BootmanLA

You've done your part - you conveyed the news to him. His response - ghosting, seeking treatment, whatever - is on him, you can't control it, and it's not worth expending any effort on, even the mild effort of being annoyed.

Don't assume I'm going to be disappearing. As RawTop suggests, there are options out there.

Please itemize those provisions, instead of merely making unsubstantiated allegations that they exist. In fact, in relevant part, the act says "Nothing in this Act, or any amendment made by this Act, shall be construed to diminish or abrogate a religious liberty or conscience protection otherwise available to an individual or organization under the Constitution of the United States or Federal law." It further states "Consistent with the First Amendment to the Constitution, nonprofit religious organizations, including churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, nondenominational ministries, interdenominational and ecumenical organizations, mission organizations, faith-based social agencies, religious educational institutions, and nonprofit entities whose principal purpose is the study, practice, or advancement of religion, and any employee of such an organization, shall not be required to provide services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges for the solemnization or celebration of a marriage. Any refusal under this subsection to provide such services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges shall not create any civil claim or cause of action." That's about as iron-clad a protection for the "free exercise" clause I can imagine, unless you think that "free exercise" means that public officials can refuse to perform their job duties (for example, county clerks refusing to record same-sex marriages) on the grounds that it's against their religion to do so. So please - do detail for us the "provisions of this law" that "usurp the 'free exercise' clause." I am not sure why I should feel the need to be "intellectually honest" when several members of the current Supreme Court are anything but that, themselves, but even so: let's look at the central holding of the Dobbs decision you seem to think was correctly decided. The majority believes that for an unenumerated right to be recognized under the Constitution, it must have been "deeply rooted in [our] history and tradition;" intellectual honesty would require that interpretation of enumerated rights be viewed with the same lens. Indeed, the right wing of the Court specifically looks at the Eighth Amendment through that lens: if the founders' generation would not have considered a punishment cruel or unusual, in their view, we can't either. But when it comes to the Second Amendment, despite its clear implication that it's meant to be viewed in the light of an official militia, and despite the fact that high-powered weapons (of the day) were most definitely NOT allowed to be in private hands, the so-called "conservative" majority on this Court ignores history, ignores the text, and carries out its goal of allowing people to possess almost any sort of weapon they want, under almost any circumstances. Marriage has been recognized as a right since at least 1923, when the Supreme Court held (in Meyer v. Nebraska) that the Due Process Clause protected an array of rights - among them, the right to marry, establish a home, raise children, and so forth that had long been recognized under the common law. Meyer wasn't even about marriage, itself; the Court merely noted that it was long-established that such rights were protected under common law, and as such protected by the Due Process Clause. And even at the time, not all marriages were religious in nature; non-religious, civil marriages (not some bullshit second-class "civil unions") were recognized under federal law since the early 20th century at a minimum, and in many states long before that. So for at least a century, your statement that marriage is only a religious ceremony has been false. If there is no substantive difference under the law between how these "civil unions" would be treated compared with "married heterosexual couples", then there is also no reason to use different terms for the two. Calling one item a square and the other an equilateral rectangle - when they are, for definitive purposes, the exact same thing - serves no purpose whatsoever. And if they need different names because they are not, in fact, under the law, identical, then you have an equal protection problem.

Individual members cannot create "things" at this level. At the top level, there are what I call "Categories" - the broadest category level on this site. Those are things like "Reading Material" or "Bareback Porn" or "General". "Regional Hookup Forums" is the relevant category there. Members cannot create new categories like this. Within a "Category", there are "Forums." So within "Regional Hookup Forums" there are forums for several cities with large gay populations (and presumably, more BZ members), then forums for various regions of the United States, then Canada, and then moving on, to other continents. Members cannot create new forums like this, either. WITHIN a forum, members can generally create a new *topic* (see below). Within any particular forum, there may be "Subforums" - so, for instance, within the "United States: Texas" forum, there are subforums for "Dallas Metro Area" and "Austin Metro Area" and "Houston Metro Area". If a subforum exists that is relevant, BZ members can post within that subforum, rather than just within the larger forum. So a post about hooking up in Fort Worth, which is in the Dallas metro area, would go in that subforum, but one about hooking up in El Paso would go directly within the "United States: Texas" forum. That said: members cannot create new "subforums" either. At the bottom level, there are "topics" - also known as threads - where someone makes an initial post about something, and others can reply to that post. A "topic" or "thread" is the ONLY level of classification that ordinary members can create. For anything higher than that, the question is not "How do I...." but "I think a Forum/Subforum covering ABC region" would be useful for the members; would you be wiling to create it?"

