Author: Alan Buddug
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The Climate Predicament
Despite what’s going on — objectively speaking — with the Earth’s climate, the culture of full-fledged climate denial is still in full swing. Certainly, some of these climate change deniers are corporate shills, but that culture is now an independent organism that would produce distorted science and outright lies even without the far-right funding that…
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The Assault Rifle
There’s this ongoing political conversation wherein liberals say, “We must ban assault rifles,” and then conservatives respond with an overly pedantic definition of “assault rifle” in order to mock the liberals, who rightly see the conservative response as a steaming pile of horseshit. But maybe we should all be clear on what an assault rifle…
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Changes to ATF Pistol Brace Rule
The federal government has quite complex rules regarding what firearms are legal and under what circumstances. Because the laws were not written well, the executive branch agency responsible for enforcing those laws has had no choice but to make sense of them. Recently the ATF changed their interpretation of a gun part called a “pistol…
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Community in America
A year or so ago, I was helping a friend with a project in one of Columbia’s homeless camps, and we talked to one of the residents who was angry about thefts that had been happening in the camp — residents stealing from other residents. The thing that he said that really stuck with me…
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The Energy Transition Punchline
Right wing propaganda is currently going after two targets: trans people and our society’s shift to less environmentally destructive infrastructure (e.g., renewable energy and EV’s). Certainly, the attacks on trans people are the more alarming of the two things, but they tend to be more confined to far right spaces. In contrast, lies about renewable…
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Planetina and Media Portrayals of the Left
I wanted to call this “Planetina Did Nothing Wrong” because it would be funny, but unfortunately, Planetina did a lot wrong during her appearance as a parody of Captain Planet on season 5, episode 3 of Rick and Morty. Media false equivalence between the right and left extends even into fiction where things like this…
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Selective Enforcement
The best definition of conservativism is: The belief that there must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect (Wilhoit’s Law). You might expect that a conservative society would have two sets of laws — one set for the ingroups and a different…
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Colorado Nightclub Shooting: Advice for Moving Forward
I’ve been following the story of the Club Q nightclub shooting in Colorado Springs, and it is absolutely heartbreaking. I’m very appreciative of how the mainstream press and the LGBTQ+ community are handling it. I’m especially glad to hear that some of the patrons stopped the killer; the bravery of those individuals saved lives by…
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Joe Biden vs. The MAGA Monster
Joe Biden has now made a second speech about how America’s MAGAs are horrible people bent on ending democracy. And then he asked us to vote. I guess it makes sense to mainstream Democratic Party voters, but from my perspective, it was very concerning. For example: “extreme MAGA Republicans aim to question not only the…
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Conservativism Has Failed
American conservativism has failed. That shouldn’t be a surprise since the failure of conservative politics is the motivation behind every openly fascist political movement. What is interesting, though, is that conservatives are beginning to acknowledge this failure and are struggling with how to separate themselves from the fascists that have taken over the Republican party…