Who said anything about “being shitty humans?”

I’m talking about a very specific dynamic - a civilization in which there is widespread citizen discontent and whether the government acts to alleviate that discontent legitimately or merely acts to divert or stifle it.

The former allows for solutions so allows for recovery. The latter leaves the problems to rot and fester, and is a death sentence.

This is the primary reason that I say the United States is terminally ill - that the only possible future is collapse.

When faced with popular discontent, the leaders of a nation have exactly two choices - to attempt to deal with the issues that cause the discontent, or to refuse to deal with the issues and instead just try to squash or distract from the discontent.

A nation that has chosen the latter is living on borrowed time, since the discontent is still there, lurking below the surface, will always be there as long as the cause remains unaddressed, and will, sooner or later, burst into the open again, even more toxic and violent than it was the last time.

Much though the ruling class might wish to believe otherwise there is no third alternative. There’s no magic wand they can wave to make the discontent vanish. They can either work to eliminate it by eliminating its cause(s), or they can watch while it weakens and eventually destroys the nation.

And the US has clearly chosen that latter path. In fact, it could broadly be said that that’s the exact purpose of the Trump presidency - a concerted and organized effort by elements of the ruling class to establish a government specifically dedicated to refusing to address the causes of discontent and to instead merelybtry to distract from it or squash it.

And it will ultimately fail. It can’t do otherwise.

In almost 30 years of posting online, I don’t know of any instance in which I’ve ever gotten anybody to reflect and shift their views on anything.

I presume it’s happened a time or two, but I have no knowledge of any specific instance.

Broadly, while I necessarily write in response to other posters, my responses aren’t really intended for them - they’re intended for the lurkers.

According to a February Quinnipiac poll, about half disapprove of how Democrats in Congress are handling their job, compared with about 4 in 10 who approve.

How can even 4 in 10 approve? What is there to approve of?

There is no “doing their jobs well” or "doing their jobs poorly " - most of the Democrats in Congress aren’t doing their jobs at all.

1. It doesn’t “expose” anything really, since that implies that it was formerly hidden and it very much wasn’t. Trump and his co-conspirators and mercenaries have been very clear that their position is that the rules only apply to other people literally since day one.

2. Legal concepts are only relevant if they’re enforced - if they’re not, then they’re just meaningless mouth noises that might as well not exist at all. So the real problem isn’t that Trump et al consider themselves above the law, but that damned near NOBODY in the entire fucking government is doing one single thing to disabuse them of that notion.

Nobody’s as bad as he is, but she’s certainly an awful human.

But that’s not really relevant. It’s just that from what I’ve seen, she tries to stay as far away from him as possible - preferably in another state. So I assume being given an excuse to be in a different coutry would be okay by her.

I get the impression that Melania would be fine with that - that she’d take any excuse to be as far as possible away from that stinky lump of congealed fat and bronzer.

As I point out over and over, it’s all actually clear evidence of the simple fact that he’s profoundly mentally ill.

By any objective standard, the man is a raving lunatic, and deeply emotionally disturbed. He not only shouldn’t be president - he shouldn’t even be allowed out on his own. He needs extensive mental health care, or barring that, he needs to be kept away from any opportunity to do harm, because he self-evidently is incapable of moderating his own behavior into anything even vaguely approaching healthy.

And the most insane and incomprehensible part of this timeline, to me, is that there are so many people who apparently can’t see that, when it’s so bludgeoningly obvious, or who can see it but pretend that they don’t.

If I didn’t know better, I’d assume that somebody went out and found a smelly old derelict locked in an argument with God in a dirty alley somewhere, gave him a shave, a suit and a layer of bronzer, and made him president.

The timing here is what makes this move particularly baffling…

It’s only baffling if you cling to the ever-more-laughable belief that the Democrats are any sort of meaningful opposition.

If you instead simply shift to the ever-more-supported belief that they are in fact essentially oligarchic co-conspirators, then the timing makes perfect sense.

And all because Columbia backed out of a $400 million real estate deal with Trump decades ago, and Trump is profoundly mentally ill.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/nyregion/trump-columbia-university-400-million.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5k4._mce.EeQP47eDVqah

That whole family is just rich white trash, aren’t they?

And the bidding will start at $1 billion. Do I hear 1.1 Billion?

stop pretending that voters base their entire fucking vote on the identity of the candidate as an excuse to run dogshit neoliberal campaigns.

Preach.

Fat lot of good it’ll likely do, but still.

Are we actually asking if an utterly vile, demonstrably corrupt, entirely self-serving psychopath who’s overseeing a genocide, a violent incremental land grab and repeated attempts to provoke wars with four different neighbors has “finally lost America?”

Every time I think this timeline couldn’t possibly be more fucked up, it shocks me yet again.

Whoever ends up being the candidate will get literally billions of dollars in earned media by simply “becoming” the candidate. The whole drama of it suddenly engages what is currently a completely disengaged voting populace.

This is the most important bit IMO.

At this point, I don’t even think of dumping Biden as just a satisfactory fallback position, but as a winning strategy, and specifically for this reason.

It’s not as if Biden suddenly became a weak candidate the night of the debate - he’s been a weak candidate all along. As I just said earlier, the only thing that changed with the debate is that more people came to that conclusion.

And all it would take to motivate the base - to get Democrats enthused in a way that they haven’t been since 2008 - is to throw open the nomination. That would bring the race a sense of excitement and hope that hasn’t just been missing since the debate, but all along.