The fact that they don't show their faces suggests that either (a) they have sensitive jobs and don't want to be associated with porn, or more likely, (b) their cock is the only physically redeeming aspect of their entire corpus. There are just not that many high-level lawyers, doctors, and so forth with 9-10 inch dicks who'd be professionally ruined if people knew what they had in their pants. (B) is the more likely answer in most cases.

Because topping for fucking is work. If a guy is fucking and he starts to lose stiffness, he may well lose the ability to keep penetrating, and then he's got to mentally go through the work to get himself hard again. Even soft cocks can be sucked, and even soft cocks are sensitive enough to enjoy getting sucked. The top has nothing to worry about except sitting back and enjoying himself. Moreover, unless the bottom has no gag reflex, it's quite possible for even an average cock to present a challenge to suck well. Such a top can hear the gagging sounds and imagine he's hung a lot better than he is. Unless the bottom's exceptionally tight, an average thickness 5"er is not going to find any obstacles in an average man's ass - especially not an American's ass, home of the 32-oz "medium" soda.

I have no idea why you think you're "doomed" for doing something that every man on this site practices - bareback sex. JFC it's right in the name of the site. As @ErosWired noted, you don't need other people's approval to have bareback sex. What you should do - and unfortunately, this is a step far too many people omit - is to take control of your sexual health. Get on PrEP. Take it consistently (sounds like you have random sex at times, which doesn't lend itself to the "on demand" method). And at the same time, take responsibility for your choices of places to have sex. Sure, it's hot to do it regularly in public locations, but oddly, plenty of people take a dim view of public sex (gay or straight, protected or not), and I suspect you don't want to end up spending time in prison for public lewdness. Your profile doesn't say how old you are, but if you're old enough to have a place of your own to live, that's what it's for. If anyone disapproves, they can go fuck themselves. You certainly don't have to.

I don't think so. They look like ordinary pus-filled pimples, especially the one at your lips. I suspect given that you (apparently) shave your private parts, you most likely have ingrown hairs.

Not sure what you mean by "solution". There is no cure for herpes, period. There are treatments which can help manage or control breakouts, some of which need to be taken daily (like PrEP or HIV treatment) in order to be largely effective. But there are no guarantees - it's possible for someone with herpes to have a breakout almost any time. The medications that treat it, though, can make it harder to pass on to others. So it's worth talking with your physician about that.

OK - so if there's nothing romantic going on, that you can tell, and you're not sure you'd want to sleep with him (either while dating or casually), then I don't see much reason to pursue anything along those lines. It sounds like he's a very good friend - big brother/little brother type - and he's happy with that and I don't hear anything in what you're writing to suggest you definitely want more. If you don't, then just continue doing what you're doing. If he wants more - and my guess is he doesn't, but he might - then it's on him to ask you. Basically, as long as you're content with a non-romantic close buddy friendship, that's fine. Most men really need more of that in their lives.

