# The Washington Post: Democracy Dies With Us **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Tags:** trump\ **Created:** [October 25, 2024, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210 "2024-10-25T17:30:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 25
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/481 "2025-02-27T19:42:59Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > My wife and I are looking at Amazon now, and that will be tougher. Amazon Music is my main streaming source, the five of us spend thousands of dollars there every year, we have Echos all 'round the house, and we watch a lot of Amazon video content. > > So, we’re thinking about it, but I don’t know yet. Consider that Amazon is using these services, and especially the Echo devices, to track your usage and refine a personalized profile to induce you into buying shit you don’t need and selling your information to other users to do the same. By eliminating Prime and minimizing your purchases from Amazon you can conserve some of those “thousands of dollars there every year” spent on stuff that I’m guessing at least some of which you don’t need and ends up becoming clutter and/or waste. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/482 "2025-02-27T20:02:41Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > FWIW, In 2022, Bezos [pledged to give away most of his $124 billion fortune before he died](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/14/jeff-bezos-says-he-plans-to-give-away-most-of-his-124-billion-fortune.html) Before he dies? In other words, after he gets the terminal diagnosis, and is in hospice care, he’ll set something up to give it away when the death rattle starts (revocable if immortality comes through first)? If he’s giving away significant quantities of it now, to people who actually need it, tell me about it. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/483 "2025-02-27T20:07:11Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Before he dies? He has to hold on to as much as possible in case he wants to buy twitter or something ---
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/484 "2025-02-27T20:11:09Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > Consider that Amazon is using these services, and especially the Echo devices, to track your usage and refine a personalized profile to induce you into buying shit you don’t need and selling your information to other users to do the same. By eliminating Prime and minimizing your purchases from Amazon you can conserve some of those “thousands of dollars there every year” spent on stuff that I’m guessing at least some of which you don’t need and ends up becoming clutter and/or waste. > > Stranger Eh. I hear that all the time, and not only am I not sure how that works in practice, but on the rare occasion I see ads, I’d rather see something I’m interested in than not. As for prompting me to buy shit I don’t need, how would that happen? We don’t browse Amazon, we scout deals for things we want and either buy them or don’t. We also put board games and books on our wish lists, and gifts (and textbooks, and home repair items) make up a good percentage of our spending. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/485 "2025-02-27T20:15:43Z")
> [@Shalmanese](#): > > FWIW, In 2022, Bezos [pledged to give away most of his $124 billion fortune before he died](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/14/jeff-bezos-says-he-plans-to-give-away-most-of-his-124-billion-fortune.html). The thing is, I’m not sure people like Bezos think they’re ever going to die. Enough of them have bought the techbro kool-aid that we’re only a few years away from curing all disease, or full body replacement or uploading their brain into a computer, or have subscribed to pseudomedical woo like Steve Jobs did and think they can cure cancer with yoga and fruit juice. ---
**Author:** ![OldOlds](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a3d4f5/32.png) [@OldOlds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldOlds)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/486 "2025-02-27T20:19:40Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Before he dies? In other words, after he gets the terminal diagnosis, and is in hospice care, he’ll set something up to give it away when the death rattle starts (revocable if immortality comes through first)? Actually, a strict reading of that tells me that he didn’t give away the money because he died before he could do so. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/487 "2025-02-27T20:23:15Z")
No, he’d be giving it away “when the death rattle starts”. In the last few minutes, half hour at most, of his life. If immortality comes through before the death rattle, then he doesn’t give it away. Not everybody, of course, dies in such a fashion that “the last few minutes” can be determined. My mother did, though; so it can happen. In practice, he probably wouldn’t, I grant. ETA: and this: > [@Smapti](#): > > The thing is, I’m not sure people like Bezos think they’re ever going to die. “I’ll give it away before I die” probably means “I’m not going to give it away, I just want to make people shut up about my not giving it away by telling them I’m going to.” ---
**Author:** ![OldOlds](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a3d4f5/32.png) [@OldOlds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldOlds)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/488 "2025-02-27T20:25:21Z")
I was joking. The quote was > [@Shalmanese](#): > > FWIW, In 2022, Bezos [pledged to give away most of his $124 billion fortune before he died](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/11/14/jeff-bezos-says-he-plans-to-give-away-most-of-his-124-billion-fortune.html). Died being past-tense, it sounds like Bezos is now dead and thus was not able to complete his promise. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/489 "2025-02-27T20:26:13Z")
Whoops. I thought you were replying to what I said. It showed up that way. ---
