoring or trying to downplay the story is preposterous.

A lot of people try to downplay Left-Wing media bias by pointing to Fox as a kind of "whataboutism". But in practice they're not nearly as bats**t crazy as a lot of people try to make them out to be.

Even if there was somebody I wanted dead badly enough to act on it, venturing out to commit the deed would be extremely dangerous and I'd likely end up dead before I could even get to his house. And if that person were to successfully kill me in self-defense before I could do anything to him, not only would I have accomplished nothing and lost everything but I'd also be remembered as a bad person.

So no. I'd just retreat to an innocuous and remote hiding place with a loaded shotgun in hand and wait it out.

Hey guys, how about this:

I ought to devise a pseudo-history of mankind. Then when I'm done with that one I ought to make another, and then another, then another, and another, and so on. Then, I'll ask historians whether they believe in these stories I made up. Whenever they inevitably say no, I'll say "The overwhelming majority of historians reject the overwhelming majority of histories. Therefore, there is no history! Our species and planet don't have any past at all, and we ought to mock and discriminate against anyone who believes otherwise!"

To our military's credit, the Navy will be developing a variant of the Tomahawk (range: 1000+ miles) that can hit seaborne targets, which should serve to counter China's edge in IRBMs.

They've also upgraded the Sea Sparrow missile, which is Navy's defensive weapon of choice against anti-ship missiles.

This marks changes in their procurement policies, in which they now opt to upgrade existing platforms instead of designing new ones from scratch every time there is a need for further innovation to counter a new development in the capabilities of our foes. This should save considerable amounts of money and raise the overall cost-efficiency of the military.

I do not, for the same reason that I do not include the Huffington Post.

"Do you believe in the devil?"

 No.

"If so who or what is the devil?"

The Devil is a malevolent spiritual entity described in the Abrahamic Religions but especially Christianity. In Christianity, the Devil is an archangel of God who rebelled against his Creator, and in the process incited other angels to join his rebellion. He was motivated to rebel chiefly by pride. Either he wanted to directly usurp the glory and power due to God or he thought himself as wise as God and took issue with the way that God was running things. Either directly or indirectly he appeared to the woman in the Garden of Eden and incited mankind to join his rebellion against God.

The decision by the first human couple to disobey God's command meant either that they introduced sin into the world and caused their own offspring to be born sinful and in need of a Savior OR they rebelled because man was sinful from the onset. It can be assumed that Satan desires for humans to go to Hell because either he hates them for being created in the image of God (and perhaps is jealous of such a privileged position that humans enjoy), or because he knows that doing so serves to break God's heart, or because he's headed there and wants company, or because he doesn't want humans glorifying God, or perhaps all of the above.

"What effects does this being have on our world?"

As described above, but to elaborate further: Satan according to Christianity is active in the world today, either directly or indirectly, with the purposes of swaying the behavior of the masses and the governments of the world for the purpose of stifling the spread of Christianity and eroding it wherever it exists presently. While he has already been described in the Bible as the Prince of this World, in the end of days he shall assume total control over human civilization and direct all of its resources towards the eradication of the Church, but the return of Jesus shall put an end to his reign of terror and he shall be cast into Hell.

"Would this being mind, do you think, if we call it Stan for the purposes of this discussion?"

Were such a being to exist, I suspect he would be delighted that you treat all of this as one big joke.

One of the most valuable assets of a civilization is its dignity.

Dignity Ranking:

1. Western Europe/Wealthy East Asian Countries/Canada

2. United States/Australia/Israel

3. Russia/China

4. South America/Middle East

5. Africa, especially Sub-Saharan Africa, which is at the bottom of the totem pole

Things that may serve to confer dignity:

-A long history of independence

-Material prosperity (most important)

-A fascinating traditional culture and for your country to have been around for a long time

-A strong military/high performance in wars

-A strong democracy and low levels of corruption

-A longstanding peaceful society

Things that may serve to detract from dignity:

-Having long been under subjugation

-Being economically underdeveloped (most important)

-Being a recently born "artificial" country (like, say, the Democratic Republic of the Congo)

-Underperformance in wars

-A weak or nonexistent democracy, and high levels of corruption

-A reputation for violence, civil wars, and coups

When a country has dignity, we human beings are more likely to give a crap whenever something bad happens to its citizens. That is, we actually place a higher value on their lives than we do on the lives of people from countries which lack dignity. This isn't fair, as nobody can help what country they were born into, but that's the way things are and, for all intents and purposes, have always been. Donald Trump said aloud about Haiti what a lot of people have long thought.