There's a lot to unpack in this post. You kind of pussyfoot around what your actual question(s) is/are, so I'm going to make some assumptions and respond accordingly. If I misunderstand feel free to correct me. It sounds like you find this guy attractive and want to either (a) possibly date or (b) have sex with. For either one you'd have to know what his proclivities are. You don't say where you live - which is highly relevant. I get from your description that it's not the most gay-friendly place in the world, but that could be anything from a somewhat less-enlightened part of the United States to man places in western Europe to a lot of places in other parts of the world. Different places have different protections for gay people, so hiding behind an anonymous account where you don't even disclose your country, much less your city, leaves a huge hole in whatever help can be offered. It sounds like this guy may be in a supervisory capacity over you, in some fashion, even if he's not a professor. Regardless of where you live, that presents ethical issues you'll need to check into. Someone in an administrative capacity at the hospital and at the medical school should be able to explain what policies exist, if any, regarding socializing/dating between a hospital employee and a medical student. You can ask for general policies without naming names or revealing your sexual orientation. If I were you, I'd be trying to find out more about him without committing to anything. He's invited you to his house; ask him about coming over for some specific, time-limited event (watching a TV show or movie, watching a sports event, dinner, whatever). Make sure it's time-limited so you have a good reason to leave after a reasonable amount of time, and pay attention while you're there. If he's got pictures of himself with other people, ask if they're family or friends. He may have some decor (like something with a rainbow) that conveys that he's LGBT-aligned, or maybe not. You can ask how long he's lived there. You can ask whether dating was difficult for him during medical school and has he found it easier since he's out of school and working as a doctor. In other words, ask questions that give him the opportunity to volunteer more info to you - he's in the position of power (so to speak) so you want to let him set the pace. If he's gay or bi and has an interest in you, it'll come up at some point. If he is just interested in mentoring you, that should become clearer over time, too. The point is, you don't HAVE to come out to him to get a lot further along in understanding what's going on. But you do have to do the homework.

@JimInWisc Do you mean the impact of having HIV has had on my life? If so: like some others here, I was diagnosed after a longish period of not having regular sex, which suggests I had been poz for quite some time (though given my sexual practices, it's unlikely I ever infected anyone else). It was discovered when I woke up one morning after a long period of not feeling "great", having lost a noticeable amount of weight (which I thought was a good thing), and couldn't really get out of bed. My partner and our tenant (in a separate apartment from us) got me first to Urgent Care, then to the ER when UC said that's where I needed to be. I was severely dehydrated, among other things, and the ER staff "backed into" the HIV diagnosis when someone put a lot of pieces together and asked about my status. Although the IV fluids they gave me stabilized me, in the ensuing few weeks before I could get the lab work done to start my HIV treatment, I deteriorated further (needing to use a wheelchair to get around our house and needing help to get in and out of the shower. I will say once I got on treatment, my system recovered rapidly. I'd gone from about 175 lbs before "getting sick" down to just below 130, but with the return of my appetite on treatment I was back up to about 180 within six months (and I've since stabilized right about 200 lbs). In the process of getting regular lab work for my treatment, the doctors discovered my blood sugar was running high and added a mild medication to keep it under control. My cholesterol was also off (bad cholesterol high, good cholesterol low), so a statin was added for that (which only really helps with the bad cholesterol). My blood pressure was running a little high, not enough to be worried about on its own, but in combo with HIV and the blood sugar medication, the BP was starting to impact my kidneys, so I'm also on a low-dose BP med. Before I was diagnosed with HIV, I had two bouts with shingles, which (in retrospect) were likely enabled by the immune suppression I was undergoing. I'd assumed that I was just more susceptible to them because my younger sister had shingles in college and my older sister had them as an adult shortly before I did. I will note that I was uninsured at the time of my diagnosis, because the ACA had not really kicked in fully providing the deeply discounted premiums for lower and middle income people yet. But my diagnosis made me eligible for coverage under a Ryan White program - and that's how all the additional health complications I've had were able to get fixed. I also had long known I had sleep apnea, but being uninsured, the self-pay cost of $2,500 just to have it diagnosed coupled with the costs of the CPAP machine made treating that out of reach. All of that got addressed while I was covered under the insurance our state's Ryan White funding provided. Since then I've been able to boost my income considerably such that I could afford even the steep insurance costs for an individual policy without a subsidy. As I pointed out to others, even at $1,350 a month in premiums for a fairly high-deductible policy, the cost of medications alone would have vastly exceeded that outlay, and between the insurance and copay assistance the net cost of my HIV medications for me was $0. And to be honest: I'm one of the lucky ones, because I know how to navigate systems, find the assistance I needed, and so forth. A lot of people don't, and caseworkers who are supposed to help them are typically overworked and underpaid. It's very easy, if you are HIV+ and don't know the systems, to fall through the cracks without someone experienced to advocate for you - you have to push back at times when insurance wants to deny claims or coverage, and those who aren't accustomed to challenging authority can get screwed.

