Political Discussion

MyWifeHatesTrain said:
I wasn’t claiming they were buddies or would get a beer. Just that the conversation was closer to two buddies shooting the shit over a beer than it was an interview. There weren’t very many questions.
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I get that. My point was how “unnatural” that comparison is. These are two guys who don’t get beers with buddies. They are weirdos that regular people would not want to hang out with.
 
MyWifeHatesTrain said:
no extradition agreement, have refused in past.

Also a country that has very “secure” elections and massive fraud. Also ruled by a dictator.

So you know… exactly the kind of place Trump wants to create here.
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Also a country that is currently in recovery from a complete social and financial collapse. and I really, really mean collapse.

from 2012 to 2022, there was a 9032.8% inflation. That number is not wrong. a thing that used to cost $1, now costs $9032.80.

The murder rate went from 10 per 100K in 1998 to 100 per 100K in 2018.

Maduro and Chavez governments were marked by human rights abuses, "extrajudicial executions" (jfc that's a mouthful,), torture, disappearances, death squads, "cancelled elections", and hardly surprising, crimes against humanity.
 
I used to work in hotels, I was night auditor / manager. I had a venezuelan couple that were here on vacation when Chavez "won" and the first collapse began and they just never left. They weren't a rich couple by any stretch -- I mean, 'rich' in venezuela is a matter of scale i suppose, but by american standards they were firmly middle class. Dude was a travel agent and she was in business or something. Nothing fancy. They found themselves stuck here -- if they returned they'd be too poor to leave again and just be another drain on the family -- and so they just stayed. At some point they started sending care packages, they'd get a duffelbag and just stuff it to the gills with clothing and just the absolute most basic household supplies. Soap, hygene products, toilet paper, clothing from thrift stores that sell by the pound, medicine of every stripe.

A local neighborhood, Doral, has gotten the sobriquet Doralzuela because of all the economic immigrant refugees. Much like Cuba and the rest of south america, everyone who had even the tiniest economically viable means of escape left a long time ago and now the only ones left are those too poor or sick to leave. But sometimes they do walk out. Which just. How bad would things have to get before you decided to, I dunno, walk to fucking Canada with your family. Would the first death squad convince you to do it? on the news or would it have to be someone you knew?

Anyway, yeah, 100% that's the kind of place Trump wants here, because it's pretty great if you've got money. You hide in your castle and everyone is terrified you'll stop giving them money so they treat you like a king and obey and attend to your every whim.
 
DownIsTheNewUp said:
Yeah I mean that's one way to frame it. But when a guy admits he is going to disolve the department of education, you would think it would result in countless headlines.
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nymag.com

The Media’s Double Standard Favors Donald Trump, Not Kamala Harris

Conservative complaints about bias miss the point.
nymag.com nymag.com

I think this op ed starts to get to why but stops short.

His supporters follow him despite the reality of his lies. There was a piece in the New Yorker about the J6 families and it read like an expose of a cult. The leaps of logic these people are making are wild.

After the debate, CNN had a panel of “undecided” voters. It was like an onion piece or something. It was clear to me that the people who said the debate made them decide to vote for Trump were already his supporters. None of their reasoning was about how bad Biden’s performance was - it was about what an upstanding American Trump was.

The folks voting for Harris probably don’t need to hear it.

@TenderLovingKiller® made a point a while back that I find absolutely abhorrent but is the reality - if you are undecided or a supporter or throwing your vote at Trump or RFK or anyone else at this point then you are willfully ignoring his four years in office and his four years having tantrum after tantrum about it not being fair (it being EVERYTHING).

It’s already on his platform, it’s part of Project 25 and agenda 47. It’s there in the open. You either care or don’t care at this point.
 
Bull Shannon said:
It’s very unfortunately part of the States Rights wave we’re in the middle of; prolly washes right over people.
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Watching Nationalism become myopic to the state level is the most disheartening part of all this.

The simple idea that the states could have wildly different laws, educational systems, etc… sort of takes the United part out of our country.
 
MyWifeHatesTrain said:
It’s already on his platform, it’s part of Project 25 and agenda 47. It’s there in the open. You either care or don’t care at this point.
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I would surmise that it's not that they don't care, it's that it won't affect them personally so then they don't need to care. We're intensely myopic creatures. Things aren't a problem unless they're a problem for us. So sure, Trump will deport migrants. That won't affect them...until they want to fix up their house or the price of agriculture or meat goes up tremendously. It won't affect them until a family they knew is suddenly gone with no explanation. They don't care about abortion restrictions because they don't plan on having one. Then their daughter wants to have a baby and there's a problem where she's going to die unless the baby is aborted or is a risk to the mother and is beyond saving.

We are a society that has an extreme lack of empathy. We want ours and we don't care if others get them. We also don't want to be inconvenienced by anyone else. We're happy thinking someone else will take care of the problems out there. That's why we gravitate to strong men who are tough on "others". It's a tale as old as our country.

And I agree, if you were undecided, you're either not voting or you're voting for Trump. There's simply no other way that you can overlook who he says, what he's done, and what he says he's going to do if he gets elected again. It says more about us as a nation that this isn't already a massive blowout. He's literally everything he claimed about Biden. The differences between them grow starker and starker every day.
 
mdmost said:
I would surmise that it's not that they don't care, it's that it won't affect them personally so then they don't need to care. We're intensely myopic creatures. Things aren't a problem unless they're a problem for us. So sure, Trump will deport migrants. That won't affect them...until they want to fix up their house or the price of agriculture or meat goes up tremendously. It won't affect them until a family they knew is suddenly gone with no explanation. They don't care about abortion restrictions because they don't plan on having one. Then their daughter wants to have a baby and there's a problem where she's going to die unless the baby is aborted or is a risk to the mother and is beyond saving.

We are a society that has an extreme lack of empathy. We want ours and we don't care if others get them. We also don't want to be inconvenienced by anyone else. We're happy thinking someone else will take care of the problems out there. That's why we gravitate to strong men who are tough on "others". It's a tale as old as our country.

And I agree, if you were undecided, you're either not voting or you're voting for Trump. There's simply no other way that you can overlook who he says, what he's done, and what he says he's going to do if he gets elected again. It says more about us as a nation that this isn't already a massive blowout. He's literally everything he claimed about Biden. The differences between them grow starker and starker every day.
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I get that and I don’t. I agree - don’t get me wrong, but I don’t think it is a species problem, we didn’t become the dominant species by not giving a fuck about those around us. Hell our babies are the most fragile in the world, they need everything for a very long period of time.

I think it is a combination of a lot of things. I think we broke evolution and as a species we don’t really evolve any more (possibly even devolve like Mothersbaugh and company like to say). I think the Civil Rights Movement has a bit to do with - not that it was a bad thing, it was a great thing. But people were forced to face the other and other is inherently scary - racism is just fear, there is no other rational explanation for it. Then there is the perversion of the American Dream that was mainstreamed in Reagan’s economic policy that taught us all to get ours at all costs. There’s a million other variables - complacency, the dissolution of Religion (causing further siloing), etc, but I’m just trying to hit big beats here.
 

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