When a people lack dignity in the eyes of others, outsiders have lower inhibitions about imposing crap upon them. When a people do not perceive themselves as having dignity, they're less likely to resist when outsiders impose crap upon them. In a country that lacks dignity, the people of said country are less likely to work to maintain what they have. It encourages corrupt leadership.

Dignity in the eyes of others is something that must be worked for. It usually takes a minimum of several decades to build it up. Dignity in one's own eyes is much easier. The likes of Booker T. Washington, W.E. Dubois, the various great thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance, MLK, and Malcom X helped the black community attain this. However, with the exception of MLK (though to be fair people before him laid the groundwork for his success), they failed to attain the long-term dignity of Black Americans in the eyes of outsiders. Blacks initially started out with no dignity, having emerged from centuries of enslavement. The quickest way to gain dignity would've been to become economically well off, but this didn't pan out. With the exception of Booker T. Washington, these various intellectuals failed to put enough emphasis on economic development.

South American republics used redistributive economic policies in part as an assertion of dignity, a declaration that "We have a right to not live in abject poverty and not take crap from rich people". However, as this usually served to erode democracy and prosperity, in the long term they were reducing their own dignity.

Russia has sought to increase its dignity though military might, but they're doing this instead of investing in a modern economy so in the long term they're going to end up quite undignified. Saudi Arabia has used oil to become wealthy and buy instant dignity for itself, but this hasn't translated into a viable modern, post-oil economy so 20-30 years from now they'll likely end up quite undignified also.

China has taken concrete steps to build up its dignity through economic development and a sort of faux pacifism that's lasted for decades, though under communist rule there is probably an upper ceiling as to how much dignity they can have, and in coming years they could erode much of what they've gained.

In this world there is a type of person who believes himself to be altruistic and deserving to be above the rules so that he can impose his "help" upon other people. This kind of person is in practice shallow and narcissistic, and he will only hurt those who he claims to be helping, since he is not actually a good person, his "charity" doesn't actually have altruistic motives behind them, and the fact of his dishonesty to even himself makes him unable to realize the damage he's causing. Rather, what he does is exploitative. For purposes of narcissistic supply he must be in control of everything, though he isn't near competent enough to run everything competently, and all the countless inefficiencies of this arrangement inevitably come to the surface soon enough.

Thus is the danger of overambition. That's why in a functional society national leaders understand the limits to how much they can accomplish for their people in the span of their administrations, the boundaries which they must always operate within, and the fact that they are ultimately insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and indeed replaceable, and not a lick smarter than their peers.

A blatant dictator can solve the problems of his country easier than a democratically elected leader in that he can simply force unpopular changes that are necessary.

An elected dictator cannot do this, nor is he usually interested in helping anyone but himself. This is arguably the worst form of government, second only to a dictator who outright desires to inflict harm. There was an Ancient Greek philosopher (Plato, maybe?) who predicted that all democracies would ultimately end with a lawless, amoral demagogue, resulting in an endless loop of Dictatorship-to-Democracy-and-then-back-again-to-Dictatorship.

It should be noted that all of this is contingent on a citizenry who lack discipline and fail to put in the work needed to maintain a Republic.

I suspect that what you want is an outright dictator who'll force the nation to reform and rejuvenate itself. A benevolent dictator. But a people who would try to vote in somebody like that usually end up with a dissolute and corrupt fellow over them.

Dictatorship simply isn't cool nowadays. Even a thug like Putin would rather have a veneer of democracy (thus, popular legitimacy) to his government. Under the new framework, master manipulators will rise to the top of the pack. These are men who know exactly what buttons to push to get the public to keep voting them in, no matter how unscrupulous their methods are. They rely heavily on the intelligence apparati of the government in their attempts to manipulate the public (such as to suppress unfavorable information), upon the promise of stability and national unity (especially in the face of an external threat, often conjured from thin air), and upon the ideal of themselves as the face of their country to the rest of the world.

This is simply an adaptation by old-fashioned strongman to the threat posed to them by the global export of democracy by the US. It's most likely to happen in countries that've fallen into the middle income trap and/or where there's an exceptionally strong sense of national pride, usually in countries that've existed for a very long time.

