Total posts: 2,178
Posted in:
-->
@AdaptableRatman
Thanks but I don’t agree. I definitely bullied people unnecessarily. I would agree that I was a moderating influence on some others and that there were definitely limits I had but if I could go back I wouldn’t do it again
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@21Pilots
What was that one time everything was shit?What the fuck helped you not kill yourself.
I have had a pretty easy life materially, loving family, friends etc but I’ve still struggled with depression, if you could call it that. Or more like just not really enjoying life or wanting to be alive. Although my life was never truly bad in any way by any reasonable definition my emotions were imbalanced to the point that the negative ones outweighed the positive ones quite a bit. A major accomplishment like landing a new and better job or something would give me the happiness equivalent of how negative something like a bad interaction with someone. I would’ve never killed myself but for most of life if there was a button I could press to make it so I wouldn’t exist I would’ve pressed it without hesitation.
I would have never killed myself because of what it would do to the people who cared about me. Even people you don’t think of. There was a girl from high school I had a few classes with. We were friendly, had each other’s numbers but were never close and other than a few times didn’t speak after high school. Senior year of college she jumped off a building and killed herself. A decade later I still think about her at least once a week and it moves me to tears.
Committing suicide is like place a lifelong curse on everyone who’s ever cared about you. It’s hard to talk about because it comes from a place of great suffering but it’s also the cruelest, most selfish, most disgusting, and most cowardly act a person can ever commit.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Double_R
Ok, appreciate the straightforwardness. But why? Why do you put being here illegally on par with anything we would normally think of when we hear the word crime? And why do you think we should be focusing on this issue over the multitude of other problems we have?My issue is not that I think you're wrong, it's that I can't find any other justification for the focus and drive on this issue other than bigotry. If someone is living here for years, working, paying taxes, and not committing crimes... Why not leave them alone? How is your life getting better by rounding these people up at home depot's and deporting them?
I’ll answer this bc honestly this is the real issue and I’ve been wanting to get my thoughts off my chest somewhere…I DONT think that illegally immigrating to another country is as serious as violent crime. However I also don’t think that being sent back to your country of citizenship is in any way a punishment or a violation of rights or whatever. If I went to China, or Germany, or Mexico, or any other country and overstayed my visa I can’t get mad at them for kicking me out. That’s completely justified on their part.
Why not just leave them alone? It’s an absurdity that people have been here illegally for years or decades. Unless one is in favor of full blown open borders that should NEVER HAVE HAPPENED. Birthright citizenship makes it even worse because now it’s permanent. Enough. We have laws, it’s time for them to be enforced and after that if we decide democratically as a society that immigration policy should be changed then congress should change it. I do feel bad for people who have been here a long time and especially their kids. If I were dictator I actually would show them mercy and let many of them stay. But I’m not, and the only way we get serious border control in the future given that Dems have lied and cheated republicans on this issue for years (see Reagan’s amnesty) is to demonstrate that we’re serious this time around and force the left to come to the negotiating table in good faith. We got probably around 10 million illegal immigrants just in the past four years. It MUST stop.
And yes I do have reasons you’d probably consider bigotry. If I’m being honest, and I’ve lived in areas with large immigrant populations my entire life…. I don’t like most immigrant cultures. I think they’re obnoxious, uncomfortable to be around, and they change society for the worse, at least according to my preferences. I don’t like the fact that my property tax dollars go towards teaching English to and educating the children of people who should not even be here. I don’t like that the local parks in my area are trashed by immigrants who refuse to use trash cans literally every weekend to the point that we have to hire contractors at the expense of the groups of people who don’t litter. I do not like interacting with people from low trust cultures who may and have used what I consider to be one of my best traits (honesty) against me. I do not like that they choose to blare loud music at all hours and couldn’t give less of a shit about the fact that people need to sleep and go to work in the morning. I fundamentally disagree with the premise that having preferences about the cultural trajectory of society is inherently immoral even if it’s uncomfortable to talk about or hurts people’s feelings.
The economic arguments for immigration are extremely strong on paper, but when you look at similar countries that have had sudden large increases in immigration (like Canada, the UK, arguably the US 2021-2023) the results are catastrophic. I’m not sure why this is the case. My overall thought is that immigrants spur both the supply and the demand for basically everything economically and whether that benefits you entirely depends on your specific situation but is overall a wash. And that culturally outside of outliers (and “chooses to illegally immigrate” or “downloads an app on phone” isn’t a good selection process to get positive outliers) the average impact of any given immigrant is to make society more like the country they came from. This seems self evident to me and when you’re talking about taking in people from places like Haiti that’s extremely concerning.