I would encourage you to post about this in discussions elsewhere when people are glamourizing chasing. Granted, people who become poz after chasing (and who test regularly hoping they've converted) can go on meds themselves to keep HIV under control. But even that has long-term impact on your body's ability to ward off other infections. Even worse are the ones who encourage others to go get pozzed and to stay off medications so they can poz others. This is the kind of thing that can happen - once your body's immune system collapses, almost any kind of infection can incapacitate you for extended periods. Those of us who lived through the 80's and early 90's when HIV was truly a death sentence and not a "health maintenance issue" know what that's like.

The historical reason for the pattern: A president gets elected representing a change in party (Democrat to Republican or vice versa), and he starts out to fulfill campaign promises. The opposing side raises the alarm - can you believe what this guy is trying to do? - and the net result is usually a loss of House seats as a way to temper the efforts of the president. The president's own supporters, by contrast, may not feel the compulsion to vote in the midterms because "their guy" is already in place, and, especially if he hasn't gotten everything he wanted into law yet, they may not be excited about his tenure. Think, for instance, Clinton's huge losses in the 1994 midterms after pushing for a huge health care overhaul that riled up Republicans. Or Obama's huge losses in 2010 after pushing through the Affordable Care Act. Or Trump's huge losses after his disastrous presidency started, from start to finish. Bush II didn't face that in 2002 because we were newly at war, but blowback from his war overreach is a big part of what cost him the House in the 2006 midterms. And so on. That undoubtedly helped Democrats in some races. There was a seat in Washington, for instance, that would have been safe for the incumbent Republican. But she voted to impeach Trump, and she was defeated in the GOP primary by a Trumpanzee. And that candidate, in turn, lost to the Democrat, who flipped the seat blue. But in general, in districts in red states where there's heavy gerrymandering, a GOP candidate can survive the Trump downward pull - there just aren't enough Democratic voters in those districts to make a difference even if the candidate is dreadful. The census does drive a lot of the process. Congressional districts are apportioned among the states based on population, with each state getting at least one House seat, and the rest distributed by a formula that determines who gains or loses seats when the population has shifted among the states. Once the number of seats in a state is determined, it's up to the state legislature to pass a law that divides the state into districts, each of which must have a population as near as possible to the "ideal" number; that is, if a state has 5,000,000 residents exactly, and it has ten seats in Congress, then each district should be as close as possible to 500,000 people. The districts must be contiguous - that is, you have to theoretically be able to get from any point in the district to any other point in the district without crossing into another district. I say "theoretically" because the district might have a river down the middle that completely separates the land on both sides - but assuming you could walk on water, you could get from any point to any other point. You can't have two parts of a district separated entirely by land in another district. Beyond that, it's up to a state to decide how to draw those lines. Remember that each state is a sovereign entity unto itself in addition to being part of the United States. There are some limits - notably, the Voting Rights Act limits the ability of a state to abridge the voting strength of a group based on their race or ethnicity - but the Supreme Court has held that there's nothing in the Constitution that makes drawing the district lines to favor one political party illegal. Now - that doesn't mean Congress couldn't pass a law to prohibit just that. Congress has the power to supplant any state law regarding the "times, places, and manner" of elections for Congress. It's under that power that they require states to have districts, for instance, instead of a state being free to elect all its congresspeople statewide. Assuming SCOTUS adhered to precedent - no small assumption these days - Congress could ban partisan gerrymandering entirely, and in fact, bills have been pushed to do just that, but they have not passed the Senate. My gut feeling is that codifying abortion rights would have helped the Republicans, not the Democrats. The GOP would have pointed to the law and screamed that the right needed to take back the House so that this horrible bill could be undone (even though Biden would veto any repeal). Meanwhile, the Dems would, to some extent, consider it a victory over which they could relax. The fact that multiple states started cranking down abortion bans and limits between the Dobbs decision and the election made it that much easier to rally Democratic voters. I think the same is true regarding Medicare, marriage, and contraception, though possibly to a lesser extent. Fixing the potential problems before the GOP can wreck things even worse is generally helpful to GOP turnout. Urgency to fix the problems going forward, by contrast, motivates the Democrats to turn out to vote.