People can use nationalism as an opiate to avoid having to face the hard realities of their country, which in turn leads to social, political, economic stagnation and decline. History has shown that a country whose people were stupid enough to turn down hard work and gradual progress for the siren's lure of a messianic leader who'll fix all their problems in one generation will one day end up being remembered as a "s**thole country".

According to this source, about 1/3 of Syrian refugees are men ages 18-59. The majority of the refugees are male, constituting roughly 50-something to 60 percent of the refugees. However, many of these are minors. There are more women age 60+ than men 60+.

Source:

While the majority of Syrians in general are male, the natural gender ratio imbalance is small enough that it cannot possibly make up for this disparity.

As for young men being duty-bound to fight in their country's wars (or at least are not allowed to flee the way zone), I agree to this only so far as there is due compensation to them for this sacrifice (that is, they'd be regarded as heroes and they'd be able to find wives, should they survive). If a large number of women flee, that creates a gender imbalance, reducing the likelihood that there'd be any payoff in that regard for the men in question.

My younger brother and roommate for the past 15-16 years moved out of the house today.

I think a more helpful mode of comparison, rather than spelling out which group has more members that have resorted to violence (given that both sides at Charlottesville hated each other equally, it just as easily could've been a leftie who plowed his car into a crowd), we should ask which group puts a greater emphasis on violent action in its rhetoric (among its members), which is more willing to state (and believes) that violence is necessary to accomplish their aims and therefore justified, etc.

It's also helpful to ask what the end goal of either group is.

Alright. Thank you, and thanks airmax.

If somebody with at least one functional account on DDO could ask airmax to re-open my account, I'd really prefer not to have to create another email to make another DDO account just to ask that one thing from him.

So long as everything but their brains are functional (that is to say, their bodily functions are sustained by machines). That's what I mean. They are anatomically still living humans for the most part, so testing should yield results very similar to those that would be seen for actual living humans. Comatose isn't really what I meant, because people can and sometimes do wake up from comas and resume normal lives, and there is some evidence to suggest that comatose people can have a level of awareness of external stimulus (such as perhaps pain). I mean a situation where there's nothing left of their consciousness to be revived.

I wouldn't take the offer unless it was possible to "reset" my brain from time to time (which would perhaps entail resetting my memories), so that I wouldn't eventually become totally jaded and unresponsive from having exhausted myself in everything.

I had a thought: what if we used clinically brain dead people who had no hope of ever regaining consciousness? This obviously wouldn't work for, say, neurological drugs (such as antidepressants), but I'm sure the results would be more accurate than what we get from testing stuff on animals. Of course, this could only be done with people who donated their bodies to science ahead of time.

The big problem I could see stemming from this would be that there simply wouldn't be enough available bodies to substitute for the huge number of animals used every year for testing.

The following rule should apply with political public gatherings that turn violent:

The side which first gets the permit to hold the demonstration should be considered the innocent party if it's unclear who was the instigator in the clashes. In such an event, the second party (the counterdemonstrators) should be held responsible, since their presence is a challenge to the first amendment rights of the first party to assemble peaceably.

Good grief, somebody please update the edit feature. It only allowed for one time.

Alright, let's start off with this article by ABC:

Note first of all that this is NOT labeled as an opinion article. So they really have no excuse for this one. As usual, they use the term "White Supremacist" as a blanket term for all the right-wingers gathered at Charlottesville last year, even though considerably less than half of those in attendance could be considered as such. Many, perhaps most could be considered white nationalists (not the same thing as white supremacists), but not all of them could be considered as this.

Last year, Trump said that "both sides" were responsible for the violence. This was not an unfactual statement, and it shouldn't have been controversial: left-wing counterprotesters chose to show up to the rally which the right-wing protesters had a permit for and stir up trouble. We have a picture of a counterprotester throwing a newspaper box at a protester. One counterprotester was wielding a lighted spray can (effectively, an improvised flamethrower). There's a photo of at least one protester with a big swell and fresh cut on his face. The counterprotesters seized and burned flags from protesters, and I'm sure they didn't just ask for the flags. There is no doubt that the counterprotesters engaged in unlawful and violent activities.

The source of the protest (the "Unite the Right" rally) in the first place was the scheduled removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, the confederate general who brilliantly led the Confederate army during the Civil War. The statue had been in place since 1924. Some of the people wanted the statue to remain for white supremacist reasons, but there are also more sensible reasons for opposing its removal.

