MAGA bros - [Did not start out a political post]

[BannedWord]

18 hours ago, BlackDude said:

Exactly. I think Don Jr. is kinda cute but I recognize he doesn’t Believe anything he says and he’s doing this one for the money and two he’s an attention starved ego maniac.

That describes nearly everyone in politics, my friend. It's all a great lie. At least AOC makes for a funny meme (no, I wouldn't fuck her with anyone's dick).

[BootmanLA]

Just now, TheSRQDude said:

People aren't worried about gay or trans issues as much as the issues that impact everyone: The economy. War in Ukraine. Foreign Policy. Supply Chain. Affordable housing. How the price of gasoline affects everything. Whether Biden knows where he is, what day it is, or if he'll screw up reading the teleprompter. Look at the polls and they'll tell you the same thing. Latest one I saw had 87% of respondents worried about the economy, over 75% worried about crime. 

I largely agree, except that as someone whose ox is likely to get gored if the GOP takes power again - and god forbid they get the chance to replace Kagan or Sotomayor on the Supreme Court - I don't have the luxury of worrying only about the economy and such. I think it's an indictment of the selfish, self-centered, egotistical ethos of the "Libertarians", who want all the benefits of living in a society without any of the responsibility of caring for the members of that society. I have even less respect for self-proclaimed Libertarians than I do for Republicans.

3 minutes ago, TheSRQDude said:

And it's become that way with the Democrats and progressives as a result of cancel culture, social media censoring, media coverage, the list goes on. So the extremes of both sides are equally guilty. I really do try to look at multiple perspectives to every issue, and many of them can be challenging, especially when they're misrepresented by both sides. 

Except you're lumping together a whole bunch of unrelated stuff. "Cancel culture" is nothing more than decent people deciding they won't put up with non-decent people's public bullshit any more. Social media companies "censoring" is no different from any newspaper or magazine refusing to run someone's letter to the editor, or a cable channel refusing to give someone a prime-time slot to express their opinions. They're entitled to decide what they will and won't permit on their sites - just like TruthSocial is frantically scrubbing any posts that reference the January 6 hearings in Congress and suspending the accounts of people who post about it. The #1 "news" channel in the country is a conservative-warped one (FOXNews) and one of the largest newspapers in the country (the Wall Street Journal) is practically a mouthpiece for the GOP. So let's not talk about media coverage as though it's all slanted one way. It's not, by a long shot. (And I'll note that the NYT and the WaPo *incessantly* covered "Hillary's emails" throughout her campaign and made an enormous splash about the investigation re-opening in October 2016, while FOXNews has yet to run one word of story about the Jan. 6 hearings.)

10 minutes ago, TheSRQDude said:

If you look at the general population -- GOP, Democrats, Libertarians, Independents -- we're all largely centrist and moderate.

I'd say that's true for most Democrats and most Independents. I can't speak for Libertarians because they tend to be wackos who want to shrink government to the size it was in 1840, but the GOP? centrist and moderate? The party where 80% of the members believe that Trump won the election fair and square and it was stolen from him? Please. There are *some* centrist, moderate Republicans - mostly because the Overton window has shifted so far to the right over the last 30 years that what used to be wacko right wing nutcase territory is now mainstream GOP thought - but those centrist, moderate Republicans no longer have any semblance of control over their party. It's been hijacked by the MagaTrump train. 

And I speak as a former Republican (from many decades ago) who saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship, first as an Independent, and then firmly in the Democratic camp, because it's a party that's grounded in reality. I may not agree with the left-most or right-most elements of my party, but even they are largely within the realm of acceptable beliefs. Once a party endorses the violent overthrow of government because it didn't like the results of a free and fair election, that party gets no respect from me.

[evilalex]

No. I'd have to be the top in that situation, and I'm all out of lube.

[ErosWired]

18 hours ago, TheSRQDude said:

I for one would be interested in seeing that, not because I believe it's remotely true but because I'd like to better understand how they developed and identified the subset and phrased the questions to get their responses.

Thanks.

I'm not sure if this was the exact study that was being discussed on the radio when I was listening, but it sounds very similar:

[think before following links] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2378023121992600

There is, however, another interesting paper on Politico that (I think) is more aligned with your thinking, and in fact makes as much sense to me as anything:

[think before following links] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533/

[BootmanLA]

I'd like to throw something else out there - as someone defended sex with MAGA bros by comparing it to people with a fetish for Nazi uniforms.

