But the reality I see is that they are very easily manipulated by unregulated media like TikTok and would vote for the same extreme right wing party as old people. Surveys here in Germany are a bit disturbing…

The same argument can be made for people of any age.

Can’t we instead take away voting rights from old people? Also kinda wrong.

The same can also be applied to younger people.

Personally, I prefer to err on the side of including them. It’s unjust that we can take advantage of them in so many ways as a teen but they can’t participate in the political system that decides how they can be taken advantage of (work, school, taxes, military, etc.) I know I hated it at that age and as a general rule, I’ve tried not to repeat the same things the adults in my life did that pissed me off when I was a kid. It’s not a perfect approach, but it’s been the correct approach to avoid the problems it caused when I was growing up from being repeated more often than not.

The only way to do right by them is to give them the right. If you are worried about them being manipulated too easily, education is a good fix.

And as a conflicting anecdote, my 16 year old is very interested in politics and very much wants to have a say in their own life, just like I did at that age. Are they the most informed individual? Hell no. Are they more informed than some adults? Hell yes.

Younger people may be susceptible to their lack of experience, but they are also more likely to bring new ideas to the table because they are less invested in the status quo. If they have the capacity to make informed decisions, they should have the right to self determination and participation in our political systems.

What you say about your kid doesn’t sound like an inability to process these concepts, just a lack of interest. Do you talk to your kid about politics and if so, how? I’ve found I’ve made a lot of progress by talking to teens about current events and asking them what they think. They won’t care about every topic, but I guarantee there is something that will peak their interest and typically topics related to adults imposing their beliefs on kids will get teens to talk, even if it’s just related to school. It’s important that you get them talking about their beliefs, not just telling them yours, because they won’t want to talk to you unless they feel like you will treat them as a peer.

You don’t need to agree with their beliefs, just listen and not talk down to them. Ask follow-up questions that can turn into wider conversations. Help try to explain what is going on and the context surrounding it if needed. You can absolutely share your views, but it’s usually best to talk about what’s going on/being discussed, asking their thoughts, and then following with yours. If you talk down to a kid, they will shut down or fight back (and also shut down). They need the same respect adults crave. They’ll also eventually disagree with you just like adults.

It varies by person, but I’ve found kids tend to start getting interested around 13-14 if you take this approach and then will really come into their own in terms of beliefs by 16. Kids have a LOT they are concerned about in the world today even without this. It causes many of them significant anxiety because they feel powerless. If you have success getting them interested, 16 (or after a few years of observing and talking about current events, history, and politics) is a good age to talk about analyzing the events.

If you’re into Marxism, it’s a great time to start teaching and practicing dialectical materialism so they can figure out for themselves why the world is the way it is on their own.

I know there can be differences with ASD, but I have a few cousins who are 15-20 years younger than me with ASD and have found the same applied for them. Details of the conversation, finding something that gets them invested in the topics, and explanations you give them may vary, but the basic approach doesn’t change and this varies by person regardless of any condition.

This is just a random reply, but if it’s something you want to be able to talk to her about, I hope this helps you be able to do that in a way that expands your relationship as they grow older. I know I wish I could have talked to my parents about politics and the world the same way I do with my kids when I was a kid.

And the skewed power dynamic.

I’ll trade you the communal toothbrush for this joke.

“A different damned drink.”

I agree with the term enshitification for this thing normally, but this is just a “bait and switch” at this point.

Any chance you’d be willing to provide answers to any of my questions based on what you saw?

Good points. It’s difficult to find a clear answer to how important lend-lease was to the Soviet war effort. During the war, the USSR and US obviously had good things to say about the program, but the start of the Cold War soured this discussion, leading to the US overstating and the USSR understating the impact. Here’s an excerpt from a paper by a British scholar exploring the topic. Emphasis is the author’s:

It is neither possible nor fruitful to try and put a precise measure on the material value of allied aid to the Soviet war economy, if only because of the unavailability of many Soviet production data. Whatever the value of western aid, the Soviet war effort was measured in human life and suffering incomparable with material aid from outside. Further, the Soviet economy became much more of a war economy than other combatant nations. Nonetheless, it seems that the contribution made by deliveries from the USA and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Canada, played an important part at crucial times and in crucial areas. First, and above all, was a vital margin of food supplies, second was the provision of specialist or deficit products such as aluminium and copper, specialized tools, high quality steels. In this respect lend-lease supplies overcame bottlenecks. However, it must be stressed that the major impact came after the Soviet counterattack and the beginning of German retreat. Such aid directly and indirectly helped defeat the German forces, and was in such a way a substitute for a second front, but it did little to defend the USSR from the initial onslaught. Third, some of the raw materials and more especially machinery and transport equipment was of positive value to the Soviet economy after the war. For this, the tyre plant is the best but not the only example.

