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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: August 26th, 2023

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  • I’m starting to see shades of a relative I have in trump. Mind you, this person is very nice and I’m not trying to disparage them at all. They’re ADHD and probably in the early stages of dementia. They eat like shit. Using hocus-pocus dietary supplements because they know they eat like shit and think these are a fix. Constantly shifting what the latest great thing is - doesn’t matter what it is, food, clothing, a bit of tech, supplements, a media source… and thanks to their declining mental state it’s like the worst aspects are amplified. Wide emotional swings. Focusing on anything difficult like logical steps to return a purchased item via mail are super difficult.

    While my relative’s swings are anti-trump if the subject comes up and the anger is focused on trump’s and the reich wing’s stupidity, it sure mirrors trump’s wild swings on everything, his raging about whatever, and his focus on what the latest interest is. Fixing anything like the Economy is too hard and too many steps, so he relies on whatever clueless mumbo-jumbo others tell him. Even the hocus-pocus health fix by using a snake oil salesman like Kennedy.








  • Thinking is too shallow when it comes to this. Yes, there is absolutely the direct results: starvation, death, and malnutrition.

    And for whatever reason people seem ok with that to save US $ and force the other country to pick themselves up by their bootstraps.

    The shallow thinking avoids the indirect issues. The starvation leads to instability. The instability can cause war and fighting on a local level that can damage US interests and trade. It can spill over into neighboring countries causing the same issues. Increase radicalization and terrorism. They’ll blame the “West”, likely justifiably, for supporting some dictator that steps in to crush opposition yet protect the West’s interests in whatever resource they’re stripping from the country or ag product like chocolate they’re making people grind at growing and underpaying for. It could have the country(ies) switch allegiances to competitors like China. All of this can directly increase costs to the US or indirectly to the US via regional instability disrupting trade. That’s ok, they’ll just pass the cost on to consumers while business profits are protected. It beats spending any tax money on things.

    This is typical reductionist and oversimplified thinking by the Right. Just punish people into changing behavior, nevermind the indirect costs.