This election proved that there are a lot of dumb-asses that need to go back to school to take U.S. Government, Civics, and Economics because they didn’t learn it the first time, or they never had to take them to graduate high school. Seriously, why in the f#ck would you entrust the economy to a dumbf#ck who bankrupted TWO casinos!! The freaking business model, of a casino, is people walk in, then over the course of two to four hours hand you all their money and then leave. You REALLY have to be a dumbf#ck to fail at that.
Americans are even dumber than that.
A few weeks before the election Donald Trump and Elon Musk had a little circle jerk podcast interview with each other. They spent time talking about how anti-union they are and how much they hate worker’s rights. Then working class Americans went out in droves and voted for those two rich assholes who openly talked about wishing workers had less rights.
We made a guy who was the first president in U.S. history to stand on a picket line with striking workers step down because he was old. Then we hired another equally old rich guy who openly talks about wishing workers had less rights.
That’s how stupid Americans are. And this election showed us that the majority of Americans are that stupid. When a majority of a society is that stupid, there are no happy endings. We’re set for a period of long decline.
Yes, I remember the reports on that podcast. (There was no way that I could listen to it.) Apparently, common sense has left the building. When I took ancient history, another student asked how or why did the Roman Empire fall. (Honestly, the answer has multiple factors.) However, we have witnessed the reason why the U.S. will fail. The republicans’ planned results of demolishing the education system has seen fruition and the plot of “Idiocracy” has come to pass.
“The government that you elect is the government you deserve.” — Thomas Jefferson
If everyone knew U.S. Government & Economics, they would also know that there isn’t too much they president can do to improve the economy. He can make it worse quickly with bad policies, but not much on improving it. He cannot control the Fed or prices. The last president who tried to control prices was Nixon with a prices freeze, and that started the dominoes which made everything worse all the way through to the end of Carter’s term. The presidential policies that can effect the economy for good, most of the time, take a year or more to see results. Basically, that’s why the republicans get credit for improving the economy, from the democratic president before him. This is the first time that there’s been a ‘soft landing’ from inflation, if memory serves.
“The government that you elect is the government you deserve.” — Thomas Jefferson
Yup. That’s actually why I’m almost relieved in a way. The last 4 years I spent A LOT of time on social media trying to combat misinformation by spreading factual data. It didn’t matter. Americans aren’t intersted in learning. Many aren’t even interested in doing their civic duty by voting. So now I’m hands off. I’m just here to watch the slow (or maybe fast) collapse. I honestly don’t believe there’s much to be done about it at this point.
The collected data over time is there. Freely available. It clearly shows us which choice was the more intelligent choice. And we ignored that and chose poorly at a vital point in American history, despite being given all the warning signs.
We are simply a society set up to fail.
We have definitely started the slow burn of our country. We may be seeing the reason why the ‘founding fathers’ did not want and think that the ‘common man’ should be allowed to vote. Back then, the common man did not own property and was not educated. Maybe they thought that the common man lacked the knowledge and insight to understand the nuances of governing. I strongly believe that this past voting cycle showed a strong lack of understanding, emotional myopathy, and the pure racism & sexism that exists in our country.
Yes but Trump, Musk, Thiel, and other billionaires will get a little bit richer and all they had to do was tell a bunch of stupid fucking yokels that it’s okay to be bigoted trash.
If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.
- Lyndon B. Johnson
Yes but Trump, Musk, Thiel, and other billionaires will get a little bit richer
You all still don’t get it.
It’s not that people were convinced they’d get richer. It’s that they’ve gotten significantly poorer over the last four years while Dems were in charge.
How are “Dems in charge” when Republicans have had a majority in both Congress and the Supreme Court for years now? For half the time there was also a Republican President.
It is crazy to me that when the GOP essentially ran the government and still did absolutely nothing for this country and didn’t follow through on anything they blamed the “deep state” and people still bought into it.
The economy moves slowly. The impacts on your pocketbook over the last 4 years were a direct result of the tariffs trump imposed during his previous stint in the White House, his absolutely abysmal reaction to Covid, and several other things he and his cronies did during that time.
Biden fixed much of that, and as a result, inflation in the US slowed so it was less than in other countries that were impacted by many of the same market forces. It was already too much to completely reverse, but it was far better than it would have been otherwise.
But instead of understanding what actually happened, loads of people seem to think the president can just flip a lever and the whole economy will turn on a dime – despite decades and decades that show that the economy is always better under democrats. Because democrats fix things, so the next republican administration looks good for a few years, then republicans break things, so the next democrat administration looks bad for the first few years. The economy is as nimble as the Titanic.
So now, the US has voted the same guy back in who wrecked the economy that we’re still feeling the effects of, so he can reverse Biden’s improvements and instead make it far, far worse.
