Link to the archived Tweet
Leopards
On each side people are voting who they believe is the “lesser evil”. A third party doesn’t really need much popularity to start a landfall
That’s a solid point. They are both shit. Proof: they alternate and things keep getting worse for US and outside of it (as result of US policies or direct wars)
My party is slightly less bad than yours is the worst argument you can put. Be honest, they both don’t care about us.
If you said you’d not include the name, you might want to edit this image…
Ryan is the person asking to take the screenshot
Just insane this is happening.
Um, this was a campaign promise. He promised to raise tariffs, and the natural reaction of the market to new tariffs is to drop. This isn’t surprising, this is expected, and Trump said as much.
If you didn’t want that, you shouldn’t have elected Trump. Simple as. I didn’t want that, so I didn’t vote for Trump. Simple as.
Even if you expected some tariffs the degree and arbitrariness have exceeded almost every expectation. Charitably you could have assumed he meant he would implement tariffs in a way that makes some kind of sense, you know, warning well in advance so businesses can actually plan for them.
It’s kind of amazing the market hasn’t dropped even more now that the administration has revealed that it has no guard rails guiding Trump’s dementia fueled decisions and that he doesn’t give a fuck about wall street at all.
Yeah, Trump is a real estate guy, and I expect he has a relatively small allocation to stocks in his portfolio. So he probably doesn’t care all that much about Wall Street.
That said, he did give several warnings. He campaigned on a platform of across the board tariffs (I think he even mentioned his 10% figure), he tried doing tariffs at the start and backed off, and now he’s committing to them. So that’s several months of warning, not necessarily for the actual numbers, but for the general direction.
It absolutely is alarming though. But that’s kind of Trump’s MO, he holds his cards close, and is usually bluffing, but sometimes he actually takes action.
The knuckleheads all thought that the other countries would be paying the tariffs because they didn’t understand how tariffs work.
well, it’s been a quick and painful way to educate the American population on specific economic theories and topics
A few did. Many still don’t understand, and some are doing some pretty impressive mental gymnastics to make it sound like it’s Biden’s fault somehow.
You don’t even need to get into economic theory, just tell them it’s a hidden sales tax, and that’s all they’ll need to know. Tariffs are pretty simple:
- product gets taxed when it comes into our country
- companies increase the price of goods to pay the tax
- products are more expensive for customers, because of that tax
They won’t see the tax when they buy stuff, but it’s still there, and it’s largely the same as if the fed government levied a nationwide sales tax, but it only applies to imports. Most US-made stuff relies on imported materials, so it even impacts them.
The Harris campaign literally did this, I want to say in a sideswipe during the debate. And Trump said nuh-uh, it’s not a tax, and the campaign more or less shut up about it, wasn’t a core feature of their advertising, stump speech, or debate strategy going forward, they opted for “save our institutions” and “he’s going to raise the ever nebulous cost of living” (which got lost in the Biden is responsible for bird flu egg prices noise from the other side). Can you imagine betting it all on courting Republican voters, and being so easily talked off of the “he’s going to tax you more” hill? I know hindsight is 20/20, but that’s some frustrating shit to think about
“Tariffs are a Trump tax” was a core message of the Harris campaign… (Trump really was planning to tariff the entire world 10% since last August!) The last months of the campaign befoee election day are a blur to me, but did Harris really drop that line after the debate? I really doubt it.
Neither do Democrats or they would have used that information to win the election.
I find this baffeling. Multiple people, on different topics did disagree with his campaigns promises, and voted for him against their best interest. (Farmers for exemple) Their justification ? “He won’t do it”. Are you telling me you are voting for someone who promises to do things, in the hope that he does all the other things but the one that would negatively impact you ? REALLY ?!
But you see, America is the Greatest Country in the World™, and therefore anyone they elect as President can’t be that bad. It doesn’t matter if he repeatedly states how he absolutely will be that bad, he won’t actually do the things he says he’ll do because those things Can’t Happen Here.
Couple of days ago there was a news item here in the Netherlands about a Dutch tulip grower. And his dad was wearing a MAGA hat. And this old man was saying that Trump was doing the right thing even though his business is negatively affected by Trump’s tariffs. Seriously, conservatives all have brain worms or something. Or they hate everyone else so much that they would gladly suffer to see other people get hurt.
