No. In a thread about gas prices or affordability, I would be chiming in to support you. In Ukraine, they are targeting buses and hospitals with missiles. They literally kidnap children and send them back to Russia with the intention of using them as soldiers later. In that context, you are a bit whiny for my tastes. In that context, I like to think you’re just going to have to walk, or ride a bike. I think it will do you some good.

There’s a flip side to this. I am persistent. But busy, and a realist. Since AI, I have been able to accomplish things I always wanted and planned to, but never got done before. I’ve been wanting a contractor’s license to expand my business. But I’m busy. AI is the tutor that helped me get it done. I’ve been loving Linux and open source, had a handful of raspberry Pi projects, but was never quite confident enough to go full on self hosted. Thanks to AI, I am fully self hosted and loving it. Also, I own a service business, time is money. Guess who has more time since AI? Define persistence in the context of my experience with AI. Put in other synonymous terms, am I faltering, yielding, “going fallow”, atrophying? I don’t think so.

I’m not the person you responded to. A “tankie” according to Wikipedia is an authoritarian communist or someone who supports them. I don’t think the person who called you a tankie was accurate or even understood what the word means. It’s a red flag when people use that term In any case, it seems absurd to whine about gas prices in the context of the horror Ukraine is experiencing.

I guess you didn’t grow up in one of these racist, white nationalist families. As someone who did, your whole blame shifting scenario is absurd. My uncles believe they have a birthright as white men. And they are violently furious that they aren’t thriving, at the top of the food chain. Obviously they are proudly MAGA. Of course they aren’t thriving, lol, we’re not from Texas, Kansas or Nebraska. Their racism ( and sexism) is at insane levels that I guess you can’t even fathom… The loudest laughter I ever heard at a family gathering came when my uncle told this joke: “I don’t have a problem with N@##@rs, I think everyone should own one.” Ha ha ha. There is no nuance here. To older men in my family, if you are a (stupid, because they all are) women, gay, or brown, or liberal, or Jewish, Muslim or atheist…you are filth. And any suggestion that you are equal deserves immediate, violent response. Sound crazy? Lucky you. I know from experience that kind of family and upbringing is not rare, or strange. It’s rampant. Just pick a random American church to visit. The “root”, as you say of the problem, is that they are terrible people, completely lacking character. They should be disenfranchised, sterilized and have their children taken from them. That’s right. I said it. Democracy can’t work if people that mean and stupid can vote. RFK and Trump are what you get if you don’t have the stomach for stomping on cockroaches. We need a " Great Proletarian Cultural Democratic Revolution" The USA failed at reconstruction and needs to take another crack at it in earnest. Nationalize Palantir. Stamp out the Idiocracy future.