For certain issues, of course, compromise is essential. What's the ideal marginal tax rate for someone making $140,000 a year? I might say 30%, someone else might say 15%, compromise might make the rate 22%. That doesn't work for everything. You can't have "compromise" on things like marriage rights - either states can allow restrictions on same-sex couples getting married, or they can't. Either states must recognize each other's legal marriages, or they don't have to. You can't have "compromise" on things like racial discrimination. Either you can refuse to hire people, refuse to serve people, refuse to transport people, because of their race, or else you can't. There's no middle ground. The good news is that for some issues, public opinion has swung so far to one side that it's not possible to stand in the way of progress. Twelve Republican senators joined all fifty Democratic senators to pass the Respect for Marriage Act. The chances of the right getting its way on same-sex marriage are fast approaching zero. Of course, as always, individual churches and clergy will be free to refuse to officiate such marriages, and that's enough to satisfy all but the most hard-core bigots. I'm for compromise when it's an issue that good-minded people can disagree on the details. I'm not for compromise when it's indefensible to take one of the only two opposing sides.

I appreciate that this is a goal of yours - and don't mean to disparage it in any way. But quite a few of us don't want to spend more time at the center, the way we did under Clinton and Obama, always waiting for the "flip side" to any advance we made, because precious centrists had to be appeased. The truth is that when individual positions - the expansion of medicaid (and even single payer health care), increased legal immigration, abortion rights, same-sex marriage rights, contraception rights - are polled, a huge majority of people in this country support all of them. (For those who question that statement on abortion: most surveys ask something along these lines: Abortion should a) Always be legal b) Be legal but with some restrictions late in pregnancy c) Be legal but only early in pregnancy d) Never be legal except to save the life of the mother e) Never be legal period. A substantial majority of people in this country believe either a or b. A smaller group believes in c, and even smaller numbers believe in d or e. But anti-abortion people will lump b through d together and say "people overwhelmingly want restrictions on abortion" while concealing the fact that a majority of people want very, very few restrictions at all.) The problem isn't that we can't get back to a centerline; it's that one side constantly hawks fear and hatred of the other such that groups who would otherwise be natural allies are divided. Poor white people ought to be in solidarity with poor black and brown people, but the right has been telling the poor whites for decades that the reason they're not all upper middle class with great jobs is that the black and brown people get preferential treatment and take jobs from (more deserving) white people. They don't come right out and use this racist language, but that's what they mean when they say "affirmative action is robbing real Americans (ie white people) of jobs". It's why they used feminists as the same foil (those women are taking your jobs) and LGBT people in a different way (you don't want to have to go to the same BATHROOM as those people do you? They'll be putting the moves on you as soon as you step up to the urinal). And it's why they raised the specter of perverted men in dresses claiming to be trans so they could go into women's restrooms and rape your daughters, while omitting that if you follow a strict "only persons with vaginas can use the women's room" policy, that's where Buck Angel, in all his tattooed, perverse glory will be pissing.

Except that the OP already confirmed by actual medical professionals that it was Monkeypox. Helps to read through the existing replies.

