Meanwhile, the rest of the world has been patiently waiting for progressives to put down their smartphones and lattes in order to start the next civil war and finish what was started by killing all of these hillbilly fucks.
![wave :wave:](./images/smilies/wave.gif)
This one sounds like he's gone a little bit off the rockerTyler Durden wrote: ↑Wed Mar 25, 2020 10:51 amIronic that the lunatics stockpiling weapons in the event that they have to overthrow an authoritarian government elected a psychopath like Trump and continue to support him.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world has been patiently waiting for progressives to put down their smartphones and lattes in order to start the next civil war and finish what was started by killing all of these hillbilly fucks.![]()
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Rocky commented 7 hours ago
Rocky
Mesa, AZ7h ago
All of this - the sicknesses, deaths, unemployment, bankrupt businesses - could have been avoided if Trump had acted quickly to quarantine the United States.
Paradoxically Trump's slow response, done to try to protect businesses and the economy, is now crippling it. He just does not know, does not get it. Everything seems to amaze him about its complexity or impact.
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4 REPLIES
STWAWK commented 5 hours ago
S
STWAWK
DMV5h ago
@Rocky When our “leader” is a simpleton, we can’t expect much more than what we’re getting.
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McGloin commented 4 hours ago
M
McGloin
Brooklyn4h ago
Times Pick
@Rocky
Trump does know. You don't get it.
Trump does it on purpose. It is called disaster capitalism. Create a disaster. Profit from it. Use it to rewrite the rules in your favor. He did it to four casinos in Atlantic City alone. That is what he calls winning.
Everyone that judges Trump as if he is merely stupid is missing the whole thing. Trump may be purposefully ignorant, but he knows how to take over an organization and bleed it dry, by keeping everyone in a state of shock.
Trump is the bull in Our china shop, which we have been perfecting for hundreds of years. While We chase him around, his billionaire cabinet is looting the cash register and and signing the lease over to Trump and friends.
This virus may or may not be worse than he expected, but Trump has used it to declare a national emergency, so he can have "powers most people don't even know about." Trump is not using these powers (except to punish GM for embarrassing him), so what does he think these powers are for?
The global billionaire class thinks they are separate from us, because they go to each other's parties and all own pieces of each other's conglomerates.
They have realized that they can use disasters to take Our wealth and put it in their bank accounts. According to the US Treasury the Great Recession transferred 40% of the wealth of 99% of Americans to the richest 1%. This included tens of thousands of homes that are now rentals owned by hedge funds.
Trump is more super-villain, than idiot.
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lisa commented 3 hours ago
L
lisa
michigan3h ago
@McGloin remember when we were told the trump crime family would not get a bailout? Look what was hidden in the bailout.
NY Times has an article the reports on page 203 of the bill is a provision that would allow real estate investors to take paper write offs on losses to offset investments in the stock market. It was limited to500,000 in the 2017 tax law but is being changed. The 1%ers could save as much as 170 billion over 10 years.
Bonanza for Rich Real Estate Investors, Tucked Into Stimulus ...
www.msn.com › en-us › money › bonanza-for-rich-real-estate-invest...
The new stimulus bill lifts that restriction for three years — this year, and two retroactive years — a boon for couples with more than $500,000 in annual capital gains or income from sources other than their business. That group comprises the top 1 percent of taxpayers, according to Internal Revenue Service data.
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30 million+ fundamentalist Christians... A shitton of gerrymandered voting districts... Whole states with absolutely fucked economies and education / health and a huge opioid crisis. Yeah, that's probably enough, given that you only need about 60 million votes to win the presidency.
The thing about displaying the vote that way is that it doesn't give you a sense of the population, and the extreme role that the Electoral College played in that victory. The red areas are NOT proportional at all to the blue. Here's one way to show that:mockbee wrote: ↑Fri Apr 24, 2020 9:56 pmI encounter a lot of people who voted (will definitely again) for Trump. It is like a prophet thing to them. The coasts and the foreign are the enemy, who orchestrate their misery (and in reality they are very miserable). Trump has all the right words.![]()
It's unfortunate that we associate them as miserable people (yes, there are some miserable people) but not address the miserable conditions. Capitalism is very broken.
+238 million eligible voters in the US.
63 million voted for Trump in 2016.
That's 26.4%......easy.![]()
Follow the red.
