Honestly, after your reading youre examples, it seems like things are worse today.

25 people were killed in the Salem witch trials. That is about the same number of unarmed black people killed by police every year.

And in your other example, 5 million people were killed in 154 years. In the post 9/11 Middle East wars, there were about 1 million people killed in 20 years. There were 100,000+ civilian deaths in Iraq which was the result of misleading WMD lies. So a lot of death from a “wrong” messenger in modern days too.

Yep. If you can get in the habit of asking questions, listening, making a comment, and then asking follow up or tangential questions you’ll be in good shape.

Places. Where people grew up, where they have traveled, where they have lived. Maybe even where they would want to go. This leads to other topics and lets you talk about something not too personal to start.

This is estimated to impact around 10% of workers. I don’t think landlords are going to react that much to 10% of the population making a couple dollars more per hour.

I really don’t see it this way. Sorry. The right wants culture wars to be done by government, the left wants culture to move towards a more fair and free society where people aren’t held back from opportunities because of biases around their identity. These are very different. And, no one in power on the left talks like those who in power on the right. The President has called half the country terrorists. Its insane and so much more one sided than you are saying.

It’s pretty telling that your example of a prominent non-MAGA type republican died 7 years ago. What Republicans support is MAGA. Otherwise they could hold MAGA people responsible for their clear crimes and moral failings.

Darwin talked about societies and advancement in species around communication. It is important for us to be able to communicate threats in order to build community. Assholes don’t build lasting societies.

Yep. We will need Nuremberg trials to actually move on from this.

We need to weather the storm and come back strong. We need a FDR 2.0 to transition from chaos and oligarchy into a more equitable America with universal healthcare and more support for struggling Americans.

Yep. This is the impact I see from my employer who is in the energy industry. They are trying to build up the electric grid to handle additional data centers. Between Bitcoin and AI there is a lot of new demand for energy in locations where there has been little population growth.

Nice try Elon

I am an accountant and prepare financial reports.

Companies catering to the wealthy is already happening. The richest man in the world, Bernard Arnault, sells luxury goods. It used to be that selling products to the most amount of people was better, Ford, oil barrons, even Wal-Mart. Now money is made selling products to the wealthy. The growth in inequality of the last 50 years shows up in many ways today. Housing sizes are larger because builders need to sell to the wealthy instead of to the masses where margins on modest sized homes are smaller or non-existent.