It is important to acknowledge and name corruption for what it is. It's just hard to continue to have novel reactions to it. It reminds me of an article I read once about cartel violence in Mexico, and how people typically become desensitized to the violence.
filoeleven 1 days ago [-]
This is exactly why they want a televised execution.
iugtmkbdfil834 1 days ago [-]
I think this is the part that makes things aggravating. You can have all the rules, monitoring, surveillance you want, but it is all rather pointless if someone simply makes for the machinery to not apply to them.
Edit: And, if we accept that this is the default state, then lets dismantle the surveillance part. Might as well be free in that aspect, right?
tim333 1 days ago [-]
I was thinking that with Trump's recent buying of diesel from Russia seemingly in contravention of a 2022 law banning energy imports from Russia, passed 100-0 in the senate. I mean what's the point of having laws if they are ignored?
JKCalhoun 1 days ago [-]
I suppose so you can prosecute the administration for breaking the law.
arn3n 1 days ago [-]
The CFTC, since Trump, has become entirely corrupt. Note that the proliferation of sports gambling in prediction markets, which is explicitly illegal, largely exists because the CFTC refuses to enforce their own legal mandate against Kalshi and Polymarket.
It’s actually worse; when states try to shut down sports betting in prediction markets, the CFTC fights on behalf of Kalshi with the reasoning that only the federal government has the mandate to regular futures and prediction markets. And then they refuse to regulate!
The CFTC is supposed to have 5 chairs, with no more than 3 in the same party. The administration has gotten around this rule by simply removing 4 of the commissioners and then refusing to appoint replacements. In effect, the CFTC has only 1 republican chair and no opposite party representation. The level of corruption is staggering.
namdnay 1 days ago [-]
> sports gambling in prediction markets, which is explicitly illegal
It’s a bit more complicated than that. The CFTC argues that under Dodd-Frank any bet on a future event that can have economic consequences is regulated by the CFTC.
It’s a bit silly because this obviously wasn’t the intention of the legislation, and it would also mean anyone betting outside a CFTC regulated exchange is in illegality. But it’s valid enough that The case will probably go to the Supreme Court.
It is an argument that is baldly non-nonsensical, but the Justice Department is not going to complain.
miltonlost 1 days ago [-]
It's only a valid argument to this invalid Supreme Court filled with bribed judges, rapists, and racists.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 11 hours ago [-]
> The CFTC is supposed to have 5 chairs, with no more than 3 in the same party.
Of course it's a policy that helps the two-party system become further entrenched. It should be no more than 2 from the same party. (Not that it matters given the fact only one is appointed, but still.)
BoggleOhYeah 1 days ago [-]
Not to mention that Trump Jr is an advisor to both Kalshi (YC19) and Polymarket.
mhh__ 2 days ago [-]
These guys are all going to end up in prison at this rate. Dems are currently predicted to win next election no?
baggachipz 1 days ago [-]
Maybe a mid-level scapegoat or two will go to prison. Definitely not the ones at the top. God bless America
pm90 1 days ago [-]
Depends on who actually gets elected. A centrist candidate like Buttigeg/Ossoff/Harris/Newsom would almost certainly lead to no prosecutions. Someone with actual convictions like AOC or Ro Khanna might.
RobRivera 1 days ago [-]
I will laugh and then cry if the left puts up a candidate that is (again) alienating of the working class.
Enough of the voter base will cut the nose to spite the face
beambot 1 days ago [-]
Which candidate(s) would that be... and why?
NewJazz 1 days ago [-]
Newsom because he is backed by oil wealth, has suspicious connections to PG&E, and has delivered (some of?) the highest electricity rates in the country.
SwellJoe 1 days ago [-]
There's only one Democrat I simply will not vote for, because they transparently serve the oligarch class, and it seems like the one the Democratic establishment wants to nominate for president in 2028 (that candidate is Newsom, if it weren't obvious). A man who grins while destroying everything a homeless person owns is a monster who should never be allowed into any position of power. I don't know if the working class, in general, understand who Newsom is, but he's clearly not for the working class, and at least some of them will figure that out in a general election. He's the kind of California Republican that runs as a Democrat so he can win statewide in California.
kyboren 1 days ago [-]
California voter here. If Newsom wins the primary I will campaign for the Republican.
But please note that he's pre-emptively declared he won't run if Kamala runs[0]. He even admits this is because they're both backed by the same groups and share the same donor network[1]. So there's at least one more Democrat you simply should not vote for.
[1]: Quote from above article: "The governor said he would not want to force a contest against the former vice president, noting that the two share many political allies and supporters."
SwellJoe 1 days ago [-]
Yeah, I had to hold my nose to vote for Harris, and I don't look forward to the continued dominance of that wing of the party. The good thing about Harris running instead of Newsom is that she's less likely to win the nomination. I hope primary voters are as fed up with the corporate Democratic party as the country in general is.
kyboren 1 days ago [-]
> The good thing about Harris running instead of Newsom is that she's less likely to win the nomination.
That's a good point.
What scares me about Newsom is that, outside of California, Newsom's corruption, broken promises, and policy failures are totally unknown. He's just the handsome guy with all those great anti-Trump zingers. And as a relatively young white man, he might be seen as a demographically "safe" choice for primary voters burnt by their experience with Hillary and Kamala.
> I hope primary voters are as fed up with the corporate Democratic party as the country in general is.
I think a good chunk of them are. The question is really, who can win both the Democratic nomination and the general election?
AOC is the obvious choice for the DSA faction, but I'm deeply skeptical she can win in the general. The corporate faction seems dead set on Newsom or Kamala. If Kamala can somehow eke out a primary victory, she's gonna crash and burn badly in the general. And I don't see anyone else suddenly appearing as a viable candidate.
So from where I'm sitting, it looks like Democrats' most likely path to victory goes through Newsom. And I think his corruption and inevitably poor governance will discredit the Democratic party for a generation and catapult MAGA--perhaps another Trump--back into power. Then we'll be properly fucked.
SwellJoe 1 days ago [-]
Ossoff isn't my first choice, but I believe a charming, good looking, southern white man, who isn't afraid to call a Nazi a Nazi, might have a pretty good shot at both the nomination and the general (though I think AOC is also a strong contender, she's popular nationwide). It's early, yet, but if Democrats can't win a state or two in the south, they're going to have a hard time taking the White House. The northern "blue wall" simply aint (it started falling apart almost immediately after it was named, and Trump hammered the nail through its heart).
kyboren 23 hours ago [-]
If so, the guy needs to get his name and message out there pronto. I don't hear jack shit about him, so he clearly sucks at gaining attention, and that's one thing both Trump and AOC excel at. These days, that seems to matter more than almost anything else.
> It's early, yet, but if Democrats can't win a state or two in the south, they're going to have a hard time taking the White House.
The Democrats are going to have a hard time taking the White House. Full stop. The electoral map isn't pretty. And if current trends continue, it's gonna become almost impossible for a Democrat to win the Presidency after the next reapportionment.
> The northern "blue wall" simply aint
Preach. It was always a delusion. Democrats have a long history of taking their voters for granted. Then, of course, they are shocked when they give them the finger. Unfortunately I don't see this changing any time soon. The DSA faction seems similarly aloof, in their own way.
insane_dreamer 18 hours ago [-]
> California voter here. If Newsom wins the primary I will campaign for the Republican.
It was thinking like this about Kamala that got us Trump.
I don't want Newsom either, but if it's a choice between Newsom and Trump 3.0 (if he swings it) or JD Vance, I'd still take Newsom any day.
SwellJoe 17 hours ago [-]
If you don't want Democrats to lose, figure out how to keep someone like Newsom off the ballot. You've all got two years to settle on someone who isn't odious.
insane_dreamer 7 hours ago [-]
AOC
but I'm afraid that the dem party will work against her just like they did Bernie in 2016, which got us the mad king
greggoB 1 days ago [-]
I see what you did there - "only people with conviction might get convictions"
tenuousemphasis 1 days ago [-]
Next election is midterms, not presidential.
estearum 1 days ago [-]
Ossoff does not really seem like a centrist on this point. He's pretty vicious about the whole Trump criminal organization.
pm90 1 days ago [-]
Fair. Although he seems to mostly target Trump, rather than the conditions that gave rise to Trumpism. Unless someone addresses that we’re stuck in a vicious cycle…
estearum 1 days ago [-]
He's even better than you thought, then. Here's a post from a week ago (and a common refrain in his writing and speaking):
"I get why people voted for him. Because even before he came on the scene, American politics was coin-operated.
Money goes in, favors come out. It’s been running on corporate money, secret money, billionaire money. Both sides.
And when members of Congress aren’t fundraising from lobbyists and corporate PACs, they’re trying to dodge getting bombed by these super PACs.
Spectacular wealth buys an ever greater share of power over our national affairs. And this corruption is why nothing works for ordinary people."
SwellJoe 1 days ago [-]
He at least seems to recognize the stakes, while the Schumer and Pelosi wing of the party (most of the party) simply do not. It's literally barbarism or democracy, and barbarism is currently winning, and if your opponent is a white supremacist fighting hard on the side of barbarism, you gotta say that plainly. Ossoff is one of the few democrats who will say it. He has the benefit of his opponent being particularly odious in his ties to literal Nazis, and the base he has to serve including a lot of black people who understand what a white supremacist looks like.
horns4lyfe 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
boston_clone 1 days ago [-]
Shallow dismissals and low-effort responses are not in the spirit of this site; please try to better substantiate your ideas.
baq 2 days ago [-]
Oh absolutely not. They’re going to end up very rich!
bdcravens 1 days ago [-]
Probably not, if the previous administration, when they had full control, is useful precedent.
Buttons840 1 days ago [-]
We might get someone like Obama again who "looks forward and not backwards"... a logic that would result in all crimes being ignored if consistently applied.
Zigurd 1 days ago [-]
A big part of why we are at where we are is that January 6 was our Beer Hall Putsch. Like the Germans, we failed to put a stop to it.
ethagnawl 1 days ago [-]
There have already been rumors of some administration-wide pardon scheme but that'll probably fall on its face when put to the test, like almost everything else they do.
It's baffling to watch people destroy their reputations, careers and possibly risk their freedom for a chance to get close to power and pad their (possibly offshore/crypto) savings accounts. For as evolved as we pretend to be, we're really not very far beyond our "lizard brains" and a few missed meals away from mania. I was actually just thinking about Todd Blanche and the stupid games he's playing, flirting with contempt in a number of lawsuits. He's almost certainly got less time in the AG seat than Trump has in the president's and reality is going to slam into his brown nose very hard, sooner than later.
Zigurd 1 days ago [-]
There are enough state level charges to be laid against these people that federal pardons can be made in effective. The JDs among them can also lose their licenses.
IncreasePosts 1 days ago [-]
Also, civil infractions can claw back ill begotten gains at a 3x multiple, and you can't pardon those
dboreham 1 days ago [-]
I wondered about this so checked what happened to Joseph McCarthy. He was subject to a vote of censure in the senate, and became unpopular, but that was it. Of course he died shortly after of alcohol related conditions, so there's that..
ceejayoz 1 days ago [-]
Or, like, Nixon.
The relative lack of consequences there enabled this go around.
GolfPopper 1 days ago [-]
Nixon resigned, and was pardoned. Many of the conspirators were convicted and served prison time.
With Reagan and Iran-Contra, Reagan was never charged, most officials were pardoned, and only one person served any jail time.
With Bush (43) there were no consequences for any of it. Not he war under false pretenses, not the domestic spying, not the torture.
And with Donald Trump (45) a single judge recently appointed by Donald Trump held up legal proceedings until he was elected President, again.
ceejayoz 1 days ago [-]
> Nixon resigned, and was pardoned.
Yes. That's deeply bad precedent.
Roger Ailes founded Fox News, explicitly, to avoid a recurrence of even that minimal level of consequence.
They're simply in the oligarch level now. Everyone understands that they're above the law. Nowhere near enough Democrats are talking about the level of corruption clearout that would be required to bring accountability. Law enforcement are heavily compromised in the opposite direction. See the raid on Ilhan Omar, for example.
euroderf 1 days ago [-]
Techno-feudalism has many practical applications that benefit techno-royals.
GolfPopper 1 days ago [-]
Techo-nobles benefit as well. Just ask Eric Holder and centi-millionaire Obama. If you can reach the latter in his mansion on the exclusive island for the wealthy, that is.
gadders 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
ChaseMeAway 1 days ago [-]
Ofc congresspeople should not be immune, but she is being investigated for the possibility that a relative who brought her to the US when she was a child (15) lied on her immigration paperwork.
It’s not clear to me how she’d be responsible for that and it’s also not clear to me what evidence they expected to turn up related to such an offense by raiding her home decades after the offense was alleged to have occurred.
koolba 21 hours ago [-]
If she knew she wasn’t an actually a citizen yet still voted that’s a crime. If she lied about her birthday on federal forms that’s a crime too.
foobarian 1 days ago [-]
Half the congress would be in jail for insider trading if this was taken seriously.
gadders 1 days ago [-]
Imagine I just inserted the "Your terms are acceptable" meme here.
But seriously - insider trading should be straight to jail for a politician, at any level or party.
Zigurd 1 days ago [-]
Now do Elon
gadders 1 days ago [-]
What laws do you think Elon has broken?
Zigurd 1 days ago [-]
He lied on his immigration forms which is a declaration under penalty of perjury. He was a paid employee without legal authorization to work in this country. He also failed to maintain his non-immigrant student status.
These are all willful acts by an adult.
FireBeyond 1 days ago [-]
The same immigration laws that Republicans allege Ilhan's family broke?
Like coming here on a student visa, and working for startups, explicitly against the visa requirements.
While they're at it, they can look at Melania, who started working without a work visa, not to mention the granting of an O-1 visa to her in the first place (Eastern European model of zero prominence even in her home country, working for an agency that had ties to organized prostitution and sex trafficking).
BoggleOhYeah 1 days ago [-]
I agree. But it’s pretty apparent that this is a case of political targeting. Elon and Melania Trump likely committed some level of immigration fraud as well.
aweiland 1 days ago [-]
And they did it as adults.
gadders 1 days ago [-]
Do you think Trump was politically targeted?
triceratops 1 days ago [-]
No. The guy literally had boxes of classified materials in his house and refused to return them [edit: also lied that he had returned them all] when asked politely.
gadders 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
triceratops 1 days ago [-]
> And just didn't get prosecuted because the prosecutor said he was too far gone mentally
So...was Trump also too far gone? That means he shouldn't be president now.
Or did he do the same thing while being of sound mind? That means it wasn't a politically-motivated prosecution.
Logically it can only be one of these two. Tell me which one is right.
The Biden prosecutor is a registered Republican. The Trump prosecutor is an independent. You tell me who's more likely to be politically motivated.
gadders 1 days ago [-]
>>So...was Trump also too far gone? That means he shouldn't be president now.
I dunno, but I don't think it got in the official report like it did for Biden.
And the argument isn't "Biden took the documents home because of Alzheimers". The argument is "Biden took the documents home when in control of his faculties, but his Alzheimers was too far gone for him to be prosecuted."
triceratops 1 days ago [-]
I'm asking you about Trump. Is he mentally unfit to be president now or was the prosecution actually politically valid?
And I notice you still haven't addressed the differences between the two cases. I've found most people of a certain political persuasion never do because it's too inconvenient for their narrative.
In one case, a guy was asked to return documents the authorities knew he had, he didn't and then had to be served a search warrant to retrieve them.
