Trump could have had it so easy by basically doing nothing, letting the soft landing happen, while doing Project 2025 stuff quietly in the background. But between Trump's insatiable desire for tariffs and Elon embracing unpopular austerity, they made things harder for themselves long term
Obviously there's a long way to go, and the odds the US emerges from all of this as a functioning liberal democracy are still far lower than I'd like them to be. But we've been blessed with the stupidest fucking enemies imaginable.
These guys should be the vaccine against fascism. The literal weakest, most inept version imaginable that we should pound into the sand and cause us to redouble our defenses against it... unfortunately our immune system is immediately post-chemo levels of useless.
A white blood cell with an exaggerated southern accent shouting, "Just let them through! Someone else will take care of it once they do enough damage, then people will miss us!"
careful. there may be more to this madness than meets the eye. again, yarvin. which is compatible with a firesale of america, to be bought up by the very folks destroying it (and their allies). so long as the current system is vacated and the void filled by oligarchs.
I still have faith we come out of this with a literal Green New Deal and my grandkids talk about the AOC/Walz/Pritzker era in their APUSH classes and visit the massive works projects on field trips.
They do so many tweets/truths about very unpopular things! Why don’t they just do them and shut up about them? No one would notice until it’s too late!
Exactly. Vance could have been the savior of the party just by keeping his head down until Trump deteriorated enough to be removed, then getting rid of Musk and DOGE and governing as a normal Republican. But now he's poisoned the foreign policy well.
Yeah, given his role in the abhorrent foreign policy, Vance has made it so that if the US manages to depose Trump and tries to convince old allies "we've changed! really! trust us again, please!" getting rid of Vance too will have to be necessary, as proof of evidence.
Spot on! Trump has united our allies against us. Elon has made Tesla toxic. Few people other than government employees have been directly affected so far, but there are enough Veterans who are government employees for everyone see the writing on the wall. The T-Cells are now on full alert!
I would say in the short term, too. Trump has made the flag of Ukraine a symbol of resistance like the old Confederate flag. Elon has made Tesla toxic. The body politic needs galvanizing shocks for its immune system to kick in. My sense is that this is happening now.
This is what gets me. If they had waited a few months, the GOP Congress probably would’ve authorized 95% of what they wanted. Instead they ran headlong off a cliff like the drug-addicted morons they all are.
his problem is that he has no interest in being a constitutional president, he wants to demand things and then yell and demean people until it happens or he gets distracted.
I'm not entirely sure who I'm referring to here, but it applies to both of them.
It is difficult for such cool headed methods to take place when your ideology is inherently insane. It reminds me of people saying oh the Nazis might have won if they didn't do the Holocaust or invade the ussr. Well maybe, but their ideology demanded it. They wouldn't be who they are without this.
They’ve fucked up the brand for all their international fascist friends too. Everyone’s looking at their local fascist party like “wait you want to do THAT??”
Overwhelm, demoralize, disorganize the opposition, breaking the ability to resist. A blitzkrieg by executive order.
Soon enough they won't even have to pretend to obey laws.
And Trump's old. Putin needs him to entrench Vance and Musk before he's gone.
DOGE could have done the same thing more slowly over the course of a year, and probably with Congressional support. But no! They had to do everything all at once *right now*
(I realize this is no guarantee of anything still, it is genuinely very bad, and yet)
oh, wow, it's so sane over here. no one else mentioned either. are people taking elon's words at face value? bit surprising, given his... history and mental state
Not to mention openly and repeatedly stating his desire to betray or outright conquer territory from longtime allies, turning this country into a rogue pariah state and diplomatically isolating it from the rest of the world
Ideologically speaking, is it possible to be a fascist and not "screw things up," as it were?
It's been a long time and I still don't think we've seen the mythical Competent Fascist. Arguably, going fascist is a direct response to suffering the consequences of incompetence...
I've thinking about this, and I think the closest you find are in the military juntas (at least the long lasting ones) - Spain, Portugal, Argentina. The common thread there is 1. The loyalty of the army; and 2. Authoritarian but not utterly incompetent (YMMV).
This is kind of naive to me. In many places authoritarian regimes are almost impossible to remove even when they deliver catastrophic economic results.
I knew he'd screw up the economy but didn't think he could do it so quickly. Hopefully, that is what hobbles this whole regime, but as you said, there's a long way to go with a lot of damage and hurt coming for many.
People will say they voted for the economy. The facts don’t support voting Republican for fiscal health.
It was always an excuse to vote in favor of bigotry.
I think that's pretty unfair. A lot of low-info voters voted Trump to punish Dems for "causing inflation", or stayed home when they voted for Biden in 2020
This is a good thing! These are gettable votes. People are not wedded to the ideology here, they're wedded to lower egg prices
There are three horses running in a Trump presidency: malice, incompetence, and cholesterol. Malice and incompetence fight it out every day, but cholesterol only has to win once.
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#MAGA is a cult! For #morons!
I mean, in the next election he could have owned all the "positives" and none of the chaos if he could have...just kept his mouth shut.
But he is who he is.
I'm not entirely sure who I'm referring to here, but it applies to both of them.
Soon enough they won't even have to pretend to obey laws.
And Trump's old. Putin needs him to entrench Vance and Musk before he's gone.
(I realize this is no guarantee of anything still, it is genuinely very bad, and yet)
1. yarvin plan
2. control the taps, siphon/redirect
elon cares about one thing: elon
But he always chooses the wrong, terrible path.
But now it's run out of gas, and all the problems are coming home to roost...
Its all just so perfectly apt, they couldn't help themselves
It's been a long time and I still don't think we've seen the mythical Competent Fascist. Arguably, going fascist is a direct response to suffering the consequences of incompetence...
If Q1 is April-June and Q2 is July-September, then, yes
You would reach more people, when you add a good description into the Alt-text field.
That is pretty easy, especially, when your image just contain text.
This way, you support visually impaired people and everyone else, who rely on a good filled Alt-text.
#accessibility
It was always an excuse to vote in favor of bigotry.
This is a good thing! These are gettable votes. People are not wedded to the ideology here, they're wedded to lower egg prices
I guess