We have a little more information now and it is interesting:

https://nypost.com/2024/09/15/us-news/alleged-would-be-trump-assassin-ryan-routh-donated-exclusively-to-democrats-since-2019/

The article starts with:

The Hawaii man suspected in former President Donald Trump’s assassination attempt on Sunday is a long-time Democrat, donating exclusively to the party’s candidates 19 times since 2019, records show.

Then later on it mentions:

Routh, 58, claimed in other social media posts that he supported Donald Trump in his first presidential campaign in 2016 — but later became disillusioned after his chosen candidate won office.

The article you linked was updated, looks like he did have a gun and was spotted while aiming through the fence:

Investigators found the suspect had left behind his “AK-style” rifle, as well as two backpacks, one of which contained ceramic tile, at the scene, Bradshaw said.

Yep, I definitely misunderstood that. Thanks for pointing that out.

It’s not a perfect system by far and I’m not arguing that.
But we’ve already seen how removing all privatization from an economy leads to worse outcomes because we have less options, less innovation, and more monopolies.
In my opinion we need to find a balance between the two systems that works best for everyone. Arguing for either extreme doesn’t make sense (in my opinion). I would rather see if we can come up with some other solutions that are better than the current system.

“Always” is a pretty strong word here. In some cases this is true, but in others it’s not.

For example, if you live in an area where all of the public schools are terrible, you’re going to want to look for other options. If the private schools in your area are way better (and hopefully affordable) then you would want to send your kids there. Public schools can also compare/see what private schools are doing that’s working, and update their policy/curriculum to improve themselves.

Privatizing public libraries is a terrible idea and is currently happening at an alarming rate in the U.S.

Removing all privatization from the entire economy is where we end up with command economies or communism which means that we end up with a lot of monopolies. There isn’t much of an incentive for innovation in those economies. Then you’re either living under some crazy dictatorship, or the country is falling apart and they are forced to change how their economy works.

Latinos who vote wouldn’t be getting deported…

List of polls for battleground states: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-harris

Circular reporting is just one thing that can make this more difficult. Checkout the cycle in this xkcd:

https://xkcd.com/978/

I suppose if you’re not trying to let people know that their views are not acceptable then you’re part of the problem.

Yes, but how are you approaching this discussion?

I think there are different ways to handle this. On one hand you can be hostile and “give them what they deserve”. On the other hand you can engage in friendly arguments.

This is a story about how someone from the Westboro Baptist Church left because of the way that people engaged with her. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVV2Zk88beY

What’s worth noting from this story, people that were hostile in their interactions with her only served to entrench her further in her ideals.

What caused her to change her mind were the people that had “friendly arguments” and made an effort to learn where she was coming from.

She listed out 4 key points when engaging in difficult conversations. I extracted/paraphrased some of what she said below:

1. Don’t assume bad intent (assume good or neutral intent instead) - Assuming ill motive almost instantly cuts you off from truly understanding why someone does and believes as they do. We forget that they’re a human being with a lifetime of experience that shaped their mind and we get stuck on that first wave of anger and the conversation has a very hard time ever moving beyond it.

2. Ask Questions - Asking questions helps us map the disconnect. We can’t present effective arguments if we don’t understand where the other side is coming from.

3. Stay calm - She though that “[her] rightness justified [her] rudeness”. When things get too hostile during a conversation, tell a joke, recommend a book, change the subject, or excuse yourself from the conversation. The discussion isn’t over, but pause it for a time to let tensions dissapate.

4. Make the argument - One side effect of having strong beliefs is that we sometimes assume that the value of our position is, or should be, obvious and self-evident. That we shouldn’t have to defend our positions because they’re so clearly right and good. If it were that simple, we would all see things the same way.

You can’t expect others to spontaneously change their minds. If we want change, we have to make the case for it.

What’s wrong with the bot?

If you’re using Voyager: Go to settings -> appearance then scroll all the way to the bottom and toggle on the option for “Show user instance”.

Edit: specified ‘appearance’ setting

It is disinformation. The data from the poll they are referencing was mostly completed before the assassination attempt: https://pro.morningconsult.com/trackers/2024-presidential-election-polling (Archive Link)

The latest data was collected Friday through Sunday, meaning most responses were gathered before Saturday’s assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

As much as I want this to be true, this is straight up misinformation at this moment.

The poll they are referencing is this one: https://pro.morningconsult.com/trackers/2024-presidential-election-polling (Archive link)

Under “In this tracker”

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Trump maintains lead: Trump continues to lead Biden by 2 percentage points, 44% to 42%, unchanged from the previous week and superior to his standing in the lead-up to the first 2024 presidential debate, when the candidates were tied. The latest data was collected Friday through Sunday, meaning most responses were gathered before Saturday’s assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

I don’t see any polls listed out here either that have been able to do a complete poll since the assassination attempt:

https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2024/trump-vs-biden

Out of curiousity, what would happen to the funds if we did have a wealthy replacement?

Would the donors be refunded a percentage of the money they donated to the Biden campaign? I doubt that money would be locked up and become unusable.

In most cases, it’s a slam dunk win unless things went really wrong. (say a pandemic)

I think people are severely overestimating how much of an impact being an incumbent actually has with the final results. In smaller elections this definitely has a big impact, but in the entirety of the US history we’ve only had 27 presidents run for reelection, and 9 of them have lost.

That’s a ~67% win rate for incumbent presidents, which isn’t terrible, but isn’t great either, and with a terrible sample size.

I’m on board with some sort of age cap, but it shouldn’t be a specific age/number cutoff.

That number should be dynamic and change according to some other metric like the average life expectancy of someone in that country. Maybe something like 90-95% of the life expectancy of the country?

At least that way we can provide another incentive for politicians to push forward legislation that will help increase the overall life expectancy of the nation as a whole.

the fact that the US doesn’t negotiate with terrorists,

Isn’t that just some Hollywood trope that’s not actually true?

That list, reorganized/alphabetized by state:

How is this live? It’s already dark in Los Angeles… (Sunset was 30 min ago: https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/usa/los-Angeles)