On a personal level, even if I can admire the aesthetic of the Nazi uniforms - when Hugo Boss designs your troops' clothes, you can expect them to be snazzy - I can't get into using them in a fetish scene. I have no problems with those who do, but don't involve me. I feel the same way about skinhead clothes (and I don't give a crap whether the "original" skinheads were anti-gay, the look is indelibly stained by those who co-opted it). I'm the same way about guns in scenes and confederate flags. All are immediate boner-killers - you're free to indulge, but I'm not going to be part of it.

That's different from fucking an actual MAGA bro, just like it's different from fucking an actual Nazi. 

[BannedWord]

16 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

I think it's an indictment of the selfish, self-centered, egotistical ethos of the "Libertarians", who want all the benefits of living in a society without any of the responsibility of caring for the members of that society. I have even less respect for self-proclaimed Libertarians than I do for Republicans.

Just so we're clear, on a lot of this we'll disagree on politics because of our viewpoints and that's ok. I noticed that the mods moved this over to the Politics Forum to account for this not really being a "fetish" topic any longer.

We Libertarians aren't all that way. A lot of us are far more realistic that the society needs guardrails and social safety nets and the like as population has grown. But do we need better accountability and transparency on what is spent and where it goes? Fewer $1.5T Omnibus spending bills that have $1.4T of unrelated spending in them? Libertarians just believe that government isn't always the best manager of those funds and they're often applied more efficiently if they're handled as public-private partnerships. Railroads are a great example where privatization hasn't worked.

16 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

(And I'll note that the NYT and the WaPo *incessantly* covered "Hillary's emails" throughout her campaign and made an enormous splash about the investigation re-opening in October 2016, while FOXNews has yet to run one word of story about the Jan. 6 hearings.)

At the same media sources that squelched the Hunter Biden laptop story before the '20 election, and the NY Post was among the only outlets to cover the details, all the while Twitter and most social media squelched the story or locked any account that would mention it. 15 months later? NYT goes, "Oh, yeah, whoops, that story WAS true." We talk about making tougher gun laws, yet Biden's son literally lied on a firearms application to purchase a firearm. So rules for thee and not for me? Please. The media largely swings to the left, so does social media, and 86% of journalists identify as "liberal". I'm glad that works well for you now. 

As for the January 6th hearings, watch them if you like. I'm disappointed that we've turned the country into a Congressional Kangaroo court for what's largely been a show trial, produced by a former ABC News producer, and harping on Trump nearly 1.5 years after he's left office. He's gone, move along, you're all in office now so do something other than bleating on about the prior 4 years. I've switched it all off because it's so lopsided and we've seen the movie. "Cheetoh-man bad." We get it. 

Sure, we can talk about one demonstration on January 6th. But can we also talk about the nationwide riots that the media covered as "peaceful protests" that cost around 50+ people their lives and caused over $2B in property damage and why nothing was ever done about that? Or why BLM gets a pass on its use of 'charitable funds' to buy and flip real estate? 

16 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

The party where 80% of the members believe that Trump won the election fair and square and it was stolen from him? Please. There are *some* centrist, moderate Republicans - mostly because the Overton window has shifted so far to the right over the last 30 years that what used to be wacko right wing nutcase territory is now mainstream GOP thought - but those centrist, moderate Republicans no longer have any semblance of control over their party. It's been hijacked by the MagaTrump train. 

Wait, wait, wait...so far to the right?!?  Dude, not sure where you're getting that, but I reckon that most of the country is trying to pull it back from the far left -- you know, the left where narco-terrorists can just walk across the border but the FBI is hunting down parents for objecting at school board meetings? Let's agree to disagree here as the people I see more and more are getting tired of reacting to woke social policies that don't represent the larger majority of fairly moderate values, regardless of political party.

I'll agree that the MAGA section of the party is further right than the rest of the country, and that Trump still exerts an over-influence upon activist voters...if you'll agree that Cori Bush, Ilhan Omar and AOC and those like her represent an equal existential threat on the left, or that our Energy Secretary has been a disaster. We have a party in power that when asked about critical issues continues to change the topic and never answer, or launches into a Green New Deal lecture, or tells people who are struggling because of a $1 increase in gas prices that they should go and buy $60K electric cars. It's tone deaf, out of touch, and about as uncaring as Marie Antoinette offering up cake. 