Our agrarian sector is indeed not known for its progressive outlook, so I’m not surprised.
Currently nitrogen deposition is a big issue as it fucks up local plantlife. Their lobby has been downplaying this problem since it became known in the fucking 80’s, hindering every political attempt to take action.
Now that the point has been reached where action needs to be taken they are all Pickachu-faced and shouting “how did this happen, it’s the fault of the leftwing treehuggers”. No, fuck the farming lobby in particular for kicking that can down the lane for 40 years.
Blissfully ignoring the consequences of adverse actions and acting as if nothing bad will come out of it is fully ingrained in their thought process.
I always assume politicians won’t keep the promises I like and will keep the promises I don’t. Generally speaking, I’ve been pretty right about that.
That said, Trump did these tariffs in his last term, so I don’t understand why anyone would think he wouldn’t do it again.
Literally yes. I recall there was a study (can’t find it now) which showed that people who vote for extreme candidates often do so under the assumption that they won’t actually follow through with their promises, and hence the vote is more about “sending a message.” In some sense, it is a sick version of normalcy bias.
Common clay of the new west and so on
it is depressing how much people in the US care about their little stack of chips over anything else.
When you don’t have a solid social safety net, 30+ years of indoctrination of “individualism good, family and friend support bad”, a medical system that is built for profit and generations of both subtle and obvious propaganda that the more money you have the better of a person you are, I can understand why people protect their small stack of chips.
Lmao they still think they can vote these racist parasites out of power.
The vote is a warning, not a request.
Voting for Newsom is a warning that fascism will continue. That trans and unhoused people will continue to be attacked.
“Wait, this affects me? That changes EVERYTHING!”
That’s what makes it even more awful. They’re so selfish.
On one hand I’m happy he’s changed his opinion… On another how the fuck do you have two functioning brain cells and vote for this shit stain to begin with… 😡
Mama told you the stove was hot.
It’s worse… Mama told you the stove was hot… You grabbed it and lost one hand… Then you went and grabbed it again and with the other hand…
Not even toddlers are this stupid, Republicans legit have brain damage
Gavin Newsom? He does not need republican votes to win in a blue state.
Republicans: Useless, even when try try to do the right thing
The difference is that this affects his voters’ (the ones with any money) place in the hierarchy. If their retirement accounts zero out, they’re no different from the poor people they consider themselves above and made so many choices to separate themselves from. If they introspect a little bit, they might even say “then what have I been working so hard all this time for?”
The dems become the rational alternative. These Trump voters can hold their nose and vote for a little less brutality on the trans folks and a little more DEI lip service as long as they stabilize the market.
Meanwhile ofc the dems are likely to keep 80% of the immigrant deportation policies, tax cuts for the rich, etc.
Meanwhile ofc the dems are likely to keep 80% of the immigrant deportation policies, tax cuts for the rich, etc.
Listen, 80% of fascism is still better than 100% of fascism so we have to vote for Congressman Lil’ Hitler 2. You leftists can’t just get everything you want. Sometimes you have to triangulate between the guy with the Sea-Do business owner with six sexual harassment complaints, the seventh generation plantation heiress trying to dodge any kind of inheritance taxes, and the Groyper with the confederate flag face tattoo. You don’t have room to flirt with Starbucks unionized workers or migrant farm labor or college professionals with enormous student debts or black church parishes, because they were automatically going to vote for you anyway.
The dems become the rational alternative.
What could possibly be more rational than this?
Vote for Dick Cheney’s Daughter’s Best Friend or you aren’t serious about beating the Republican Party.
I’m all in for Trump randomly deporting immigrant citizens, sending a mob at the capitol, breaking the lives of millions of the minorities and the poorest, being best friend with a pedophile, insulting our allies and threatening annexion of other coutries, but crashing The Market??? That’s not ok. He’s suppose to help ME make money by exploiting others, if I have to lose money it’s not fair!! ------- What a stupid broken evil country.
Yeah, this guy’s not redeemed. The last and worst thing a MAGAt can do is take of their fucking red hat and put on a blue one like nothing they did happened.
Fuck that. Carve “MAGA” into this douche’s forehead and then he can rejoin sane society.
