The thing that tends to really get me down is when my wife shows me a stupid meme shared on Facebook by members of my own family. Last night’s little gem said something about China just agreeing to remove tariffs on $2bn worth of US soybeans and the mainstream media wasn’t covering it. I did look up the facts, but I didn’t need to. The mainstream media reports “news”, not “dumbass lies claimed in memes originating from a Russian troll farm”. I knew already that the media wasn’t reporting this because it wasn’t “news”, it was “bullsh!t”, but I looked it up anyway. I found what I expected to find.
They also used to share memes exclaiming how the ACA was going to make milk cost $6 a gallon. You know, because…um…reasons? I guess cows wouldn’t be able to afford healthcare unless they charged more for milk or something?
It never fails to amaze me how readily people are led to believe stupid things because the morons love a juicy scandal so much that they would rather believe and propagate a lie than accept the less exciting, but also far less terrifying reality of what their idiotic actions are helping to accomplish. Today’s GOP is nothing but an intricate framework of lies, falsehoods, misrepresentations and outright cheats. Their economic policies are always disastrous, never failing to increase the deficit or punch the poor and middle class right in the jimmy, so they’d be unelectable if they actually told the truth, that their services have been bought and paid for by corporations and the puppeteers who profit from them on the backs of everyone else.
There are all these idiotic beliefs that the “global warming scare” is all about money, somehow. I just wish my fellow man was smart enough to realize that after stealing nearly every cent the middle class has our corporate overlords are going to be well set to buy all the food they need once the crops start failing and still have billions in ill-gotten gains left over. So yeah, I guess it is about money. It’s just not a “scare”. It’s reality.
It’s a long story, @widdershins, but my extended family is estranged because of Trump. I also had to move out of my last apartment because of his rhetoric.
My situation is not unique. I have actually done some research into this. It is coming up as an issue in divorces, as well as mental health.
People will say, “Over politics? Why fight over politics?” But this ISN’T “just politics.”
In my case, I was seriously ill, and facing loss of my medical treatment if the ACA were overturned … my relatives were always posting memes about all the lazy folk on O’Bummer care. Then, the Evangelical couple I was renting a room from got obsessed with Hannity and began stocking food and firearms in case of civil war.
African-Americans, Jews, people on Disability, Hispanics, LGBTQ, people concerned about the environment, DACA folks, immigrants, all sorts of people are being put in the bullseye…and opinions that in the past people kept to themselves are just spilling out everywhere.
The frustration I had with my family and with others always comes down to this: I REALLY do my research. Yes, sometimes I am wrong, but I try really hard to check multiple sources across the political spectrum, and access objective data whenever I can.
But none of that matters when you are up against someone with a Libtard meme.
I originally wrote this one before Trump, and it would take too much effort to update it. But to me, the Right is all about a certain set of false narratives.
A huge problem for liberals is that the solutions to huge societal problems are often complex, nuanced, multifaceted, and anti-intuitive. These concepts are hard to explain in interviews, harder in debates and impossible on bumper stickers. Right-wing one-dimensional “solutions” always make better “messages.”
You’re right oneguy. Trump does have a little bit of deliberation and self control. (Tho not enuf to function optimally as POTUS, I don’t think.). Also, calling him a “rageaholic” is a bit of hyperbole.
But you say that our country has a system that prevents someone from concentrating authoritarian power. But Trump has been doing just that. He does not recognize any law, or standard, or ethical stance, or convention of any sort that is not consistent with what he wants at any given time. He stands, effectively, now, as being above the law. And the only thing that stands in his way is the faint possibility that he will lose an impeachment fight.
If/when he wins that fight, he will be free to use the powers of the POTUS to manipulate other countries to do things that will keep him in power in the US.
He has already warned us that we will face a civil war if he were to be impeached. He has stacked the federal judgeships. Also the SC is stacked in his favor. With a firm control of the Senate, the legislative branch is held in check, from even adequately overseeing him. He governs how he wishes with foreign affairs, and with Presidential decrees and executive orders. He has his own propaganda news networks. The “system” that would protect us from him, seems to be failing.
We are at a nexus, now, in which his authoritarian power will continue to grow or our “system” will win out once again. Which it will be, is not yet known. But I imagine that oddsmakers would give Trump becoming a dictator the odds on likelihood.