Shut the border down, send them back. If it turns out to be a catastrophe then I know millions of people would be happy to immigrate here and we can allow that to happen.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Double_R
First off, a shocking amount of illegal violent criminals? Do you have any data on that? It's kind of an odd thing to claim given that undocumented immigrants are statistically the most law abiding group in the United States.
I follow accounts such as DHS or ICE spokespeople who will detail the violent crimes many of the people they detain, and its just murderer after murderer, rapist after rapist, extortionist after extortionist. In many cases they’re intentionally seeking out criminals but it’s still shocking to see. The number of immigrants who are violent criminals should be close to zero for obvious reasons. We have a choice in who we allow into our country!
The claim that illegal immigrants are “the most law abiding group in the United States” is not very strong—there are some studies that try to determine their crime rate but they don’t actually analyze a persons legal status, they try to make estimates via proxies—and frankly the people who have done those studies (such as Alex Nowrasteh) are pretty naked open borders propagandists. Everyone who lives in an area with lots of illegal immigrants knows they’re constantly arrested for drunk driving, they drive without insurance, they litter absolutely non stop, etc. The idea that illegal immigrants are less criminal or better to live around than say legal Asian immigrants or native born white people doesn’t pass the smell test at all.
Still I’m happy to concede that millions of people who are here illegally who have committed no other crime, part of me does have some sympathy for them on a human level but they need to take the self deportation deal. No country can sustain these type of numbers and it’s incredibly, INCREDIBLY unfair to everyone else.
If you don't care about whether they're criminals and just want them all out that's fine, make that case. Stop pretending that this is about crime and drugs and tell us what you believe with your chest. That's the point.
That is my belief. They all need to go back regardless of their behavior after choosing to illegally immigrate to our country. Obviously some cases are worse than others (such as the organized crime Biden invited here from Venezuela) but all illegals have to go back regardless
Created:
Posted in:
The administration never made that commitment and why would they? As I understood it, violent criminals will be prioritized first (of which there’s a truly shocking amount, thank you democrats), then people who already have a final order of removal but nobody here illegally is “off the table”
Why would it be any other way? Why would any country tolerate millions of people being there illegally? They aren’t welcome here and they all have to go back.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Double_R
I agree with him for the most part. The purity testing on the left is worse than on the right, but a big part of that is because today's political right isn't about ideas, it's a cult of personality.
Yeah in a way Trumps shamelessness and the cult of personality is a political benefit. Look at the tariffs. He can and hopefully will back down with a few token “deals” in a way that would utterly humiliate a normal politician
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Swagnarok
As for why, I'd argue there are three reasons.First, the Overton Window in the last half-century has near consistently moved left. This means a general trend where yesteryear's centrist Democrats become palatable to Republicans, while at the same time the purity spiral comes for said centrist Democrats, pushing them into the Republican camp. Second, someone who leaves their old party is thought of positively as a freethinker not beholden to blind dogma. Third, Democrats as a historical rule have been a lot better at populism than Republicans, so an ex-Democrat running in Republican primaries brings with him a very useful skillset that his opponents tend to lack.
IMO a big part of the reason the Republican Party has been so inefficient in our lifetimes is because by the early 90s they’d for the most part won on the things they cared about. Post WWII economic policy was so so much more left wing than it is today. The 90% top marginal tax rates is just the tip of the iceberg. The Republican Party
was also extremely concerned with containing the Soviet Union pretty much from the very beginning…then it collapsed.
What did the establishment GOP actually want? McConnell and Co clearly very much cared about lowering taxes and appointing GOP aligned judges. They actually were really effective at that. But the right doesn’t really have an overarching idea of what they want society to look like imo. The left doesn’t really either but they have a religious like framework about systems of oppression, equity, etc which informs their viewpoint by default on almost any issue that pops up. Whereas the right in America is more like a coalition and the only thing they have in common is that they reject the left
Created:
Posted in:
Is there a mass movement of people from the left to the right? I don’t really see that. Yes Trump won the popular vote by like 1.5% but I wouldn’t get too cocky about that.