17 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

And I speak as a former Republican (from many decades ago) who saw the writing on the wall and jumped ship, first as an Independent, and then firmly in the Democratic camp, because it's a party that's grounded in reality. I may not agree with the left-most or right-most elements of my party, but even they are largely within the realm of acceptable beliefs. Once a party endorses the violent overthrow of government because it didn't like the results of a free and fair election, that party gets no respect from me.

I'd love to know when you jumped ship, that might make for interesting conversation. The Democratic Party hasn't in my view been on the side of anyone other than themselves and the political elite for a long time, and Republicans haven't been all that much better. The current generation has blinders on when it comes to key issues like crime, the economy, and things that matter to Americans in general. On gun violence, their answers are to disarm those who legally have guns so that criminals can run more amok. Really? 

And as for free and fair elections, I witnessed election fraud at a local level. I witnessed firsthand what happened when people tried to prevent it from happening again. I brought suit against a county board of elections to ensure there were fair elections because it hadn't happened previously. And as a result things changed. As a registered "Democrat". So yeah, I witnessed it, I know how it looks. There were potentially some irregularities in the 2020 election, but that's over and we need to move on while ensuring that we have free and fair elections, whether or not things happened or the '20 election had issues. 

Peace, friend.

[BannedWord]

16 hours ago, ErosWired said:

I'm not sure if this was the exact study that was being discussed on the radio when I was listening, but it sounds very similar:

[think before following links] [think before following links] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2378023121992600

There is, however, another interesting paper on Politico that (I think) is more aligned with your thinking, and in fact makes as much sense to me as anything:

[think before following links] [think before following links] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/donald-trump-2016-authoritarian-213533/

Thanks for this.

Interesting stuff. The one survey was structured, in a nutshell and I'll paraphrase, upon asking 'if all White Nationalists are white'. And the results were statistically significant that they were. I'm joking in a sense, but when I read through it, it was focused on a fairly white nationalist profile to get its results. Also, the fact that the author spends so much time postulating a position before presenting the data suggests that his approach to get his data is more focused on validating his own opinion. So I get how he want about it, but that he also outsourced his data collection to Amazon MTurk -- you can look up how MTurk sources workers and provides services through crowd-sourced labor -- isn't very 'scientific' in nature.

The second survey from Politico -- which isn't exactly a non-politically-biased source:

[think before following links] https://www.allsides.com/news-source/politico-media-bias

...and is about 6.5 years dated (back to the 2016 primaries). And...oh! He's a Political Sci professor at UMass Amherst teaching, what else, 'authoritarianism'. His subsequent writings have been beating this drum for some time. I think this may have been the survey you were seeking since he's been a frequent guest on NPR. Nonetheless, I credit that he's said some interesting observations, with which I agree with a few. Not sure I agree with all, but he makes a couple of good points. I wish he'd done similar research oriented toward Democratic candidates, but that I couldn't find from him. Would have liked to have compared the perception/reality on Hillary Clinton.

One thing that is notable is that it was clear on "who" aligned with a candidate based on their authoritarian views, but it made no specific statements on whether that candidate was authoritarian in nature. 

Interesting stuff though.

[ErosWired]

2 hours ago, TheSRQDude said:

Thanks for this.

Interesting stuff. The one survey was structured, in a nutshell and I'll paraphrase, upon asking 'if all White Nationalists are white'. And the results were statistically significant that they were. I'm joking in a sense, but when I read through it, it was focused on a fairly white nationalist profile to get its results. Also, the fact that the author spends so much time postulating a position before presenting the data suggests that his approach to get his data is more focused on validating his own opinion. So I get how he want about it, but that he also outsourced his data collection to Amazon MTurk -- you can look up how MTurk sources workers and provides services through crowd-sourced labor -- isn't very 'scientific' in nature.

The second survey from Politico -- which isn't exactly a non-politically-biased source:

[think before following links] [think before following links] https://www.allsides.com/news-source/politico-media-bias

...and is about 6.5 years dated (back to the 2016 primaries). And...oh! He's a Political Sci professor at UMass Amherst teaching, what else, 'authoritarianism'. His subsequent writings have been beating this drum for some time. I think this may have been the survey you were seeking since he's been a frequent guest on NPR. Nonetheless, I credit that he's said some interesting observations, with which I agree with a few. Not sure I agree with all, but he makes a couple of good points. I wish he'd done similar research oriented toward Democratic candidates, but that I couldn't find from him. Would have liked to have compared the perception/reality on Hillary Clinton.

