Wow this administration is f**ing batshit insane. I thought the tariffs would be on raw metals, not anything at all that happens to contain them.
It's reasons why this that I refuse to associate with Republicans in my daily life anymore. They are undeserving of respect or decency for how they continue to make our lives worse.
The tl;dr of the current conundrum is that we have two corrupt political parties, and a system that's so rigged that it's nearly impossible to elect someone outside of them. Modern society's problems are complex to reason about and nearly intractable to solve. The people in power are not capable of even trying to reason about, let alone solve them.
I grew up in Nevada. Most of the people I grew up with are lowercase-L libertatian: they believe the government exists to arbitrate between the conflicting rights of individuals; that it should be as small as possible and let them do what they like unless they're harming someone else. Because of the aforementioned duopoly, these people tend to count as Republicans (in the style of Reagan). (This is true generally - the more geographically isolated a place is, the more it skews libertarian. The more urban, the more it skews liberal.)
The national Republican party was weak after Bush and got taken over by the Trump personality cult. The people I grew up with don't believe in instituting tariffs and arresting immigrants; yet if you force them to choose an R or D label, most of them are still going to count as R.
The world is a nuanced place. If you ignore that nuance and force everyone you're willing to converse with to pass your litmus test, you end up with two tribes ostriching themselves into bubbles of partisan-approved groupthink. That begets more yelling, less mutual understanding, and makes it even harder to solve problems. All of this empowers the extremists who control the major parties to continue making the world a worse place in service of their own power.
Yes, everything about politics sucks, and the people in charge are unfathomably awful. But if you refuse to share ideas with people you might disagree with, you're contributing to making that even more true.
Maybe not "as a whole" but the majority of Republicans voted for this so at least those need to be written off. The rest have an opportunity to claim that they oppose the takeover by the personality cult. A great way to do it is to change their voter registration to anything else.
At this point, ever Republican has absolutely opted in to the current leader and platform.
Are you willing to write off so many people? That is what the "fascists" want. Division is a core technique of erasing liberty
> Division is a core technique of erasing liberty
Seems like embracing a self-coup is also a core technique of erasing liberty? Maybe both of these statements are so broad that they are meaningless.
You chose your lesser of 2 evils, and others chose theirs. There is no acceptable choice in American presidential politics.
1. Biden was old and everyone knew it. He still got shit done. The idea that everyone thought he was great and fine is not true. That's what Republicans claimed people thought.
2. Primaries are not an official part of the election process. They are a party matter. The whole weird Republican meltdown over it is not based in fact or history.
3. Russia did interfere with the 2016 elections. There's a whole congressional report on it, by a majority Republican committee. [0]
4. I don't even know what this means. If someone did crimes, they should be held responsible. The idea that we don't want that is, frankly propaganda.
[0] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/...
2. I'm not a Republican and I like the idea of the people getting to have a say in their leadership.
3. The claim I mentioned was that Trump was a Russian agent. Where's the evidence for that one?
4. This means the blue team had plenty of time to do something about the Epstein files and didn't. We'll never know what kamala would have done about it, but my money is on jack and squat.
Again, I'm not a republican. The red team sucks, and still the blue team wasn't good enough to beat them.
Hahaha so instead of voting for 60 year old you voted for the almost-octogenarian who thinks there were airports in the revolutionary war, representing the party that has absolutely never hidden the neurological decline of a sitting president. My guy.
Also, is anyone claiming that Trump isn't steering the ship? The people elected him and he seems to be the one at the wheel. The people elected Biden, who may have been steering the ship in his good hours of the day, but who knows who made the decisions the rest of the time.