Yeah. Trump was not remotely subtle about how bad he is or how bad his intentions were. At this point anyone who thought they’d get anything but nastiness and stupidly out of him were willfully self deluded.
I’m just going to repost this here, because god knows we could use a laugh:
The Death By A Thousand cuts future seems very plausible. Good examples in the US are the Boeing scandal, and in post-Brexit UK the scandal with the privatised water companies pouring effluent into the rivers and waterways.
You deprive the oversight bodies (all bad government overreach things, messing with the private sector which knows best) of funding and quietly they reduce the checking and testing they used to do, because that stuff costs money, they can’t afford it, and no one really notices anyway. Over time more and more of that oversight is devolved to the business’ themselves, who now have to check up on themselves and report their failures.
Can you see the conflict of interests here, and how it will quietly build up over time until there is a really big problem. That problem then rises to public awareness and Something Must Be Done, but it’s hard to point the finger at a government that is long gone so the new government needs to find the money for that oversight. Wash, Rinse and Repeat.
Except they were between venomous, sharp spikes and a hard place. The 13 million who stayed home were either too brainwashed by Putin or too stupid to see it.
But, at least they sent a message, right?!
I suppose “we’re gullible idiots” is a sort of message…
Quite. And the thing is they felt they were being told to resign themselves to the hard place for all foreseeable futures because the alternative will always be so much worse. A failure of imagination of how much worse it can be.
Exit polls show that Muslim-American support for Trump actually declined slightly from 2020, from 35% to 32%. So let’s not blame the Muslims! (Yes, I know “Muslim” and “Arab” aren’t synonymous, but I didn’t see data for Arab-Americans).
Exactly. And a lot of these people are too fucking lazy to do any sort of thinking or analysis and just think that “somethin’s gotta change” but they have no idea what it is that has to change.
They’re too ignorant and too stupid to understand that the civilization/society that they are lucky enough to live in didn’t just magically happen, and that it took a shit-load of work and philosophical change to go from a pre-1945 dog-eat-dog western world to a post 1945 western world of relative stability and comfort. And these fuckers, because in their stupid opinions something undefinable by them’s gotta change. And the rest of us are going to pay dearly.
This reminds me of the letters and videos of Russians pleading for Vladimir Valdimirovich to do something about whatever tragedy has befallen them…. 
… thoughts and prayer mother fuckers!
History repeats itself.
The desire need to believe in a benevolent God (King) is real deep in a certain category of people. That’s another thing we need to breed out of the species.
Not at all a creepy statement.
Which was already a repeat of the old serf’s refrain. Good Tsar, bad Boyars
Nationwide? Or every state worked the same way? I don’t expect them to be a monolithic bloc across the country.
'Cause Arab-Americans in Michigan, at least, seem to have broken for Trump in a significant way. And I don’t pity those in Michigan, at least, who expected the leopards to stay away from their faces.
I know this is obvious and has been for years (apparently, not obvious enough for millions, though!), but here’s one snippet from today’s NY Times reporting on the various federal spending freeze effects:
There is concern in Appalachia, a region that Vice President JD Vance has roots in, that Trump’s funding freeze could hit its residents the hardest. “Many of these funds come from prioritized investments in coal country, a region that has economically struggled for decades,” said Dana Kuhnline, program director for the economic development organization ReImagine Appalachia. “These shortsighted and drastic changes undermine bipartisan efforts in the region to dream big.” Kuhnline noted that Appalachia had been taking advantage of federal funds from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that could be at risk.
This one is more interesting:
Senator Charles Grassley, the Iowa Republican who chairs the Judiciary Committee, sent President Trump a letter on Tuesday requesting that he provide a detailed written explanation for why he fired each of at least 17 inspectors general over the weekend. Grassley released the letter, which was also signed by Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, the ranking Democrat on the panel. The mass purge defied a law Grassley helped pass in 2022 that requires presidents to give Congress 30 days advance notice and a “substantive rationale, including detailed and case-specific reasons” for such a removal.
Trump’s response, if he bothers to respond at all, will be something like “because eff you, that’s why”.
That will be huge. Whether trump or Grassley wins will be a real belwether for the future course of this regime.
It seems to me that law means the firings are illegal and have no effect. Those folks are still on the payroll no matter what the criminal regime wants or thinks.
It goes to the Supreme Court and, by a vote of 6-3, or maybe 5-4, they decide that the Executive has the power to hire and fire whoever is in government, other than those working in the other two branches.