In the other, a guy found documents himself, told on himself and consented to a voluntary search to look for more.
Mens rea is an important variable to the chances of conviction. Juries can easily be convinced that honest mistakes happen; especially when the person who made the mistake turns themselves in.
gadders 1 days ago [-]
>>I'm asking you about Trump. Is he mentally unfit to be president now or was the prosecution actually politically valid?
Those two statements don't follow on from each other. I realise there is this big push to claim Trump has alzheimers now because it was an effective attack on Biden (due to being true) but it's not sticking with Trump. You may not like him, you may disagree with his decisions, but he's still as much Trump as he ever was.
>>In the other, a guy found documents himself, told on himself and consented to a voluntary search to look for more.
Yeah, when the Justice Department says "We'd like to check your house for classified info" saying "Nah, we good" is definitely an option.
triceratops 1 days ago [-]
> Those two statements don't follow on from each other
Then you can't follow logic, sorry.
He had the documents, didn't report them, and refused to return them. That's fact, not commentary. He either did those things with a sound mind or without. That's logic.
Given these things, there are only two possible deductions. Criminal behavior that was deservedly prosecuted or unfitness for office today. Unless you believe he was crazy at the time, then became sane.
> Yeah, when the Justice Department says "We'd like to check your house for classified info" saying "Nah, we good" is definitely an option.
Well it was definitely an option one of these two guys used. Because he knew had people like you to call it "politically motivated" regardless of the facts.
The guy who cooperated was a sitting President at the time. He could've easily invoked executive privilege or some other BS. We know what the current guy would do.
mrguyorama 1 days ago [-]
>OK, but you know Biden did more or less the same right?
No he did not.
Biden had some leftover documents that he turned over when told to. That is normal. It is quite literally part of secrets management to expect some stuff ends up uncontrolled and have processes and plans to recover it.
Trump had a secret stash of literal nuclear secrets in his meeting place with pretty much anyone willing to pay him, and denied having them, refused to turn them over, and denied everything again when he was finally raided and they found all that shit. People like you still insist somehow that this wasn't absurd on it's face.
Trump is the most sued president because Trump historically gets sued by everyone he talks to because, as he has literally told you to your face, that's his strategy, abuse everything and force it to go through the courts, because then you can bend those rules and slow down problems.
It's a bit much to say "he turned them over when he got caught". Yeah. no doubt.
triceratops 1 days ago [-]
It's literally in the first sentence of the article you posted. "attorneys for Biden discovered classified documents" and contacted the authorities. How does that mean "got caught"? Your own attorneys can't "catch" you.
gadders 1 days ago [-]
" Biden's personal attorney said on January 21 that the Justice Department discovered six items containing classification markings during a consensual search of his home the previous day, some of which dated to his tenure in the Senate; investigators also seized some of Biden's handwritten notes from his vice presidency."
triceratops 1 days ago [-]
"On November 22, 2022, Biden's attorneys discovered the first set of classified documents in a locked closet...they reported them that day".
If you're in possession of a calendar, you will notice that November 22, 2022 is actually before January 2023. You might also note the "consensual search" in your own quote.
So a normal person might conclude that the Justice Department called Biden after he reported on himself, and said "We see you said you had some documents, so maybe you forgot some more? Can we come search with you?" And Biden maybe said "Good idea."
wat10000 1 days ago [-]
What makes you think the Democrats are going to do anything? They had multiple slam-dunk cases against Trump during the previous administration and they either did nothing at all, or slow-rolled the investigations and then gave them up when election season rolled around again.
trinsic2 1 days ago [-]
Nothing's going to change with the Democrats in. The authoritarianism will be done but behind the scenes much more.
Remember the whole system is filled with institutionalists who believe following in the program, no matter who sets the standards.
We need to focus on systemic change rather than populism.
deadbabe 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
convolvatron 1 days ago [-]
No one thinks that there non-zero corruption in the Democratic Party. but we're at point where things like environmental policy, foreign relations, military alliances, tariffs, wars, and a whole bunch of actually important issues are being decided by how much Trump can extract from the arrangement.
Maybe they're just really good at hiding it, but I don't really remember a time under any administration when we could say something like 'as a country we're now supporting Russia and abandoning Ukraine and our traditional allies in Europe because they offer much better bribes'.
we should be going after corruption by anyone, its extremely corrosive. I don't understand why if that's a concern why we're supposed to be ok with turning it up to 11. Not only outright personal deal making, but the active replacement of foreign governments, state and local officials with people who know how to play that game properly.
What have you got to even begin to claim an equivalence here. Pelosi's stock trades? Biden's sleazy son?
I never saw anything remotely close to the Trump 2 level of corruption in any previous administration, Democrat or Republican.
GolfPopper 1 days ago [-]
Trump has certainly taken corruption and malfeasance to new levels of blatancy, but Obama's AG Eric Holder declining to prosecute the banks his firm used to represent, escaping punishment for Contempt of Congress because his own DoJ declined to prosecute him (on a different matter), and then returning to that same firm is part of how we got to where we are now.
horns4lyfe 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
specproc 1 days ago [-]
Everybody pisses in the pool, not everybody pisses from the diving board.
actionfromafar 1 days ago [-]
Pisses in the drinks.
sandworm101 1 days ago [-]
>> only slightly less corrupt than this
The values do not bare comparison. Lookup the whitewater controversy (Clintons, 1990s). The loans in that fiasco were in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars. Trump just earned over 2,400,000,000$ in one year as president. One man. One year. And only the money he felt the need to report. There is simply no meaningful comparison to any previous corruption scandals. Nothing touches the numbers 10-digit gain numbers spiraling around the current administration.
I am not sure the old pardon system will function here. The second half of that system involved the pardoned people slipping into a quiet retirement. The extended Trump clan is not going to go quietly.
filoeleven 1 days ago [-]
My only quibble with this comment is your use of the word "earned".
ourmandave 1 days ago [-]
It really is mind boggling to watch a months long committee investigation of Jan 6th and then Merrick Garland just nopes out.
Zigurd 1 days ago [-]
Purge FedSoc
estearum 1 days ago [-]
I think (hope) that the next generation of Dem leadership saw the error in that and will come out guns blazing.
If the remaining MAGA cultists want to take to the street and die for their godking then so be it. The criminals must be punished.
llm_nerd 1 days ago [-]
> Most of them are only slightly less corrupt than this, and definitely not enough to actively punish corruption.
This feels like one of those "and that's why I blame the Democrats for everything Trump does, so I guess I have to vote for Trump's enablers" bit of horseshit, fwiw.
Both parties are completely in the pocket of special interests (billionaires, Israel, among others), however on the corruption file the GOP has an absolute monopoly. The corruption in the modern Republican party is simply off the charts. And this presidency has turned the corruption to the max, in the open. Every criminal knows that if you think you're going to get caught, the first thing to do is profess your love of Trump and declare yourself a Republican, and in a moment your crimes will be exonerated and it will all be called "lawfare".
> Most times they just say "let's move on" and grant a pardon.
The Democrats have constantly tried to be the "high road" party. The law and order, let the process run out party. The "let's make bridges and not walls" party. The Republicans have completely taken advantage of it. If they take power -- which I think there is going to be a "Surprise" by this criminal fascist -- they need to go absolutely scorched Earth. And screw slow walking with some Merrick Garland type of snail, speed-run sending every Trump and enabler to jail. Hegseth needs to spend his remaining days rotting in a dungeon.
I mean, Trump still sincerely calls Democrats "divisive". From the guy who gets his chuckling audience of halfwits to cheer on blowing up American cities, and who constantly attacks and disparages "blue states" and their residents.
I cannot for the life of me understand how Americans in the better states aren't talking about secession. You simply must send some of the ignorant, garbage states packing.
And seriously, the "both parties are the same" trope is so transparent now. It's a coping mechanism that terrible people use to try to justify why they're how they are.
Sharlin 1 days ago [-]
"Guess what, we don’t want you back in the Union after all, good riddance"
chii 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
cowlevel 1 days ago [-]
I think the democrats are definitely less corrupt but still extremely corrupt. It's just that the current administration is so vastly, mindbogglingly corrupt it blows all previous meanings of "extremely corrupt" out of the water. It's like comparing the memory safety of C++ to the memory safety of hexadecimal machine code: Yeah C++ isn't particularly safe but when you compare it to flipping bits with tweezers and a steady hand, it's miraculous.
el_blargos 1 days ago [-]
Yeah but its unpay strike we're taking. Not sure a US worker can afford that.
And... Its popular. When I go to a protest in the US I'm coming home sad.
cowlevel 1 days ago [-]
You are shadowbanned
esseph 1 days ago [-]
doesn't look that way here
cowlevel 21 hours ago [-]
any new comments they post will be dead unless vouched. You can see all but two of their comments are dead, because those two have been vouched.
FrustratedMonky 1 days ago [-]
If prison was an option, it would have already happened. They will get away with it. Dems aren't going to be able to break this administration. They will just ignore congress. What will congress do?
cmrdporcupine 1 days ago [-]
Even worse they (the GOP) is just lighting everything on fire now and leaving it in a dysfunctional state on purpose. Because they know for the next two years voters will just start blaming the Dems for everything that goes wrong. Trump will say "I would fix it but the radical left Democrats are too busy persecuting me. High gas prices are their fault, and Zelensky's etc"
What's happening in Brazil right now should give people pause about thinking that an interregnum with someone left-ish in power trying to restore normality will reset things to a saner state.
These are people totally willing to burn the crops and salt the fields. Trump could die tomorrow and a thousand heads would pop up looking to benefit from the anger and resent.
FrustratedMonky 1 days ago [-]
Exactly. Almost be better if Dems lost. Now they will be a ignored, and a target for blame, an excuse.
specproc 1 days ago [-]
So the election will be meaningless. Expect bad things in November.
shrubble 1 days ago [-]
The CFTC’s refusal to do anything useful serves both parties.
ergonaught 1 days ago [-]
This regime, as others like it, poses the constant question, “What are you going to do about it?”
And the answer is, largely, nothing.
It’s a shame, really.
stickfigure 1 days ago [-]
> And the answer is, largely, nothing.
There's a two-year delay baked into the system. If the house flips (and it almost certainly will), the house will be able to investigate these things.
I expect fireworks.
alpha_squared 1 days ago [-]
I've become cynical enough to expect the opposite at this point, which likely means reality will settle somewhere around the midway point.
It appears that one party has settled into reckless disregard for democratic and social norms because they can rest assured that the other party is feckless and only cares about "returning to normal" rather than holding anyone accountable or ensuring the harm can't be repeated. They're probably right.
All of this is thanks to the winners-take-all voting system which entrenches two parties and prevents any meaningful consensus to be reached at a national level. I think where the US is at now is inevitable given the voting system in place.
notahacker 1 days ago [-]
77 million voters voted for Trump after he'd shown them exactly who he was. I don't think you can blame the voter sentiments and information environment that leads to that outcome on the voting system.
A fragmented party system driven by Parliamentary coalition building might actually mean less accountability, since right-leaning independents and ex-Republicans disgruntled at the erosion of democratic and social norms under Trump suddenly have to worry about actual socialists being part of the alternative, and options that genuinely aren't MAGA to vote for who in practice will need to ally with MAGA
insane_dreamer 18 hours ago [-]
there's actually not that much that Dems can actually do to hold the Executive branch accountable unless they have a supermajority in the senate or the GOP wakes up from their cult-like stupor
the real problem is SCOTUS and their "gifts" to Trump
and yes, the DOJ under Biden failed spectacularly by not aggressively prosecuting Trump and putting him behind bars
UncleOxidant 1 days ago [-]
> I expect fireworks.
I expect fireworks as well, as in flashy, noisy but nothing real accomplished.
Certainly hope that there will be accountability, and maybe there will be some, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
Post-Watergate there was some accountability and laws were changed. Campaign finance laws were introduced. Other laws to limit presidential power. But those laws have subsequently been eroded and weakened and here we are with an imperial presidency again.
spankibalt 1 days ago [-]
> I expect fireworks.
Me too. Fireworks of "We have to move on" and "We have to reach out", etc.
stouset 1 days ago [-]
Don’t forget, “We are very angry” and “The law clearly says that they cannot do this”.
sidewndr46 1 days ago [-]
Followed by some congressional subcommittee making a demand from another Federal entity for an explanation by a firm date. Under threat of making the exact same demand again if they don't answer it satisfactorily.
alistairSH 1 days ago [-]
And Susan Collins will furrow her brow.
mcherm 1 days ago [-]
Prior to recent Supreme Court decisions many regulatory agencies and things like the Justice Department were independent agencies that could provide some check on executive branch abuses. But that is gone now.
Congress can perform investigations, but without the President's signature they cannot take actions that have the force of law. Impeachment cannot remove any official from office without 2/3 support in the Senate. Congress CAN refuse to fund some activities, but the administration has been ignoring existing legal restrictions on spending.
So no, Congress won't take any meaningful action to reign things in for at least two years, regardless of who wins the election unless we also overthrow the government in some way.
totetsu 1 days ago [-]
I expect proactive pardons.
IncreasePosts 1 days ago [-]
I'm sure there will be, but perhaps the saving grace is that a lot of financial crimes contain a criminal as well as a civil component, and people can only be pardoned for criminal offenses.
So, if the Democrats have any modicum of backbone and integrity(doubtful), they might not be able to jail anyone but they would be able to claw back illegally gotten funds, sometimes at a 3x multiple
cramer4next 1 days ago [-]
>> and it almost certainly will
I would love to know where you got this analysis from. Hopefully not from polling or CNN. I think we all learned a lesson from using those data points.
The best indicator for this is the futures market. It never lies.
mcherm 1 days ago [-]
The futures market (or at least the ones I was watching) predicted that Donald Trump would lose both of the presidential elections he ran in (especially the first).
That should serve as a simple existence proof that the futures market CAN and does sometimes "lie".
cramer4next 1 days ago [-]
Since you didn't state which futures, I will assume it was the Canadian and Russians futures. And your spot on those markets do lie.
At least in the U.S. they we're spot on predicting Trump's victory 2022 & 2016, and congressional control. 2020 predicted the loss.
If your willing to share how you read futures markets for predicting elections I'd love to hear it.
alistairSH 1 days ago [-]
I hope you're correct, but suspect you'll be disappointed.
Even if the House and Senate flip, majorities will be slim enough to prevent anything major. Certainly unlikely we get any impeachment trials in the Senate, though I'd love to see Hegseth get tossed out.
insane_dreamer 18 hours ago [-]
unless the senate also flips, the house investigations won't go anywhere
UncleMeat 1 days ago [-]
We have to hope for a changing approach from the dems. They dragged their feet on prosecuting Trump and his cronies before out of an attempt to return to normal.
0x262d 1 days ago [-]
Really? How many times can Democrats take power and shrug their shoulders and mostly do nothing before you stop expecting fireworks?
shevy-java 1 days ago [-]
The interesting thing is how easily a democracy can be abused. In some ways, though in a more limited manner, it reminds us of Germany in 1933 or 1930s. Now the orange mafia in charge is, of course, not 1:1 comparable; ICE kills citizens willy-nilly style but they are not as systematic in their overthrow of the US democracy as the N people were in the 1930s. But many elements are very much comparable, such as the orange mafia trying to stifle critical journalism. That's a transition to a more authoritarian system.
c22 1 days ago [-]
It's not unique to democracy, any power structure can be abused by those who manage to seize the reigns. It's possible that a democracy could produce a system with limited power structures and diffuse responsibilities if its constituents desired such.
halJordan 1 days ago [-]
It much more like (imho) the period of time around the Gracchi brothers in the Roman Republic. Lots of corruption, where the corruption is "tolerable" by the masses and elites. One or two people pushing the corruption as far as possible and being reprimanded but not punished. The masses groaning but not buckling. It tracks even the politics of the time. Trump is a populist in his political platform. His supporters do believe he is draining the swamp. The same way the Gracchi brothers rode on a tide of populism while not being populists.
superxpro12 1 days ago [-]
how his supporters genuinely believe he is ridding the government of corruption is a contradiction so plain and bare that it begs a psychological study.