Partisan Dems don’t want to admit it (although they’re beginning to hate the guy too) but the Biden admin was incredibly, incredibly extreme. Unilaterally quadrupling immigration (all illegal or outside the intended scope of our laws), huge spending bills that just weren’t needed at all even after massive inflation had started, open racial spoils system (ie, trying to ration covid medicine or aid by race, nominating judges solely due to race and gender), very very very nakedly authoritarian. And of course the left wing party has now been implicated in a massive cover up of the president being at least partially incapacitated.
That will leave almost anyone who isn’t a partisan with a bad taste in their mouth. It seems to me like the Overton window itself moved significantly to the right over those years. Looking at it like conversions seems wrong for most people imo, it’s more like they may have moved slightly to the right on certain issues and the spotlight has been on things people don’t like about the left.
Trump is doing a little better this time around, especially if he continues to back off on the tariffs, but the backlash to him will probably hurt the right eventually and something similar will happen as people focus on the stuff they don’t like about the right now that they are in power.
Created:
Posted in:
The scene:
Deep in the forests of exurban Maryland. Nothing but silence all around. A gentleman is sitting alone at a tree stump, looking down at the papers he is supposed to be grading in between occasional periods of blankly staring into the forest. His expression is one of wistfulness and bitterness. He looks aged far beyond his relative youth. The regret is palpable to all observers. Lost dreams. Mistaken decisions. Good intentions gone wrong.
The crinkle of a leaves crunching interrupts his thoughts, the same ones he’s been ruminating in these long seven years. A muscular and handsome blonde man is approaching.
He instinctively looks away.
“It is time for you to return to your rightful place.”
“You know I cannot. I gave that life up.”
“The situation has changed. You’re needed now more than ever.”
“I already told you, the answer is no. I will never return.”
“One last job Bsh1. One last job.”
The pair lock eyes. Slowly, but steadily, Bsh1 nods.
Created:
Posted in:
I mean ffs the democratic nominee for vice president said on the debate stage like three months ago that he didn’t believe “hate speech” was protected speech. He said throughout the campaign that things like “hate speech” or “disinformation” were not protected by the first amendment. Their vice presidential nominee. A stance entirely in line with how the current democratic administration behaved in office. So sick of this gaslighting that we’re ignorant or crazy to say that the modern left does have a problem with free speech
Created:
Posted in:
Additional mental note: spot Trumps approval rating aggregate around an additional 3 points this time around. I was skeptical in the run up to 2024 that he would outperform his polls yet again just because past performance doesn’t equal future results but it’s happened three times in a row now.
I think it’s clear now that pollsters really do have an issue reaching an appropriate number of Trump voters and that would extend to narratives about his approval too.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Double_R
What on earth are you talking about?
The Biden admin was sending social media companies specific posts and demanding they censor them. The case went all the way to SCOTUS where it was dismissed for lack of standing, but the fundamental facts, that the USG was monitoring communication and sending companies specific things that they demanded to be removed, was never in dispute. Before Elon bought Twitter, every single social media company was on board with this. Zuckerberg wrote an open letter just a few months ago admitting that he felt pressured by the government and expressing deep regret that he acquiesced to their demands.
There was also a broader cultural trend against free speech led by the left when they felt ascendant during the George Floyd mass riots and the early Biden Admin. Remember “free speech does not equal freedom from consequences” whenever some random unfortunate would get caught on camera performing some minor blasphemy and would have their life ruined, get fired from their job, etc? That’s more or less dead now. I’m surprised you’re acting as if you have no clue what I’m talking about because I have distinct memories of discussing this sort of thing with you in 2021-2022 and you expressing your approval.
Obviously this is only one man’s testimony but I fully believe it. It seems evident to me that there was a concerted effort to control the information flow of technology through ideology and regulation. This certainly seems like the type of thing that democrats would be on board with given their behavior with other industries.
“ He continued, “They were taking us through their plans, and it was – basically just full government – full government control. Like this sort of thing, there will be a small number of large companies that will be completely regulated and controlled by the government, they told us. They said don’t even start startups – there’s just no way that they can succeed – there’s no way that we’re going to permit that to happen.”
Rogan gasped.
But Andreessen wasn’t finished. “They said that this [control of AI] is already over. It’s going to be two or three companies and we’re just gonna control them and that’s that. Like this is already finished.”