It is nonsense to repeat the figure of four per cent of Soviet wartime production and disingenuous to disparage western aid - a feature evident in Soviet literature and one criticized even by Khrushchev. It is nonetheless true (and this is a point repeated in some Soviet works) that Britain and the Empire received far more than the USSR from the United States. Lend-lease, in this respect, may be seen as a temporary substitute for foreign trade. Britain was a major trading nation, highly dependent on imports, especially for food and raw materials. The USSR, on the other hand, was an economy with little trade dependence whose foreign trade turnover had fallen steadily during the 1930s…

The part left off at the end compares repayment of aid sent to the British vs the Soviets. A fairly short read that will give some more context to the conclusions I shared above.

One of the main points the author makes is that lend-lease was used by the US as a stand-in for entering the war and opening a new front in 1942 as the allies (and Stalin in particular) were requesting. In this context, lend-lease was a replacement for reopening the Western front in 1942, an action that could have been far more impactful. The US provided material aid in lieu of entering the war, shifting the human burden of the war onto the other Allied forces and particularly the USSR from 1942 to least at 1944 (note that lend-lease aid extended wider and was provided from 1941-1945).

Overall, the impression I’ve gotten from sifting through academic writings on the subject is that while lend-lease certainly helped take some of the pressure off of the USSR (mainly in the form of producing food, trucks, and raw materials), it’s most likely that the result would have been the same. That said, wondering over historical what-ifs, while fun, should really be constrained to recreational musing and shouldn’t be taken seriously.

I will, but this is an 8 hour series.

For real, the US committed a coup in Australia with Whitlam. They don’t constrain the CIA to just poor countries.

If the US was to take an isolationist policy 100 years ago, then there is a good chance that WW2 would have been won by the Axis. The Allied forces likely would have put up a good fight, but I’m not sure they would have emerged victorious against the combined Axis forces. The war in the Pacific would have raged on much longer, and without nuclear weapons, there would have been an extreme loss of life invading Japan. At the very least, WW2 would have lasted much much longer than it did. Depending on the outcome, plenty of countries might currently be speaking German and debating if they should tear down 80-year-old statues of Hitler.

The only people who believe this drivel are those who have only learned about WWII via Hollywood and YT videos. Go listen to an actual historian and you will not hear this fantasy. They will tell you that Germany had one foot in the grave by the time the US joined the Western front. The only ounce of truth in this statement is that the Pacific theatre would have gone on longer.

Edit: I didn’t touch on this but should have…the whole idea that a nuclear attack on Japan was necessary or even justified in any way is not only incorrect but is a racist, genocidal excuse for not one, but TWO of the most horrific acts in our entire history. You should be ashamed for propagating this tired lie.

Lol, only if you learned history from Hollywood.

Did they also go into mass atrocities committed and initiated by the US? If you go around lighting fires and then come back around to put them out after donning an official uniform, should others consider you a fire fighter or an arsonist?

Is there a single instance covered that wasn’t a situation the US directly and purposely had a hand in creating?

It’s just the worst one.

Agreed. The general trend of switching to natural gas has led to the release of a lot of methane, which is notorious for leaking during drilling, transport, and storage.

This is much worse than carbon dioxide and has been going on for decades. Methane will continue to rise within the atmosphere and cause further warming for decades even if we stopped releasing it today.

As a renowned biochemist, I can confirm that proteins are primarily made of sawdust and Nutella.

LOL, the only people who would say this to Yogthos are those speaking from ignorance. The dude is like a machine when it comes to reading and sharing articles from all over the place. I’ve never seen anyone else read the news so widely.

Agreed.

For instance, G Suite is now so thoroughly integrated into school workflows that, even if they collect nothing from students while under 13 (ha!), they are setting kids up to harvest their data in the future by forcing them to learn how to perform basic tasks only on their apps. It’s like advertising fruity cigarettes or vapes, but for data.

It’s not just that all of these companies harvest everyone’s data, but so many of them are specifically targeting kids from as young of an age as they can.