jrs100000

It is relevant. Congress is mostly going along with him because they are afraid of being primaried. If he dips much lower we might suddenly see unexpected people speaking truth to power.

You know who should be doing that? The Democrats in the House and Senate. If they cant even do that a bunch of geriatric retired politicians writing a letter to the editor its going to galvanize anything.

Who exactly does he think the former presidents are going to convince? They hate Bush, and the rest are all Democrats.

Except Hungary, Turkey, India, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Venezuela, Hong Kong, El Salvador, and I dont even try to keep track of whats going on Africa anymore.

Wasnt Korea’s impeached president just arrested a few hours ago? Didnt Brazil just indict their former president just a couple months ago? Both for attempting to topple their own democracies? Didnt anyone notice that France was on the verge of electing a neonazi a few years ago, or that Germany might actually do that next month? If you arnt questioning the health of global democracy it just means you havent looked.

The world will go on, but democracy wont do just fine. Once they are done with the US they’ll push harder than ever to do the same to the EU, and they’ve already come damn close in both France and Germany. Its just a matter of time until one of them slips. And worse, without the US leading the “free world” theres a huge power vacuum/imbalance that will almost certainly have to be resolved violently, either with a spate of serious regional wars or another big global brawl.

For real. They already started calling for Ramaswamy to be deported, despite being a natural born citizen, but they wont touch the actual immigrant who possibly committed immigration fraud. I think just the idea that white people could possibly be illegal immigrants stirs up too many uncomfortable assumptions for them.

Like when he was president last time? Money isnt power. Power is power, and if the country falls far enough into autocracy, anyone who forgets that can take the fast elevator down from the 40th floor.

Screwing over investors is his second favorite thing, right after screwing over contractors.

And beyond the exhaustion, this is how representative democracy is supposed to work. We have an election, everyone decides which candidates are taller and have better hair, then we go back to our lives and let the politicians worry about politics until the next election.

Thats the plan.

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What? No, they stopped him all the time. They never hold him accountable, but they stopped all sorts of crazy shit.

The way its used in conservative circles in the 21st and late 20nd centuries does mean that they see the empathy as performative and either self serving or naive, not that they think the person simply cares too much. Up until about a decade ago they might have even seen empathy as a noble trait, as long as it was backed up by personal action.

Its not just that. Its refering to people expressing extreme performative empathy, backed up self serving or useless actions. There are liberal grifters out there, just like there are conservative ones, and the phrase is used to label a person as one of them.

I doubt he would actually be able to do it. Even if he had a solid case, Musk has the money to drag this through the courts until long after Trump is gone. However, Im pretty sure hell make a big show of the threat when they inevitably have their falling out.

No expropriation necessary. All hes got to do is knock out Tesla’s subsidies and SpaceX’s government contracts…maybe have the DOT and FAA take a reeaaal close look at their safety records just to put the final nail in their coffins. Trump is petty though, my bingo card say he also threatens to strip him of his citizenship and have him deported before this is all over.

Its the scale that is the issue. ICE has a total capacity of maybe 50k people. The entire US, federal government plus 50 states, has a combined prison capacity of less than 2 million people. And those facilities are already occupied now. Hes got to build new capacity for maybe 10 million people. Thats bigger than China’s reeducation system. Its bigger than the Soviet gulags. Its bigger than the fucking Holocaust. Not just a little bit bigger, but bigger than all of those put together. And its got to be ready within 4 years, maybe 8 if he clings to power for a third term. His last administration couldn’t even build the wall.

I didn’t say there was anything new about it. People are, and always have been, capable of monstrous evil. It is normal human behavior, but that doesn’t make it any less vile.

It would be easier to believe they think they are doing the right thing if they weren’t so excited about all the people they want to hurt.