One thing that is notable is that it was clear on "who" aligned with a candidate based on their authoritarian views, but it made no specific statements on whether that candidate was authoritarian in nature. 

Interesting stuff though.

The one math course I took in college was statistics, and the biggest thing I got from it was a realization of how difficult it is to produce truly comprehensive and unbiased sampling sets. I agree that there are open questions left in both of the cited examples, and I take neither of them at full face value. They are nonetheless data that suggest interesting social trends. Society is nothing, however, if not fluid.

[BootmanLA]

5 hours ago, TheSRQDude said:

We Libertarians aren't all that way. A lot of us are far more realistic that the society needs guardrails and social safety nets and the like as population has grown. But do we need better accountability and transparency on what is spent and where it goes? Fewer $1.5T Omnibus spending bills that have $1.4T of unrelated spending in them? Libertarians just believe that government isn't always the best manager of those funds and they're often applied more efficiently if they're handled as public-private partnerships. Railroads are a great example where privatization hasn't worked.

You're conflating small-l "libertarians" (the political belief) with capital-L "Libertarians", the latter being the party. I stand by my assessment of the latter and only need to point to the party's various adopted platforms for evidence. The 2020 platform called for abolishing eminent domain - meaning if a government wants to build a highway, paying the landowners in its path isn't sufficient; if any of them object, you just can't take their property (even with just compensation). Period. Try building or enlarging *any* public road with that in place.

It calls for abolishing *all* regulation of commerce between individuals. No more minimum wage, no OSHA requirements for safety, no bar on child labor in mines or whatever.

It calls for an end to the "illegitimate" practice of marriage licenses - which sounds fine until you realize it means there's nobody to decide who a rightful spouse is, when a patient can't make health care decisions for him/herself. And kiss any spousal benefits goodbye in employment because if an employer can't rely on the law to determine who is legally entitled, as a spouse, to benefits and who is not, they'll simply drop those benefits.

It supports use of deadly force to protect property - no dollar value specified, meaning under Big-L Libertarian government, you could shoot a kid for plucking a flower from a bush at the sidewalk in front of your house.

It makes the "would be hysterically funny if not incredibly stupid" point that governments have a bad track record on the environment and it should be up to private industry to protect it voluntarily, as though the vast number of Superfund sites, oil spill disasters, pipeline ruptures, strip mining of coal by blasting off mountains, and such were acts of benevolent stewardship by the private sector. The notion that they have a vested self-interest in protecting the environment flies in the face of history, which suggests they simply abandon sites that are hopelessly polluted and move on to pollute something else.

It demands that government not subsidize any particular form of energy, as though coal-smoke belching power plants and solar farms should be treated alike under the law. (This one in particular commits the classic Libertarian fallacy of ignoring externalities, the fact that the coal plant is foisting part of its cost to society - the loss of clean air - onto everyone whether they use the power from the plant or not.)

It literally calls for the abolition of ALL taxation - EVERY DIME of it. What that means, of course, is that people pay privately for everything: if you want justice, you not only have to pay a lawyer, you have to pay fees to a court system to pay for the judge. Guess which side is going to typically always be able to pay those fees? (Hint: not the poor individual; it's the rich and the big companies).

I could go on and on (I've only covered the first few paragraphs of the Libertarian Nutso - I mean, Manifesto - for the 2020 election, but this is what the party advocates for. So yeah, I think I'm pretty sound in calling Big-L Libertarians whackos.

[BootmanLA]

6 hours ago, TheSRQDude said:

At the same media sources that squelched the Hunter Biden laptop story before the '20 election, and the NY Post was among the only outlets to cover the details, all the while Twitter and most social media squelched the story or locked any account that would mention it. 15 months later? NYT goes, "Oh, yeah, whoops, that story WAS true." We talk about making tougher gun laws, yet Biden's son literally lied on a firearms application to purchase a firearm. So rules for thee and not for me? Please. The media largely swings to the left, so does social media, and 86% of journalists identify as "liberal". I'm glad that works well for you now. 

That laptop story is far from settled, and I'll note in passing that the chain of custody is so fucked in that case that proving anything allegedly found on the laptop came from Biden, as opposed to any of the half dozen or more political hacks for the GOP who got their hands on it at various times, is going to be a tough sell. So no, this isn't "that story WAS true", it's more like "there may be something there, although not necessarily anything like what we claimed, and it's still not verified."