It's amazing what a little bit of propaganda can do to a system of government.
FireBeyond 1 days ago [-]
Where it gets worse is about a month ago he literally sat giving an interview at the WH where someone asked about insider trading and he said "My kids are insider trading all the time now".
Not even denying it, admitting it and proud of it.
mrguyorama 1 days ago [-]
It's motivated reasoning, he's hurting the right people and that is all that matters to them. They will sacrifice anything to put the "Other" in their place.
It's no different to when impoverished white men insisted that letting black men be "equals" in a philosophical sense was worth dying for. When you are so pathetic, so stupid, so inept and impotent and just unspecial, sometimes you will do whatever it takes to pretend to be special.
Projection is what they do all the time. Remember when they kept crying about "Identity politics"? They can't process their self consciousness.
America is a mental health wasteland.
A lot of these people are to this day holding a grudge about that black man. It's taught to entire generations of southerners still that the south didn't revolt to protect the institution of slavery, despite every document of the south stating such in plain english, because the alternative, as the confederacy plainly stated and feared publicly during the close of the war, was to recognize how awful a person you were to be willing to die to keep human beings as some other random white mans property and believe that god wanted that to be the case and to believe that you were inherently better than black people for zero reasons.
People in these worldviews have to start inverting reality at an extremely young age, and so they are well equipped to continue that in adulthood. These are the people that are desperate to have an external reason to be failures. To have something to blame. It's funny, because I don't get that. I'd rather things be my fault, because then I can change that. But these people genuinely struggle to accept that being wrong is normal. People like my brother who insist "I am never wrong" at the age of 40 as an alcoholic who blames not getting into a good college on "affirmative action", as if he could even compete with the average black kid in college. He's as smart as me at least, but because learning requires you to accept your own fallibility, he refused to engage with it, or he refused to accept that he struggled from ADHD, which he refuses to treat because he wants to believe stupid anti-mental-health stigmas despite direct evidence from family members that it fixes problems. He flew a confederate flag on his truck in high school, insisting "Heritage not hate". In fucking Maine (Woo Chamberlain!). As a Frenchman who had his culture erased by the literal KKK. Who shares family names with black people in Louisiana because of the previous time his culture was erased by the British before the US existed.
When I was 12, his young son was first getting into public school. He knows very little about the world, so he didn't realize how shitty school lunch had gotten since he paid attention to it in the 90s. So he blamed poor school lunch on Michelle Obama. This led him to assert that "All Democrats should be shot", to multiple family members who are democrats. In front of his house with more firearms than kitchen utensils. At least he takes gun safety seriously with his kid.
They just want to be proud but the only way for them to do that is to utterly reject reality and ensure there is a strong enough underclass for them to feel superior to. It's pathetic.
mindslight 1 days ago [-]
> At least he takes gun safety seriously with his kid.
Thank goodness for the little things.
As for the rest, I feel you. I'd say this is at least forgivable though. Trashy people have always existed, and it's understandable that they're trying to rationalize their situation rather than doing the work to escape it. You get the same thing in the blue tribe, of people externalizing their locus of control and embracing the blue-flavored victim narratives.
What I find unforgivable are the people who don't actually live their lives that way, who do have better access to information, who aren't stuck in the shit end of society - but yet still take up the destructionist banner because they want to be edgy, or because it's lucrative, or because they have legitimate problems with things like "the woke" but are too lazy to do anything but lash out. People who really do know better but yet still insist on back-rationalizing a whole fictional extended universe is how this self-defeating perspective ends up being legitimized. The entire red tribe has thoroughly destroyed their own culture to the point that they don't even try proposing constructive solutions to problems any more, rather they seemingly just want to watch the world burn while pointing and laughing at everyone else for caring.
vkou 1 days ago [-]
I mean, the simple explanation is that they aren't being honest with the rest of us. The next simplest is that they are incredibly fucking stupid if they thought that this was the lesser of two evils.
Hikikomori 1 days ago [-]
About the tested in less than 1 month. I have my doubts about democracy surviving.
RobRivera 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
hirako2000 1 days ago [-]
The Nazi state started by funding a certain police, granting it quasi immunity on the pretext of protecting the nation.
It may not turn into totalitarian, but if walks like a duck, sound like a duck, it's wise to wonder as it may very well be some poultry.
FrustratedMonky 1 days ago [-]
Of course, have to be careful. You might get targeted. People posting online are being targeted by official gov agencies now. Freedom of speech is kind of gone now.
SpicyLemonZest 1 days ago [-]
The US Gestapo publicly broke a man’s legs yesterday. I understand why it might be comforting to have more nuance, but there really isn’t any to be found.
Braxton1980 1 days ago [-]
Blame the people who put them in charge, voters
cowlevel 1 days ago [-]
Why stop there? Why did voters vote the way they did?
Zigurd 1 days ago [-]
Nobody was shooting cruise missiles at the Yandex data centers. Seriously if you want to deny influence campaigns affecting US elections using a broad spectrum of influence ops, you also have to believe that advertising and PR doesn't work.
It's also not just happening to US elections, perhaps not even primarily to US elections. Brexit, AfD, Orban, etc. were all boosted with a strategic goal in mind.
CalRobert 1 days ago [-]
Tbf trump has lost the popular vote more than he has won it. Voters picked Al Gore too… (and it seems likely that Florida was stolen)
cowlevel 14 hours ago [-]
That's because the Republican party plays the game that actually gets you elected, not a different game that doesn't.
CalRobert 13 hours ago [-]
Well, it gets you seated. Elected is a different question.
WarmWash 1 days ago [-]
Populism is historically both popular and destructive.
breakyerself 1 days ago [-]
I'd argue FDR was a populist. It just depends on what kind of populism and to what end.
notahacker 1 days ago [-]
FDR had the folksy charm to directly address the public and acquired a lot of power, but in most respects he seems the opposite of a populist. He was a party insider with a complex technocratic response to the Depression voters believed actually worked, not someone who spent his time picking fights and arguing he needed more power to defeat enemies (or making complete fantasy promises like Huey Lewis), he picked up a broad voter coalition including lots of minorities he neither scapegoated nor actually defended, and was a conventional moderate for the time on foreign policy and [future] culture war issues. He was more radical and centralised than previous Presidents when it came to economic policy and the role of the executive, but it wasn't a shouty type of radicalism, especially not compared with how socialists and fascists elsewhere addressed the subject of the Depression...
cucumber3732842 1 days ago [-]
You don't get modern discontent and populism (and the current president) without the expansive (at the expense of congress and the states) executive branch. You don't get the expansive executive branch without 1930s populists and FDR.
Obviously there's a lot more nuance and detail to it (the blame Nixon deserves being of specific note IMO) but the argument is there.
So I'd argue that both the means are bad and the end
filoeleven 1 days ago [-]
The Supreme Court Citizens United decision that allowed money to flood into campaigns.
Buttons840 1 days ago [-]
Because people were (and still are) struggling and wanted something to change. Trump was the change candidate. Harris straight up said she wouldn't change anything.
The election was a rejection of stability.
At least, that's how people in the middle, who decide election results, saw things.
We rolled the dice and lost. But things still aren't working very well in society, so we'll roll the dice again.
Firaxus 1 days ago [-]
Those are my conclusions as well, though I want to note anyone who paid attention to her campaign rather than getting it second hand or third off of vibes would not have made the claim that she “straight up said she wouldn’t have changed anything”.
A lot of voters in the middle aren’t taking the time to understand why things seem to keep not changing (somewhat understandably so, but also unfortunately given the need for an engaged electorate in a healthy democracy). Both parties are being sticks in the mud, but one in particular is doing a lot more to keep change from happening than the other.
In the usa we have an overemphasis on the president, but we’ve slow walked ourselves into a dysfunctional congress that just can’t do anything. The point of democracy is to let the best ideas win, and part of that is being able to try those ideas out, and respond when they don’t work. Having a senate with two votes per state regardless of population, that are only replaced a third at a time, with an archaic but also recent rule that effectively requires 60/100 vote to pass almost anything meaningful, is just a recipe for failure.
End the filibuster as it is today. If you want a filibuster, force people to talk for it the way it worked for the first ~150 years of our country at least.
helterskelter2 1 days ago [-]
To be fair she was asked in an interview how she would differ from her predecessor and she totally choked. It was like she'd never even considered that was a question somebody might ask her. She just didn't have an answer.
Zigurd 1 days ago [-]
She might've been a fine president and she might've actually changed some things. But even more fundamentally than whether she would've changed anything, Harris was a lousy campaigner with an ineffective track record as a politician. As you point out, catching a former prosecutor flat footed with an easy interview question is inexcusable. A last minute shove to the top of the Democrat ticket was burdened with all of that downside from the very beginning.
hvb2 1 days ago [-]
> In the usa we have an overemphasis on the president, but we’ve slow walked ourselves into a dysfunctional congress that just can’t do anything.
Isn't that cause and effect? In essence, what the US is showing is that the executive has so much power now that congress is largely obsolete.
If there was a better balance of power and less executive power, the only way the executive branch can get something done is to work with congress.
Obviously that doesn't work in all cases, conflict in particular. But in my experience that's where most democracies have drawn the line on executive power, basically for emergencies.
cucumber3732842 1 days ago [-]
We should go back to indirect election of senators. Something needs to represent the will of the states as distinct entities.
Having some slimy Mitt Romney types doing math about various state industries and interests when wording bills and trading votes would be a huge improvement over the equally slimy jerks we have now scheming up ways to serve their donors (who's interests correlate with the voters even less than the state's despite that bar being low to begin with) while leveraging abortion this guns that wedge issues to get re-elected despite screwing their voters.
The distribution of senators to states would also matter less if they weren't direct elected and therefore as beholden to party platforms and funding systems and whatnot.
triceratops 1 days ago [-]
> Something needs to represent the will of the states as distinct entities
Why? And why is indirect selection of senators better for that? Won't it just hand power to backroom operators at the state level, instead of to the people of the state?
1 days ago [-]
jordanb 1 days ago [-]
This basically. Change election after change election but nothing changes except the country keeps getting worse and more corrupt.
You can see the same thing playing out in Brazil
NikolaNovak 1 days ago [-]
I would agree in principle, but from outside at least (I'm in Canada), BOY did President Trump and the accompanying cohort bring in some change. It's just... not even remotely change I would have personally sought. But USA's reputation, and relationship, with huge number of countries has changed significantly. This will have short and long term impact (positive or negative) on USA citizens - imports, travel, cost, employment and otherwise. The "new normal" of insance news, complete corruption, blatant lies from official sources, decimation and mistrust of both scientists and competent personnel, dismantling of regulations, completion implosion of the health department, etc... this feel like changes from the outside, but perhaps it's all business as usual and feeling the same on the inside :)
shigawire 1 days ago [-]
>this feel like changes from the outside, but perhaps it's all business as usual and feeling the same on the inside :)
Because many people in this country just go by vibes and don't really care what is happening.
CamperBob2 1 days ago [-]
We rolled the dice and lost. But things still aren't working very well in society, so we'll roll the dice again.
We rolled dice well known to be unfair and lost. At some point, victim-blaming is the answer.
CamperBob2 1 days ago [-]
Because approximately half of them have IQs under 100, and are relatively easy for malevolent actors to herd to the polls.
Yes, "both sides" do this, but Trump's party has refined it to a science with help from people like Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg, while the Democrats still rely on shoe leather.
miki123211 1 days ago [-]
Not an American, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, but
I think Trump mostly happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Notice how many countries had the then opposition party win (or come much closer than usual) around 2023-2025. It didn't matter which side they were on, Poland went right -> center-left for example, so did the UK.
People in 2024-ish were very unhappy about their economic situation (which was mostly caused by pandemic disruptions, with the war in Ukraine not helping things), but was usually attributed to whoever was in power at the time. In the US, that happened to be the democrats, so that's whom people blamed.
This gave the GOP a trump card (no pun intended) which they played reasonably well. I think the Democrats could perhaps have made some hay there (by focusing on "evil capitalists" causing "fakeflation"), but the Republicans automatically started from a position of strength by not being in power at the time that particular disaster happened. Even so, the DEM focused mostly on race and not economics, which was a bad play at the time.
hvb2 1 days ago [-]
He was elected first in 2016. With that I think your whole analysis falls apart.
The Ukraine war also had a lot less impact on the us than it did in Europe. Europe was much more reliant on energy from Russia, and that was where the pain was in 2022/23/24.
Geeek 1 days ago [-]
Because they're stupid and filled with bullshit culture-war hate fueled by rightwing media?
barney54 1 days ago [-]
Because Joe Biden was too old and shouldn’t have started to run for President again and because Kamala Harris was a bad candidate? Or do you mean something else? You can complain about Trump, but the people had a choice.
Geeek 1 days ago [-]
Trump is both of the above, too old and a bad candidate - as you can see from the current state of our country.
felixgallo 1 days ago [-]
You don't have to assume they're stupid, it's just that they're entirely surrounded by a bubble of increasingly protofascist craziness framed as reasonable opinion. Turn on Fox News sometime, or open Twitter.
Geeek 1 days ago [-]
If you allow yourself to live in such a bubble and don't seek alt knowledge, you're stupid.
cowlevel 21 hours ago [-]
How would you know you lived in such a bubble?
hardbass 14 hours ago [-]
For example,. talking about captialism being great and communism being evil and then instituting worldwide random and massive tariffs, promising to start no wars and then starting multiple wars of pure choice, believing in free speech the getting arrested over jokes about a persons death are objective facts that can be observed from any bubble. If one chooses to ignore it or claims it doesn't exist, then one is stuck in denial. If one can recognize this and step out of thr mess, then one succeeded in recognizing and escaping the bubble.
watwut 1 days ago [-]
They hoped the vote will hurt liberals, blue states, trans people and others they hate and dont consider real. But not themselves. They spend years listening to hate and learning to wish to destroy, so they voted for candidate consistent with that.
And some simply found Trumpian corruption and abuse to be manly and cool.
ashleyn 1 days ago [-]
>They hoped the vote will hurt liberals, blue states, trans people and others they hate and dont consider real. But not themselves.
Even if you work by the logic of respecting the median voter's position as legitimate and worthy of equal consideration by mere virtue of it being democratically held (a viewpoint I don't necessarily subscribe to), it seems as if the median voter got an own goal this cycle.
I'm trans. I'm also smart, wealthy, and live in America - an intersection of categories that essentially mean you can do almost anything you want to do with your life. I've barely felt any of the consequences of the election because I can afford to move to somewhere where the legislative climate is more friendly, can afford to have a social life among people who are not hostile, can afford to pay out of pocket for every new medication of mine that gets banned off insurance, and largely shrug off fuel and food inflation. I'm not feeling the consequences of the current regime half as bad as the people who voted enthusiastically for it. If the goal was to obstruct or ruin my life for being a member of a given suspect class, then the goal failed.