I would add the following factors: FIRST: In the last few years, the Supreme Court has held that there is no federal constitutional problem with gerrymandering districts for partisan gain. Several red states (Ohio, Texas, Florida) have congressional districts that are far out of balance with the overall balance of votes in the state. For instance, in Ohio, the Republican who won the Senate seat got 53% of the vote. In a fairly districted state, you'd expect somewhere between 50 and 60% of House seats to go Republican. But the way the state is gerrymandered, 66% of the seats went to Republicans. In Florida, Rubio got 57% in his Senate race and DeSantis got 59% in the governor's race. But 71% of the congressional seats went to Republicans. In Texas, Abbott got 55% of the vote. But Republicans took 66% of the House seats. By contrast: California, the largest blue state, has its districts drawn independently without regard for party. New York's highest court imposed similar restrictions on that state. If those two states alone were allowed to gerrymander the way Republican states do, the Democrats would still hold the House. The Democrats lost four House seats in New York alone because we were not allowed to do what Republicans do in Texas and Florida. (Illinois is currently our "best bet"; statewide races tend to go about 55% Democratic, and we hold 14 of 17 seats there.) SECOND: In at least three states, courts ruled that the redistricting plans enacted by those state legislatures violated the Voting Rights Act, including the aforementioned Ohio. The others were Louisiana and Alabama, both of which refused to create a second black-majority district to better reflect the states' populations. The Supreme Court blocked all three of those court decisions, allowing the plans - which were already found by the courts to violate the law - to be used for this election anyway. If those decisions had not been blocked, the Democrats would probably still hold the House. THIRD: Republican legislatures in many red states enacted a whole batch of discriminatory voting measures over the last few years, curtailing or eliminating drop boxes, prohibiting people from having anyone else turn in their ballot, enabling other voters to easily "challenge" the eligibility of others to vote, cutting back on early voting and vote-by-mail, and more. Almost every measure was designed to hurt turnout in communities where progressives/liberals/Democrats outnumber Republicans. Quite a few were struck down, but again, the courts (stacked with Republican judges hostile to the Voting Rights Act) are upholding these restrictions more often. Those, in a (large) nutshell, are reasons the Democrats aren't winning races hands down across a lot of the country.

Short answer: yes. It's certainly not (usually) a copyrighted or trademarked pattern or design. A quick search on Amazon turned up lots of sources. Google searching turned up more not on Amazon.

They may well show up. They are not going to arrest you, however, simply for what you said. They will only arrest you if they determine there is probable cause that you committed a crime - for instance, if you have made preparations tied to such an attack. As ErosWired noted, the FBI has a responsibility to investigate threats. Investigating is not the same thing as arresting - it's what they do to determine whether an arrest is warranted.

1. Prior to Musk's purchase of Twitter, it was a publicly traded company, run by a group of executives who were overseen by a board of directors elected by the shareholders. That's not the same thing as an "owner" "running it the watt hey want"[sic]. 2. Nonetheless, it's a complete falsehood that the laptop in question, whose provenance cannot be determined with a high degree of certainty, could not be discussed on Twitter. Twitter blocked ONE article, from the New York post, which made several unsubstantiated (and still not substantiated) allegations about the laptop as though they were facts they had verified. There were, and still are, many tens of thousands of posts about the laptop.

