There’s something there that’s a natural inclination. I don’t know if it’s just the government forcing things on them or what, but the right has been vaccine/mask resistant all over the world. Trump would have had to go out of his way to counter this, but that wasn’t happening obvious. Trump wasn’t just the leader of the knownothings, he was one of them.
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Honestly this back and forth reminds me a lot of when I was told by a lot of people here that Biden couldn’t do any more at the border back in March/April. The idea that this is the best a current Federal response can be is something I disagree with. It seems like I am in the minority here on that and I will leave it at that.
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I don’t think Biden’s COVID policy is beyond reproach, but any issues on his end are a drop in the ocean compared to the main problem.
Immigration situation is different because Biden openly wants a relatively anti-immigration policy, his only difference with Trump on that is tone and a minuscule difference in # of immigrants permitted. The COVID problem is more of a “you can lead a horse to water, but can’t make it drink” problem.
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I agree with all of this tbh. Of course the anti-vax morons are more of a problem than whatever Biden’s policies are. My main point is that if Trump was president and the current state of things was the same people would be screaming for Trump to do something. That he was murdering Americans for not doing it. Meanwhile Biden de-masked America in May and has not made many significant moves as Delta has ravaged the country. Maybe there is nothing he could do. I get that. But he doesn’t appear to be doing much of anything to even try either.
Immigration is a much clearer example of something Biden has control over and is doing a crappy job.
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One difference is I highly doubt Biden directed the CDC to recommend vaccinated people didnt need to unmask. I think that was just more of an example of our CDC being dumb and thinking that would push up vaccine rates. They fucked that up just like they fucked up masks
Here’s an interesting view of how America has decayed in terms of military competence.
He actually did do that some months ago on FOX News.
Unfortunately, they were too far gone by then.
And it’s not the only country where this is happening either. 
Yeah but he was clearly deliberately halfassed about it.
Biden def >>> Obama if you don’t factor in degree of difficulty in being an old white guy versus a black guy named Barrack Hussein Obama.
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Do you have any specific reasons to think the US isn’t in decline, or examples of what you expect will improve in the foreseeable future?
In 50 years the world may very well be unrecognizable as humanity tries to cope with an unstable climate that is changing faster and more drastically than anything our species has experienced in tens of thousands of years – a direct result of current CO2 levels (that are still rising) being at a level not seen in over 3 million years, when the planet was a very, very different place.
And even if we somehow miraculously fade that, 50 years is a long time to expect anything resembling the status quo to hold out. Nobody in 1971 could have come even close to accurately predicting how things are today.
I don’t know whether or not the US has started down some irreversible path of decline, but I have every reason to expect lots of fairly significant change in the coming decades, and few reasons to think many of those changes will be for the better. I’m pretty bearish on the ol’ USofA.
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I think you are correct and it is going to become painfully obvious in the months ahead, particularly when ~every kid in the US under the age of 12 is affected by COVID with the lucky minority only forced to quarantine several times.
Biden was definitely better than Trump would have been. Vaccine rollout would have been a massive shitshow under Trump and Biden is helping on the margin with mandates and rhetorical support for local mandates. He also massively underestimated COVID and tried to move past it for political reasons, just like Trump did.
“Hey we did better on COVID but delta was just harder and people wouldn’t vaccinate” is not gonna cut it and lawnmowers are gonna go into orbit when “who will do a better job with COVID” polls like 55-45 R heading into 2022 elections.
I think it’s pretty clear now that Obama was more interested in his hip hop barbeques than creating jobs. He worried so much about disrupting his future party plans he planned nothing for his party.
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Imo the “bullish” argument would be that every other major economy/power is even more screwed by climate change and/or has significant demographic problems. Really, I’m bearish on the entire world in general, but America seems much better positioned for the challenges of the next 50 years, assuming that we don’t descend into either civil war or permanent one-party rule in the next decade.
Like you said, it’s impossible to really predict the future, but simple geography means that America isn’t going to be hit with untold millions of climate refugees from the middle east and sub-Saharan Africa like Europe. While we will have waves of our own climate refugees, the numbers are nothing in comparison. The EU struggled with just Syrian refugees and it seems inevitable that right wing nationalist authoritarianism will continue to rise and the EU itself could easily collapse. China has some demographic problems from the one-child policy and in worst-case climate scenarios (which are seeming more and more likely) will see much of its land rendered inhabitable. Russia is one of the few places that in theory will benefit from global warming, but has ridic demographic problems. Japan also major demographic problems. India seems like it will be overrun with refugees from Bangladesh but I’m not too knowledgeable there. Not sure what other competitors there are after that, Brazil? Canada?
tl;dr whole world is fucked
WHY HAS THIS GUY NOT BEEN FIRED YET
Honestly I think the centrists lose on this one. This isn’t a huge immediate need like the covid relief bill. The progressives also have Nancy and 90% of the democratic party on their side. If the moderate dems try to hold up the reconciliation bill they will get 100% of the blame. Completely different dynamic from before where if progressives held up the covid bill for the $15 min wage they would have gotten the blame.
If the moderates really try to hold this up its going to be a career ender.
I really hope progressives are on their shit and willing to tank both bills if moderates won’t budge. Fuck them, they got their way in the covid relief bill, time to take a stand.
I just don’t see them standing up to the white house, almost all of the house, and most of the senate. The bi partisan bill is too important for the centrists. If they pass it they’re locked in for re-election, if they fuck around and both tank they’re done. Everyone will blame them.
The main reason they get away with this shit in the senate is Manchin is in a trump +40 district so he doesn’t really care about democratic backlash plus probably retiring.
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