The blue are people with one foot out the door on the coasts, and the rest of the blue are the subjugated people...![]()
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It's more complicated than that. It's easy to say "it's capitalism". There's an obvious technical truth in that, but it doesn't explain anything. It doesn't, for one thing, show that things couldn't be better and still capitalist. The harder question is: what the fuck is actually going on?mockbee wrote: ↑Mon Apr 27, 2020 8:05 amThat is a good map you have to demonstrate the dichotomy of represention in the US.
It may actually also represent the extreme balance we have going.... We don't think of the consequences of completely getting rid of the electoral college. How long do you think it would be until there would be real revolt if 90% of the land area of the US (the people who live there are important to consider, even if they are a significant minority...who makes the world's food..produces building/manufacturing materials..makes stuff...elves??!!!!) felt totally disenfranchized? And no, with the way things are going with national leaders on the left(democrats) I dont think there would be some magic reckoning of rural areas if these doofus democrats were magically in power perpetually. Obama wasn't a doofus, and even then there was just a formenting of hostility ( yeah yeah racism...but it went beyond that as well)..same with a woman.....and Biden....? No way.
What to do....? Its capitalism that is driving our cultural wedge...MLK understood this intimately.
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Well, I wouldn't disagree with most of this. Except I think the power of special interests is actually precarious. Citizens United and billionaire tinkering is awful, but certainly did not pick Trump. I think his general appeal is seen as an antagonist to their influence (a guy like "us" that busts up the elites, however messed up that is...Hype wrote: ↑Mon Apr 27, 2020 12:07 pmIt's more complicated than that. It's easy to say "it's capitalism". There's an obvious technical truth in that, but it doesn't explain anything. It doesn't, for one thing, show that things couldn't be better and still capitalist. The harder question is: what the fuck is actually going on?mockbee wrote: ↑Mon Apr 27, 2020 8:05 amThat is a good map you have to demonstrate the dichotomy of represention in the US.
It may actually also represent the extreme balance we have going.... We don't think of the consequences of completely getting rid of the electoral college. How long do you think it would be until there would be real revolt if 90% of the land area of the US (the people who live there are important to consider, even if they are a significant minority...who makes the world's food..produces building/manufacturing materials..makes stuff...elves??!!!!) felt totally disenfranchized? And no, with the way things are going with national leaders on the left(democrats) I dont think there would be some magic reckoning of rural areas if these doofus democrats were magically in power perpetually. Obama wasn't a doofus, and even then there was just a formenting of hostility ( yeah yeah racism...but it went beyond that as well)..same with a woman.....and Biden....? No way.
What to do....? Its capitalism that is driving our cultural wedge...MLK understood this intimately.
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Part of the story is clearly foreign influence. The other part that is difficult to deal with is the influence of moneyed interests since Citizens United. We know the names of a set of billionaires on both the right and the left who tend to have outsized influence in who runs for office and what policies they implement. Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers, Bezos, Gates, etc., all put hundreds of millions, if not billions, into lobbying, "research" at partisan "institutes", media spin, and faux-grass-roots mobilizing (especially on FB / social media) This isn't strictly caused by capitalism, because it's identical in form with what goes on in Russia with oligarchs, in Africa and the middle east/west-Asia with warlords and local powerful men (it's almost always men) and in China with various regional members of the ruling "party" jockeying for power. What has radically changed in the West, especially in the United States, is that government power has been whittled away slowly but steadily for 40+ years, since at least Reagan, and the working class has been hoodwinked into agreeing with it. The middle of the country, the rust belt, the service-class everywhere, needs to unionize, to fight governmental and corporate union-busting, and to force things to change for the better. But saying that is one thing -- mobilizing people and getting it done takes powerful people with will and foresight to get it done. It's not clear that it will happen any time soon. But it has happened before. Don't forget, Bezos and his ilk are not the first batch of robber-baron billionaires the United States has been controlled by -- arguably Carnegie, Morgan, Rockefeller, etc., were much, much, much more powerful, and much worse. But hard-fighting anti-fascists managed to force them to break up their massive companies and get the government to force them to respect human rights. It's doable. But people have to be able to see that it's worth doing.
Oh, it is still quite obvious to me. Possibly, even more so if stuff gets sort of normal...ish............Which I do admit, the whole thing (markets) could just collapse, and then who the fuck knows what happens next.....