As for his gun application: he illustrates the point, that it's too easy for people like him, much less criminals, to buy a gun. He should have been blocked. The fact that there was a hole in the system that allowed the purchase to proceed is an indication we need to tighten the system. Or maybe you think drug abusers should be able to readily purchase firearms legally?

I have no doubt that more traditional journalists (ie newspaper, TV, etc.) identify as liberal more than conservative. But two points: just because someone is a liberal or a conservative doesn't mean that will necessarily affect his writing - as we saw with the NYT in 2016. On the other hand, conservative people have largely abandoned traditional media - which was at least vetted by editorial boards and multiple layers of editors looking for bias issues - in favor of conspiracy-spewing shitholes like NewsMax and OAN, and the king of all of them, FOXNews. I note that during the initial January 6 hearing, not only did FOXNews not broadcast the hearing itself, and not only did they refuse to give it any "serious news" coverage, they actually skipped ALL commercials during the time it was running, for fear their viewers might change the channel during a commercial break from Skippy the Fish Stick Heir and accidentally discover something called News.

6 hours ago, TheSRQDude said:

As for the January 6th hearings, watch them if you like. I'm disappointed that we've turned the country into a Congressional Kangaroo court for what's largely been a show trial, produced by a former ABC News producer, and harping on Trump nearly 1.5 years after he's left office. He's gone, move along, you're all in office now so do something other than bleating on about the prior 4 years. I've switched it all off because it's so lopsided and we've seen the movie. "Cheetoh-man bad." We get it. 

If this is a "show trial" it's because the GOP, frantic to protect its leadership from being exposed as deeply involved in a plot to overturn an election, has refused to cooperate with the legitimate investigatory function Congress is displaying here. Interesting that literally *every* witness testifying in both hearings so far has been - drum roll - not a Democrat, but a Republican. If this is a show trial, why are so many GOP'ers coming forward to say "Yes, we told him he lost, no there wasn't fraud, but he kept insisting"? I, for one, happen to think that trying to overturn an election is a big fucking deal, and it might well have succeeded if there had been fewer people around Trump standing their ground (finally).

And despite that, I'm not as concerned about the last four years (despite the outright fraud and graft that occurred) as I am about the NEXT election. When Trump has managed to get sympathetic secretaries of state elected in half a dozen swing states, and he calls himself the winner at 10 PM on Election Night, long before those states have come close to counting their ballots (or even receiving them, for those states that go by postmark date), and he demands that counting stop while he's ahead, will there be the institutional firewall of "that's not how we do things" any more?

You said once before you don't want Trump back. He's going to run again - his game is the grift, and he needs the millions he can siphon off his campaign donations to keep afloat, like the $250 million he raised for his "election integrity" fund that actually didn't get spent on anything related to the election. If you don't want him back - if another four years of the kind of chaos his incompetence brought is too much for you - then I'd think you should be in favor of taking the steps necessary to make sure he doesn't come back. 

[BannedWord]

16 hours ago, BootmanLA said:

If you don't want him back - if another four years of the kind of chaos his incompetence brought is too much for you - then I'd think you should be in favor of taking the steps necessary to make sure he doesn't come back. 

It isn't about just me. That type of statement is much like Disney stating that they'll do everything in their power to change a law rather than leaving those decisions to the people who have and should have a voice in that: Voters. It's not up to a corporation receiving highly favorable tax treatments to think they have any right as an entity to change the will of voters. It's also not up to me pushing to "make sure he doesn't come back". It's up to 2 things: The Law and the will of a majority of the country. The voters have spoken on that count. If he truly broke the law, indict him, bring him to trial, and adjudicate it. You'd get no argument from me.

But if we are talking about "incompetence", how happy are you with the state of the country right now? Because even most Democrats aren't and the country's level of consumer confidence is reaching lows, VIX (Volatility Index) has increased by about 100%, people don't feel safer, are becoming a LOT poorer, Hispanics have given him lower approval ratings than even whites (seems they don't like how he's handling the border either), the list just goes on. Not even mentioning the recent coverage in The NY Times that a poll of 50 influential Democrats suggest that Biden should not run in '24. Even CNN, MSNBC and the major networks as well as NYT and WaPo are starting to talk about how bad things have gotten under Biden. 