Culture war is nonsense and nothing can ever supersede material conditions.
There is no solution to this problem other than electing a candidate who will raise taxes, fund infrastructure, and stabilise prices. I don't care what party they come from. I don't have optimism we'll get anyone like this on the national stage within the next decade - NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is the closest I've seen yet to a candidate who espouses the positions I'd like to see in someone who is qualified to run for president.
unethical_ban 1 days ago [-]
Single-choice voting one of the least effective forms of democracy.
Taikonerd 1 days ago [-]
I totally agree. Presidential elections have 2 (viable) parties, so voters are really only able to express 1 bit of information.
Individual people may have nuanced takes on politics when you talk to them. But it all gets compressed down to 1 bit on the ballot: left or right? Red or blue?
I wish we had a system with more parties, like they do in many other countries.
spacephysics 1 days ago [-]
In a democracy where everyone has the right to vote, I think the “downside” that must be accepted is there will exist a spectrum of voters. Voters who only listen to sound bites, voters who mindlessly vote tribally, to voters who research, voters who understand second and third order effects. We also can’t assume we have total information of how the elected official will act throughout their term.
Even something as simple as, attractiveness mattering more in presidential candidates since the advent of television in homes.
At the same time, we had a system whose establishment largely looked down on middle class Americans who didn't go to college. Early to mid 2000’s through the great recession saw the middle class tighten, with no real improvement to healthcare or affordability (attempts were made but ultimately medical costs are still rising). Many middle class people rely on things like cheap gas, child care, and affordable heating among others.
Then you have a system whose leaders actively works to increase gas prices (regardless of EV incentives, you’re asking individuals to purchase new cars when a difference of 1 dollar in gas goes a long way), some states subsidizing green energy programs by additional taxes on oil and natural gas heating costs (just switch to heat pumps and take on a 0 interest loan for 10 years), and rising childcare costs partly due to regulations in childcare businesses.
Then you have someone who claims to be an outsider (he wasn’t), who clowns on the existing elites in debates, and makes vast promises. The other party doesn’t say anything about positive change they’ll bring, just that they aren’t Him. Why not try something different than the status quo over the last 2 decades?
With gas prices up, the Epstein scandal still unresolved, and another ME war, i think if many of middle America were told these would be the outcomes they would not have voted him in again.
We should have more empathy for our fellow Americans, and try to understand each other instead of assuming they want the worst for your side.
kenmacd 1 days ago [-]
We (most of the world) also have to deal with well funded external government organisations constantly pumping out propaganda attempting to make sure we don't work together or have empathy/understanding of each other's views.
Push that through a media filter that optimizes for engagement and it's no wonder these things are happening.
andrewflnr 1 days ago [-]
Jan 6 alone was enough to make voting for Trump morally unacceptable. Voting for fear and money over the preservation of freedom is a classic moral failure and every one of the people who voted for Trump not only knows it, but pretends to make it a cornerstone of their political beliefs. If they use Epstein and gas prices as excuses, fuck them.
spacephysics 1 days ago [-]
You assume those voters believe Jan 6 was an insurrection. Many of them don’t. Whether thats a fault of the media/bubble they’re in or gross naivety/negligence is a different discussion.
If you go with the presumption Jan 6 was a mob that got out of hand (not my position, just one of the perspectives), then the idea that he wasn’t able to enact his agenda due to the opposing party, coupled with the shenanigans of the other option (no democrat primary for Kamala being one, with democrat party having done similar in the past with Bernie), then claims that the democrats are spinning Jan 6 and risking another term with him seem more reasonable.
Whether I or you agree with those premise is separate from what the zeitgeist is for much of America
andrewflnr 1 days ago [-]
It's not a different discussion. Ultimately the only way you wouldn't understand that Jan 6 was an insurrection supported by the president is through motivated reasoning, driven by their fear of all the rest of the nonsense and desire to put their hope in a strongman to fix it. Given the stakes, this continues to be morally unacceptable.
SpicyLemonZest 1 days ago [-]
I simply don't believe that any substantial number of voters think January 6 wasn't an insurrection. Trump openly spoke for a full month beforehand about how he was going to overturn the election, and continues to this day to insist that he should have been allowed to. People who claim it was a protest that got out of hand are not confused, naive, or in a media bubble; they're just lying.
paulryanrogers 1 days ago [-]
My college educated father said J6'ers were just tourists. He denied there was ever a noose involved. I had to send photos.
The media bubble is something these people seek out. They avoid sources that offend them. They don't go to original sources or seek first hand accounts. When confronted before they get the talking points their responses are rational, then after receiving orders they'll pivot on a dime.
vel0city 1 days ago [-]
I can agree with your position based on the election on 2016. He was a wildcard, and truly nobody could know exactly how he'd act in office.
I can't agree with your position based on the election of 2024. We knew exactly who Trump was, and it was obvious the second term was only going to be more extreme and unhinged.
SoftTalker 1 days ago [-]
And this is where you have to admit that the Democrats just ran a terrible candidate in '24. You might believe she was the better choice but she just did not appeal to the middle, and you need them to win.
vel0city 1 days ago [-]
I do blame the Democratic party and Biden especially for the major shitshow that was the selection of a presidential candidate. Their hubris and corruption definitely continued to enable this walking disaster of Trump's second term. The Democratic Party has failed America over and over again in terms of actually selecting candidates the people want over people whose "turn" it is.
I also blame the people who voted for Trump for Trump getting elected. Ultimately its the voters who chose this disaster of a presidency, despite obvious signs.
spacephysics 1 days ago [-]
The second term I think was largely handed to him given the Democrats had no primary for Kamala, and frankly were tone deaf with what the “other side”’s needs were in a candidate.
Politicians flip flop, or hopefully truly develop different opinions after experience/learning more.
Kamala came off as a piece of clay molded in the last minute to appease groups just for their vote. A good politician makes that “molding” process come off more naturally. Her and Walz did not really resonate with voters, they were just not Him.
And that is a lesson I hope democrats or a third party has learned that they can’t just reflectively say “I’m not Trump,” they need to show that through their principals, track record, and message of unity.
Hillary admonished trump voters, many of whom are middle class union/laborers. Biden claimed he was pro union then broke up the railroad strike. Kamala couldn’t hold a conversation without some sound bite failure (doesn’t make her bad, just not a politician) and wasn’t elected in any primary.
I think we need to better hear and learn the context of the other side’s perspective to understand why they voted the way they did, then provide a better option not just a different one
vel0city 1 days ago [-]
I totally agree the Democratic party has routinely failed the electorate.
> I think we need to better hear and learn the context of the other side’s perspective to understand why they voted the way they did
I hear it all the time. If I vote democrat, they're going to do forced gender reassignment surgeries in our public schools. If I vote democrat, I'm for murdering babies. If I vote democrat, I'm supporting Satan, and can't possibly call myself a Christian. To vote against Trump is to vote against God's will. This isn't just some stupid talking point on TV ads, its a position I've heard in person countless times and has absolutely touched me personally.
I've had people who were supposedly my friends for years, people I shared a table with weekly for years, decide they couldn't associate with me anymore because of a yard sign.
These are the people you're telling me that I need to better understand.
Where is the expectation for them to take a real look at reality and actually examine their positions aren't backed by reality, and their votes are going against their own interests?
CPLX 1 days ago [-]
A problem many people have with Democrats is they think that they're condescending, smug assholes who think they're better than them, talk down at them, and think they're stupid.
Perhaps the many, many comments in this thread, going on and on about how people are misinformed, ignorant voters who vote against their own interests, could be understood for what it actually is, which is that.
There's no such thing as people voting against their own interests. People vote based on what they think will make their life better. The quality of a person's life has a massive number of interrelated variables that are hard to tease out.
Someone might decide that their quality of life will be improved by having better jobs or doing something about the extractive corporate sector that makes it almost impossible for normal people to thrive. They might also try to improve their lives by trying to make other people besides themselves feel humiliated and outcast in society since they are sick of being those people. In fact they might decide that's only thing they can change since that first thing isn't on the agenda of either party.
In all cases people get to decide what they care about and what they think their life improvement chances are by whatever metrics they pick. They are right about their preferences by definition. That's inherent to democracy.
tzs 1 days ago [-]
What about when what someone cares about and votes based on turns out to not even exist?
There was a lot of campaigning in 2024 based on completely made up claims. Many voters voted based on that, even though they thought the other candidate was better on other issues they cared about.
triceratops 1 days ago [-]
> Democrats [are] condescending, smug assholes...going on and on about how people are misinformed, ignorant voters who vote against their own interests,
Totally. No one likes an asshole. But assholes can be right. What's a kinder label than "misinformed" for someone who rejects the truth because of its source?
CPLX 1 days ago [-]
There's no truths or untruths here. Just preferences and values. Some people care more about some things than others. People vote based on if their life is getting better or worse and who seems most focused on changing that if it's getting worse.
vel0city 1 days ago [-]
> There's no truths or untruths here.
"They're eating the cats and dogs!"
triceratops 1 days ago [-]
> There's no truths or untruths here. Just preferences and values. Some people care more about some things than others
This is easily disprovable. People care about gas prices. They were unhappy with gas prices under Biden and said so loudly. They voted for the candidate that increased them even more.
Reason: ignorance and misinformation.
Outcome: voting against one's own declared interests.
I'm not denying preferences exist. But preferences are shaped by lies. They easily lead to outcomes contrary to those preferences.
CPLX 1 days ago [-]
What you're saying is just factually incorrect. They had a Biden presidency and a Trump presidency. Prices went up much faster and more painfully under Biden than under Trump.
So they voted for the candidate who had a track record of lower inflation.
Turns out things didn't happen that way but that's a different criticism. You're assuming a forward-looking omniscience of some kind or prediction skill that just doesn't exist.
triceratops 1 days ago [-]
Wars and pandemics that begin on the other side of the world cause inflation.
When "smug asshole Democrats" explained why this wasn't Biden's fault, given that it happened on the other side of the world, they got called "smug assholes".
Enacting tariffs and waging war also causes inflation. Tariffs were a campaign promise - zero omniscience required.
And gas wasn't this expensive in 2022. So you're wrong about that.
vel0city 1 days ago [-]
> So they voted for the candidate who had a track record of lower inflation.
So they made the ignorant choice at choosing the candidate who teed up the highly inflationary environment and enacted policies which driectly drove the inflation. Like, the $450B in cash handouts and the near trillion dollars in forgiven PPP loans with zero enforcement. Loans which his family directly abused.
> You're assuming a forward-looking omniscience of some kind or prediction skill that just doesn't exist.
No, I'd expect people to not make stupid choices. Anyone actually paying attention would understand Trump is bad for the economy long term. But here we are.
FireBeyond 1 days ago [-]
There are. There's a subset of Republican voters who absolutely believe that in Democrat states you can:
- get an abortion up to one month after delivery
- get gender reassignment surgery coordinated at your school without parental awareness or consent.
"There's no truths or untruths here". There absolutely fucking are. And then people like you are acting like we're the ones contributing to it, "Well, have you considered why they might think that way?"
You're not asking them "Have you considered how what you're saying is utterly disconnected from any reality whatsoever?"
Why not?
mrguyorama 1 days ago [-]
The largest problem with America is a strong culture of believing that my ignorance is just as valid as your knowledge.
This is because 35% of the country identifies as rejecting all science and asserting the belief that the earth is 6000 years old because they explicitly believe a "plain reading" of the bible trumps all
The believe that the earth is 6000 years old or "Young", a belief that is explicitly taught in hundreds of private schools funded through school voucher programs that only hand little timmy very special textbooks that assert that scientists are evil and trying to keep them from gods light.
This belief requires you to not learn how science works. It requires you to reject empiricism entirely. It requires you to believe that science in general is an evil cabal directly in league with satan to make you stop believing in god. It requires you to believe that democrats are in league with these satanists to "brainwash" your good little god fearing kid in school, so you should put him in a private school where he won't be brainwashed because instead he will be taught the truth of god, which is to just do whatever the Pastor and his leaders say, and don't think.
CPLX 1 days ago [-]
How would you describe a belief that says that technology and technology companies will improve people's quality of life and that the people who run them should be given more power and authority within our culture as a result?
hardbass 14 hours ago [-]
It is very easy, remove all hospitals, power plants, etc from red states. Wait a few months. We will see what their opinion is on technology and its relation to quality of life.
vel0city 1 days ago [-]
If this was why you voted for Trump you once again failed to pay attention. If anything this administration is down to let billionaires and their tech corporations do whatever they want to do, far more than the administration actually starting to make regulations and antitrust proceedings.
Yet another example of "voting against your interests" due to massive amounts of ignorance.
Trump owns a social media company. The leaders of the other big social media companies backed his run to the tune of nearly $300M dollars.
CPLX 1 days ago [-]
There's no scenario where I'm voting for Trump. I'm a lifelong progressive and I've been involved in Democratic Party politics for about 30 years. Worked on my first campaign in the early '90s.
So you can dispense with that assumption. Hopefully you can pick up on the point I was making, which is that there are a lot of irrational belief systems in politics. You can find them everywhere.
What I dislike is this tendency among overeducated elite, nominally Democratic Party-type commentators to focus on this meta discussion: Why are they stupid? Why are they misinformed? What bots are influencing them?
How about we just focus on the merits? What exactly is your favorite politician proposing to do? Do they have a conception and understanding of how power works and will they use it to achieve goals of any kind? Can we evaluate them on those goals? The last time your team got a chance, what did they do with it? Can people trust you? Who do you serve and who do you fight?
If the answer to that last question is that you serve Wall Street corporate interests and Silicon Valley and you fight against labor and wage earners then you're not on my team either.
andrewflnr 1 days ago [-]
We don't talk about the merits because the merits are clearly not running the show as far as voter decisions. It's all emotion, mostly loyalty and fear. (Using "we" very broadly, since I'm nowhere near being nominally Democrat.)
vel0city 21 hours ago [-]
We could go on and on about the merits of voting for Kamala or Biden in that election, but ultimately it didn't matter because tons of people think voting for a Democrat is a vote for post-birth abortion, forced gender reassignment surgeries, migrants coming to murder you and eat your pets, allowing transgender people to sexually assualt your wife and daughter in public bathrooms, forcing Sharia law on everyone, and force injecting people with dangerous vaccines which are more likely to kill you than the disease they're protecting against.
How do you engage with the many, many millions of Americans which believe these things? You think they give a damn about how some infrastructure bill finally started the planning on replacing that bridge in town that they don't even realize is about to collapse when their pastor says voting against Trump is sentencing you to hell? These same voters that can't put 2 and 2 together and realize the reason why the only hospital nearby closed finally because their state refused Medicaid expansion so long ago.
What's the way you suggest we connect with these topics? What's the right give-and-take here? How do you come to a middle ground when they're off in adrenochrome-fueled lala land?
But hey, according to you, I guess they're acting rationally, and there are no truths or untruths.
People are refusing to vote for Talarico because they know he's a transgender vegan who will outlaw meat in Texas and force your kids to be gay. You think people who think these things will be swayed by another vote for Medicare for All or eliminating the tax cap on Social Security or paid family leave? Nah, he's unelectable because he suggested maybe God doesn't have a penis, as we know for sure God the Father is definitely a dude even though somehow women were also made in the image of God. They can't vote for Talarico because he's against God...as opposed to the guy who's defrauded his friends, practices extreme corruption, got impeached by his own party, and flies around the world with his mistress to party with fugitives illegally supporting him in a Muslim country while costing the public tons of money.