The "fire in a crowded theater" bit needs to be completely retired. First, the case in which the phrase was used wasn't about fire, or theaters. U.S. v. Schenck was about whether an anti-draft pamphlet distributed during World War I was protected speech or not. In a dreadful decision, the Supreme Court held it was not, under the theory that the pamphlet created a "clear and present danger" to a nation at war. This was what's known as an "as applied" challenge/ruling - where the Court said, in essence, in this particular set of circumstances, this law is constitutional, but this is not a blanket approval of a law banning any speech, any time, any where, that criticizes the draft. Second, the phrase about the crowded theater was not any part of the holding in the case. Rather, it's what is called "dictum" - expository language in the opinion that helps illustrate a point, but which is not actually part of the ruling. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (who wrote the opinion) noted (again, in dicta) that "[t]he most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic," which is where we get that notion - in other words, it was cited as another example of speech causing a "clear and present danger." Third, and perhaps most importantly, the central holding of Schenck has been effectively overturned. Rather than a "clear and present danger" test - one with which the Supreme Court grew increasingly uncomfortable over the decades - Brandenburg v. Ohio outlined a new test: the language in question is presumed protected speech unless the speech is "directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action". In other words, inflammatory language, by itself, is still protected - that's why flag-burning, which is inflammatory in multiple respects, is still protected speech (in this case, because it's a form of expression). The "fire in a crowded theater" example might well inspire people to flee, and they might get hurt in the process. But the speech, by itself, did not "incite imminent lawless action" because the action incited - trying to get out of the theater - is not lawless. Accordingly, this is (since Brandenburg) a bad example because now such speech is, in fact, protected.

You can't do that, at least in the United States. There is this pesky thing called the First Amendment which absolutely protects speech in and of itself. Now, hateful speech *can* be used as evidence for a hate crime enhancement for an existing crime - but there must be another crime committed beyond the speech. And the hateful speech is only relevant to the extent that the prosecution can prove the intent of the crime was, in essence, to instill fear or terror in the protected group. Meaning, if I burn down a craft store, I can be charged with arson. But if I burn down a craft store owned by lesbians, and scream "die you heathen lesbians!" in a protest in front of the store earlier in the week before I burn it down, a prosecutor can make a good case that the point of the arson was to terrorize the gay and lesbian community, not just to cause damage to these particular individuals. It has nothing to do with corporate "doners" [sic]; it's just that speech is protected, except under exceptionally limited circumstances. Especially speech on controversial social issues.

Musk has really zero interest in controlling disinformation; if he had any such interest, he'd be investing in the people and departments needed to root out bogus, sock-puppet and foreign troll accounts. He slashed them instead. I can't presume to speak for what Musk DOES want, but I suspect that somehow, somewhere along the way, he got his fee-fees hurt by posters on there and wanted to control the site to be able to take them down. Given how aggressively he's censoring content by Twitter employees (and former Twitter employees) critical of him, that could be most of the reason. It certainly wasn't a wise business decision.

That is true. But if that were the only underlying issue, all that rage and bitterness would be targeted at the people in power, who are overwhelmingly supportive of Republicans. Money has a way of seeking protection from those who want to maintain the money status quo. One can argue, of course, whether particular policies are especially helpful to those at the bottom and middle of the scale (for instance, the Covid-era stimulus checks). One can argue whether such policies are sufficiently targeted at those who need them most (as in the student loan forgiveness program). But there is no arguing that Republicans offer no such policies, or at best crumbs from the massive giveaways they engineer for their wealthy donors. So why, one might ask, do Republicans still garner support from populists at the lower end of the income/wealth spectrum? Hint: they're almost uniformly white, and substantially more male than female. Republicans excel at dividing people and causing resentment on the basis of race and ethnicity, and to a lesser extent sex; it's always "those" people who are taking the jobs, getting the things that these voters' parents used to get and took for granted. It's the immigrants, the "lazy welfare recipients" (ie Blacks), the angry feminist women who have taken all the opportunity from white men with high school educations or less. And we (that is, Democrats/progressives/liberals) are horrible at messaging why that isn't so - in part, because the real answers are complex. How much things like automation and offshoring and so forth affect the jobs market is a complicated analysis, but that makes it easier for the GOP to say "brown people took your job". And easier for them to scream "socialism!" at any attempt to rebalance things more fairly. It's much simpler to hammer home the point that GOP fat cats pocket all the savings from offshoring, from automation, from all the things that took good blue collar jobs out of the reach of so many Americans, but that requires a commitment to disgorge excessive corporate profits that today's Democratic party just doesn't have.