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Mharman
I get the sense the country’s centrists vote as a collective on him. I’m not entirely sure if it’s sure or why it would be if it is… perhaps Trump is so provocative that they have to take a look at him and his message- there’s no room to look at him equal or less to his opponent. So if they find things aren’t going well under a left wing administration, they will all go for him.
I think people underrate how incredibly radical and divisive the Biden administration was. There’s a reason he’s been extremely unpopular for three straight years. They what, quadrupled immigration (entirely low skilled) unilaterally, were completely open about using the USG as a racial spoils system, an obviously failed foreign policy (just look at the results!!) and while they backed off from it because it backfired (and flipped extremely important players like Musk and other tech elites to Trump) there was an effort in 2021-2022 to use the administrative state and friendly industry to effectively repeal the First Amendment and destroy freedom of speech forever. And then the inflation. While this was unavoidable to some extent they did make it worse by passing huge spending bills that weren’t needed.
And to top it all off the President himself, the person we elected to run the executive branch and to deal with foreign leaders, revealed himself to be completely incoherent and possibly senile due to his advanced age. After the debate all these leaks started coming out about how the President was only functional four hours a day, that he couldn’t stay up past 8 o clock, that he no longer recognized people he had known for years. And that this had been going on since 2022 at least. They spent years covering it up! They LIED to us for years, the entire party.
Honestly Harris over performed by a lot. I think if we reran the simulation there’s a good chance that Maine, New Hampshire, Virginia, New Jersey, Minnesota, and New Mexico all flip.
Created:
Posted in:
Also he gave her “no primary contest” which is technically true…but in this highly unusual case that was obviously bad for the incumbent party. They didn’t have a primary because there wasn’t enough time…because there was a scandal that forced the sitting POTUS out like three weeks before their convention.
And he gave her both keys for a strong economy which I don’t know how I would’ve handled but it CLEARLY wasn’t how voters saw it. And a key for major foreign policy success. I must’ve missed that huge success in between all the wars and chaos that broke out.
Yeah the model actually held up lol he was just a hack
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Greyparrot
The funniest thing about that guy is I’m pretty sure the 13 keys model would’ve actually held up if he had applied them honestly. I remember he said that there was no “Scandal” key for example…I would say the sitting POTUS having to drop out four months before the election because he was exposed as senile on national television and the conspiracy to cover that up ranks among the biggest scandals in history.
Created:
Posted in:
It’s a relatively weak victory all things considered, his 2016 map + Nevada and a popular vote margin of +1%. All the talk of Trump winning Virginia, Minnesota, Maine, etc is a pipe dream. This isn’t the Republican 2008, but it could’ve been with a better candidate.In the senate the GOP wins West Virginia, Montana, and Ohio but predictably chokes in the other close states. In the house the republicans keep their majority but it’s a similarly weak showing to 2022.
Alright so other than getting the ultimate victor right I got the most important part of my prediction wrong. Biden did actually drop out. But this prediction is pretty good, I got every state right and the PV will settle at about R +1.5%. The GOP house “victory” was indeed anemic and they choked in literally four (!) senate races where Trump won the presidential vote. But they did manage to pick up Pennsylvania by a tiny margin which is a big scalp.
If Biden had stayed in it would’ve been the Republican 2008 even with Trump.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Barney
I’ve been off for a while, what’s uncertain about the site?
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Owen_T
Lonesome Dove is huge but incredibly beautiful. I think about that book at least once a week.
It’s cliche, but Blood Meridian has the reputation it does for a reason. There’s no greater villain than The Judge. Personally I thought it was kind of a slog mixed with writing that was so good I didn’t believe it was even possible to write like that, and then the ending absolutely slapped.
The Flashman series. Hilarious and actually great for casually learning history.
Akenfield- this is my all time favorite non fiction book. It’s a series of interviews with, for lack of a better word, peasants in an English village in the mid 1960s. The overwhelming sense you get reading it is a window into a vanished society and way of life, which is both good and bad. Even though it’s technically well past that timeframe listening to some of the old people talk gives you a good idea of what the past several thousand years of life constantly on the edge of a Malthusian disaster was like.
