The alpha/beta wolf notion doesn't even make much of a sense, considering wolves tend to be loners but only make packs when they need to hunt.
Dan Schneider has not been convicted though.
The only conservatives which I give some healthy degree of respect are the European and maybe Japanese conservatives. I can't comment on conservatives from other places as I don't know much about them, but the American conservatives are bat shit insane. There are far and few sane American conservatives are drowned by loud crazy ones.
For me, the worst is either Batman and Robin, or the first 30 minutes of The Killing Joke where Batman fucked Batgirl (say what you will about their relationship, it is just plain weird of them to become romantically involved).
As for the Dark Knight Rises, I see where you're coming from. I think Nolan directed the last movie in such a way so that people would not crave for another sequel. It's not bad, but it is not titilating. A lot of directors "underperform" on their works so that the audience would not demand for another. Some movies just doesn't deserve more sequels than needed.
In Germany, where there is stricter gun control, there was an incident in which a bystander tackled the knife attacker. The police mistook the bystander as the perpetrator, and because the police were distracted, the attacker got up and stabbed two more people including one of the police officers. https://apnews.com/article/germany-mannheim-stabbing-police-officer-death-a66c14970a53464aff0c1c77a7196481
I agree with others. The idea of "good guy with a gun will stop the bad guy with a gun" is pretty much wishful thinking if the police arrives on the scene and mistakes who. It does not matter whether there is gun control or not, the good guy could be mistaken in the midst of chaos.
I don't work in healthcare but I know plenty of people who do. The industry is notoriously understaffed, and of course there are sudden emergencies you have to deal with. Therefore, they pretty much require 24/7 operations.
This reminds me of the current French politics. After the previous legislative elections were won by the left, neoliberal president Macron nonetheless appointed a conservative as his prime minister.
At the end of the day, it's all about the bottomline.
Too many are accusing them already. Where there is smoke, there is fire.
I suppose my comment could have been phrased better, but by introducing I mean he wanted to forward UBI to be legislated/legalised by the house and Senate.
I only realised it later that many people have a transactional view of life. They think everything single activity must have a purpose. And while they not actively seek it, at the back of their minds they expect some sort reward. Like, the dude who scoffed the guy learning to play flute probably only wants to learn new skills if it impresses others, like a girl or something.
Where is the love for Chrisjen Avasarala? The UN General Secretary ~~Queen of the Earth~~ from The Expanse lore? The Space Iron Lady!
I admire her more than other traditional depiction of bad ass action stars who are either a man or a woman. I realised I admire mental acuity more than raw strength. Avasarala is Machiavellian but a pragmatist, and ready to get her hands dirty if needs be in spite of her privileged upbringing. Her main drawbacks though is that she is too willing to get her hands dirty, especially at the first episode when she personally oversaw the torture of a Belter in a blacksite. She was also willing to use her family image to gain political sympathy. But one could argue it's for the greater good, not that I am excusing both of her egregious and questionable actions. As I said, she is a pragmatist after all and looks at the bigger picture and have long term scope. She was right about slowly colonising the New Worlds. Avasarala is an anti-hero but she's right in more ways than none.
It's an myriad of reasons from what I can tell. Americans are conditioned to think along the status quo lines even if there is certain degree of freedom of thought. The American corporate media carves the political landscape to intentionally but subtly influence folks to pick either only Democrats or Republicans.
Another reason is that, I suppose rugged invidualism won out in the American society for better mobilisation. As you rightly pointed out, there just isn't grassroots activism among American people (not counting civil and lgbt rights which are undoubtedly grassroots activism and successful ones at that). But this isn't what it used to be. Before and in the early 20th century, there have been other third political parties still gaining respectable number of votes, the last one being the Socialist Party led by Eugene Debbs. He won a respectable 1 million votes as a presidential candidate while campaigning from prison during World War I.
Not sure what happened why political grassroots activism that could counter either Democratic and Republican parties died out, but my guess is that the proliferation of mass media in the 20th century may have had a hand to convince people to stick with two parties, as well as heavy emphasis on individualistic values.