Maybe I didn't love Trump, but based on the way things are now, I'll take a few mean tweets versus this. 😃

If you think about it for a moment, up to this point Biden has had a very friendly press corps who've been willing to toss him mostly softball questions, and it's been a long time since he's held a press conference (126 days). Compare that to the same hostility that his predecessor encountered -- while you may not like the approach, the man held his ground and stood up to take the questions. I don't have any confidence that Biden could even do that given that the guy flubs up reading a teleprompter much of the time. 

It's World Elder Abuse Day today. The kindest thing anyone could do for Mr. Biden is ensure he steps down. 

 

[ErosWired]

2 hours ago, TheSRQDude said:

But if we are talking about "incompetence", how happy are you with the state of the country right now? Because even most Democrats aren't and the country's level of consumer confidence is reaching lows, VIX (Volatility Index) has increased by about 100%, people don't feel safer, are becoming a LOT poorer, Hispanics have given him lower approval ratings than even whites (seems they don't like how he's handling the border either), the list just goes on.

I never cease to be amazed at the way people automatically lay the blame for everything going wrong at the present moment at the feet of the current president as though he personally had caused it all, or could somehow magically fix it. We should just change the name of the office to Scapegoat-In-Chief.

A president inherits a set of circumstances and societal and financial trends that were set in motion long before he took office, enacted at least by his predecessor if not even further back. I’m reminded of a houseboat my father once owned - it was a gargantuan vessel, and once you got the damn thing moving, there was no way to bring it to a quick stop or make a sudden turn. It had a momentum all its own.

Joe Biden, contrary to all the trash talk, is not mentally incapacitated by age. He is not feeble-minded or suffering from dementia. His level of cognitive function is obviously normal. He is not incompetent. He is, however, hamstrung on one side by a Republican side of Congress hell-bent on derailing any forward progress he may try to make just because he’s trying to make it, and on the other side by two obstructionists in his own party who have frustrated any possibility the Democrats might have had to leverage their slim majority. His hands are tied.

2 hours ago, TheSRQDude said:

Maybe I didn't love Trump, but based on the way things are now, I'll take a few mean tweets versus this. 

Please. You absolutely cannot expect to be taken seriously if you attempt to categorize Trump’s litany of outrageous behavior as “a few mean tweets”. By objective, fully documented standards - beyond bias or question - Donald Trump is a habitual liar. He lied to the American people repeatedly on a daily basis for his entire term of office. By the standards of federal ethics - as I as a former federal executive branch employee can attest - he callously threw the ethical constraints that govern public servants out the window in breathtaking fashion. The grift, graft and nepotism that took place were thinly concealed when they were concealed at all. Violations of law, such as the Hatch Act, went blatantly unaddressed (such things can cost a federal employee his job). And all this is quite aside from the fact - fact, sir - that the man was impeached, and only survived his trial in the Senate by the craven political capitulation of cowards. It is quite, quite aside from the mounting body of indisputable evidence, much of it directly from the testimony of his own subordinates, that Donald J. Trump did attempt to overthrow the results of a free and fair election and remain in power by way of a coup, in which he spurred on a mob of his supporters to make a violent and seditious attack upon the seat of American democracy. Or aren’t you paying attention?

This is what you’ll take over Joe Biden? This is what you’ll take over a bit of economic discomfort that anyone who weathered the ration stamps of the Second World War or the energy crisis of the 1970s would laugh at? These are not “the worst of times”. They’re not even in the running. They may be worse than we’ve seen in a while, but frankly, we’ve been spoiled in recent years by markets running higher than their actual value, and an economy acting as though the planet wasn’t on course to bake itself to death.

The piper has to be paid, there’s no getting around it. It’s not Biden’s fault that the chickens of the Industrial Age are coming home to roost. But the last, the very, very, very last thing the nation needs right now is a self-absorbed narcissist in its highest office who loves money, hates windmills, scorns the rule of law, turns the truth on its head, and sets the people at each other’s throats.

’Mean tweets’ were the very least of his sins.

Edited June 15, 2022 by ErosWired

[BootmanLA]

1 hour ago, ErosWired said:

’Mean tweets’ were the very least of his sins.

If I hear one more person try to reduce the colossal dumpster fire that was the Trump administration to "mean tweets" I swear I'm going to break something.