Children of Time- extremely good hard(ish) science fiction, that was probably the last time I blew off work to read like 150 pages in one night. Didn’t hold up upon re read when I knew what would happen but I think if you go into it blind you’re in for a treat
Only if you have a kid- The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Bleak, but beautiful ending. Think about a lot. Doesn’t hit the same if you don’t have a kid but is still good
Created:
-->
@Double_R
That's insane. Even grade school children listen to Trump and remark about how dumb he sounds. He has the vocabulary of a 4th grader, he'll make a statement that was meaningless the first time and then repeat it over and over again to fill up space because that's as deep as he can get, he talks about everything as a contrast between "good people" and "bad people", and in 9 years as a politician I've never heard him go into any kind of detail on any complex subject. You can't say any of that about Biden or Harris.
Whatever lol. One thing doing formal debate in high school taught me was how difficult extemporaneous speaking actually is. You think “a four minute rebuttal? Really? I won’t even be able to bring all my points in that amount of time!” And then you actually try it and you start stumbling over your words after thirty seconds. It takes a lot of practice to hone that skill even with a subject that you’ve prepared for. I can’t imagine doing it day in and day out about all sorts of random things knowing that it will be broadcast to tens of thousands at a minimum.
I never said his performance is impressive (I even said it’s terrible by the standards of politicians!) what I said is that it’s way way better than an average member of the public would be able to do, which is true. It’s an extremely difficult skill to learn and many people would never be able to do it no matter how hard they tried. Idk how you can say that Biden is clearly so much better at this considering that like two months ago he lost a debate against Trump so badly that he had to drop out. Even before his severe cognitive decline he was known as a gaffe machine. Yet Biden is still capable of better extemporaneous speaking than about 95% of the general population imo.
Created:
-->
@Double_R
Oh you said SOUNDING intelligent. With Harris that’s hard to say, I. her previous campaign she came off extremely badly but I thought she was just one of those people who aren’t really the best under the spotlight. I would probably sound like her in a national campaign. But for me to accurately assess her abilities as a politician she would have to take questions from reporters and do interviews instead of reading from a teleprompter, which she has refused to do
Created:
Romneys education (Harvard law and MBA) and his business career speak for themselves
I can’t remember where I saw it but I remember reading that there were so few black students at Columbia law at the time that using publicly released demographic data, Obamas LSAT was around 170 using the current scale which would be a hair above 130 IQ
Created:
-->
@Double_R
Yes, I can’t tell who is more intelligent between Trump and Biden, Harris I would guess is more intelligent than Trump but by a small margin. They’re all likely in the 105-110 IQ range whereas Obama and Romney would’ve clocked in at 130ish
Source: I made it up
Created:
People underestimate how difficult it is to talk on the fly on a huge variety of subjects basically all day every day, often to a hostile or skeptical audience, without sounding stupid at least some of the time. Even politicians who are very bad at it like Trump, Biden, Harris are better at it than probably 95%+ of the general population.
Trump has said and done some stupid things but his performance as a politician is well above what an average person would be able to do. The last election with two clearly high IQ and well spoken candidates was 2012
Also:
But at his recent press event he was saying that more than 100% of job creations went to migrants. And it wasn't like he slipped and said the wrong thing. He stopped mid sentence, re-iterated it and repeated it more than once. Emphatically. What kind of moron thinks that more than 100% of jobs could go to anyone.
This just is true. Their interpretation of it or what they’re trying to imply may not be correct. But in the past few years the number of native born people in the workforce has declined while the number of foreign born people in the work force has increased. So 100% of net job growth did go to immigrants. That probably has more to do with the massive baby boomer cohort retiring than policy but it’s certainly not a moronic thing to say.
Created:
-->
@Greyparrot
Pretty much, he doesn’t morally deserve to be POTUS but it’s hard to just ignore policy. Also, it’s a little grating to hear democrats talk about “democracy” when their party was just caught red handed trying to perpetuate the biggest fraud against the people in my lifetime by lying for years about the presidents health and then installing a new candidate nobody ever voted for. Not to mention trying to put their opponent in prison for the “crime” of selecting legal expense in a drop down menu when paying your lawyer. Or trying to give amnesty for illegal immigrants to help win more elections. Nobody cares about “democracy”
Created:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
I disagree that we’re getting poorer but I would agree that it’s in spite of bad policy ( we’re growing because of technology.) It is underrated how bad some dem economic policies are. It’s baffling that California with its incredible weather and nature and longstanding powerhouse industries is losing population because they make their state miserable for productive people to live in. When Dems like Kamala talk about “equity” it scares me because I can hardly think of anything that would be worse economically than trying to forcibly equalize outcomes
Idk if you’re familiar with Richard Hannania but he said something I agree with recently, that he isn’t necessarily morally opposed to government intervention in a lot of stuff but every time it happens it just doesn’t work out the way he would want. It’s just done incompetently, the money is siphoned away by grifters, there are unintended consequences, etc. Free market is better
Created:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
Oh I don't think that was the tone of the OP.More of an animal backed into a corner giving one last warning before it strikes.