CPLX 11 hours ago [-]
> We could go on and on about the merits of voting for Kamala or Biden in that election, but ultimately it didn't matter
Pretty sure it matters. In fact, I think the merits of the people that you run for president are super insanely unbelievably important. The idea that there's any other way to look at this is completely baffling to me. The fact that Biden was essentially incoherent and Kamala did not appear to have a discernible idea of why she was running in the first place mattered a ton, as did the fact that Kamala was literally selected by an opaque committee process with no voter input whatsoever.
They matter a lot. Try it the other way and run a candidate that has a clear and articulable vision for how people's lives will get better if they're elected, and then starts to act on that vision as soon as they're elected effectively. See what happens. It'll be different. It's happening in New York City right now, if you want one example. When people try this approach instead, the distinction is really easy to see. As is the suddenly vicious opposition from the establishment Democratic Party that's behind these people you're talking about
> People are refusing to vote for Talarico because... Nah, he's unelectable...
This election hasn't happened yet. Once it happens, that will be a better time to explain why he did or didn't win.
I still think that your understanding of the reasoning of the people who don't like him is flawed. The reason people oppose him and don't want to vote for him is because they don't think he's like them and or has their interests in mind. They think he cares about other things and other people besides them and the things that they care about. Conversely, the people that will vote for him will have been convinced that he does care about the things that they care about and will help people like them. Because that's pretty much always how it works.
Have you ever talked to a single person who has the views that you think they have? Or is your opinion of these "people" with these crazy views something that was served up to you by a company run by Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Ellison?
vel0city 10 hours ago [-]
> Have you ever talked to a single person who has the views that you think they have?
Yes. Constantly. Every single day of my life. I've told you that several times now. They're my neighbors. They're my relatives. They're the people who used to be my friends at church. They're my kids classmates parents. They're the people I talk to waiting for the train. They're my barber. They're the person sitting next to me at the bar. Most people I've talked to who support Paxton do so for one or more of the above reasons. The few who aren't like that support him because they're worried about their taxes going up, because their personal financial situation is above all else in their lives. If you truly think these people are rare, you're burying your head deep, deep in the sand.
I've rarely heard any other reasons other than the above as to why vote Paxton over Talarico. These are the arguments I hear in person, on the fliers stuck to my door, and on the TV all the time. And you're failing to give anything different here. You're absolutely right "they don't think he's like them" in that they think he's going to force your kids to be trans and allow for entirely open borders.
If these kinds of lies weren't effective, why would the GOP put so much stock into them? Why would they go on the debate stage and say immigrants are eating your cats and dogs? The answer: because it works. People I talk to in person still routinely think Haitian migrants are likely to eat your pets.
vel0city 1 days ago [-]
> smug assholes who think they're better than them, talk down at them, and think they're stupid.
Trump literally said he could say the stupidest things to his supporters and they'll still cheer. Trump is a smug asshole who thinks he's better than his supporters, talks down to them, lies to their faces over and over, and knows they'll support him because they literally see him as God's anointed one.
CPLX 1 days ago [-]
Now do the other guys. That's the problem here. We have two competing elitist political parties. They unite on their agreement that capital should rule everything and everyone, and disagree on a bunch of other stuff.
vel0city 1 days ago [-]
Tell me again about how this applies to a candidate showdown like James Talarico versus Ken Paxton.
> There's no such thing as people voting against their own interests.
This is truly as nonsensical opinion as people always choose healthy choices. People can absolutely make self destructive choices. A smoker choosing to smoke isn't making a good choice, but to you they couldn't possibly choose something against their interests. It would be in their interests to stop smoking, but they're unable or unwilling to make that decision.
CPLX 1 days ago [-]
You're almost there.
Now see if you can figure out why self-destructive choices can be rational at times?
Can you formulate a hypothetical where smoking is a rational decision? I can.
vel0city 1 days ago [-]
> self-destructive choices can be rational at times
It's not a rational choice. It's choosing to make the irrational choice.
A drug addict choosing to shoot up isn't making the rational choice. It's a choice we can examine on why they made that choice, but it wasn't reason that drove them to make that choice.
Thinking Trump is the anointed one isn't a rational decision. Voting for Trump to get rid of corruption isn't a rational choice. Voting for a rapist in the middle of a big pedophile ring isn't the rational choice at fighting the pedophiles.
CPLX 1 days ago [-]
Is it irrational to smoke cigarettes if you're in a concentration camp?
Is it irrational to take out yourself as well as your enemies if you have no realistic prospects for improving your situation but you do have the ability to hurt people who hurt you?
vel0city 22 hours ago [-]
> Is it irrational to smoke cigarettes if you're in a concentration camp?
Yes, I'd agree it's irrational to willfully give yourself a chemical addiction in a place where you are already have enough stressors and it'll be hard for you to continue to feed that addiction once started. It's probably a terrible choice to start an addition in a concentration camp. I can understand why people would choose it, and I don't fault them for making such a decision in such a bad place, but it's definitely not the rational choice.
CPLX 11 hours ago [-]
Have you ever really been at any kind of rock bottom? Or known people who have been around situations like that? Just purely from a self-improvement standpoint, you should try to open your mind to what that might be like and how people make decisions in those kinds of situations.
vel0city 10 hours ago [-]
Yes, I've been homeless, in debt, with only a minimum wage job.
Just purely from a self-improvement standpoint, you should try and not assume you know everything about someone through a short conversation.
I'm not passing off a moral judgement over someone choosing to smoke in a concentration camp. I don't fault someone making that choice. There's a good chance I might make the same. That doesn't make it a rational choice.
FireBeyond 1 days ago [-]
That only works to a point.
I, and the other poster, are beyond that point. I've actually had it said that it's our fault (liberals) that things are like this, because we are refusing to engage and that we "owe" conservatives the opportunity to listen and understand their argument.
That we somehow owe it to people to argue in good faith with them when they are talking of (the ones I've personally had mentioned): post-birth abortion ("in several Democrat states, abortion is legal up to one month post birth!". Apparently you can take your baby home, come back a month later, and say "Nah, changed my mind on this one", who knew?), adrenochrome harvesting, etc.
That it was my/our fault such views propagate because we're not "willing to understand their perspectives".
The thing is, their perspectives are a lie. And in many cases, they know they're a lie, they just don't. fucking. care.
So they can go online and whine about being dismissed or criticized, or pat each other on the back for "knowing the truth". There's a subset who, I'm sure, see such things as actual literal truth, and that's a different issue altogether, but not sure it's my responsibility to solve, or that failure to engage on my part makes the current situation "my fault".
"Maybe I need to put more effort into why they think or feel that way?" That won't work, because I'll be the only one doing so. You'll note that it's never framed as a matter "maybe they should think about why people think what they're saying sounds absolutely ridiculous". There's no effort on critical reasoning or discourse that will work there, because it's not grounded in reason in the first place. And when that comes up, crickets. But no, "keep going high", keep working on empathy for people who actively celebrate LE shooting people, and for a President that will say from the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, quote, "My kids are insider trading all the time".
CPLX 1 days ago [-]
This sounds like a conversation about something other than politics.
Do the candidates you support have any kind of track record of making people's lives better, helping average regular everyday working people live lives of dignity where they can afford to live in places and raise their families?
Or do they have a long track record of doing the opposite, favoring the interests of war overseas and corporate hegemony at home?
Those are political questions.
FireBeyond 1 days ago [-]
What?
How is "does your candidate favor a corporate hegemony?" a political question, but "does your candidate favor allowing abortion?" not? Politics is the methodology by which we organize a society, which includes legality, morality, and ethics.
I feel you think you've had some sort of "gotcha" moment by implying that Democratic candidates have failed in meeting their claimed goals. For one, I am unable to vote in US elections. And for two, the candidates I would support would be far left of today's Democratic Party, and I would vote for that Party only if/because the realistic alternative candidates were ... as abhorrent as they currently are.
CPLX 13 hours ago [-]
A candidate favoring or opposing government restrictions on abortion is most certainly a political question. A voter having delusional opinions (or claiming to) is something else.
> I feel you think you've had some sort of "gotcha" moment by implying that Democratic candidates have failed in meeting their claimed goals.
Yeah, of course I do. The fact that Democratic politicians have failed to improve the lives of regular people and aren't really trying to is pretty fucking relevant to why they lose to obviously corrupt opponents.
Which seems important if your goal involves acquiring and wielding political power instead of lamenting all the idiots out there in internet posts.
vel0city 11 hours ago [-]
You're acting like it's only some small fringe of voters which believe these things. It's not.
Nearly 1/3 of the country think the Earth is less than 10,000 years old.
Most people I've personally talked to about voting for the MAGA candidate have said one or more of these things. The others are usually wealthy people happy for their tax cuts. As mentioned earlier, I've had close friends and relatives refuse to associate with me because I've voted D a few times in my life and obviously do the work of Satan. This isn't some fringe rare thing, if it was would most TV ads I see against Talarico appeal to these fears? If this was truly some fringe why would the President constantly hammer these points?
The answer is, it's not rare. This is the new base of the GOP. The same people who knew Obama was a Muslim from Kenya.
Let's say these people really are some statistically irrelevant percentage of the population. Let's say it really is just that normal, sane, middle class Joe's are truly the people the D's need to target more. How on earth are the R's the better choice for them? This is the party which cuts their healthcare, works to defund their public education, cutting access to college, is even more in bed with corporate interests, is even more obviously corrupt, and overall has had power more and delivered less for the common person. How does it make sense to vote that way?
For a real concrete and recent example, can you explain the voting base for Paxton versus Talarico? Why would that average Joe voter support Paxton over Talarico?
FireBeyond 1 days ago [-]
> The second term I think was largely handed to him given the Democrats had no primary for Kamala, and frankly were tone deaf with what the “other side”’s needs were in a candidate.
Yeah, the biggest speedbump for Democratic candidates or left leaning people is the DNC.
From Hillary and the whole Debbie Wasserman-Schulz sabotaging Bernie, being caught doing it, denying it, then ... surprise! She's Hillary's campaign manager within 24 hours of resigning DNC leadership...
... through to one of the most uneducated electorates (which is on both sides), where the single most popular Google search on Election Day? "Did Biden drop out?"
cucumber3732842 1 days ago [-]
"The populism will continue until morale improves"
Avicebron 1 days ago [-]
The unrest will get more and more pronounced until affordability improves
soulofmischief 1 days ago [-]
Have you heard of manufactured consent?
estearum 1 days ago [-]
> Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate. Such ingratitude.
Voters obviously bear ultimate responsibility, but there's a lot more going on than just "voters are responsible." If that were true, corporations and wealthy individuals would have no interest in injecting money into politics, but alas... they do.
jgeada 1 days ago [-]
You're supposed to regurgitate the Brandies "“If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.” statement.
You can never blame anything on propaganda and deliberate misinformation and manipulation of the public. And you have to assume all speakers have the same power and reach.
Unrestricted free speech in practice falls under what Anatole characterized : "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
Elon can lie and propagandize at scale with impunity. But let's blame voters.
Zigurd 1 days ago [-]
Looking up and down this thread and there are people you would agree with about our situation being awful, while being extremely reluctant to blame a planned and coordinated influence campaign by an adversary. It amounts to calling our fellow citizens chumps, and that's rude.
The private sector, for slightly more benign reasons, and sometimes less benign reasons like keeping cigarettes from being blamed for cancer and emphysema, uses the same mechanisms to sell products. If that didn't work, nobody would pay for advertising and PR.
esseph 1 days ago [-]
He also said after last time he was done putting so much money into politics, and then recently just dropped around another $300 million promoting republican candidates.
estearum 1 days ago [-]
Well after demonstrating shaky allegiance to the US and personal meddling in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, his companies are ripe for nationalization.
He's got a lot to lose!
blitzar 1 days ago [-]
> done putting so much money into politics
Will be done by the end of the year (tm)
_DeadFred_ 1 days ago [-]
I blame the 'both sides are the same' non-voters that did their best to discourage voting for Kamilla.
JKCalhoun 1 days ago [-]
"“What are you going to do about it?”"
Curious what you think should be done.
No offense, but often when I see this kind of comment there's a call for… unspecified action?
elmer2 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
globnomulous 1 days ago [-]
Could you give an example?
0xy 1 days ago [-]
There's the commutations of habitual fraudsters and Ponzi scheme operators prison sentences, some of whom bragged about 'spending a lot of money on politics', for instance.
Specifically, Babubhai Patel and Gregory McKnight.
tyromaniac 1 days ago [-]
The only Gregory McKnight I could find is a man still on death row.
Forget the IRS. America can balance its budget going after and fining these illegal trades and traders. MAGA!
(edit: /s but not about making the government some money off this corruption)
lesuorac 1 days ago [-]
[flagged]
helsinkiandrew 1 days ago [-]
You can use your own proprietary information (for example knowledge about a coffee blight) to trade, but you can't use information stolen, misapropriated and specifically "non public government information" - The Eddie Murphy rule:
The bar for insider trading is higher but it’s not missing. Governmental employees for instance have explicit laws about their behavior as insider trading in commodities.
verdverm 1 days ago [-]
In this case, it sounds like they were privy to information outside of their own corporation which would impact their corporation. That $100k sub to the president looks to be a two-way, wall(ed garden) street. I wonder how parasocial it is
xbar 1 days ago [-]
Corruption?
deepsquirrelnet 1 days ago [-]
> The trading in question was eye-popping. In a two-minute window starting at 6:49 a.m. in New York on March 23, traders sold contracts equivalent to at least 6 million barrels of Brent and West Texas Intermediate, more than 8.5 times the volume that had changed hands that time in the morning over the prior week. A similar increase in activity was observed in futures tied to the S&P 500, with contracts worth more than $2 billion in notional value traded — far more than would be expected in an otherwise quiet premarket session. Unusual volumes were also visible in natural gas and other futures markets.
> Those trades paid off 15 minutes or so later, when Trump wrote on Truth Social that he was reversing his threat to attack Iranian infrastructure unless the country re-opened the Strait of Hormuz.
Likely the entire purpose of the war is to create opportunities for corruption in my opinion.
1 days ago [-]
1 days ago [-]
shevy-java 1 days ago [-]
Total corruption by the orange clown-thief and those around him benefitting from their heist here.
The only partially redeeming thing we will soon witness is that he will lose the upcoming elections, no matter how much he plans to cheat. The TechBros pissed off too many people and stole too much money in addition to that. All that money should be given back, directly to the people. The superrich should not be allowed to control and manipulate democracies in general, even though they are currently prepping up the eyeliner-boy as successor to the orange insanity clown.
spencerflem 1 days ago [-]
The super rich control the democrats too, I wouldn’t expect very much to change. They will focus on moving forwards not back, charge a few low level guys, and revert ~10-20% of what Trump has done.
The counterfactual doesn't make sense. Which country would stop or grind to a halt after electing a corrupt president? I think almost all countries would keep running at a basically normal capacity until failure, yet that doesn't prove those countries have great systems.
This will need a lot more time and hindsight to make general statements in terms of the wider picture.
diydsp 2 days ago [-]
It'a not abt whether it keeps running. It's whether its citizens are able to maintain their rights.
estearum 1 days ago [-]
Many citizens are not able to maintain their rights. Citizens are getting shot and killed by masked federal agents marauding through their neighborhoods. Americans who speak with particular accents or have specific skintones or frequent certain restaurants are getting harassed by police non-stop.
cowlevel 2 days ago [-]
the comment specifically said whether it keeps running
mxkopy 2 days ago [-]
I think it’s sarcasm. In other counties such corruption would trigger revolution, and the political system would grind to a halt
mlfreeman 1 days ago [-]
We're still running in the same sense that Wile E. Coyote is still running when he goes off the cliff. Eventually we'll collectively look down.
