"we extracted some stuff from them and now we will come back around in January in a stronger position and extract even more" would be good to have laid out if it's their thinking, you know?

If there's a case to be made for why doing this was a good idea from a "we want the country to be livable" perspective (which maybe there is) I'd like the Senate Dems to make it and not just sort of let us wonder what the reasoning is

imagine John Wayne Gacy, fully integrated into society, followed awkwardly by a robot that looks like the Greendale Human Being and grabs him whenever he lurches towards a young boy

Unbelievable that they could be this stupid. Nobody cares. Just make a good movie.

Yeah I think balkanization is big time on the table and I have no idea what percent chance to give it but it seems very possible at this point

The breakdown of consensus reality is a hell of a thing

I will yes and this with noting that this is one reason why it's important to fight for dignity and agency for all people

Humans do not behave well when cut off from these things

I don't know what that's going to look like or honestly if it's even going to look like one nation rather than several

The future is very opaque to me right now

You're right and it makes total sense for people to opt for luddism when the people who own tech use it exclusively to fuck you over

But it is the case that technology has uses that aren't "fire everyone" or "make a financial house of cards"

We just never see them any more

I would like if more people understood that the problem with the maniac trying to kill you with a hammer is more the maniac and less the hammer

It does seem like them ending the filibuster is kind of a hollow threat, I agree

I agree it's good to extract these and indeed any concessions but doesn't increased leverage against the GOP mean they'll have to fall back to nuking the filibuster sooner than later next time

It's a subset of the argument that it was good to cave on the shutdown and I dunno "pressuring them that far is bad because then they will stop curtailing themselves" feels wrong to me

And again they can already end the filibuster! Today! This is just "don't make daddy mad"