But... let's look at some of those mean tweets. Like the shitflow that erupted every time someone in his administration quit on principle, or he decided he couldn't control them enough: you'd think, based on his vituperative tweets, that these were all people left over from a prior administration and he was finally cleaning house, ignoring the fact that HE appointed every goddamned one of these people (usually with syrupy praise for something completely off-base). By his own admission, apparently, he has abysmal judgment.

There's a reason why his former cabinet members variously described him as "a moron", "dumb as rocks", and worse. The very stable genius not only was a mean tweeter, he was a demonstrable idiot incapable of speaking off the cuff about anything except himself (and the daughter he wanted to boink, and the women he wanted to grab by the pussy, and sometimes did).

I suppose you consider his administration a success because the stock market did well under most of his term - which of course ignores that the trajectory line for stock prices under Trump is exactly the line it was on for the last two years of Obama's second term as well; which ignores that his incompetence in dealing with Covid pretty much killed that anyway; which ignores that the wealthiest 10% of Americans own almost 90% of all stocks; which ignores that as stock market values soared, wages stagnated, producing income and wealth inequalities unseen since the Gilded Age of the robber barons. I don't consider that an achievement worth celebrating, but maybe you do, I don't know. 

[NWUSHorny]

I don't usually make political comments on this platform, but as someone who leans pretty far small-l libertarian and mostly voted Republican before Trump completely upended the party's focus. I'm really curious what the people that think Trump would do to solve the inflation dilemma would be doing? I know he hasn't actually publicly prescribed any actual policies so I think any ideas about what he might do are purely speculative. Because Trump hasn't put forth any suggestions, and he has managed to keep an iron grip on currently serving Republicans aren't going to introduce any legislation that is not fully approved by Trump.

I think he would either with or without authorization from congress try to implement price controls a la Nixon in 1970 (Nixon did have congressional authorization). Even in the hands of reasonably competent experts and leadership Nixon's actions led to shortages and long waiting lists for goods and services that we are already experiencing today. In addition to that problem, Trump has shown through his 4 year term a penchant to try to control the micro through "deals" with companies and individuals rather than focusing on the macro, which if any government led solution is possible on inflation it will have to come from macro policy. As a libertarian, I would expect you to be firmly against intervention at either the micro or macro levels.

Another huge problem I have giving Trump the authority to attempt to deal with it is his history as a businessman. Trump's "great personal wealth" may or may not be more than illusion, but either way the perception of it has been created by taking the cash flow from a long line of failed business ventures. Companies he has controlled have declared bankruptcy 6 times. Many more have defaulted on the debts, almost all of them have negotiated with creditors to pay them pennies on the dollar owed, and numerous others have shut down after he took the customers money without providing the agreed upon goods or services, including the outright fraudulent enterprises that had to be shut down by multiple states (Trump University is just the tip of the iceberg in that area). None of which give me confidence the "fabulously wealthy businessman" has any hope of navigating the global economic currents that are driving this bout of inflation, let alone preventing or reversing it.

The MAGA have been insisting for 6 years now that it is a "binary choice" where we have to pick the "least of the evils". Guess what, right now that is the Democrats. The Democrats have not pledged total fealty and discretion on policy to a single individual, that is in my opinion the most seriously flawed major party leader in US history. They have not claimed election fraud and refused to accept the results of an election, even after almost 2 years of failure to provide evidence of the fraud that has standing in a court of law. No Democrats have condoned an active revolt against the constitutional republic on the scale of the January 6th, 2021 insurrection, since the Civil War ended in 1865.

Trump has been very successful at removing the philosophical and policy reasons I mostly voted Republican in the past, so at this point I don't have much in common with either party. Some of my biggest disappointments with Biden are that he has left the Trump tariffs and caps on legal immigration in place, both of which are contributing to the current inflation problem. I don't think that Biden should have followed through on Trump's withdrawal from Afghanistan. I am at least thankful that Biden opposed Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and firmly believe Trump would have actively worked to hand the Ukraine over to Russia, and actively undermined NATO efforts to keep it an independent nation.

Small-l libertarianism "live and let live" approach only works if a majority is willing to heed the "do no harm to others" component of the philosophy. MAGA will not tolerate the "do no harm to others" part nor can they be shamed into even considering what harm they may be doing.

[ErosWired]

1 hour ago, NWUSHorny said:

nor can they be shamed into even considering what harm they may be doing.

Indeed. Trump supporters are in an unenviable position that in some ways explains why they’re so intransigent - there’s now no way for them to be a little ashamed of themselves without taking a bath in it.