**Author:** ![Ellecram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ellecram/32/18948_2.png) [@Ellecram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellecram)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/490 "2025-02-27T20:53:22Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > > [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > > > Consider that Amazon is using these services, and especially the Echo devices, to track your usage and refine a personalized profile to induce you into buying shit you don’t need and selling your information to other users to do the same. By eliminating Prime and minimizing your purchases from Amazon you can conserve some of those “thousands of dollars there every year” spent on stuff that I’m guessing at least some of which you don’t need and ends up becoming clutter and/or waste. > > > > Stranger > > Eh. I hear that all the time, and not only am I not sure how that works in practice, but on the rare occasion I see ads, I’d rather see something I’m interested in than not. > > As for prompting me to buy shit I don’t need, how would that happen? We don’t browse Amazon, we scout deals for things we want and either buy them or don’t. We also put board games and books on our wish lists, and gifts (and textbooks, and home repair items) make up a good percentage of our spending. I use an ad blocker for Amazon and never see ads. Ads do not influence me to buy anything - never have. I buy very little anyways. There may be some recommendations for video viewing but I have even calibrated that down to very little these days. I’m much more inclined to read a couple of forums here and there and real life books. I’ve reduced my consumerism drastically over the years and even more so in the last 2 months. There are some things that I cannot find in local stores and that’s when I go online. I guess I will have to start looking at other options. But they are all connected somehow so it seems rather pointless. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [February 27, 2025, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/491 "2025-02-27T21:15:01Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > The thing is, I’m not sure people like Bezos think they’re ever going to die. Enough of them have bought the techbro kool-aid that we’re only a few years away from curing all disease, or full body replacement or uploading their brain into a computer, or have subscribed to pseudomedical woo like Steve Jobs did and think they can cure cancer with yoga and fruit juice. That’s no exaggeration. There are _tens of billions_ of dollars [being invested in longitivtiy and anti-senescence startups](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeff-bezos-altos-labs-startup-trying-to-extend-human-life-reprogramming-stem-cells/) with dubious viability even when they are based on a foundation of real science instead of “blood replacement” or winding extra coils of DNA on the end of telemeres to prevent chromosomes from degrading (not how that works, guys); and the speculation is that the real reason that Mark Zuckerberg was so all-in on the ill-fated “Metaverse” was because it was intended to be a prototype of a virtual world to which human consciousnesses could be ‘uploaded’. These guys are fucking nuts over the notion of living forever, whether in embodied or virtual form because apparently they’ve bought into the utopian vision instead of the horrorshow that they would realize if they played [a scenario of Eclipse Phase](https://welcometoeclipsephase.com/) even if this technology were actually viable. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2025, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/492 "2025-02-28T05:33:38Z")
> [@natureboy](#): > > One or a handful of these jerkoffs is probably something civilization can withstand, but when they multiply, they start taking up all the oxygen in the room. Pretty soon the rest of us struggle to breathe. [clapping] That was most excellently stated. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2025, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/493 "2025-02-28T20:22:09Z")
WELL WOULDN’T YOU KNOW WHO WON THE PONY? > **[Mediagazer (@mediagazer.com)](https://bsky.app/profile/mediagazer.com/post/3ljb6atrz6j2b)** > > Trump says he had dinner with Jeff Bezos on February 26, the day Bezos announced that WaPo's opinion pages would focus on personal liberties and free markets (Jaden Amos/Axios) > > Main Link | Mediagazer Permalink ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2025, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/494 "2025-02-28T21:05:16Z")
I cam’t imagine a worse time short of being fed into a wood chipper than spending dinner with Donald Trump. I’m morally certain he is a open-mouth chewer who slurps his beverages. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [February 28, 2025, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/495 "2025-02-28T21:28:27Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > a worse time short of being fed into a wood chipper than spending dinner with Donald Trump. And really, the wood chipper option is worse only if being fed in feet first. ---
**Author:** ![DesertDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/desertdog/32/11503_2.png) [@DesertDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DesertDog)\ **Post date:** [March 1, 2025, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/496 "2025-03-01T00:02:06Z")
> [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](#): > > I’m morally certain he is a open-mouth chewer who slurps his beverages. And the Quarter-pounders are always cold. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2025, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/497 "2025-03-03T03:48:09Z")
FUCK YOU BEZOS [![](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:xjgsaiyut2ybl7id44e363rm/bafkreibkubpwi7wg2ob33vawtb7b7u3jafockdh3vvi3ktrgov5wuu6phm@jpeg) ](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:xjgsaiyut2ybl7id44e363rm/bafkreibkubpwi7wg2ob33vawtb7b7u3jafockdh3vvi3ktrgov5wuu6phm@jpeg) ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2025, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/498 "2025-03-03T15:26:55Z")
Thiessen is a known right-wing asshole who has been writing regular opinion columns in the Post for several years. His function is apparently to anger the readers. ---
**Author:** ![wguy123](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wguy123/32/3161_2.png) [@wguy123](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wguy123)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2025, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/499 "2025-03-03T16:34:44Z")
He wrote an op-ed on Thursday claiming Trump was brilliant for crafting the rare earth minerals agreement. That aged like sour milk and was completely rotten the next day when Trump torpedoed it. Time to pivot to again protect Trump. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 3, 2025, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210/500 "2025-03-03T19:25:23Z")
> [@Johanna](#): > > Thiessen is a known right-wing asshole who has been writing regular opinion columns in the Post for several years. His function is apparently to anger the readers. As grating as Thiessen is, he is somehow less awful than Hugh Hewitt who is just offensive in how absolutely stupid he thinks readers are to accept his dissimulations, or maybe he is just such a dumb motherfucker that he actually believes what he is writing. Thiessen is at least marginally intelligent enough to present coherent if completely disingenuous theses. Of course, both of these turds is going to dominate the toilet bowl that is now the _Washington Post_’s editorial section, so either get really comfortable with being outraged at them or else cancel your subscription and let Jeff Bezos eat a tiny more fraction of the red ledger in continuing to publish the paper. Stranger [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210.md?page=24) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-washington-post-democracy-dies-with-us/1009210.md?page=26)