So you want to alienate everyone who might be interested in changing the outcome of the next election? Why so much gatekeeping?
Because the problem isn’t gone. Their opinions haven’t changed, they are just finally seeing personal impact from them. These people are going to fall for the same stupid shit another Trumpalike touts in 2032. They need intensive reeducation, not to be welcomed and treated like nothing happened.
It often takes a personal crisis to get people to doubt the cult/white supremacist group/multilevel marketing scheme they’ve been a part of for a long time
They need intensive reeducation
That’s not going to happen.
Maybe this gatekeeping is why Trump won in the first place. The right approach, IMO, is to meet people where they are and convince them to join your side based on policies they support.
Harris should have been railing against tariffs, throwing Biden under the bus because he, too, continued and expanded tariffs. She should have explained the consequences for tariffs and why free trade is good for everyone. Conservatives like the idea of fewer restrictions, so appeal to that.
But no, she muttered something about “price gouging” with no real plan to fix it. She said she’d largely keep doing what Biden did, when people obviously wanted change. She didn’t even try to meet those concerns, her campaign was basically, “I’m not Trump,” which almost worked until she made it clear that she’s basically just Biden 2.0, but from a different demographic.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Court people based on common ground instead of purity tests.
Am I allowed to upvote all of you?
Nope, but I do accept fun memes, dealer’s choice.
She had a plan to fix the price gouging though. Fucking hell, I agree with the rest of your post but seeing people continue to lie about her campaign is so frustrating
Sort of? But “price gouging” isn’t the issue at all, the issue is inflation and lack of supply. If you limit how a company can charge for an in-demand product (say, eggs), there’s much less incentive to find more supply (say, imports from another country). It’s nonsensical.
But I don’t think that’s why she lost. I think she lost because she said in an interview that, given hindsight, she wouldn’t change anything if she were in power instead of Biden. That’s a giant slap in the face to the average voter who saw a ton of problems during his administration and want to see something change to address those problems.
First world countries in a nutshell
You’re just now realizing people are selfish assholes? 2016 wasn’t proof enough somehow?
He’s not just friends with a pedo, court docs confirm he himself is a pedo.
It is no issue tho. From spending enough time on americanized internet i have come to the conclusion that everyone in the U.S. is more or less secretly a pedophile.
Aren’t Americans responsible for their own retirement fund via various investment portfolios? Seeing your retirement money or college fund for your kids disappearing is bound to ruffle some feathers.
Yes, to an extent, though most don’t actually take that responsibility seriously.
We have Social Security, which will provide some amount of retirement based on how much you’ve put in, and it gives more weight to the first contributions (i.e. poorer people) than last contributions (i.e. wealthier people). Basically, it works like this (link w/ more details if you care:
- 90% of the first 1.2k/month taxable earnings
- 32% of the next ~$6k/month taxable earnings
- 15% of everything up to the cap
That’s not the amount of the benefit, but the amount of income considered for your benefit, and only for your top 35 years of earnings. This gets run through a calculation that determines your Social Security benefits. People who put in more get more, but people who put in less get a higher ratio of the amount they put in. It gets further complicated by marital status and whatnot.
The maximum Social Security benefit for someone starting taking it at 67 is $3,822/month, and the maximum for someone at 70 is $4,873 (data current for 2024). Your average retiree is probably seeing something closer to $2k/month though.
In other words, Social Security does exist, but you’ll want some of your own retirement savings as well for a more comfortable retirement.
Ofc Musk is trying to destroy social security as we speak
Maybe? This is the data I see so far (here’s a related NBC article if you don’t trust Newsweek). If the Trump admin pisses off old people, they’re going to be screwed in the midterms. It seems the main change will be to service, not benefits (so longer call wait times, slower website updates, etc). SS was given a 2.5% COLA update this year, so AFAICT benefits aren’t being cut at all.
From the NBC article:
According to a May report from the Office of the Inspector General, people were already experiencing prolonged wait times working with the SSA. The report noted that in-office appointments could be completely booked up for more than 40 days in the future and that it could take months for promised services to be delivered. The report said 65% of Social Security beneficiaries were unaware that there were online services for the agency.
That seems to be the main impact, not actual benefits.