LeBit 1 days ago [-]
The billions diverted from the government (tariffs, Venezuelian oil, etc) to enrich his own family and friends probably won’t make a dent in the American economy.
America is so great , it can sustain the appetite of corrupt presidencies.
boesboes 1 days ago [-]
Just don't look at how the bottom half is doing!
cowlevel 1 days ago [-]
I heard there's now an epidemic of people dumping their spare change jars on the gas station counter to get the last drops of gas they can. This is what a collapsed country is like. This is what the USSR was like just before it officially disintegrated. The relatively wealthy tech bubble this website inhabits is shielded from it to a large extent.
1 days ago [-]
Steve16384 1 days ago [-]
What would be your definition of not running? It's like when someone says "We survived Covid!". Yes, you might have but thousands of others died.
serf 1 days ago [-]
>What would be your definition of not running?
inflation combined with little to no wage increase leading to total economic stall outside of the scope of any safety mechanisms, which precipitates an extreme cliff-face degradation of everyday life and commerce for citizens at every level.
or, another way : conditions that would lead to public rebellion en masse, which further stalls things past the economic strife.
the type of thing 1780s France saw.
dgellow 1 days ago [-]
It’s way worse, the accumulated covid deaths in the US was above 1.1M in 2023
antonvs 1 days ago [-]
And to head off at least one of the common denier objections, those deaths are reflected in the excess mortality figures, they’re not affected by how deaths were classified.
I.e., the number is not affected by how people were diagnosed, or how their cause of death was recorded. Claiming that there was a widespread trend of classifying unrelated deaths as COVID-19-related doesn’t affect that number at all. Here’s a CDC page about this: https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/89507/cdc_89507_DS1.pdf
loudmax 1 days ago [-]
A (fairly obvious) historical analogy is how the Roman Empire survived the reigns of maniacs like Caligula and Commodus. It's hard to ascertain how reliable historical sources are, but as presented, both of these emperors were at the least pathological narcissists, and at worst completely out of their minds. They each squandered an enormous amount of the Roman treasury on vanity projects and undermined Roman institutions and the rule of law. And yet, the Roman Empire survived both of them for centuries.
Like you, I'm impressed with how resilient the American economy has been over the past few years. The tariffs, the war, the incompetence and open corruption seem like they should have done a lot more immediate damage. What's disconcerting is that much of the damage is to America's long term interests. So much of America's greatness has come from attracting talent from all around the world into a stable lawful society. That's what we're losing.
mschuster91 2 days ago [-]
Eventually though, the built in resiliency will be destroyed. Public services got gutted by DOGE and a bunch more called it quits.
And in the end, that is the game they are playing. Starve the beast (aka, the US government) until not much more than the military remains.
actionfromafar 1 days ago [-]
And weaken the brass, Russia style, until the military is just the personal Army of the King.
phs318u 2 days ago [-]
Please tell me there's an implied /s there somewhere.
alienbaby 1 days ago [-]
have you looked closely at the state of your institutions lately. 'The country keeps running' .. a large thing has quite a lot of momentum, it will travel quite far from that alone even if you do remove it's kneecaps.
unless you dropped the '/s' ?
actionfromafar 1 days ago [-]
Russia also "keeps running". The floor is a long way down, doesn't mean it's a good idea to go in that direction.
antonvs 1 days ago [-]
And consider North Korea, which Trump explicitly stated was a model for him:
“[Kim Jong Un] speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same."
Edit: And, if we accept that this is the default state, then lets dismantle the surveillance part. Might as well be free in that aspect, right?
It’s actually worse; when states try to shut down sports betting in prediction markets, the CFTC fights on behalf of Kalshi with the reasoning that only the federal government has the mandate to regular futures and prediction markets. And then they refuse to regulate!
The CFTC is supposed to have 5 chairs, with no more than 3 in the same party. The administration has gotten around this rule by simply removing 4 of the commissioners and then refusing to appoint replacements. In effect, the CFTC has only 1 republican chair and no opposite party representation. The level of corruption is staggering.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. The CFTC argues that under Dodd-Frank any bet on a future event that can have economic consequences is regulated by the CFTC.
It’s a bit silly because this obviously wasn’t the intention of the legislation, and it would also mean anyone betting outside a CFTC regulated exchange is in illegality. But it’s valid enough that The case will probably go to the Supreme Court.
Of course it's a policy that helps the two-party system become further entrenched. It should be no more than 2 from the same party. (Not that it matters given the fact only one is appointed, but still.)
Enough of the voter base will cut the nose to spite the face
But please note that he's pre-emptively declared he won't run if Kamala runs[0]. He even admits this is because they're both backed by the same groups and share the same donor network[1]. So there's at least one more Democrat you simply should not vote for.
[0]: https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/gavin-newsom-sa...
[1]: Quote from above article: "The governor said he would not want to force a contest against the former vice president, noting that the two share many political allies and supporters."
That's a good point.
What scares me about Newsom is that, outside of California, Newsom's corruption, broken promises, and policy failures are totally unknown. He's just the handsome guy with all those great anti-Trump zingers. And as a relatively young white man, he might be seen as a demographically "safe" choice for primary voters burnt by their experience with Hillary and Kamala.
> I hope primary voters are as fed up with the corporate Democratic party as the country in general is.
I think a good chunk of them are. The question is really, who can win both the Democratic nomination and the general election?
AOC is the obvious choice for the DSA faction, but I'm deeply skeptical she can win in the general. The corporate faction seems dead set on Newsom or Kamala. If Kamala can somehow eke out a primary victory, she's gonna crash and burn badly in the general. And I don't see anyone else suddenly appearing as a viable candidate.
So from where I'm sitting, it looks like Democrats' most likely path to victory goes through Newsom. And I think his corruption and inevitably poor governance will discredit the Democratic party for a generation and catapult MAGA--perhaps another Trump--back into power. Then we'll be properly fucked.
> It's early, yet, but if Democrats can't win a state or two in the south, they're going to have a hard time taking the White House.
The Democrats are going to have a hard time taking the White House. Full stop. The electoral map isn't pretty. And if current trends continue, it's gonna become almost impossible for a Democrat to win the Presidency after the next reapportionment.
> The northern "blue wall" simply aint
Preach. It was always a delusion. Democrats have a long history of taking their voters for granted. Then, of course, they are shocked when they give them the finger. Unfortunately I don't see this changing any time soon. The DSA faction seems similarly aloof, in their own way.
It was thinking like this about Kamala that got us Trump.
I don't want Newsom either, but if it's a choice between Newsom and Trump 3.0 (if he swings it) or JD Vance, I'd still take Newsom any day.
but I'm afraid that the dem party will work against her just like they did Bernie in 2016, which got us the mad king
"I get why people voted for him. Because even before he came on the scene, American politics was coin-operated.
Money goes in, favors come out. It’s been running on corporate money, secret money, billionaire money. Both sides.
And when members of Congress aren’t fundraising from lobbyists and corporate PACs, they’re trying to dodge getting bombed by these super PACs.
Spectacular wealth buys an ever greater share of power over our national affairs. And this corruption is why nothing works for ordinary people."
It's baffling to watch people destroy their reputations, careers and possibly risk their freedom for a chance to get close to power and pad their (possibly offshore/crypto) savings accounts. For as evolved as we pretend to be, we're really not very far beyond our "lizard brains" and a few missed meals away from mania. I was actually just thinking about Todd Blanche and the stupid games he's playing, flirting with contempt in a number of lawsuits. He's almost certainly got less time in the AG seat than Trump has in the president's and reality is going to slam into his brown nose very hard, sooner than later.
The relative lack of consequences there enabled this go around.
With Reagan and Iran-Contra, Reagan was never charged, most officials were pardoned, and only one person served any jail time.
With Bush (43) there were no consequences for any of it. Not he war under false pretenses, not the domestic spying, not the torture.
And with Donald Trump (45) a single judge recently appointed by Donald Trump held up legal proceedings until he was elected President, again.
Yes. That's deeply bad precedent.
Roger Ailes founded Fox News, explicitly, to avoid a recurrence of even that minimal level of consequence.
They're simply in the oligarch level now. Everyone understands that they're above the law. Nowhere near enough Democrats are talking about the level of corruption clearout that would be required to bring accountability. Law enforcement are heavily compromised in the opposite direction. See the raid on Ilhan Omar, for example.
It’s not clear to me how she’d be responsible for that and it’s also not clear to me what evidence they expected to turn up related to such an offense by raiding her home decades after the offense was alleged to have occurred.
But seriously - insider trading should be straight to jail for a politician, at any level or party.
These are all willful acts by an adult.
Like coming here on a student visa, and working for startups, explicitly against the visa requirements.
While they're at it, they can look at Melania, who started working without a work visa, not to mention the granting of an O-1 visa to her in the first place (Eastern European model of zero prominence even in her home country, working for an agency that had ties to organized prostitution and sex trafficking).
So...was Trump also too far gone? That means he shouldn't be president now.
Or did he do the same thing while being of sound mind? That means it wasn't a politically-motivated prosecution.
Logically it can only be one of these two. Tell me which one is right.
The Biden prosecutor is a registered Republican. The Trump prosecutor is an independent. You tell me who's more likely to be politically motivated.
I dunno, but I don't think it got in the official report like it did for Biden.
And the argument isn't "Biden took the documents home because of Alzheimers". The argument is "Biden took the documents home when in control of his faculties, but his Alzheimers was too far gone for him to be prosecuted."
And I notice you still haven't addressed the differences between the two cases. I've found most people of a certain political persuasion never do because it's too inconvenient for their narrative.
In one case, a guy was asked to return documents the authorities knew he had, he didn't and then had to be served a search warrant to retrieve them.
In the other, a guy found documents himself, told on himself and consented to a voluntary search to look for more.
Mens rea is an important variable to the chances of conviction. Juries can easily be convinced that honest mistakes happen; especially when the person who made the mistake turns themselves in.
Those two statements don't follow on from each other. I realise there is this big push to claim Trump has alzheimers now because it was an effective attack on Biden (due to being true) but it's not sticking with Trump. You may not like him, you may disagree with his decisions, but he's still as much Trump as he ever was.
>>In the other, a guy found documents himself, told on himself and consented to a voluntary search to look for more.
Yeah, when the Justice Department says "We'd like to check your house for classified info" saying "Nah, we good" is definitely an option.
Then you can't follow logic, sorry.
He had the documents, didn't report them, and refused to return them. That's fact, not commentary. He either did those things with a sound mind or without. That's logic.
Given these things, there are only two possible deductions. Criminal behavior that was deservedly prosecuted or unfitness for office today. Unless you believe he was crazy at the time, then became sane.
> Yeah, when the Justice Department says "We'd like to check your house for classified info" saying "Nah, we good" is definitely an option.
Well it was definitely an option one of these two guys used. Because he knew had people like you to call it "politically motivated" regardless of the facts.
The guy who cooperated was a sitting President at the time. He could've easily invoked executive privilege or some other BS. We know what the current guy would do.
No he did not.
Biden had some leftover documents that he turned over when told to. That is normal. It is quite literally part of secrets management to expect some stuff ends up uncontrolled and have processes and plans to recover it.
Trump had a secret stash of literal nuclear secrets in his meeting place with pretty much anyone willing to pay him, and denied having them, refused to turn them over, and denied everything again when he was finally raided and they found all that shit. People like you still insist somehow that this wasn't absurd on it's face.
Trump is the most sued president because Trump historically gets sued by everyone he talks to because, as he has literally told you to your face, that's his strategy, abuse everything and force it to go through the courts, because then you can bend those rules and slow down problems.
It's a bit much to say "he turned them over when he got caught". Yeah. no doubt.
If you're in possession of a calendar, you will notice that November 22, 2022 is actually before January 2023. You might also note the "consensual search" in your own quote.
So a normal person might conclude that the Justice Department called Biden after he reported on himself, and said "We see you said you had some documents, so maybe you forgot some more? Can we come search with you?" And Biden maybe said "Good idea."
Remember the whole system is filled with institutionalists who believe following in the program, no matter who sets the standards.
We need to focus on systemic change rather than populism.
Maybe they're just really good at hiding it, but I don't really remember a time under any administration when we could say something like 'as a country we're now supporting Russia and abandoning Ukraine and our traditional allies in Europe because they offer much better bribes'.
we should be going after corruption by anyone, its extremely corrosive. I don't understand why if that's a concern why we're supposed to be ok with turning it up to 11. Not only outright personal deal making, but the active replacement of foreign governments, state and local officials with people who know how to play that game properly.
What have you got to even begin to claim an equivalence here. Pelosi's stock trades? Biden's sleazy son?
The values do not bare comparison. Lookup the whitewater controversy (Clintons, 1990s). The loans in that fiasco were in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars. Trump just earned over 2,400,000,000$ in one year as president. One man. One year. And only the money he felt the need to report. There is simply no meaningful comparison to any previous corruption scandals. Nothing touches the numbers 10-digit gain numbers spiraling around the current administration.
I am not sure the old pardon system will function here. The second half of that system involved the pardoned people slipping into a quiet retirement. The extended Trump clan is not going to go quietly.
If the remaining MAGA cultists want to take to the street and die for their godking then so be it. The criminals must be punished.
This feels like one of those "and that's why I blame the Democrats for everything Trump does, so I guess I have to vote for Trump's enablers" bit of horseshit, fwiw.
Both parties are completely in the pocket of special interests (billionaires, Israel, among others), however on the corruption file the GOP has an absolute monopoly. The corruption in the modern Republican party is simply off the charts. And this presidency has turned the corruption to the max, in the open. Every criminal knows that if you think you're going to get caught, the first thing to do is profess your love of Trump and declare yourself a Republican, and in a moment your crimes will be exonerated and it will all be called "lawfare".
> Most times they just say "let's move on" and grant a pardon.
The Democrats have constantly tried to be the "high road" party. The law and order, let the process run out party. The "let's make bridges and not walls" party. The Republicans have completely taken advantage of it. If they take power -- which I think there is going to be a "Surprise" by this criminal fascist -- they need to go absolutely scorched Earth. And screw slow walking with some Merrick Garland type of snail, speed-run sending every Trump and enabler to jail. Hegseth needs to spend his remaining days rotting in a dungeon.
I mean, Trump still sincerely calls Democrats "divisive". From the guy who gets his chuckling audience of halfwits to cheer on blowing up American cities, and who constantly attacks and disparages "blue states" and their residents.
I cannot for the life of me understand how Americans in the better states aren't talking about secession. You simply must send some of the ignorant, garbage states packing.
And seriously, the "both parties are the same" trope is so transparent now. It's a coping mechanism that terrible people use to try to justify why they're how they are.
And... Its popular. When I go to a protest in the US I'm coming home sad.
What's happening in Brazil right now should give people pause about thinking that an interregnum with someone left-ish in power trying to restore normality will reset things to a saner state.
These are people totally willing to burn the crops and salt the fields. Trump could die tomorrow and a thousand heads would pop up looking to benefit from the anger and resent.
And the answer is, largely, nothing.
It’s a shame, really.
There's a two-year delay baked into the system. If the house flips (and it almost certainly will), the house will be able to investigate these things.