Yeah I just don’t see things that way. I think we have more agency to live conservative values in our own lives than we did in the recent past.
Just as an example, fifty years ago if you were unlucky the government would forcibly bus your kids to inner city schools where they would get no education be beaten up. And outside of private schools that mostly didn’t exist and were exorbitantly expensive it was illegal to protect them from that as homeschooling was totally banned. You had to move. If you resisted the state would take your kids. Now the state is going to pay for my kids Catholic education.
There’s been lots of moral degradation in the general population (this current culture is clearly NOT going to make it) but if you have the agency to avoid that it actually seems easier than ever to live your life…
Created:
-->
@ADreamOfLiberty
I mean yeah there are definitely millions of voters who should not have ever been here, either because they got some form of amnesty (which should never be granted to anyone ever) or because their parents were here illegally and they were automatic citizens because of our retarded birthright citizenship policy. What are you going to do about these citizens, an ethnic cleansing? The whiny attitude of “it’s over” is counter productive. There’s work to be done that can be done
Created:
-->
@SocraticGregarian96
You shouldn’t be so demoralized. Demographic change in the US electorate is already a fait accompli, it’s baked into the cake. Even adding 10m new potential hispanic voters from illegal immigrants overnight (only around half of whom would actually vote and around 35% of those whom vote Republican based on current trends, in mostly safe states) wouldn’t do much of anything to change the long term trend. Republicans are going to have to learn to adapt to an increasingly diverse electorate no matter what.
American society has changed several times throughout history. The original version of the constitution was for all intents and purposes completely destroyed by immigration in the 1800s. You just have to pick yourself up and keep going, and keep trying to advocate for a better world like you would do anyway. Nothing is ever over, no matter how low you get you can always get yourself into a better position even if certain doors are closed.
If Trump is your last hope sorry but it’s over. Even if you have faith in his abilities (despite doing nothing the first time) if democrats are so close to permanent victory that one more presidential term means they win it all, then it’s already over. There will be another Dem POTUS eventually no matter what. I’m supporting Trump for President mostly because I want him to replace Alito and Thomas because I can’t stomach the Dem appointed justices and I think Kamala is a radical but even if he wins not much will change either way.
Created:
-->
@Double_R
The executive branch doesn't control everything so I understand the position that Trump will not ultimately succeed at destroying the American experiment. But the fact that there is absolutely nothing you can show to demonstrate that he won't try is what baffles me. The naivety is striking. It's like someone taking their car to 120 with your child in the backseat. Sure they're fine now, and sure they are statistically likely to be fine the next time, but does that mean it's fine to put them in that same car again?
I don’t really disagree with that much of what you said. I do think it would be fair to say he tried to steal the 2020 election. But it was such an incompetent effort and the system is so strong that it just isn’t a threat I take seriously. I do expect him to throw a temper tantrum and file some frivolous lawsuits if he loses this time but if he couldn’t get close to overturning his loss when he was a sitting President there’s a 0% chance it happens this time.
I’m supporting him for President anyway because of other reasons you likely aren’t interested in, but I’m under no illusion, I wish I didn’t have to vote for him
Created:
-->
@Double_R
That's only the first hire. A second Trump term will result in the gutting of the federal government of anyone who serves the constitution and replace them with those who serve Trump. Let's see how easily he'll get forced out the second time once he has turned the entire executive branch into his own personal task force.
Yeah I just don’t share your confidence in the competence of an 80 year old Trump and his cronies and I think you underrate the stability of the system. I don’t think the apocalyptic rhetoric is warranted, there will be a 2028 election no matter who wins
Created:
Some type of term limit or guarantee that each POTUS has the opportunity to appoint the same number of justices is a good idea but I don’t see how you could possibly do it in a fair way at this point.