Process counts as much as benefits. Difficulty making payments is a form of sabotage. Even delaying payments counts as a cut because some ppl will die before having received a payment they would have.
Why else would Musk be messing with SSA? “Efficiency” ? Why not take him at his word? A couple choice quotes from that article:
- “Most of the federal spending is entitlements,” Musk told the Fox Business Network. “That’s the big one to eliminate.”
- "Musk said Monday that federal entitlements are “a mechanism by which the Democrats attract and retain illegal immigrants by essentially paying them to come here and then turning them into voters.”
Difficulty making payments is a form of sabotage
I didn’t see anything related to making payments, only customer support. So signing up for benefits, changing deposit accounts, etc. Those things can largely be resolved through the SSA’s self-service portal, so there’s a good chance states and charities will step up to fill in the gap.
But it’s still not clear what exactly the changes are. They claim to be targeting “fraud and waste,” but I haven’t seen a breakdown of the tangible changes other than “some offices were closed.” I generally don’t take Musk at his word, and haven’t for years (or even ever), so I’m looking for some credible journalism to go over it in detail. If it was a serious issue, we’d see a ton of highly credible news agencies making a big deal out of it. Given that we don’t, either the investigation is on-going (this was pretty recent) or it’s not an issue.
So I guess we’ll have to wait and see what the impact is. So far, it doesn’t seem like there have been any major impacts yet, other than some more wait times for getting an in-person appointment (which isn’t necessary at all to sign up for benefits).
“Most of the federal spending is entitlements,” Musk told the Fox Business Network. “That’s the big one to eliminate.”
Right, and that requires legislative action which Trump has repeatedly said he’s not going to consider, because that’s political suicide.
"Musk said Monday that federal entitlements are “a mechanism by which the Democrats attract and retain illegal immigrants by essentially paying them to come here and then turning them into voters.”
That’s not how any of this works, and Musk knows it. To get SS, you need to have a Social Security number, which you can’t get on many legal visas, not to mention entering illegally. You also need proof of 40 quarters of paying into Social Security, meaning you need to have legally paid taxes for 10 years (non-consecutively). Voting is also constitutionally limited to citizens, not even permanent residents, so there’s absolutely no basis for that either.
In short, 100% of that statement is wrong. The best explanation for him making it is to justify additional ID checks on the Social Security system, which is honestly probably a good thing due to how much Social Security numbers get abused. So it might end up being a net positive long term, though it’ll cause some issues in the short term as people navigate any changes that get made (esp. poor and tech illiterate people who may not have the resources to navigate it).
I want to make it extremely clear that I’m not a fan of Trump, Musk, or DOGE, I just happen to like some of the side-effects of broken clocks being right twice/day (these changes should mostly go through Congressional approval, not EO).
The quotes are not there for their accuracy, but to illustrate Musk’s outlook and intentions. He sees all entitlements as a bad thing per se and will break whatever norms and rules he can get away with to get rid of them, citing great replacement lies as a justification to the far right and citing “efficiency” as a sop to the less-far-right. Whether he can get away with it remains to be seen, but my original comment was an off-the-cuff “Musk is trying to destroy social security”, not a detailed argument about what has happened so far. I think, given the experience of so many other government agencies with Musk and DOGE, that this is a fair statement for casual posting.
Yes, but it still doesn’t explain why they vote GOP. Dems have an economic record of faster growth, lower unemployment, better stock market performance etc, and still they vote GOP.
From a non-us perspective, I would tend to call it the Fox Effect. Capitalist brainwashing of the under-educated, who lack the basic capacities of intellectual self-defense. When you control all the media you can make people believe that a black president asking for dijon mustard on a burger is a big deal, while a rich white president being a convicted rapist and best friend with the most notorious pedophile of the past 50 years is anecdotal, or fake, or a witch hunt, or “look, the woke are transitioning your kids”. Americans have been brainwashed to believe they the strongest, toughest, smartest people and that it’s practically in their genetic so they dont need to educate themselves. Hopefuly to good thing of pedo-don being president is that it will lead to the downfall of the US.
Dems have an economic record of faster growth, lower unemployment, better stock market performance etc
You think their media tells them that?
“Numerous impeachments? That’s fine.