Anyways, when Trump said that "both sides" were behind the violence, he said something that about half of the country (the conservative half) agreed with and half of the country (the liberal half) was outraged over. However, the latter half's outrage was unreasonable. Trump didn't say "Those Antifa goons shouldn't have been there", but instead rightly blamed both sides. This was about as close to bipartisan as one's gonna get with President Trump. It was a more or less Presidential thing to say, and in any case it was not the media's place to decide whether or not Trump said the right thing. Instead, they took what he said and tried to turn it into some kind of big controversy.

And now, one year later, those same people try to look back on Trump's statement as something that still "puts him on the spot" today, even though literally the only reason he was ever in a "spot" for this is because of the media's unethical interference.

Alright, I never bothered to do this in the past, and I don't know how well this little experiment will work out.

There is not a shred of doubt in my mind that the press works tirelessly to help the Democratic Party win elections by painting President Trump, the GOP, and conservatives in the most negative light humanly possible. In this thread, I will attempt to provide proof of this, and perhaps convince a few people in the process.

For 2020 Canada has a projected fertility rate of 1.56. The fact that their population is projected to rise to 40 million people by c. 2050 can clearly be attributed solely to immigration. Each year roughly 300,000 people immigrate to Canada. To their credit, most of these immigrants are not from the Islamic world. However, many of these are from China (about 5% of the population is ethnically Chinese), and that poses the risk of Canada becoming a Chinese proxy state in coming decades. If all of these immigrants are properly integrated into Canadian society, it could strengthen the country and make great power status considerably more likely.

(Yeah, after posting this I ran it all through in my head and realized there's virtually no way to make this workable. So feel free to just ignore this thread altogether.)

They're small, but they can be hitched to a truck and moved anywhere. The owner of the trailer doesn't have to own the land that the trailer's on. Instead, he/she can just opt to pay rent. The price of the mobile home itself would be about 1/4th the same price of a conventional (and, to be fair, considerably larger) home. According to one source, a mobile home manufactured c. 2014 would have an average lifespan of about 30-55 years, and I will not discount the possibility of construction design improvements in coming decades increasing this figure somewhat. In any case, a person who bought their moved out and bought a mobile home of their own at 18 would find that he'd likely only have to purchase and move into a new house once more in the span of his life, barring damage incurred from close proximity to natural disasters and whatnot.

It would serve to make housing significantly more affordable in America if mobile homes became more popular, and, perhaps equally importantly, it'd allow for greater flexibility in the jobs market: in today's climate, many Americans are reluctant to move into a new house because they're not sure they'll be able to sell the old one, which would straddle them with extreme debt. So they may turn down more lucrative job opportunities elsewhere in the state/country. If all you needed was a moving truck and a new trailer park somewhere, I suspect we'd have a much more dynamic economy.

A big barrier to this is the sordid reputation associated with trailer parks: they're thought of as low-income housing units, where you'd be surrounded by distasteful and even dangerous neighbors. If the image of trailer parks could be rehabilitated so that it was a socially acceptable option for the middle class, that'd solve the problem I think. Also, the government could work with manufacturers of homes to design a model of more "serious" mobile homes which are better insulated, ventilated, and energy-efficient.

Thoughts?

A lot of men in my generation (and perhaps myself as well) are stuck in a rut where they don't really know what to do with their lives and they end up just doing nothing. They indulge in pleasures like video games (along with near-constantly sitting down) and eating junk food. They get fat, fail to develop vital social skills, and ultimately fail find a wife. This is a big problem that has to be resolved. Military service is really something that could correct this problem, but we have far more young people than the number of soldiers that we need. So something else would have to be found to take its place.

As I've said before (not here necessarily but perhaps on DDO), IQ doesn't matter as much as environment. We can cultivate an environment where people are able to put their full potential to use. Being intellectually stimulated as a child (or lack thereof) will do a lot to determine how well you manage later in life.

That is to say, I think even those people who are like "Nah kids sound like a lot of trouble I love being a bachelor" will eventually reach a point where they'd like to have kids. It's part of who we are, and modern hedonism can't take that away from us entirely.

Not necessarily. You just have to make having a family affordable, and to make it easier to find a spouse. That's the big kicker. Even I of all people would like to have kids one day.

The white birth rate could be increased via implementing paid maternity leave, abolishing social security (for white people under the age of 30 at the time of implementation with the understanding that their only security rested in either saving up a butt ton of money or having children to support them in their old age), and incentivizing people of color to undergo sterilizations or to otherwise not have children. These birth control measures would not include abortion, as that is murder in my opinion and thus should not be legal.