People’s inability to learn the absolute basics of how the economy works is about to fuck us all.
e: formatting
Biden fixed much of that,
Fixed it how, exactly?
What precisely did Biden do that affects the working class and poor, who from where I’m sitting, are convinced they’ve been abandoned. They’re convinced of this because their expenses have doubled and tripled, and if they’ve gotten better pay at all, it hasn’t kept up with the cost-of-living increases.
You can discuss economic theory until you’re blue in the face. Biden had a mandate for real change and failed in the most basic way, and Americans are working 2-3 jobs to scrape by in this country.
8 Ways the Biden Administration Is Improving the Lives of Service Workers
Biden’s Unheralded War on Poverty
And previously:
The Biden Boom: Economic Recovery in 2021
And more recently:
Bidenomics Is Starting to Transform America. Why Has No One Noticed?
I don’t have time right now to go through and create a short bullet list from these, but I highly suggest you read them. The information is there. I have many more lesser-reported policies, and I can make a summary list tomorrow.
I’ll do that, thanks for the info.
I’m going to be hard to convince. I had to loan my car to my 80 year-old parents in April, because if they don’t drive for DoorDash they’ll be homeless. Further, at least in my social circle, most of the people I know have cut back tremendously due to this economy.
That’s hard for me to digest, especially after seeing the Federal Government come down hard on people who created scarcity and then overcharged for PPE during COVID. It’s just no secret they can do more.
I was angry about Biden in 2020, but between the infrastructure act, the chips act, and the soft landing, while I’ve had a difficult few years I actually liked his leadership (for what it was). I saw him as an old centrist who did a lot of bad things in the senate, and yeah that’s probably what’s in his heart of hearts. And while his pushes towards American sustainability were not as good as I wanted but better than we’ve had in a long time. He focused on long term and stabilizing policies to prevent recession, something we all expected that never came. He also put a lot of emphasis on not ignoring the things that needed done but had been put on the back burner for years like the bridges that former DOT officials refused to use. There’s also his FTC, with Lena Kahn being an aggressive advocate for the American people and being the only person in his administration that brought the energy that we needed.
I don’t think Biden will be remembered highly. His economic strategies were of the “build long term stability through slow and methodical action” variety in a country devastated by decades of short term economic thinking. But more than that, he repeatedly insisted on an outdated style of governance, one based on the assumption that bipartisan cooperation was possible. He didn’t commit Ford’s sin, but he was too soft handed with the J6ers. More than anything, as the nation crumbled he acted as though sound economic policy and diligent justice that prioritized appearing nonpartisan would save us. Also his waiting to step down and placing his VP who did just terribly in the primaries he only won by mass dropout as his replacement was not good.
I suspect he will be remembered alongside the likes of Calvin Coolidge and Andrew Johnson. But yeah, I was surprisingly impressed by his economic and infrastructure policies, even though they were more slow than ideal.
Please do, and thanks for being open-minded. I’m going to copy part of a comment I made from the other day so you know where I’m coming from:
I’m fully disabled, and most of my friends and family died within the last few years, so I have no support network.
I’m already struggling to survive, having to choose between food and medicine, and am overdrawn every month. All my savings are gone. I have literally no money to my name, and have been barely staving off homelessness for months. I rely completely on social services now, which trump has vowed to cut.
I will not survive this administration. My fellow Americans have voted for me to die.
I’ve spent a lot of time truly learning about how all of this works, because it affects me more than most people. I am not kidding that I’m pretty sure I won’t survive another trump administration. That’s based on objective fact. Things will be getting a lot worse for your parents soon, too, and I’m very sorry for that. We were on track to actually recover and improve our conditions, and that progress will now be reversed.
I really wish US voters weren’t so susceptible to misinformation and propaganda, but here we are.
That all tracks. I’m sorry we’re a country that doesn’t take care of its people. I’m used to doing the good that I can with my own two hands, in full knowledge that this country won’t, but I was pleasantly surprised that my state (Missouri) voted down an abortion ban and to approve a $15 minimum wage in the election last week, so at least here it isn’t all bad. (Yet.)
I’m a Green Party voter, so both sides hate me and generally blame me no matter how the election goes, and I’ve found myself vehemently disgusted with both Democrats and Republicans, particularly over the last 30 years as both parties have become proxies for monied American business interests. Growing up the son of a self-employed roofing contractor taught me a lot about how little this country will do to help you, being part of a family that did well half the year and was dirt poor the other half.
They see big corporations making huge profits and somehow come to the conclusion it must be the illegal immigrants who are causing the problem (?)
In part, yes.
I’ve seen it myself as the son of a roofing contractor who votes Republican because when he was younger and his business was thriving, his bids were undercut by other companies using illegal labor. Now he’s in his 80’s and driving for DoorDash, because that’s the only job he can get and Biden and Co. aren’t going to do anything to help his situation if he doesn’t find a way to make money.