Actually I just thought of a fair way. Implement term limits or whatever type of reform is best for newly appointed justices but they don’t go into effect until 30 years from now. We’ll have to deal with the current bad system for the time being but we’ll end it there. And absolutely nobody could possibly predict what politics will be like that far in the future so it’s as “fair” as you can get, the “fog of war” from the future is the only possible way to get both sides to agree. Whichever side feels like they have dominance on the court in the near future will never agree to a change even if it’s best for the country
Created:
-->
@Moozer325
Some type of term limit or guarantee that each POTUS has the opportunity to appoint the same number of justices is a good idea but I don’t see how you could possibly do it in a fair way at this point. The current system where massive swings in power depends on when an elderly person happens to die is insane. I don’t think the founding fathers anticipated how much power SCOTUS would end up having. It’s ultimately the sovereign body in the US which is why I’m terrified of a liberal majority. The last time the left had a solid majority and decided to go for it the Warren court basically threw out the original constitution lol
Created:
-->
@Greyparrot
It’s possible. It’s a bad system but if their favored party has the house and senate SCOTUS justices should retire at even the first hint of poor health. Ginsberg not retiring under Obama was wild
Created:
-->
@Double_R
What excuses will Trump supporters offer for this one?
Dictators famously plan to step down from office in the exact time period that the constitutional order demands. He’s a narcissistic moron who doesn’t want to be a dictator but doesn’t care what happens to his country or his party after he can’t be POTUS anymore.
But I need him to replace Alito and Thomas and possibly Robert’s so he has my vote :)
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@badger
I totally disagree with you that liberals seem harmless. In the US at least the left wields asymmetric power and so the things they’re wrong about concern me a lot. Conservatives don’t seem to really do anything at all.
Here’s a few things about the left that really worry me. These are of course generalizations and not every lefty agrees with all of these but they’re things that are way way way more
common on the left than the right.
-On criminal justice there’s a subset of the left that is incredibly extremist, and will release obviously violent criminals again and again and again and again until they kill someone. But if a civilian attempts to stop these criminals even in a self defense situation they’ll come down on them
like a hammer. You may think I’m exaggerating but I’m not, look up Daniel Penney. Huge swathes of the urban United States are places so violent that it would be hard for a European to even comprehend (no offense.) The homicide rate in places like south Chicago are comparable to a country in the middle of a war. It did not used to be this way, crime rates skyrocketed in the 1960s when the left ascended.
-Their policies/behaviors on affirmative action in the workplace and education are a direct threat to my ability to make a living to support my family, and a threat to the livelihood of my own children in the future.
-The US had a developed something as close as possible to a post racial consensus that the left deliberately blew up in the 2010s by spreading completely false narratives about police brutality etc
-The position of the Democratic party on abortion is that is should be allowed for any reason the mother decides up to the moment of birth. To me that’s absolutely horrifying
-Leftist judges tend not to care about the constitution, and will just rule however they want. An interesting trend I’ve noticed in my years of watching the Supreme Court, there’s never any debate whatsoever how the liberal justices will rule on a contentious political issue. It’s not even considered by anyone for a split second. The question is always if some of the conservatives will defect. Leftist judges when they get power will ignore the constitution, precedent, and common sense and just brute force the country in the direction they want. For example for a half century the official constitutional interpretation of this clause was that it meant there was an absolute right to an abortion: “No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”
-The lefts position on parental rights is insane. They think that public school teachers have the right to talk to my children about sex and transgenderism and call them by a different name without my consent or knowledge.
-The left in the US does not believe that our country has the right to secure our border. We’ve had about ten million illegal immigrants move here since Biden took office, with the tacit support of the Democratic establishment
-The left does not believe in freedom of speech which is extremely important to me as it’s a right my people have had for centuries. The right has basically won on this issue in the past few years but the stuff I personally witnessed in 2020 is something I’ll never forget. I saw people lose their jobs for saying really milquetoast stuff in private conversations with people they thought were their friends.