I expect fireworks.
It appears that one party has settled into reckless disregard for democratic and social norms because they can rest assured that the other party is feckless and only cares about "returning to normal" rather than holding anyone accountable or ensuring the harm can't be repeated. They're probably right.
All of this is thanks to the winners-take-all voting system which entrenches two parties and prevents any meaningful consensus to be reached at a national level. I think where the US is at now is inevitable given the voting system in place.
A fragmented party system driven by Parliamentary coalition building might actually mean less accountability, since right-leaning independents and ex-Republicans disgruntled at the erosion of democratic and social norms under Trump suddenly have to worry about actual socialists being part of the alternative, and options that genuinely aren't MAGA to vote for who in practice will need to ally with MAGA
the real problem is SCOTUS and their "gifts" to Trump
and yes, the DOJ under Biden failed spectacularly by not aggressively prosecuting Trump and putting him behind bars
I expect fireworks as well, as in flashy, noisy but nothing real accomplished.
Certainly hope that there will be accountability, and maybe there will be some, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
Post-Watergate there was some accountability and laws were changed. Campaign finance laws were introduced. Other laws to limit presidential power. But those laws have subsequently been eroded and weakened and here we are with an imperial presidency again.
Me too. Fireworks of "We have to move on" and "We have to reach out", etc.
Congress can perform investigations, but without the President's signature they cannot take actions that have the force of law. Impeachment cannot remove any official from office without 2/3 support in the Senate. Congress CAN refuse to fund some activities, but the administration has been ignoring existing legal restrictions on spending.
So no, Congress won't take any meaningful action to reign things in for at least two years, regardless of who wins the election unless we also overthrow the government in some way.
So, if the Democrats have any modicum of backbone and integrity(doubtful), they might not be able to jail anyone but they would be able to claw back illegally gotten funds, sometimes at a 3x multiple
I would love to know where you got this analysis from. Hopefully not from polling or CNN. I think we all learned a lesson from using those data points.
The best indicator for this is the futures market. It never lies.
That should serve as a simple existence proof that the futures market CAN and does sometimes "lie".
At least in the U.S. they we're spot on predicting Trump's victory 2022 & 2016, and congressional control. 2020 predicted the loss.
If your willing to share how you read futures markets for predicting elections I'd love to hear it.
Even if the House and Senate flip, majorities will be slim enough to prevent anything major. Certainly unlikely we get any impeachment trials in the Senate, though I'd love to see Hegseth get tossed out.
It's amazing what a little bit of propaganda can do to a system of government.
Not even denying it, admitting it and proud of it.
It's no different to when impoverished white men insisted that letting black men be "equals" in a philosophical sense was worth dying for. When you are so pathetic, so stupid, so inept and impotent and just unspecial, sometimes you will do whatever it takes to pretend to be special.
Projection is what they do all the time. Remember when they kept crying about "Identity politics"? They can't process their self consciousness.
America is a mental health wasteland.
A lot of these people are to this day holding a grudge about that black man. It's taught to entire generations of southerners still that the south didn't revolt to protect the institution of slavery, despite every document of the south stating such in plain english, because the alternative, as the confederacy plainly stated and feared publicly during the close of the war, was to recognize how awful a person you were to be willing to die to keep human beings as some other random white mans property and believe that god wanted that to be the case and to believe that you were inherently better than black people for zero reasons.
People in these worldviews have to start inverting reality at an extremely young age, and so they are well equipped to continue that in adulthood. These are the people that are desperate to have an external reason to be failures. To have something to blame. It's funny, because I don't get that. I'd rather things be my fault, because then I can change that. But these people genuinely struggle to accept that being wrong is normal. People like my brother who insist "I am never wrong" at the age of 40 as an alcoholic who blames not getting into a good college on "affirmative action", as if he could even compete with the average black kid in college. He's as smart as me at least, but because learning requires you to accept your own fallibility, he refused to engage with it, or he refused to accept that he struggled from ADHD, which he refuses to treat because he wants to believe stupid anti-mental-health stigmas despite direct evidence from family members that it fixes problems. He flew a confederate flag on his truck in high school, insisting "Heritage not hate". In fucking Maine (Woo Chamberlain!). As a Frenchman who had his culture erased by the literal KKK. Who shares family names with black people in Louisiana because of the previous time his culture was erased by the British before the US existed.
When I was 12, his young son was first getting into public school. He knows very little about the world, so he didn't realize how shitty school lunch had gotten since he paid attention to it in the 90s. So he blamed poor school lunch on Michelle Obama. This led him to assert that "All Democrats should be shot", to multiple family members who are democrats. In front of his house with more firearms than kitchen utensils. At least he takes gun safety seriously with his kid.
They just want to be proud but the only way for them to do that is to utterly reject reality and ensure there is a strong enough underclass for them to feel superior to. It's pathetic.
Thank goodness for the little things.
As for the rest, I feel you. I'd say this is at least forgivable though. Trashy people have always existed, and it's understandable that they're trying to rationalize their situation rather than doing the work to escape it. You get the same thing in the blue tribe, of people externalizing their locus of control and embracing the blue-flavored victim narratives.
What I find unforgivable are the people who don't actually live their lives that way, who do have better access to information, who aren't stuck in the shit end of society - but yet still take up the destructionist banner because they want to be edgy, or because it's lucrative, or because they have legitimate problems with things like "the woke" but are too lazy to do anything but lash out. People who really do know better but yet still insist on back-rationalizing a whole fictional extended universe is how this self-defeating perspective ends up being legitimized. The entire red tribe has thoroughly destroyed their own culture to the point that they don't even try proposing constructive solutions to problems any more, rather they seemingly just want to watch the world burn while pointing and laughing at everyone else for caring.
It may not turn into totalitarian, but if walks like a duck, sound like a duck, it's wise to wonder as it may very well be some poultry.
It's also not just happening to US elections, perhaps not even primarily to US elections. Brexit, AfD, Orban, etc. were all boosted with a strategic goal in mind.
Obviously there's a lot more nuance and detail to it (the blame Nixon deserves being of specific note IMO) but the argument is there.
So I'd argue that both the means are bad and the end
The election was a rejection of stability.
At least, that's how people in the middle, who decide election results, saw things.
We rolled the dice and lost. But things still aren't working very well in society, so we'll roll the dice again.
A lot of voters in the middle aren’t taking the time to understand why things seem to keep not changing (somewhat understandably so, but also unfortunately given the need for an engaged electorate in a healthy democracy). Both parties are being sticks in the mud, but one in particular is doing a lot more to keep change from happening than the other.
In the usa we have an overemphasis on the president, but we’ve slow walked ourselves into a dysfunctional congress that just can’t do anything. The point of democracy is to let the best ideas win, and part of that is being able to try those ideas out, and respond when they don’t work. Having a senate with two votes per state regardless of population, that are only replaced a third at a time, with an archaic but also recent rule that effectively requires 60/100 vote to pass almost anything meaningful, is just a recipe for failure.
End the filibuster as it is today. If you want a filibuster, force people to talk for it the way it worked for the first ~150 years of our country at least.
Isn't that cause and effect? In essence, what the US is showing is that the executive has so much power now that congress is largely obsolete.
If there was a better balance of power and less executive power, the only way the executive branch can get something done is to work with congress.
Obviously that doesn't work in all cases, conflict in particular. But in my experience that's where most democracies have drawn the line on executive power, basically for emergencies.
Having some slimy Mitt Romney types doing math about various state industries and interests when wording bills and trading votes would be a huge improvement over the equally slimy jerks we have now scheming up ways to serve their donors (who's interests correlate with the voters even less than the state's despite that bar being low to begin with) while leveraging abortion this guns that wedge issues to get re-elected despite screwing their voters.
The distribution of senators to states would also matter less if they weren't direct elected and therefore as beholden to party platforms and funding systems and whatnot.
Why? And why is indirect selection of senators better for that? Won't it just hand power to backroom operators at the state level, instead of to the people of the state?
You can see the same thing playing out in Brazil
Because many people in this country just go by vibes and don't really care what is happening.
We rolled dice well known to be unfair and lost. At some point, victim-blaming is the answer.
Yes, "both sides" do this, but Trump's party has refined it to a science with help from people like Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg, while the Democrats still rely on shoe leather.
I think Trump mostly happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Notice how many countries had the then opposition party win (or come much closer than usual) around 2023-2025. It didn't matter which side they were on, Poland went right -> center-left for example, so did the UK.
People in 2024-ish were very unhappy about their economic situation (which was mostly caused by pandemic disruptions, with the war in Ukraine not helping things), but was usually attributed to whoever was in power at the time. In the US, that happened to be the democrats, so that's whom people blamed.
This gave the GOP a trump card (no pun intended) which they played reasonably well. I think the Democrats could perhaps have made some hay there (by focusing on "evil capitalists" causing "fakeflation"), but the Republicans automatically started from a position of strength by not being in power at the time that particular disaster happened. Even so, the DEM focused mostly on race and not economics, which was a bad play at the time.
The Ukraine war also had a lot less impact on the us than it did in Europe. Europe was much more reliant on energy from Russia, and that was where the pain was in 2022/23/24.
And some simply found Trumpian corruption and abuse to be manly and cool.
Even if you work by the logic of respecting the median voter's position as legitimate and worthy of equal consideration by mere virtue of it being democratically held (a viewpoint I don't necessarily subscribe to), it seems as if the median voter got an own goal this cycle.
I'm trans. I'm also smart, wealthy, and live in America - an intersection of categories that essentially mean you can do almost anything you want to do with your life. I've barely felt any of the consequences of the election because I can afford to move to somewhere where the legislative climate is more friendly, can afford to have a social life among people who are not hostile, can afford to pay out of pocket for every new medication of mine that gets banned off insurance, and largely shrug off fuel and food inflation. I'm not feeling the consequences of the current regime half as bad as the people who voted enthusiastically for it. If the goal was to obstruct or ruin my life for being a member of a given suspect class, then the goal failed.
Culture war is nonsense and nothing can ever supersede material conditions.
There is no solution to this problem other than electing a candidate who will raise taxes, fund infrastructure, and stabilise prices. I don't care what party they come from. I don't have optimism we'll get anyone like this on the national stage within the next decade - NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is the closest I've seen yet to a candidate who espouses the positions I'd like to see in someone who is qualified to run for president.
Individual people may have nuanced takes on politics when you talk to them. But it all gets compressed down to 1 bit on the ballot: left or right? Red or blue?
I wish we had a system with more parties, like they do in many other countries.
Even something as simple as, attractiveness mattering more in presidential candidates since the advent of television in homes.
At the same time, we had a system whose establishment largely looked down on middle class Americans who didn't go to college. Early to mid 2000’s through the great recession saw the middle class tighten, with no real improvement to healthcare or affordability (attempts were made but ultimately medical costs are still rising). Many middle class people rely on things like cheap gas, child care, and affordable heating among others.
Then you have a system whose leaders actively works to increase gas prices (regardless of EV incentives, you’re asking individuals to purchase new cars when a difference of 1 dollar in gas goes a long way), some states subsidizing green energy programs by additional taxes on oil and natural gas heating costs (just switch to heat pumps and take on a 0 interest loan for 10 years), and rising childcare costs partly due to regulations in childcare businesses.
Then you have someone who claims to be an outsider (he wasn’t), who clowns on the existing elites in debates, and makes vast promises. The other party doesn’t say anything about positive change they’ll bring, just that they aren’t Him. Why not try something different than the status quo over the last 2 decades?
With gas prices up, the Epstein scandal still unresolved, and another ME war, i think if many of middle America were told these would be the outcomes they would not have voted him in again.
We should have more empathy for our fellow Americans, and try to understand each other instead of assuming they want the worst for your side.
Push that through a media filter that optimizes for engagement and it's no wonder these things are happening.
If you go with the presumption Jan 6 was a mob that got out of hand (not my position, just one of the perspectives), then the idea that he wasn’t able to enact his agenda due to the opposing party, coupled with the shenanigans of the other option (no democrat primary for Kamala being one, with democrat party having done similar in the past with Bernie), then claims that the democrats are spinning Jan 6 and risking another term with him seem more reasonable.
Whether I or you agree with those premise is separate from what the zeitgeist is for much of America
The media bubble is something these people seek out. They avoid sources that offend them. They don't go to original sources or seek first hand accounts. When confronted before they get the talking points their responses are rational, then after receiving orders they'll pivot on a dime.
I can't agree with your position based on the election of 2024. We knew exactly who Trump was, and it was obvious the second term was only going to be more extreme and unhinged.
I also blame the people who voted for Trump for Trump getting elected. Ultimately its the voters who chose this disaster of a presidency, despite obvious signs.
Politicians flip flop, or hopefully truly develop different opinions after experience/learning more.
Kamala came off as a piece of clay molded in the last minute to appease groups just for their vote. A good politician makes that “molding” process come off more naturally. Her and Walz did not really resonate with voters, they were just not Him.
And that is a lesson I hope democrats or a third party has learned that they can’t just reflectively say “I’m not Trump,” they need to show that through their principals, track record, and message of unity.
Hillary admonished trump voters, many of whom are middle class union/laborers. Biden claimed he was pro union then broke up the railroad strike. Kamala couldn’t hold a conversation without some sound bite failure (doesn’t make her bad, just not a politician) and wasn’t elected in any primary.
I think we need to better hear and learn the context of the other side’s perspective to understand why they voted the way they did, then provide a better option not just a different one
> I think we need to better hear and learn the context of the other side’s perspective to understand why they voted the way they did
I hear it all the time. If I vote democrat, they're going to do forced gender reassignment surgeries in our public schools. If I vote democrat, I'm for murdering babies. If I vote democrat, I'm supporting Satan, and can't possibly call myself a Christian. To vote against Trump is to vote against God's will. This isn't just some stupid talking point on TV ads, its a position I've heard in person countless times and has absolutely touched me personally.
I've had people who were supposedly my friends for years, people I shared a table with weekly for years, decide they couldn't associate with me anymore because of a yard sign.
These are the people you're telling me that I need to better understand.
Where is the expectation for them to take a real look at reality and actually examine their positions aren't backed by reality, and their votes are going against their own interests?
Perhaps the many, many comments in this thread, going on and on about how people are misinformed, ignorant voters who vote against their own interests, could be understood for what it actually is, which is that.
There's no such thing as people voting against their own interests. People vote based on what they think will make their life better. The quality of a person's life has a massive number of interrelated variables that are hard to tease out.
Someone might decide that their quality of life will be improved by having better jobs or doing something about the extractive corporate sector that makes it almost impossible for normal people to thrive. They might also try to improve their lives by trying to make other people besides themselves feel humiliated and outcast in society since they are sick of being those people. In fact they might decide that's only thing they can change since that first thing isn't on the agenda of either party.
In all cases people get to decide what they care about and what they think their life improvement chances are by whatever metrics they pick. They are right about their preferences by definition. That's inherent to democracy.
There was a lot of campaigning in 2024 based on completely made up claims. Many voters voted based on that, even though they thought the other candidate was better on other issues they cared about.
Totally. No one likes an asshole. But assholes can be right. What's a kinder label than "misinformed" for someone who rejects the truth because of its source?
"They're eating the cats and dogs!"
This is easily disprovable. People care about gas prices. They were unhappy with gas prices under Biden and said so loudly. They voted for the candidate that increased them even more.
Reason: ignorance and misinformation.
Outcome: voting against one's own declared interests.
