301–310 of 420 posts
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> just wanted cheaper groceries. 1. And why would voting for Trump get that? 2. It didn't happen either way 3. Stupidity is not an acceptable excuse 4. You vote for a person not a specific policy
> You vote for a person not a specific policy You're not wrong as general rule of thumb imo, or in a straight sense of reality, but tell that to the evangelicals who spend their time slandering abortion.
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Americans want looting and authoritarianism, so that’s what they’re getting. There’s no excuses here after a majority of people voted for Trump’s return, with his repeated promises that he wouldn’t be held back this time around. We got exactly what we voted for — worldwide tariffs, sending the military to round up migrants, a military parade with tanks in DC, antivax boards — all of these things he talked about befor…
We are living through the baby boomer going-out-of-business fire sale right now, and it's just so deeply depressing. I have an entire theory of the ideological reasons why the parties are in a political realignment, but none of it really matters much, because the older folks with the least incentive to have long term strategies are staying in office forever.
Take the derivative of this chart, you see the boomer decline is accelerating to a crescendo. They're about to experience a lot of loss in their lives. They already are. I think their impending doom has a lot to do with what's going on now, given their generation is and has been in charge for the past many decades. If you know you're not going to live to see the next decade, and you're in charge of the whole world, what would you do? What wouldn't you do?
The future is going to be interesting. We have a whole generation of millennials and genx who have had to live in the shadow of boomers for decades, and now that it's fading we're not ready for the spotlight. The boomer generation has been in charge since 1993. And yeah, I had to look it up but Obama is a boomer as well, albeit on the younger side. But we're expect to take over this whole ship pretty quickly, within the next decade or so. Personally I don't feel ready at 40 years old.
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> Americans want looting and authoritarianism, so that's what they're getting. There's no excuses here after a majority of people voted for Trump's ret with his repeated promises that he wou be held back this time around. Why do you think it's appropriate to say "Americans want..." and "We got exactly what we voted for..." when only 32% of Americans voted for Trump?
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If you read about Maduro wanting to imprison the leader of a region of Venezuela, who belongs to the opposition party, you'd call it authoritarianism. If you read that the Secretary of Defense of Turkey declined to commit to obeying court orders, you'd call it authoritarianism. If you read about Viktor Orban sending actual troops rather than police to a city because of a flimsy pretext, you'd call it authoritarianism…
I am not an American and may not understand what is going on inside, but from the outside it appears that you are simply engaging in political smears. Authoritarianism means oppressing the masses, having an undemocratic government and acting against the will of the people. It happens in Venezuela. It happens in Turkey. It happens in Hungary. It doesn't happen in the US. If anything, what is happening in the US is exa…
Countries have laws that govern how they are nominally meant to operate.
When the ruler of a country breaks the laws that are supposed to constrain his behavior, and faces no consequences, what do you call that?
The US is actively choosing to become completely reliant on private providers for access to space, which at this point boils down to SpaceX and Boeing. Both seem unreliable for different reasons. I just cannot see it as anything else than a blunder.
Sorry how is SpaceX unreliable? I personally think we need at least a second reliable launch provider, probably rocket lab, just for redundancy.
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It's hard to hear people complain about looting and authoritarianism after watching these same people calling BLM mostly peaceful protest, and had no problem with the authoritarian policies passed during the COVID lockdowns https://fee.org/articles/george-floyd-riots-caused-record-se...
It's easy to play the hypocrisy card, theres plenty to go around. However in this case you're presenting a false equivalency. Yes, there were issues with BLM. the people got out of control. But that's not authoritarianism- if anything it was a lack of authority with caused dome of those problems. What you see with protests now is those with authority over-using that authority and wielding it as a weapon against the p…
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Authoritarianism means oppressing the masses, having an undemocratic government and acting against the will of the people. It happens in Venezuela. It happens in Turkey. It happens in Hungary. It doesn't happen in the US. We have an undemocrstic government. Thousands of polling stations have shut down since the gutting of the Voting Rights Act. Voter rolls have been purged in key swing states. As a result of these th…
>As a result of these things millions of people were unable to vote. By similizing the American electoral system to those in authoritarian countries, you trivialize the suffering of people oppressed and often physically exterminated by authoritarian regimes around the world. Millions? Seriously? Try talking to any refugee from an authoritarian country about this. Just please be as polite as possible and choose a smal…
There’s a spectrum of authoritarianism. Not all instantiations involve mass murder or other forms of mass suffering.
Your argument boils down to: others have it worse therefore you have no right to complain.
Consider that if we don’t stand up now and complain now that the foundation will be set for the infliction of mass suffering. Your reasoning is quite bad.
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I am not an American and may not understand what is going on inside, but from the outside it appears that you are simply engaging in political smears. Authoritarianism means oppressing the masses, having an undemocratic government and acting against the will of the people. It happens in Venezuela. It happens in Turkey. It happens in Hungary. It doesn't happen in the US. If anything, what is happening in the US is exa…
> If anything, what is happening in the US is exactly the opposite: Trump, who won the popular vote, therefore a representative of the oppressed majority, is waging a war against their oppression (as masses seems it) by the authoritarian deep state. This is an absolutely wild way of framing what's happening. The oppressors trying to paint themselves as the oppressed. Who exactly are "the right" oppressed by, and how…
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>As a result of these things millions of people were unable to vote. By similizing the American electoral system to those in authoritarian countries, you trivialize the suffering of people oppressed and often physically exterminated by authoritarian regimes around the world. Millions? Seriously? Try talking to any refugee from an authoritarian country about this. Just please be as polite as possible and choose a smal…
What do you call it when people are rounded up and sent to a gulag in El Salvador without due process? What do you call it when monies appropriated by Congress that literally kept starving people alive in other parts of the world, are unilaterally rescinded by an executive with no legal power to do so? The richest man in the world caused the deaths of some of the poorest in the world, and fulfilled not one of the ben…
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You're ignoring the massive elephant in the room. The previous administration let millions and millions of completely unvetted and undocumented immigrants into our county, creating an unprecedented crisis. I view Trump's actions as reclaiming our country from the brink. All of the instances you mentioned are simply fallout from the crises Trump was handed, and it astonishes me how liberals cannot see this simple fact…
People who think that's a massive elephant are shortsighted. You know what illegal immigrants do? Work. For shitty wages. You know what that does? Boosts the US' labor force and economy, which buffers the declining fertility rate [0]. The fact that anti-immigration (of any sort) folks never think beyond first-effects is mind boggling. Illegal immigration causes some problems; it also solves others. [0] https://en.m.w…