Hard paleoconservatism as opposed to neoconservatism, which in many respects is too liberal and which wrongly worships laissez-faire capitalism as the highest good for a nation.

Race is a very powerful idea: it causes you to perceive certain people as "your people" to the exclusion of everybody else. It causes you to perceive those on the outside as a potential threat and perhaps eternal enemy. The idea has in modern times especially captured the imaginations of people of color, who all perceive themselves as being threatened by and victims of the white majority. People hate what they fear and resent, usually. So that means "white" Americans (those of European, non-Hispanic, non-Jewish, non-Roma descent) are regularly scapegoated for all the problems faced by these groups, and will accordingly be punished if they lose the majority needed to stave these people off.

White Americans post-Civil Rights Era largely stopped thinking about race. This was kind of coarse in that it caused them to fail to acknowledge the inequalities and injustices faced by, say, Black Americans, but on the flip side it meant that they regarded their identity as Americans as being more important than their identities as Whites. Before this, in the age of White Supremacy, they were generally powerful enough a majority that they could afford to make race less of a concern than, say, foreign policy and the economy. Hence, these white people who made up the majority have always been Americans first. 

But what will happen if that majority is lost? What if People of Color become the majority? Well, they're still fixated on their status as victims and marginalized peoples, so that identity naturally comes first to them, their identities as Americans coming second. They will always flock to vote in monolithic blocs for whatever party panders to their demographic, and post-1968 that's been the Democratic Party. So once they become the majority, the end result will be a one-party state for the rest of time, like we've seen in Mexico. As these groups are much poorer than their white counterparts on average, they're always going to vote for the left-wing populists who promise to redistribute the wealth. Latin Americans are especially vulnerable to the siren's call of demagogues, as history has shown. Rule of law will be eroded, a cycle of dictatorships will take the place of our 200+ year old democracy. The economy will stagnate and decline.

For the above reason, I regard it as imperative that a comfortable white majority (say, 70%) be sustained in these lands, at least until the present mentality of non-whites (of course I'm speaking in generalizations, not on the level of every non-white individual living in the US) can be broken. Once this majority is ensured, I would support greater measures to combat racial inequality, though NOT the welfare state as we have it now, as this only perpetuates poverty in the long term.

In the America that I'd like to see, our economy would consist of untold millions of highly skilled workers, able to compete in the international market, and against the machines, ready to export our goods to a world ready to consume those goods. These skilled workers would get together to form business syndicates and share the responsibilities, workload, and profits of their enterprises. The vast majority of hardworking Americans could afford to own their home, get married, have kids. We would not be a wasteful people but all the byproducts of industry and consumption would be readily recycled. We would primarily rely upon renewable energies, especially nuclear, solar, and ethanol.

Most Americans would be religious, that religion being Christianity (and especially Protestant Christianity). Most children would be raised in a somewhat religious home, and would stay away from vices like drugs and promiscuity, but at the same time most people would not really start taking religion seriously until, say, their 20s or 30s. They'd enjoy happy childhoods, playing outside and hanging out with friends; most parents would limit the use of electronics in their households and especially for younger children. Most kids would attend public schools, as a way of ensuring social cohesion. English would be the undisputed national language, and all second-generation immigrants would end up becoming fluent in it. Most people would trust in the government, and for good reason, and they would be able to trust that when they turned on the news they wouldn't be fed a bunch of propaganda. We would be a democracy in which voter turnout was high in most elections, and especially in presidential elections. There would be two parties, one center-left and one center-right, to ensure a balance.

Instead of asking how one would draw the line, I think a more fitting question is how to know when a line is being crossed. Is it when *only* religious people hold a certain standpoint? In these instances, is it possible that nonreligious people are influenced by an anti-religious bias (not saying at all this is the case with abortion) or by something similar? Is separation of church and state a one-sided thing, something that only religious people can violate?

Hard Paleoconservatism, including racial elements. Change my mind.

Sure. In mid-19th century America you had religious leaders, especially in the northern part of the country, who denounced slavery, and I'm sure they played no insignificant role in convincing their congregations to be opposed to the practice. Because of course, religious leaders have traditionally been on the front lines of speaking up on moral issues. But slavery was also something that you didn't have to be religious to oppose. Abortion's the same way.