Convicted of numerous felonies? No that’s fine, lol.
Adjudicated rapist? That’s fine as well, she was probably asking for it, women amirite!!.
Six bankruptcies and multiple failed businesses, you say? Yeah that’s also fine because it was the other people and not him.
Proven record of scams, even on charities? No, that’s just good business.”
…
“Wait, he’s messing with my money now? This is intolerable, this is disgusting. How unfair, oh woe is me!!!”This is pretty much what I get from that. Not a shred of empathy.
I mean true but also even people who have a shred of empathy don’t always show it until they get a firsthand story. Partially human nature, but yes mostly dog shit moral philosophy giving them an excuse to not care about others.
so many people literally either have no clue about what his actual policies are, are have been so indoctrinated by our shitty schooling that their view of the world is incredibly warped
That’s the conservative MO, in my experience. Don’t care until it personally affects them. That’s why they’ll beat their chests about the sanctity of marriage, but get divorced. Or talk about protecting life, until their mistress needs an abortion.
Even then, they don’t learn empathy. “Well my case is different” they say while on welfare
https://youtu.be/yTwpBLzxe4U - Craig T Nelson, ladies and gentlemen, formerly known as Coach.
The only moral abortion is my abortion.
Sure, but a mindset change has to start somewhere. A wild thought, but maybe they’ll invest time, if only a little, in the other side and slowly but surely realize how screwed up they used to think?
Some surely will. Let’s just hope enough people will follow.
Lack of empathy means an abundance of evil.
This country and a lot of the world has a me first mentality. A lot of people can look past some really fucked up shit if it’s not directly causing them harm.
“This shit is affecting me, ME!! He crossed a line I can’t follow him out”
to be fair i think this is pretty par for the course for people in general. not caring until things affect you directly.
Yes…
But what this shows is that even for those who want an evil system that benefits them, this administration is a disaster. There’s literally nothing good about it, even for greedy, evil capitalists.
As satisfying as it is to point out this persons hypocrisy and selfishness in only caring when if affects him (and it is satisfying,) I struggle with how best to incorporate those earnestly crossing the isle (late though it may be.)
If we have any chance of unifying our country, we’re going to have to figure out how to welcome back those earnestly recognizing the errors they’ve made. Heavy emphasis on ‘earnestly.’
Yeah it’s not enough for them to realize their conclusion was bad, they need to realize the flaws that got them to the bad conclusion. Otherwise they’ll easily be conned again.
I don’t see most people who voted for trump having the strength of character to do that sort of introspection and reflection.
You are correct because them saying they wont vote for Trump is because they are selfish and have only come to that conclusion because they have been personally affected. What they do not address in their “enlightenment” is what led them to vote for Trump in the first place and what they will do going forward to ensure they have learnt from this mistake.
If Democrats were smart, they’d temporarily drop talking about some of the more controversial and not immediately relevant political hot topics.
Like gun control is not an immediate need at this moment in time. The focus needs to be on fixing our democracy as quickly as possible so we can get back to the actual process of governing once again instead of this shit show we’ve had for the last decade.
The grade schoolers getting shot at on a regular basis would beg to differ…
Aisle
D’oh! You’re 100% right and I’m a dufus. But thinking about it, ‘isle’ kinda works too doesn’t it?
Looking at the front page of Fox News, those people don’t care. They just want to be fed lies and told losing money is good for the country.
It’s a weird world we live in now, because we have no way to prove they aren’t all Russian bots when you see a wall of support for all the worst things happening. They’re always so hateful too, it’s never about fiscal anything, it’s always about who we’re “getting” this time.
Thank you for your service.
Seriously, I always want to know what the other side is saying but I hate to give those sites any traffic
It’s one of the few sources that I’ve blocked on my google news feed. I just can’t, even just reading the headlines would just ruin my day.
I don’t actually give fox news traffic. I just follow this bot on mastodon.
Any way to follow them from lemmy?
Mbin allows following both Lemmy and Mastodon with one account. And there’s now an app for it, Interstellar.
Wow seeing the headlines all in a grid like that is upsetting. Really highlights the way that different sources drip feed similar stories, or even omit them.
It really is eye opening. Major news events are just not being covered, at all, by the right.
