Our political system isn’t fucked–every political system in the world is fucked. The 300 year old dream of universal literacy and complete access to information has failed. Trump is the outcome of a failed experiment.
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Agree with a lot of this, but Biden staying in also would not have possibly resulted in a big Democratic fundraising push this month that outraised the GOP ticket, and we were seeing Senators in tough races have their fates turn south as they tried desperately to distance themselves from him. Granted that at least Tester is still doing this with Harris in Montana, but we’re not seeing the generally catastrophic downstream effects we would have seen if Biden simply insisted on hanging in there.
Mind you, I was fully behind the notion of him running for reelection regardless of his relative lack of popularity until the catastrophic debate happened. I simply couldn’t conceive of what I was going to endure for the 12 minutes my TV stayed on before I turned it off in horror. So I won’t claim any great foresight at all. But after that point I think the correct stance was clear pretty quickly.
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This is the hottest White Boy Summer of all time. Which one will win?
Hey this Biden guy looks pretty good…
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Its a bit early for this determination. The printing press led more or less directly to a series of weird religious cults and a giant theological schism that plunged Europe into war for decades
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Yeah, it has always been a problem with people and if we can overcome our worst instincts individually and collectively. It seems doubtful that we can. Like, we have a majority of our population legitimately concerned about border policy and what bathrooms people can use when our oceans are boiling, coral reefs are collapsing, and we have allowed harmful chemicals to become ubiquitous in our drinking water and throughout the environment. And we are here talking about fucking bathrooms.
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The fuckedness of our political system has little to do with the idiocy of the masses and a lot to do with the power of the wealthy to shape it to their desires. Not that they’re unrelated, but the relation is that the political idiocy of the masses is an effect of our political system’s disfunction, not a cause of it.
Disagree: The wealthy want Romney/Ryan and Clinton/Kaine-style politicians in power, they don’t give a shit about the Trump cult or transgender athletes or whateer. If the elites could really shape public opinion to their will, they’d stop all this talk about overturning the government and go back to Bush/Romney-style conservatism.
The rise of Trump and the failure of Biden is largely a grassroots movement driven by masses of ordinary dipshits. Elon is told what to think by morons on 4chan just as much as he influences the media.
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Trump rolled back 125 environmental regulations and cut corporate taxes 30%. The owners of the USA love him.
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I don’t think Trump is some outlier, I think he’s a natural product of the system. He’s standing on the shoulders of Nixon and Reagan and Bush, who are all looked back at as serious conservatives. He’s riding the coattails of the Tea Party movement, which was funded by the wealthy in an attempt to appear grassrooty. And to be clear, even if they might prefer Romney personally, the wealthy still love Trump and love the outcomes he gets.
And on the issues themselves, I agree that the wealthy largely don’t give a shit about transgender bathrooms. But, combined with the traditional media and clicks-at-all-costs social media, the system amplifies these bullshit issues because it provides convenient cover to avoid talking about issues that might harm the interests of the wealthy. Trump, and these issues that could help elect him, are a means to an end and thus have the implicit support of the wealthy and aren’t just popular because a bunch of illiterate hicks hate the gays.
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Clown country that this is legal
https://x.com/newsjennifer/status/1819378887626743958?s=46&t=XGja5BtSraUljl_WWUrIUg
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Is that legal?? What the fuck
Kind of hilarious to have this pop up in the middle of a conversation about the causes of political disfunction and the culpability of idiotic masses vs wealthy assholes. I don’t think Elon is just following the grassroots here haha
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The market bends to the preferences of the consumer.
This will be a fundamental disagreement in this conversation. The market incorporates the preferences of the consumer, but doesn’t bend to them. And has incredible power to influence them.
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People get manipulated in large numbers. Consumers get shit rammed down their throats all the time. Access to information isn’t helping the problem, it’s making it easier for people to be reached by bad faith actors. It’s all part of our idiocracy timeline.
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Markets bend to the will of the consumer seems like a very naive take.
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We have to remember that Fox News was originally anti-Trump! It’s true that the media manipulates people, but it’s also not as simple as “the system gave us Trump.” The political and media machinery tried to stop Trump and then gave up in the face of a wave of populist sentiment.
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