I'm not denying preferences exist. But preferences are shaped by lies. They easily lead to outcomes contrary to those preferences.
So they voted for the candidate who had a track record of lower inflation.
Turns out things didn't happen that way but that's a different criticism. You're assuming a forward-looking omniscience of some kind or prediction skill that just doesn't exist.
When "smug asshole Democrats" explained why this wasn't Biden's fault, given that it happened on the other side of the world, they got called "smug assholes".
Enacting tariffs and waging war also causes inflation. Tariffs were a campaign promise - zero omniscience required.
And gas wasn't this expensive in 2022. So you're wrong about that.
So they made the ignorant choice at choosing the candidate who teed up the highly inflationary environment and enacted policies which driectly drove the inflation. Like, the $450B in cash handouts and the near trillion dollars in forgiven PPP loans with zero enforcement. Loans which his family directly abused.
> You're assuming a forward-looking omniscience of some kind or prediction skill that just doesn't exist.
No, I'd expect people to not make stupid choices. Anyone actually paying attention would understand Trump is bad for the economy long term. But here we are.
- get an abortion up to one month after delivery
- get gender reassignment surgery coordinated at your school without parental awareness or consent.
"There's no truths or untruths here". There absolutely fucking are. And then people like you are acting like we're the ones contributing to it, "Well, have you considered why they might think that way?"
You're not asking them "Have you considered how what you're saying is utterly disconnected from any reality whatsoever?"
Why not?
This is because 35% of the country identifies as rejecting all science and asserting the belief that the earth is 6000 years old because they explicitly believe a "plain reading" of the bible trumps all
https://news.gallup.com/poll/647594/majority-credits-god-hum...
This statistic is at a historic low
The believe that the earth is 6000 years old or "Young", a belief that is explicitly taught in hundreds of private schools funded through school voucher programs that only hand little timmy very special textbooks that assert that scientists are evil and trying to keep them from gods light.
This belief requires you to not learn how science works. It requires you to reject empiricism entirely. It requires you to believe that science in general is an evil cabal directly in league with satan to make you stop believing in god. It requires you to believe that democrats are in league with these satanists to "brainwash" your good little god fearing kid in school, so you should put him in a private school where he won't be brainwashed because instead he will be taught the truth of god, which is to just do whatever the Pastor and his leaders say, and don't think.
Yet another example of "voting against your interests" due to massive amounts of ignorance.
Trump owns a social media company. The leaders of the other big social media companies backed his run to the tune of nearly $300M dollars.
So you can dispense with that assumption. Hopefully you can pick up on the point I was making, which is that there are a lot of irrational belief systems in politics. You can find them everywhere.
What I dislike is this tendency among overeducated elite, nominally Democratic Party-type commentators to focus on this meta discussion: Why are they stupid? Why are they misinformed? What bots are influencing them?
How about we just focus on the merits? What exactly is your favorite politician proposing to do? Do they have a conception and understanding of how power works and will they use it to achieve goals of any kind? Can we evaluate them on those goals? The last time your team got a chance, what did they do with it? Can people trust you? Who do you serve and who do you fight?
If the answer to that last question is that you serve Wall Street corporate interests and Silicon Valley and you fight against labor and wage earners then you're not on my team either.
How do you engage with the many, many millions of Americans which believe these things? You think they give a damn about how some infrastructure bill finally started the planning on replacing that bridge in town that they don't even realize is about to collapse when their pastor says voting against Trump is sentencing you to hell? These same voters that can't put 2 and 2 together and realize the reason why the only hospital nearby closed finally because their state refused Medicaid expansion so long ago.
What's the way you suggest we connect with these topics? What's the right give-and-take here? How do you come to a middle ground when they're off in adrenochrome-fueled lala land?
But hey, according to you, I guess they're acting rationally, and there are no truths or untruths.
People are refusing to vote for Talarico because they know he's a transgender vegan who will outlaw meat in Texas and force your kids to be gay. You think people who think these things will be swayed by another vote for Medicare for All or eliminating the tax cap on Social Security or paid family leave? Nah, he's unelectable because he suggested maybe God doesn't have a penis, as we know for sure God the Father is definitely a dude even though somehow women were also made in the image of God. They can't vote for Talarico because he's against God...as opposed to the guy who's defrauded his friends, practices extreme corruption, got impeached by his own party, and flies around the world with his mistress to party with fugitives illegally supporting him in a Muslim country while costing the public tons of money.
Pretty sure it matters. In fact, I think the merits of the people that you run for president are super insanely unbelievably important. The idea that there's any other way to look at this is completely baffling to me. The fact that Biden was essentially incoherent and Kamala did not appear to have a discernible idea of why she was running in the first place mattered a ton, as did the fact that Kamala was literally selected by an opaque committee process with no voter input whatsoever.
They matter a lot. Try it the other way and run a candidate that has a clear and articulable vision for how people's lives will get better if they're elected, and then starts to act on that vision as soon as they're elected effectively. See what happens. It'll be different. It's happening in New York City right now, if you want one example. When people try this approach instead, the distinction is really easy to see. As is the suddenly vicious opposition from the establishment Democratic Party that's behind these people you're talking about
> People are refusing to vote for Talarico because... Nah, he's unelectable...
This election hasn't happened yet. Once it happens, that will be a better time to explain why he did or didn't win.
I still think that your understanding of the reasoning of the people who don't like him is flawed. The reason people oppose him and don't want to vote for him is because they don't think he's like them and or has their interests in mind. They think he cares about other things and other people besides them and the things that they care about. Conversely, the people that will vote for him will have been convinced that he does care about the things that they care about and will help people like them. Because that's pretty much always how it works.
Have you ever talked to a single person who has the views that you think they have? Or is your opinion of these "people" with these crazy views something that was served up to you by a company run by Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Ellison?
Yes. Constantly. Every single day of my life. I've told you that several times now. They're my neighbors. They're my relatives. They're the people who used to be my friends at church. They're my kids classmates parents. They're the people I talk to waiting for the train. They're my barber. They're the person sitting next to me at the bar. Most people I've talked to who support Paxton do so for one or more of the above reasons. The few who aren't like that support him because they're worried about their taxes going up, because their personal financial situation is above all else in their lives. If you truly think these people are rare, you're burying your head deep, deep in the sand.
I've rarely heard any other reasons other than the above as to why vote Paxton over Talarico. These are the arguments I hear in person, on the fliers stuck to my door, and on the TV all the time. And you're failing to give anything different here. You're absolutely right "they don't think he's like them" in that they think he's going to force your kids to be trans and allow for entirely open borders.
If these kinds of lies weren't effective, why would the GOP put so much stock into them? Why would they go on the debate stage and say immigrants are eating your cats and dogs? The answer: because it works. People I talk to in person still routinely think Haitian migrants are likely to eat your pets.
Trump literally said he could say the stupidest things to his supporters and they'll still cheer. Trump is a smug asshole who thinks he's better than his supporters, talks down to them, lies to their faces over and over, and knows they'll support him because they literally see him as God's anointed one.
> There's no such thing as people voting against their own interests.
This is truly as nonsensical opinion as people always choose healthy choices. People can absolutely make self destructive choices. A smoker choosing to smoke isn't making a good choice, but to you they couldn't possibly choose something against their interests. It would be in their interests to stop smoking, but they're unable or unwilling to make that decision.
Now see if you can figure out why self-destructive choices can be rational at times?
Can you formulate a hypothetical where smoking is a rational decision? I can.
It's not a rational choice. It's choosing to make the irrational choice.
A drug addict choosing to shoot up isn't making the rational choice. It's a choice we can examine on why they made that choice, but it wasn't reason that drove them to make that choice.
Thinking Trump is the anointed one isn't a rational decision. Voting for Trump to get rid of corruption isn't a rational choice. Voting for a rapist in the middle of a big pedophile ring isn't the rational choice at fighting the pedophiles.
Is it irrational to take out yourself as well as your enemies if you have no realistic prospects for improving your situation but you do have the ability to hurt people who hurt you?
Yes, I'd agree it's irrational to willfully give yourself a chemical addiction in a place where you are already have enough stressors and it'll be hard for you to continue to feed that addiction once started. It's probably a terrible choice to start an addition in a concentration camp. I can understand why people would choose it, and I don't fault them for making such a decision in such a bad place, but it's definitely not the rational choice.
Just purely from a self-improvement standpoint, you should try and not assume you know everything about someone through a short conversation.
I'm not passing off a moral judgement over someone choosing to smoke in a concentration camp. I don't fault someone making that choice. There's a good chance I might make the same. That doesn't make it a rational choice.
I, and the other poster, are beyond that point. I've actually had it said that it's our fault (liberals) that things are like this, because we are refusing to engage and that we "owe" conservatives the opportunity to listen and understand their argument.
That we somehow owe it to people to argue in good faith with them when they are talking of (the ones I've personally had mentioned): post-birth abortion ("in several Democrat states, abortion is legal up to one month post birth!". Apparently you can take your baby home, come back a month later, and say "Nah, changed my mind on this one", who knew?), adrenochrome harvesting, etc.
That it was my/our fault such views propagate because we're not "willing to understand their perspectives".
The thing is, their perspectives are a lie. And in many cases, they know they're a lie, they just don't. fucking. care.
So they can go online and whine about being dismissed or criticized, or pat each other on the back for "knowing the truth". There's a subset who, I'm sure, see such things as actual literal truth, and that's a different issue altogether, but not sure it's my responsibility to solve, or that failure to engage on my part makes the current situation "my fault".
"Maybe I need to put more effort into why they think or feel that way?" That won't work, because I'll be the only one doing so. You'll note that it's never framed as a matter "maybe they should think about why people think what they're saying sounds absolutely ridiculous". There's no effort on critical reasoning or discourse that will work there, because it's not grounded in reason in the first place. And when that comes up, crickets. But no, "keep going high", keep working on empathy for people who actively celebrate LE shooting people, and for a President that will say from the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, quote, "My kids are insider trading all the time".
Do the candidates you support have any kind of track record of making people's lives better, helping average regular everyday working people live lives of dignity where they can afford to live in places and raise their families?
Or do they have a long track record of doing the opposite, favoring the interests of war overseas and corporate hegemony at home?
Those are political questions.
How is "does your candidate favor a corporate hegemony?" a political question, but "does your candidate favor allowing abortion?" not? Politics is the methodology by which we organize a society, which includes legality, morality, and ethics.
I feel you think you've had some sort of "gotcha" moment by implying that Democratic candidates have failed in meeting their claimed goals. For one, I am unable to vote in US elections. And for two, the candidates I would support would be far left of today's Democratic Party, and I would vote for that Party only if/because the realistic alternative candidates were ... as abhorrent as they currently are.
> I feel you think you've had some sort of "gotcha" moment by implying that Democratic candidates have failed in meeting their claimed goals.
Yeah, of course I do. The fact that Democratic politicians have failed to improve the lives of regular people and aren't really trying to is pretty fucking relevant to why they lose to obviously corrupt opponents.
Which seems important if your goal involves acquiring and wielding political power instead of lamenting all the idiots out there in internet posts.
Nearly 1/3 of the country think the Earth is less than 10,000 years old.
Most people I've personally talked to about voting for the MAGA candidate have said one or more of these things. The others are usually wealthy people happy for their tax cuts. As mentioned earlier, I've had close friends and relatives refuse to associate with me because I've voted D a few times in my life and obviously do the work of Satan. This isn't some fringe rare thing, if it was would most TV ads I see against Talarico appeal to these fears? If this was truly some fringe why would the President constantly hammer these points?
The answer is, it's not rare. This is the new base of the GOP. The same people who knew Obama was a Muslim from Kenya.
Let's say these people really are some statistically irrelevant percentage of the population. Let's say it really is just that normal, sane, middle class Joe's are truly the people the D's need to target more. How on earth are the R's the better choice for them? This is the party which cuts their healthcare, works to defund their public education, cutting access to college, is even more in bed with corporate interests, is even more obviously corrupt, and overall has had power more and delivered less for the common person. How does it make sense to vote that way?
For a real concrete and recent example, can you explain the voting base for Paxton versus Talarico? Why would that average Joe voter support Paxton over Talarico?
Yeah, the biggest speedbump for Democratic candidates or left leaning people is the DNC.
From Hillary and the whole Debbie Wasserman-Schulz sabotaging Bernie, being caught doing it, denying it, then ... surprise! She's Hillary's campaign manager within 24 hours of resigning DNC leadership...
... through to one of the most uneducated electorates (which is on both sides), where the single most popular Google search on Election Day? "Did Biden drop out?"
- Elon Musk, June 5 2025 (https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1930667528696828120)
Voters obviously bear ultimate responsibility, but there's a lot more going on than just "voters are responsible." If that were true, corporations and wealthy individuals would have no interest in injecting money into politics, but alas... they do.
You can never blame anything on propaganda and deliberate misinformation and manipulation of the public. And you have to assume all speakers have the same power and reach.
Unrestricted free speech in practice falls under what Anatole characterized : "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
Elon can lie and propagandize at scale with impunity. But let's blame voters.
The private sector, for slightly more benign reasons, and sometimes less benign reasons like keeping cigarettes from being blamed for cancer and emphysema, uses the same mechanisms to sell products. If that didn't work, nobody would pay for advertising and PR.
He's got a lot to lose!
Will be done by the end of the year (tm)
Curious what you think should be done.
No offense, but often when I see this kind of comment there's a call for… unspecified action?
Specifically, Babubhai Patel and Gregory McKnight.
I guess you are asserting that this other thing is equivalent to that?
https://www.wsj.com/finance/regulation/flurry-of-suspicious-...
(edit: /s but not about making the government some money off this corruption)
https://www.akingump.com/en/insights/alerts/the-eddie-murphy...
> Those trades paid off 15 minutes or so later, when Trump wrote on Truth Social that he was reversing his threat to attack Iranian infrastructure unless the country re-opened the Strait of Hormuz.
Likely the entire purpose of the war is to create opportunities for corruption in my opinion.
The only partially redeeming thing we will soon witness is that he will lose the upcoming elections, no matter how much he plans to cheat. The TechBros pissed off too many people and stole too much money in addition to that. All that money should be given back, directly to the people. The superrich should not be allowed to control and manipulate democracies in general, even though they are currently prepping up the eyeliner-boy as successor to the orange insanity clown.
This will need a lot more time and hindsight to make general statements in terms of the wider picture.
America is so great , it can sustain the appetite of corrupt presidencies.
inflation combined with little to no wage increase leading to total economic stall outside of the scope of any safety mechanisms, which precipitates an extreme cliff-face degradation of everyday life and commerce for citizens at every level.
or, another way : conditions that would lead to public rebellion en masse, which further stalls things past the economic strife.
the type of thing 1780s France saw.
I.e., the number is not affected by how people were diagnosed, or how their cause of death was recorded. Claiming that there was a widespread trend of classifying unrelated deaths as COVID-19-related doesn’t affect that number at all. Here’s a CDC page about this: https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/89507/cdc_89507_DS1.pdf
Like you, I'm impressed with how resilient the American economy has been over the past few years. The tariffs, the war, the incompetence and open corruption seem like they should have done a lot more immediate damage. What's disconcerting is that much of the damage is to America's long term interests. So much of America's greatness has come from attracting talent from all around the world into a stable lawful society. That's what we're losing.
And in the end, that is the game they are playing. Starve the beast (aka, the US government) until not much more than the military remains.
unless you dropped the '/s' ?
“[Kim Jong Un] speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same."
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/15/trump-north-korea-...