It should be noted also that the bulk of China's economy is centered around manufacturing stuff. If the US were to convince the rest of the world (in response to an unprovoked Chinese invasion of Taiwan) to simply satisfy their manufacturing needs elsewhere, the Chinese economy would collapse overnight. So there's more than one way to skin a cat in regards to Taiwan.

If the Chinese economy were to collapse, and their military to lose a war against Taiwan and the US, that'd most certainly spell the collapse of the communist regime, or at the very least Xi Jinping would be ousted and replaced by more sane communist leadership (though I'm skeptical that the regime could survive this).

The People's Liberation Army would have its work cut out for it in trying to take the island of Taiwan. The geography definitely favors the defenders, who have a reasonably advanced and modern military, supported by a modern and fairly large economy. The Chinese would not be able to use any of their artillery in the battle, since the distance of the Taiwan Strait at its narrowest point is 81 miles. Instead they'd have to rely upon missiles, which are quite expensive per shot, unless the Chinese were desperate enough to resort to nukes, in which case of course the Taiwanese would lose in a moment's notice.

And at this time the US military is still stronger than that of the Chinese. The PLA has not fought a war in decades, whereas the US invaded Iraq in 2003. So there could be major flaws in the coordination, tactics, organization, etc. of the PLA that are not apparent to us now. The military forces of dictatorships are generally at a disadvantage in that its generals and officers tend to distrust each other and communicate with each other less effectively, in that the motivation to fight among the soldiers would likely be lower than that of the defending Taiwanese or even the Americans (though maybe not in this case since this would be about "reuniting" China), and in that innovation and outside of the box thinking are usually discouraged. That's a big part of why the Arab dictatorships/kingdoms consistently lost to Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, despite Israel being much smaller. The US has most mastered combined arms doctrine (a force multiplier in any war), whereas the Chinese have not yet done so.

The Chinese would deliver a major blow to the US if they were to engage in kinetic anti-satellite warfare. However, doing so would render the entirety of Outer Orbit unsuitable for space travel and satellites, the latter of which the whole world relies upon for various purposes (such as GPS, weather forecasting, etc), for years, decades, or even centuries to come, and I'm skeptical that they'd do something so extreme just to conquer Taiwan.

Mostly anime.

If we go to war with them in 2020 over Taiwan, and we end up winning, and the communist regime collapses, then it'll finally be safe for the US government to adopt a very insular focus. Putin and Erdogan aren't long-term threats to us.

That wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing in a world where the CPC wasn't in charge of the country. A large Chinese consumer base would make for a lucrative market for US exports, and maybe a liberal and democratic China could handle the global peacekeeping work that we're stuck with right now.

That having been said, it seems increasingly likely that China's gonna end up stuck in the "middle income trap". A communist regime will only allow economic reforms to a certain point, and Xi Jinping's one-man rule is making even these less certain.

Keeping abortion illegal poses no challenge to the separation of church and state whatsoever, no more than regular laws outlawing the killing of other people do.

If the 350,000 figure is indeed accurate (though it also sounds extremely sketchy, as Argentina has less than 45 million people, and yet that figure is more than 1/3rd of the number of abortions performed in the US, a country with over 7x the population of Argentina, which would suggest either that Argentina has a very big "abortion culture" or that left-wing hacks are dramatically inflating the number of abortions performed clandestinely to paint the abortion ban in as negative a light as possible), then the government clearly isn't doing its job. It should work to make contraceptives much more readily available and crack down much more harshly on all parties involved in the act of abortion, including the prospective mother.

I'm assuming that Earth is 1harderthanyouthink and vagabond is FaustianJustice. Am I wrong?

It could be. But if 70% of the people here are from DDO's religion forum, that's gonna be a major buzzkill.

As a person who grew up exposed more to the Prequel rather than Original Trilogy, I would disagree with that (I would just like to add also that Jar Jar Binks was not nearly enough to ruin an entire three movies).

Yeah, kind of. This is what I've written so far from a poem I'm probably gonna use in a fanfic at some point later (just as a caveat, my poetry never rhymes):

Trapped in the storm of my mind none can hear me scream

I know our bodies shall be threshed at the foot of the altar

And our ashes sprinkled on the lips of the grinning demon

This happy dream is naught but the vapors of a dying flame

I want to cherish these moments always, but I am reminded

The strongest among us must yield to the turning of the hour

Its ticking, like nails on a chalkboard, like cascading thunder

The stroke of midnight shall do us apart, forever and ever.