Hold up. Here I was expecting actual lies, not real criticisms of how many countries, particularly America, demand hypocritical shit. Like, even if one fully believes in the liberal rules based order, the largest liberal world powers have consistently undermined it out of naked national self interest. China and Russia are able to claim they’re the reasonable ones because countries like America, France, and the UK have been so unreasonable. The only misleading thing is that Russia and China will act differently if they ever achieve a similar hegemony.

When I think alternative reality, I think of the way every right winger on earth claims lgbtq people are a nefarious plot by whoever their enemies are. I think of how genocides are denied and blind national pride is hyped up to keep people from seeing the flaws of their own system. If anything, the real reality distortion is framing these cracks in the liberal world order as distortions themselves, not a self inflicted problem that Russia and China are able to rationally exploit.

Trump has always been good at pleasing the worst people

Machine learning is an extremely useful technology that will be used for generations to come and has allowed for multiple advancements before chatGPT was a household name. “AI” is a marketing term used by businesses that dreams of an absurd future where labor is obsolete. Capitalism cultists are so enamored with the idea of getting rid of workers that they’re pouring trillions into projects that will never produce what they want. As wiser countries simply use machine learning as a productivity enhancing tool, they’ll pull so far ahead of the US that it’ll never catch up.

We’re about to witness the biggest redistribution of global wealth and power the world has ever seen. Instead of simply settling into a role as one of many major powers in a multipolar world, America gave up because the rich wanted more than everything.

Considering a megaquake in the northwest would be the single greatest disaster in American history, the knock on effects would force him to give a shit. He’d probably downplay and neglect it till the end of his days, but the economic impact would cripple the nation. If anything could grow regional differences that would allow for civil war and Balkanization, it’s millions of west coast residents dying and the survivors being shafted by the federal government.

That said, the chances of a Cascadia fault line quake during Trump’s administration aren’t that high. A starvation triggering economic depression caused by tariffs, overspeculation into AI, and mass divestment from the US is all but guaranteed.

TIL we’re “a little over a week” from mid December

You’re entirely right about the importance of context. I grew up the opposite of conservative, yet I’ve learned very similar lessons. When you’re on relatively equal footing with shared goals, most can become your friend. When there are power dynamics and the perception of a zero sum game, most can become your enemy. I’ve long been a person who seeks out those who are most opposed to my way of thinking, and I’ve never regretted being friendly with and understanding those people.

At the same time, getting into such neutral conditions is harder than ever for me, as the barriers get put up long before I show up. It’s not actual conversations that hold me back, but getting there in the first place. Whenever I come across a conservative I can approach, I always make sure to talk with them.

Thank you. It’s always unfortunate when people try to logic people out of positions that didn’t logic themselves into. I used to do things like that, but it’d probably be riskier to try now with my current outward identity. Even if I get them to listen to a brown woman, I’m also trans and bi which could easily shut them out if I conceal it, and would make me even harder to approach if I don’t. I hope others can do it for me.

You’re not wrong and I think a lot of Americans miss that perspective. We’re bottom of list in comparison to “developed” with similarly wealthy economies, but we haven’t reached the poverty of poorest countries, yet. Right now we’re more comparable to an imperial power like Russia, but even then we’re probably falling behind (at least they have a strong labor market thanks to their war killing so many young men).

That said, it is entirely possible for us to reach that level of devastation if the coming depression is bad enough and we enter a prolonged period of war and instability following Trump. I wouldn’t bet money on it, but it is more likely than most want to believe.

You vote for the party first and foremost, not for any individual politician. Instead of voting for a local representative, you vote for a single party to represent you at a national level. That party then gets a certain number of seats based on how many votes it got. As a result, voting for a minor party that only gets 10% of the votes actually makes sense, as it then gets 10% of the seats in the parliament. In such systems there usually aren’t single parties with a majority, but coalitions of parties with varying viewpoints.

There are many mixed systems that use party voting, but also link parties to specific candidates. However, the system the previous comment described sounded more like party-list proportional representation.

For a large federal system like the US that has both local needs and far less regional differences than people realize, replacing the House and Senate with a party-list would both unify the country and destroy the power of duopolistic party elites. At the same time, the state and local elections could use any number of systems that focus more on candidates. It wouldn’t prevent a fascist like Trump from taking over, as Israel is a modern example of a party-list country under fascist control, but it would’ve required him to build a party as a politician rather than take over one of the big two.

Nah, this will not happen. People like Greene are irrelevant, as Trump has bullied far more popular politicians out of office without the power of the state at his disposal. ICE are Trump’s most loyal and will never abandon him; only service members forced to break their oaths would ever turn on him, and I doubt anything outside of impending nuclear Holocaust will build enough momentum to topple him.

I’m not gonna say this is a bad idea, but I am gonna say that California Democrats are masters at using progressive sounding legislation to line the pockets of those in the know.

The fascists have a bully mentality, targeting not just a country that can’t fight back, but small boats that are most likely innocent civilians. They’re choosing the easiest targets to terrorize Latin America and project strength for their base.

They don’t seriously care about challenging other powerful countries, only attacking and extorting ones who are in no position to retaliate. If they get meaningfully challenged by a country like China or Russia, they’d fumble it in the most cowardly way, immediately trying to run away from the problem. They hate any fight that isn’t rigged in their favor.

All this said, I don’t see our citizens directly being able to threaten Trump’s power. Even with mass protests, general strikes, and pressure from rich people annoyed about their favor in the economy, his cult is far too loyal. There will never be a fair election in 2028, so the fascists will stay in power as long as Trump lives. The best we can do is prepare to take over in the power vacuum following his death.

Any automatic high rate of fire gun with "explosive* is absolutely broken, but a crippling ripper is also very fun in how brutal it is. I actually think Far Harbor has a guaranteed legendary like that.

And I’m telling you that they’ll be doing it more frequently and with federal support. They’ll be more organized and intentional about it than before.

Nah, it definitely is. If wealth was effectively redistributed following the pandemic instead of raising interest rates, it would’ve cooled down investing like they wanted without gutting the middle class. Biden earned the k-shaped recovery he warned about by being a neoliberal weakling.

aka, massive and sustained government spending

Unhinged conspiracy brained assholes end up distrusting and hating each other.

It sounds like the dumbass doesn’t know this is pointless and impractical. The only missile tests by powerful countries recently have been for the missiles, not the warhead. It’s not just because they want peace, but because it couldn’t provide any relevant information while being super expensive. He just wants to use a toy.

Things are about to get even worse has been true every day since January 20th. In fact, we haven’t even seen the tip of the shitberg. Things will continue getting even worse until Trump is long dead and this country is in shambles.

More like private equity firms killing it on purpose.