I’m just one person in America, but there are millions of stories like this. It really can’t be denied that while there are many positive effects of immigration, there are also negative effects, and those can become more pronounced when illegal immigration numbers increase as dramatically as they have in the past four years.
With that said, nearly every working class American is struggling on some level, having watched their grocery, utility, and rent costs double and triple over the last four years. They may not even give a shit about immigration, but they do care that they’re working 60-80 hours a week (or more) and their pay isn’t sufficient to deal with the cost of living.
And Dems wasted months of the campaign telling struggling people to be joyful.
“Increase as dramatically as they have in the past four years” But have they really. The numbers I’m seeing don’t seem to support your point:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/646261/unauthorized-immigrant-population-in-the-us/ Shows that generally the number of Unauthorized immigrants increased from 1990 at 3.5 million to 11.31 in 2006, and have bounced around 10.49 to 11.75 (2016) up to 10.99 in 2022.
https://www.factcheck.org/2024/02/breaking-down-the-immigration-figures/
https://usafacts.org/articles/what-can-the-data-tell-us-about-unauthorized-immigration/
because that’s the only job he can get and Biden and Co. aren’t going to do anything to help his situation if he doesn’t find a way to make money.
What’s Trump going to do for his situation?
“Our guy is as bad as their guy” isn’t the blistering retort you think it is.
Harris wasn’t as bad as Trump, that’s the galling thing.
But really, it doesn’t matter now and I’m done arguing about it.
We’re all going to suffer, but the fire that will warm my heart for the next four years is all the calories I’ll burn telling Trump voters. Stein voters, and non-voters that they are getting what they voted for.
We’re all going to suffer, but the fire that will warm my heart for the next four years is all the calories I’ll burn telling Trump voters. Stein voters, and non-voters that they are getting what they voted for.
I mean, pretending you’re better than everyone else is definitely a choice. Democrats used to be the party of the working poor but they’ve morphed into the party of ideological superiority.
I must admit I’m a tad shocked watching you folks double down on all your mistakes after this last election.
One thing I’ve learned is that Kamela Harris needed to just play a PSA explaining why the hell a Tarrif is.
The issue is you can’t teach someone who not only doesn’t want to learn, they react in opposition to the idea of understanding anything outside of emotional reactions.
That’s where cult deprogramming comes into play. There are people who specialize in getting people out of that kind of mindset your argument describes. The rest of us need to do our part and educate, even if it doesn’t always have the impact we hope in the moment.
There are people who specialize in getting people out of that kind of mindset your argument describes.
We have enough of those people to do this for the majority of Americans?
The rest of us need to do our part and educate
I love your optimism. But it just won’t work. We now know the majority of Americans are ignorant and uninterested in learning, even from mistakes. You can present these people with facts and stats and infallible logic all day long and it won’t make a difference.
We gleefully voted in a convicted felon and rapist who ALREADY had a failed presidency and openly talked about being anti-union and anti-worker rights who stated on national television that he had the concept of plans.
The only direction this society is going is down.
We have enough of those people to do this for the majority of Americans?
Only one way to find out.
Pessimism may feel true, but just because something feels true doesn’t make it true.
No one knows the future. But if we don’t learn from out mistakes, it’s likely we will keep making them.
But if we don’t learn from out mistakes
We already haven’t.
it’s likely we will keep making them.
We already have.
It isn’t just that we failed a test. We failed the most obvious test we could have possibly been given. This was the most blatant decision we’re ever likely to make as a society in our lifetimes. And we utterfly failed.
We already haven’t.
It’s a week since election day.
We already have.
It’s a week since election day.
This was the most blatant decision we’re ever likely to make as a society in our lifetimes.
This was the most blatant decision we’re ever likely to make as a society in our lifetimes so far.
It’s a week since election day.
You don’t understand. We ALREADY tried the Trump thing and it failed miserably. We aren’t even done living with the negative effects of that experience. We have one of the most poignant examples in history of what creeping fascism/authoritarianism can lead to. There are people still alive today that can tell us about it.
We don’t listen. We don’t learn.
This was the most blatant decision we’re ever likely to make as a society in our lifetimes so far.
We’re doubtful to ever experience a more black and white election than what we just experienced. And we still managed to fail.
I sincerely doubt most of these stories are actually happening. It’s true. But I doubt the actual interaction occurred. Seeing this same story different ways all over the internet. I live in a region surrounded by right wingers and aside from those flags and occasional hats, I hardly ever hear anyone outright talk about their politics.
As an European: The Brexiteers who “suddenly” were excluded from free travel and prolonged stays within EU due to their own voting gave a stream of similar stories. It was and is hilarious to watch.
I do believe that such dialogues are really happening and will continue to happen in the US around the clock from now on.