That’s just off the top of my head. I hate a lot about the modern right too, like their retardation, the conspiracy theories, wanting to cut taxes for billionaires for some reason, but the left scares me more
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@IlDiavolo
I’ve gotten this impression too but we will see with his speech. I don’t think people really change that often, especially 78 year olds, but it does happen. More likely than a true change, a temporary one after a near death experience that is long enough to last for the remaining three months of the campaign is certainly possible too.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Moozer325
Not a fan. I don’t think it will move too much but this is a bad pick, Vance adds nothing to the ticket and has a lot of potential downsides
Created:
-->
@Moozer325
I doubt more than 1% of people support what he did. Even people who hate Trump to the extent that they would like to see him *redacted* would overwhelmingly prefer it to be through some formal governmental process. Some random schizo capping a nominee and former president while also killing innocent people isn’t something any sane person supports
Created:
Posted in:
Like him or not, Trump is the main character and has plot armor. I’ve substantially revised my estimate of him winning again upwards, not because I think anyone will really be moved by this but because of the narrative.
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@WyIted
I don’t think they’ll be able to pass over the first black woman vice president. Live by identity politics die by identity politics
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@WyIted
Him remaining President is a serious issue. I don’t like Kamala but she’s an intelligent adult who seems to be “all there” and is comparatively young. It’s so absurd that he’s asking to be POTUS for another 4.5 years. Insulting
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@cristo71
Yeah but they’re fun and if you’re right you look smart, if you’re wrong you can say “hey I don’t got a crystal ball!”
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@WyIted
Literally day 1 the war in the Ukraine stops with both sides pissed about the concessions they have to make, and piaaing and moaning from war hawks.
Foreign leaders are somewhat afraid of Trump because of the madman theory and his ego making him not want stuff to happen under “his watch.” Biden is just so feckless it’s not surprising that there’s been so much chaos during his term
Created:
Posted in:
-->
@Savant
I don’t think Trump has the policy chops to implement real changes and he also doesn’t have his ego under control enough to essentially hand the keys to aids who know what they’re doing. But to be honest I haven’t read the full project 2025 document, I just saw some stuff democrats were freaking out about that I was pretty confident aren’t going to happen. There could be some more modest stuff in there that gets done
Created:
Posted in:
PS, even if it’s Kamala and not Biden the scandal of hiding the presidents rapidly deteriorating mental state from the American people isn’t one that can be easily shaken. Everybody knew, and they lied
Created:
Posted in:
Here are mine which are probably all wrong:
Biden does not drop out. He has few if any “senior moments” from here on out because access to him will be carefully planned and limited and he will slowly claw back support, but too much damage is done and Trump wins. It’s a relatively weak victory all things considered, his 2016 map + Nevada and a popular vote margin of +1%. All the talk of Trump winning Virginia, Minnesota, Maine, etc is a pipe dream. This isn’t the Republican 2008, but it could’ve been with a better candidate.
In the senate the GOP wins West Virginia, Montana, and Ohio but predictably chokes in the other close states. In the house the republicans keep their majority but it’s a similarly weak showing to 2022.
Thomas and Alito retire in the first years of Trump’s term. Trump is about as unpopular as he was in his first term, give or take a few % either way. None of the “project 2025” stuff happens. Trump doesn’t do much of anything as POTUS.
Very little happens on immigration because both sides quietly realize that a growing population is key to economic growth and a real decline in living standards is the one thing the population absolutely will not tolerate. However there will be some change to the antiquated, post WWII asylum system. Smart Dems realize that hoards of dependents being able to overwhelm the border and stay in the country on taxpayer dime if they say a few magic words is a long term strategic threat to their party. The fiscal situation continues to get worse as Trump extends at least some of his tax cuts without meaningful spending cuts. There is a free and fair election in 2028, democracy doesn’t end and Trump leaves with his ego satisfied. Entitlements are not touched. Biden is remembered as the guy who let Trump back into office
Created:
-->
@Double_R
It gave Trump more than he was asking for. Trump's attorneys argued that if the president were impeached and convicted by the Senate then he could be criminally charged for official acts. The SC ruled that he could not be charged regardless.
Not even close. he wanted blanket immunity which is just as ridiculous as saying the president doesn’t have any immunity for anything.
I've addressed why extensively on this page the left wing freak out is not dramatic at all. Do you have any arguments against them?
Didn’t read anything past the OP but have been seeing the collective freak out online by people reading into a histrionic dissent instead of the actual majority opinion. Decided to share my own opinion
Created:
-->
@cristo71
The truth about Sotomayer that isn’t the care for Kagan and doesn’t seem to be the case for Jackson(although the jury is still out) is that she’s genuinely unintelligent. People shouldn’t take the claims made in the dissent which is NOT the law at face value
Created: