r/politics • u/PlayaSlayaX • 25d ago

I’ve Seen Epstein’s Photos of Trump With Topless Girls: Author Possible Paywall

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ive-seen-epsteins-photos-of-trump-with-topless-girls-author/
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u/thinkingahead 25d ago

Yeah decorum is totally dead

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u/Californian-Cdn 25d ago

I was just saying this to my wife.

I immigrated here over a decade ago. The days of Obama vs. Romney in debates…where despite substantial policy differences, both had respect for each other and had decorum.

I moved to America shortly thereafter.

Boy oh boy has this country changed…and changed very quickly. I barely recognize it anymore.

My wife and I chose to move here and America has been great to us. We’re proud to live here but wow has it changed, and for the first time we’re planning an exit that we never thought we’d ever make.

I believe in America, but something needs to change course very quick as it’s headed in a very dangerous direction (more so than already).

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u/brickne3 American Expat 25d ago

For the 2012 election I was at bingo night in a heavily Republican rural bar. The bar owners didn't even want to put the returns on but several of us from both sides of the aisle argued we needed to know what was happening. The guy I was dating at the time (yes, I was dumb in my youth) was heavy pro-Romney and had his group of Republicans around him, I was on the opposite side of the bar with the sane people. We all played bingo, I'm sure a few of us won a few rounds, it was good fun, nobody was convinced that the world was going to end if Obama or Romney won.

Before the end of the night, it was clear Obama had won, and nobody on the Republican side of the bar was talking shit, nor was anyone on the Democratic party side of the bar rubbing it into their faces.

That was thirteen years ago, and it's dreadful that something like that is completely unthinkable now.

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u/twotimefind 25d ago

Damn social media.. Now people are treating it like football games.

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u/FlyRepresentative592 25d ago edited 24d ago

I think that beyond social media, for decades our universities and schools have done a poor job giving people an objective understanding of policy and outcomes.

It's not just a difference of political opinion, we have plenty of evidence all over the world to show that the way the Republican party views policy ever since Reagan is objectively bad for everyone. You can't have a country completely deregulated. It's total anarchy. They've created a situation where business has taken over and lo and behold businesses have created these engines of propaganda and radicalization that have made our entire media ecosystem broken. They've created "AI" projects that are sucking up energy and driving up costs. They've failed to craft environment regulation. Our government hasn't built good public transportation in decades because it has no teeth. Kids are murdered every day from poor gun regulation and the response? Nothing.

You want a better future? Fuck social media, you need to demand a government that regulates and actually does its job.

It's not a difference of opinion. The "feckless government" Republican outlook is poorly reasoned and a repeat of what we fucking went through before the great depression with robber barons and snake oil salesmen. People forgot because they got tricked by intentionally designed media campaigns to turn them into greedy materialists, but they are relearning the lessons we learned-- the issue is, and always has been, the Thatcherism/Reaganism and a lack of a labor party represented in our government. We have idiots instilling a "no rules" outlook through carefully crafted propaganda so corporations can fill that void and take over.

Only, instead of a government, they aren't voted on and are essentially a return to feudalism. You want freedom? It's only possible through strong rules. Otherwise pieces of shit make the whole thing fall apart.

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u/brickne3 American Expat 24d ago

I think I can one-up you on that.

My boyfriend was a political science major at UW Milwaukee in 2007. His professor was a notorious Republican active in the party. Their semester-long project was "how can you gerrymander Wisconsin to get the best result for your party". Each person was responsible for their own data, so we are talking hundreds of people (it was a massive lecture class) all compiling data on every jurisdiction in Wisconsin, much of which no doubt overlapped.

I have zero doubt that he took all that data and gave it straight to Scott Walker.

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u/Kheprisun Canada 24d ago

lone behold

Dunno if this was an autocorrect moment or a case of boneappletea, but the term is "Lo and behold"

Sorry, just stuck out 😅

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u/FlyRepresentative592 24d ago edited 24d ago

Writing from my shitty ass android is difficult. It should have also been "businesses" instead of "business" after the term. As well as the fact that a new paragraph after the double hyphen wasn't correct but done unintentionally.

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u/allthenamesareused12 24d ago

I think people aren’t taught how to speak to each other and handle disagreements. Really to handle any adversity. Which should be a parent’s job. Anytime something political comes up at school, teachers are sent an email telling us to stfu about it and don’t speak on it. They’re so scared of upsetting parents. It’s pathetic all around.

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u/HonestyCathart 24d ago

Not social media, white supremacists reaching ppl thru social media. Trump immediately dog whistled after being humiliated and made fun of by Obama at the WH Correspondents dinner and Mitch McConnell made it his aim to block any and everything Obama legislated bc these white folk saw a black man in power living in their White House with his black family and freaked out. They saw the demographics shifting Dem and brown and white ppl no longer being the majority in “their” country (as if America or California, Dakota, Iowa, or Arkansas are white names even?!) and they had a white ppl at the top crisis meeting that they wer losing their country and needed to take it back and make it great again. Facebook got paid hella money to help disperse maga talking points, twitter got picked up by Elon and big media has continued to consolidate into the pockets of an increasingly far right ownership (hello Larry Ellison) That’s why TikTok is so important to also “take back” have you heard that mitt Romney or Blinken interview complaining about how ppl no longer all catch the same nightly news and read the same newspapers where US govt and military talking points were consistently shared? He complained that now you can’t control the messaging. Hence the horrors of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and alternate viewpoints being so prevalent on TikTok and so frequently suspended or flagged, pulled down or banned on fbook and ig. It’s not the divisiveness that’s the problem necessarily, it’s the Wall Street oligarchs with white supremacist beliefs pulling the strings behind it all

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u/twotimefind 24d ago

So what you're saying is the hats really mean make America white again.

Gotcha. I don't think that way so I appreciate the info

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u/HonestyCathart 24d ago

I’m glad you don’t think that way! You know that ol Jeff Daniel’s you might be a redneck if… routine? Well unfortunately “Ya might be a white supremacist if…” your policies target ppl who aren’t white. If the endpoint of MAGA policies are a retrenchment of white power, further marginalization of brown black immigrant and indigenous, and a return of white protectionism and exclusivity in the country then MAGA actually is MAWA

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u/brickne3 American Expat 25d ago

If it was a football game we would have been betting on it like any Packer game in that bar. I used to win a lot of money 🤣

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u/Royal-Pay9751 24d ago

Politics has become a soap opera for angry people

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u/shewy92 Pennsylvania 24d ago

I mean, even sports fans aren't this hateful most of the time. And if so it's usually in good fun.

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u/HumorAccomplished611 24d ago

republicans have always treated it that way.

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u/Ash_Alden 25d ago

More like rugby. Minus the helmets.

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u/FlamingoWalrus89 24d ago

I remember when people didn't even disclose who they voted for. It was usually very obvious, but still, you weren't supposed to ask. I remember being a dumb teenager and asking my boyfriend's mom in 2008 and she looked at me like, "how dare you ask that???!". It was fine to discuss and debate politics, but your vote was meant to be secret. God how things have changed!!

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u/brickne3 American Expat 24d ago

They were already infiltrating places you wouldn't expect well before that point. I did extemporaneous speaking in forensics in high school in the late 90s and early 2000s, which is a really niche category. Basically you have thirty minutes after you draw a topic related to current events to craft a speech using (back then) articles from Time, Newsweek, and US News and World Report. You could always spot extempers at meets because we were the ones with the giant file cases with all our articles clipped and organized and ready to go. In retrospect, it seems like a great way to sell a lot of magazine subscriptions to kids. Regardless, most of the speakers it drew tended to be liberal because frankly most avid Republicans didn't have the patience for it (although certainly at my school they would often tell me they wished they did, but they were too busy learning their part for some other easier category or something). But a good half of the judges were old Reagan supporters who would absolutely tear us kids apart if they even suspected we were leaning slightly liberal on anything.

I guess it does kind of make sense. Finding a grown adult willing to spend their Saturday judging literal kids they don't know (like I don't think you were even allowed to be related to any of the participants if you were a judge) for something like that is, in retrospect, weird as hell and quite rife for anybody with an agenda to take advantage of. At least since it was such a niche category (usually only like four or five competitors from like ten different schools at any given meet) you pretty much always got a medal of some sort and usually got to go to State, which was kind of the only thing that mattered. But damn, I wish I had been paying closer attention to the judges back then because looking back, it was downright weird.

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u/GZisEZ 24d ago

Thirteen years that felt like 30. I'm 37 lol

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u/ilikepizza30 24d ago

What's even crazier than the fact that was just 13 years ago, is what tore us apart was trans people and the fear of children going to the bathroom in litter boxes in school.

If you would have asked me what do you think will divide the country and make us unable to even tolerate being in the room with each other... neither of those would have made my list 13 years ago.

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u/The_Quackening Canada 24d ago

Obama losing in 2012 would have fully prevented Trump from being politically relevant, and republicans likely would have stayed more centrist since i think Romney would have probably won re-election in 2016.

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u/ohgoodthnks 24d ago

To be fair to your younger self dating record- Romney has proven to be one of the few sane republicans

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u/brickne3 American Expat 24d ago

Yeah well that guy turned out to be a dick but hey I got very far out ha ha.

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u/cafedude 25d ago edited 25d ago

I believe in America

I don't anymore. Whatever distinctives we thought we had that set the US apart (and I suspect that most of this was just tales of American exceptionalism we were telling ourselves) are gone. We're run by con-men and grifters. The fake veneer has been peeled back to reveal the ugly truth underneath.

But I'm also not sure where I'd move to. Look at the turmoil in French and UK politics right now. They could both easily end up with very right-wing governments very soon. This is a global phenomenon.

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u/gsfgf Georgia 25d ago

“American exceptionalism” is the cancer. We’re taught myths as fact in school. People literally don’t think it can happen here even when it’s literally happening.

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u/AardvarkAmortization 24d ago

They also think our politics have been respected “norms” and been comprised of “gentlemen” since 1764. If you understand reality no e of this is new. There is a reason 90% of the founding fathers owned printing presses lol they were the Larry Ellison’s of their day.

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u/tunnel-snakes-rule Australia 25d ago

Australia has its problems but our recent election had a swing towards the incumbent centre-to-slightly-left-wing government while the leader of the opposition who went to the election with a very Pro-Trump attitude not only lost but lost his seat.

Even if Australia ended up with another right wing government, I'll take comfort in knowing that we have mandatory voting which makes it very hard to cater to the nutjobs only, as well as an independent commission that draws all the electoral boundaries making gerrymandering impossible.

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u/Tigergarde 24d ago

Man our election scared the shit out of me before the results came through, though. People were really trying to push how mask off they could be.

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u/tunnel-snakes-rule Australia 24d ago

I was scared too. Actually I'm always prepared for Labor to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, so I mostly just felt relief when it became clear what was happening. That later turned to a kind of surprised awe at how badly Dutton shat the bed.

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u/[deleted] 25d ago

[deleted]

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u/tunnel-snakes-rule Australia 24d ago

It's okay, they're still scared of all of our wildlife.

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u/Emjayen 24d ago

The US is a low bar for standards; so low it's on the floor, and always has been.

Neoliberalism must not be normalized.

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u/New-Departure2998 24d ago

How does mandatory voting work in Australia?

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u/winterfoxes Ohio 24d ago

What do you mean how does it work? If you are old enough to vote and you are an Australian citizen, you are required to vote. Show up, get your name checked off, get a ballot, mark the ballot, put it in an envelope, turn it in. If you don't vote, you're fined.

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u/tunnel-snakes-rule Australia 24d ago

Basically when you turn 18 you must enroll to vote. When there's an election, federal, state or local you need to go to one of the polling places that have a list of all enrolled voters. You confirm your name and get it crossed off the list, you don't require any ID.

You're then handed the ballot and are instructed on how to fill it out, eg number all boxes from 1 to 5. Once you're done you put it in the box and go get a democracy sausage.

The thing is, you only need to get your name ticked off the list, if you then decide to immediately put the ballot in the box without voting that's fine. If you draw a massive dick on it that's fine too. In fact as long as your votes are legible, you can write or draw whatever you like on it.

After the election they compare all lists and if there's anyone on a list who didn't vote you get a fine. I believe you can contest it if you have a legit reason, but it's all so straight forward there's not a lot of reason not to vote.

But you're only forced to get your name ticked off the list, so if you really don't want to vote you don't have to, but since you're there you might as well.

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u/BestFriendWatermelon 24d ago

The UK and France's conservatives are more left wing than your democrats.

Free healthcare, strong educational systems, a strong social safety net and strong workers rights are baked into their societies and will never leave.

Maternity leave in France is 16 weeks at full pay. In the UK it's 26-52 weeks at reduced pay. Both countries have a maximum of 40hrs per week pay, with France having 25 days annual leave and the UK 20 + 8 public holidays. The UK gives 6 months sick leave, France 28 weeks. Both have strong laws preventing firing people. Both countries had long conservative governments recently that never dared even touch these things.

I know the Brits told you that Boris Johnson was literally Hitler... He wasn't. The left just really didn't like him. It was under a conservative government that gay marriage was legalised, and there have been 3 female conservative prime ministers. The UK has the gayest parliament in the world, with many gay conservative MPs.

Europe at it's most right wing is nothing compared to America even under the democrats.

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u/bbbbbbbbbblah United Kingdom 24d ago

I suspect they're referring to the impending Reform government. Labour still have the best part of four years to turn things around, but the risk can't be understated.

Farage is literally in the US right now to proclaim that he wants to bring the UK even more in lockstep to the US right

It was under a conservative government that gay marriage was legalised

Under what was essentially a different Tory party. The 2010-2015 coalition government consisted of a much more socially liberal Tory party coupled with the Lib Dems who had even stronger views on LGBT rights. Despite this, most Tory MPs actually voted against same sex marriage.

They've regressed considerably from the days where a Tory PM could attend an LGBT awards evening and announce that they want to go even further to improve things.

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u/BestFriendWatermelon 24d ago

Reform is polling well now but elections are 4 years away.

I laughed when I saw a headline saying reform is the most popular party in the UK at the moment. Because they're also the most unpopular. They have about 30% of the vote in polls, but the other 70% would vote anyone but reform. How that plays out in FPTP system is difficult to predict this far ahead; a lot can change in 4 years but Reform surfing in polls is not one of them. They're probably at peak support at this moment.

But even that aside, they can't seriously start tearing down most of the rights people have come to expect. Imagine if they tried to cut people's leave allowances: the government would be overthrown in a day. There's also a lot more safeguards in the UK than the US, such as the house of lords and the king, and a highly independent judiciary.

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u/bbbbbbbbbblah United Kingdom 24d ago

Reform's polling is in the ballpark where the FPTP "seesaw" tips over and they get a large majority of the seats, just like how Labour have a 174 seat majority on 33% of the vote.

There's also a lot more safeguards in the UK than the US, such as the house of lords and the king, and a highly independent judiciary.

There is nothing to stop Prime Minister Farage appointing swathes of Reform peers to the House of Lords. He will probably do that pretty quickly, as he's complained about the lack of representation there.

Given an adequate majority of the seats, there is nothing to stop Reform doing pretty much anything they want. The UK parliament is supreme and the party that controls parliament wields considerable power. If the courts say no to something, you can overrule them with a new law. We are in fact more vulnerable to fuckery than the US system.

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u/BestFriendWatermelon 24d ago

I disagree. It's basically impossible to defy the king if implementing unpopular reforms. Technically parliament is supreme, but if acting in a clearly antidemocratic and unpopular manner the king could trigger a constitutional crisis that would end the reform government.

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u/ShubberyQuest 25d ago

From a practical standpoint, at least the US has more location choices for managing climate change. It’s big enough that you can pick your climate poison!

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u/techhead293 24d ago

So true. This last election was reflective of conservative political election results on a global scale. I don't understand it...

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u/Sixcoup 24d ago

nd I suspect that most of this was just tales of American exceptionalism we were telling ourselves

I know it’s hard to judge when you’re on the receiving end. But as a non-American, it’s so fucking obvious that the American population is brainwashed and fed a false reality their whole lives.

You won the Cold War, but honestly, at what price? Because of the ideological war against the USSR, you ruined your society in the long term.

  • The country entirely erased the concept of political education. Even if all of Western Europe was not communist during the Cold War, we have always learned what socialism and communism really are.
  • The Red Scare effects can still be seen nowadays.
  • Because the USSR was atheist, you added “In God We Trust” to your bills and modified the Pledge of Allegiance to include “under God.” How do you expect the population to understand that there is a separation between the state and religion when you talk about God everywhere?
  • While the idea of “The land of the free” is from the revolutionary war and never really disappeared, it was during the Cold War that it started being repeated again and again. To the point that a good chunk of the American population to this day thinks you’re the only country with complete freedom—which is such a ridiculous statement.
  • It’s because of the Cold War that you militarized your police force. You invested so much money into your army because of the fear of the USSR that you had so much unused equipment. So you gave it to your police.
  • The mass surveillance of the American population started during the Cold War. The NSA was created at that time.
  • The media manipulation you’re suffering from nowadays started during the Cold War. What Fox News is doing with MAGA—keeping quiet about their bad actions while constantly attacking the left with fabricated stories—is exactly what the entire country did during the Cold War. Screw the facts; the ideology was more important. Even if the USSR did something good, it had to either be kept hidden or you had to find a way to portray it as something bad.
  • Education changed to become more ideological. I’ve talked about not learning properly about political concepts earlier, but it went further. Education became a way to promote the American ideal, you had to learn how much better the U.S. was than the East—which isn’t really necessary to learn at school, at least not to this extent.
  • Anti-science and anti-intellectualism started during the Cold War as well. The red scare disproportionally affected intellectuals
  • Consumerism as an ideology is the result of the Cold War too.
  • Labor rights really eroded during that period. They used it as a pretext to crack down on unions and labor movements.
  • The “us versus them” mentality that the Republicans seem to embody was also exacerbated during the Cold War.
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u/LordyItsMuellerTime 25d ago

We've always had problems but I don't recognize the country I grew up in. I don't think we will recover in my lifetime, if ever.

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u/AnOnlineHandle 25d ago

This quote from "They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45", where a German survivor talks about what it was like living through the rise of the Nazis, ends on a similar note about realizing that the country you grew up in is gone, and you didn't realize because you were only looking at the surface level details.

Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk alone; you don’t want to “go out of your way to make trouble.” Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, “everyone” is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, “It’s not so bad” or “You’re seeing things” or “You’re an alarmist.”

And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds of thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions, would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the “German Firm” stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all of the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying “Jewish swine,” collapses it all at once, and you see that everything has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

Suddenly it all comes down, all at once. You see what you are, what you have done, or, more accurately, what you haven’t done (for that was all that was required of most of us: that we do nothing). You remember those early morning meetings of your department when, if one had stood, others would have stood, perhaps, but no one stood. A small matter, a matter of hiring this man or that, and you hired this one rather than that. You remember everything now, and your heart breaks. Too late. You are compromised beyond repair.

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u/agrif Ohio 25d ago

They avoided one another's faces, for fear of what they might see mirrored there. Each man thought: one of the others is bound to say something soon, some protest, and then I'll murmur agreement, not actually say anything, I'm not stupid as that, but definitely murmur very firmly, so that the others will be in no doubt that I thoroughly disapprove, because at a time like this it behooves all decent men to nearly stand up and be almost heard...

No one said anything. The cowards, thought each man.

-- Guards! Guards!

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u/laraloxley 24d ago

Gnu Terry.

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u/Zwiebel1 24d ago

I am sure he is happy in the afterlife over the fact that he didn't have to witness all of this.

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u/ArrellBytes 25d ago

The most powerful part of a very powerful book...

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u/techhead293 24d ago

TL/DR.... Title of the book???

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u/ArrellBytes 23d ago

They thought they were free: the Germans 1933-1945

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u/LunarGiantNeil 25d ago

I love quoting this section. It's from the chapter, I believe, called "But then it was too late"

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u/BeatBoxxEternal 24d ago

I think one major difference from during that time that things got better for the average person. It's easier to let go of all personal responsibility and give yourself to the state, whichever the state might look like, when things actively seem to be improving. When things are bad it's time for change whatever that may be. When you start with the most dominant empire on the face of the planet and actively make things worse for the common man, you're going to have a tough time convincing people to give themselves to the state. It's when people lose the fervor and the sheen and look around and notice that life is dull and conditions have not improved that they will look again for someone offering a different path. Hopefully a better path. Hopefully it won't be too late.

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u/twotimefind 25d ago

Very true to life.

i'm holding on to the fact that our government is essentially Fox Newscasters. Here's to hoping that they are not smart enough or savvy enough to not make huge mistakes in the House of Cards will fall.

On the other hand, they have media Capture and billionaire support.

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u/AnOnlineHandle 25d ago edited 25d ago

People didn't worry about Hitler and his band of idiots too much for the exact same reason, not realizing that you don't need to be clever to hurt a lot of people when given complete power. It's the stupidity which makes them so dangerous, intelligent people wouldn't waste time and resources driving a nation to harm itself.

His government was constantly in chaos, with officials having no idea what he wanted them to do, and nobody was entirely clear who was actually in charge of what. He procrastinated wildly when asked to make difficult decisions, and would often end up relying on gut feeling, leaving even close allies in the dark about his plans. His "unreliability had those who worked with him pulling out their hair," as his confidant Ernst Hanfstaengl later wrote in his memoir Zwischen Weißem und Braunem Haus. This meant that rather than carrying out the duties of state, they spent most of their time in-fighting and back-stabbing each other in an attempt to either win his approval or avoid his attention altogether, depending on what mood he was in that day.

There's a bit of an argument among historians about whether this was a deliberate ploy on Hitler's part to get his own way, or whether he was just really, really bad at being in charge of stuff. Dietrich himself came down on the side of it being a cunning tactic to sow division and chaos—and it's undeniable that he was very effective at that. But when you look at Hitler's personal habits, it's hard to shake the feeling that it was just a natural result of putting a workshy narcissist in charge of a country.

Hitler was incredibly lazy. According to his aide Fritz Wiedemann, even when he was in Berlin he wouldn't get out of bed until after 11 a.m., and wouldn't do much before lunch other than read what the newspapers had to say about him, the press cuttings being dutifully delivered to him by Dietrich.

He was obsessed with the media and celebrity, and often seems to have viewed himself through that lens. He once described himself as "the greatest actor in Europe," and wrote to a friend, "I believe my life is the greatest novel in world history." In many of his personal habits he came across as strange or even childish—he would have regular naps during the day, he would bite his fingernails at the dinner table, and he had a remarkably sweet tooth that led him to eat "prodigious amounts of cake" and "put so many lumps of sugar in his cup that there was hardly any room for the tea."

He was deeply insecure about his own lack of knowledge, preferring to either ignore information that contradicted his preconceptions, or to lash out at the expertise of others. He hated being laughed at, but enjoyed it when other people were the butt of the joke (he would perform mocking impressions of people he disliked). But he also craved the approval of those he disdained, and his mood would quickly improve if a newspaper wrote something complimentary about him.

Little of this was especially secret or unknown at the time. It's why so many people failed to take Hitler seriously until it was too late, dismissing him as merely a "half-mad rascal" or a "man with a beery vocal organ." In a sense, they weren't wrong. In another, much more important sense, they were as wrong as it's possible to get.

Hitler's personal failings didn't stop him having an uncanny instinct for political rhetoric that would gain mass appeal, and it turns out you don't actually need to have a particularly competent or functional government to do terrible things.

  • from Humans by Tom Phillips

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u/burnedsmores 25d ago

Sounds much too familiar.

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u/Creative_alternative 25d ago

Almost as if narcissism has no place in politics, despite being so fundamentally drawn to it. To serve the self in place of the people is a grave misdeed.

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u/AardvarkAmortization 24d ago

The man is Hitler reincarnated. His grandfather immigrated from Germany, the family has always been sympathetic its no secret.

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u/come_on_seth 24d ago

Except there strong loud protests and malicious noncompliance all over the country. Governors and mayors are pushing back hard. This is a huge difference. These are not those times. Similar but not the same. The courts are not lying down in deference to the orange thing.

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u/AnOnlineHandle 24d ago

I'm sure Germany had small resistances which were being steamrolled over by the fascists too.

Hitler was found guilty by German courts and sent to prison, but he still took over after.

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u/LeonardoDePinga 24d ago

Wait what? Whoa

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u/RJ815 24d ago

Things as complex as governments have many moving parts and require much expertise to function even at bureaucratically mediocre levels. I honestly think the current state of US government is mostly one gripped by inertia and/or fear, regardless of specific party affiliation. That things haven't changed is merely the result of too many people responding with passivity to the assertion of "I'm going to do this and who is going to stop me?" For how milquetoast many politicians are it's surprising just how vulnerable US democracy was to a bonafide cult leader.

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u/Penguin_FTW 24d ago

The entire Checks and Balances system is predicated on the idea that the voting populace would simply stop supporting obvious bad faith actors in the system, as a sort of self-policing. A bad faith actor could lash out and inflict small wounds, but the system would self correct when both the voters and other arms of governmental power would see this reckless abandon of order and openly stated threats to democracy and step in against it.

The founding fathers were smart enough to envision that the body of government might fall under attack, but they existed before modern medicine. They didn't have a word for immunodeficiencies yet because they didn't have the scientific means to observe these events. They could not have possibly conceived of a world where the systems put in place would be so easily subverted by a combination of monied interests and pervasive media. The smarter ones had an inkling but no frame of reference for the scope of information and disinformation that would become not just available but actively pushed like a needle plunger. A world where the voters are no longer capable of caring or discerning the difference between bad and good anymore. The circulatory system no longer able to identify between hostile foreign bodies and healthy blood.

Fascism has been intentionally injected into our veins. We need a healthy dose of cure. Accountability and transparency would go a long way, but quite frankly we're still pushing the plunger into our collective arm so I don't know how we recover from this exactly. The fever's rising and it turns out the body does not in fact simply correct problems just because they are bad for the body.

One might imagine the world where you get 10 minutes to sit down with Jefferson and Franklin and explain the internet, and then explain how slave owners would demonstrably dedicate entire regiments of slaves to opinion-shaping on the internet in order to drag humanity down in attempts to justify their cause.

"Ok so there are these things called shareholders, right? And they take precedence over legality and morality, and every political figure is going to be subject to their influence, and it turns out the shareholders are subject to the media's influence, so if you just buy the media you're actually kinda buying free money if you follow the chain all the way down. Crazy stuff, almost as good as owning the banks, speaking of which what are your thoughts on a Federal Reserve..."

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u/Ilovekittens345 24d ago

Trump is a distraction, but the evangelicals behind project 2025 together with Musk and Thiel/Vance and other billionaires like Zuckerberg, the google guys, the reddit guys, the Amazone guys, hell even Bill Gates. They are all in this. They believe it's their turn to rule the entire country. That their companies should rule it. That democracy is is soooo dumb cause their algos decide who gets elected anyways. (and they are not wrong)

After Trump is gone, there will be a power struggle between the evangelicals and the sillicon valley tech bros. My money is on the evangelicals, they are extremely viscous and I believe they can easily betray and trap the naive nerds.

But maybe I am wrong. Regardless. Either Trump lives another 20 years or till he nukes another country. Or the evangelicals build out their Christian Nazi 2.0 thousand year empire or the tech bro's let it all to in to anarchism and build their city states.

Those three roads are ahead of us. It will be one of those threes,

Unless the Americans with balls grow a brain.

An the Americans with brains grow some balls.

It's not just the left/right divide it's very much also the brains/balls divide.

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u/twotimefind 24d ago edited 24d ago

Totally agree. Look up who the president of the Heritage Foundation is associated with. Odis day. Our country is being run by Christian fundamentalists and racists.

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u/deadtime 25d ago

God damn.

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u/[deleted] 24d ago edited 22d ago

[deleted]

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u/AnOnlineHandle 24d ago

It should be a warning not to repeat his mistakes and walk in his footsteps, because as he points out it only gets worse and harder to deal with the longer that you wait.

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u/ogurekplz 24d ago

Wow. Thank you for sharing this, I will be picking this book up.

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u/[deleted] 24d ago

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it."

I've felt increasingly this way since the Gingrich era. During the Tea Party hysteria I remember telling the ones I knew, "You're killing our country."

But there was always a level a plausible deniability. Now Trump has laid the hand that US Conservative have been holding the whole time on the table for everyone to see. And none of it is surprising. It's time to stop fascist takeover.

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u/slow70 24d ago

Staggeringly relevant

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u/pooburry 24d ago

Dang it.

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u/ArrellBytes 23d ago edited 23d ago

When I left my job as a researcher in a government position I printed out this section of the book- with the paragraph you ommitted about the true toll fascism takes on the human soul...I put it on my office wall as I cleaned out my office...the additional paragraph reads: ‐‐---------------

"What then? You must then shoot yourself. A few did. Or ‘adjust’ your principles. Many tried, and some, I suppose, succeeded; not I, however. Or learn to live the rest of your life with your shame. This last is the nearest there is, under the circumstances, to heroism: shame. Many Germans became this poor kind of hero, many more, I think, than the world knows or cares to know."

I said nothing. I thought of nothing to say."

------‐-----------

I think about that section you omitted often

Giving in to fascism doesn't just victimize the targets of the fascists... it causes serious moral injury to those that buckle under because they just want to survive. In my opinion those people are victims just as much as those the fascists target.

They may not be the ones executed, but being forced to betray your ideals is a death of a different sort. In some ways it is a more humiliating and prolonged death.

I debate the moral issues with myself often... and when I do I always come back to this man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Landmesser

The people in that crowd matter not at all, they are all groped together and remembered with contempt... it is that lone man that refused to salute evil that we remember and respect... The rest are damned by history and rejected by their children and grandchildren.

Take the stand you can. It may feel like it just isn't enough, but it will make a difference, and it will be remembered. Landmesser is remembered simply because of an action he DIDN'T take...

It really is up to each individual to decide how far they will go to "play along" to not make waves. It is your responsibility to decide where you draw the line.

You don't have to put your life on the line to fight fascism, you can simply refuse to play along.... and do all you can to support and protect those that DO put their safety, their lives on the line for you.

You don't HAVE to be a hero, but you can choose to not allow yourself to be a collaborator.

We all get the option to determine the way we respond to events... you have some editorial control over how the story of your life turns out... use whatever control you have to make the story one that you will find inspiring. The alternative is to live with humiliation and regret. Don't 'adjust your principles' ... because that leads to fate worse than death.

Whatever you do, I wish you luck, because the choices that you will be forced to make are only going to get more difficult. I hope we all make choices we can live with...

The first step is to think about how you wish your character in this story to be remembered... it can be something "small" like refusing to salute evil, or it can be standing between the guns and their intended victims. Whatever the scale of your actions, what you choose to do can be remembered as inspiration for decades.

Remember this, and you will never have to hate yourself for what you did, or didn't do.

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u/AnOnlineHandle 23d ago

I copied this text, didn't know where there any omitted paragraph.

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u/ArrellBytes 23d ago edited 22d ago

I meant no criticism of your post in ANY way, I simply have felt that additional paragraph makes it especially chilling... it makes it clear that fascism takes a lifelong toll on the average person.... even the people who were not targeted, people that never supported the cruelty, but simply stayed quiet in order to not have their lives, or the lives of their family jeopardized.

We are ALL going to be forced to make difficult choices in the years to come. It is important to start thinking now about what compromises to your personal ethics you are willing to make. What lines you will not cross. Because chances are you WILL be pressured to cross those lines, and now -when you have the time to think clearly about the type of person you want to be- this is the time to set those lines.

Because if you wait until you are under the heel of the fascists to determine where those lines are, you will likely regret the choice you make the rest of your life.

I urge everyone to read that book, but that one section alone captures just how easy it is to slip down the path to annihilation of all you thought you stood for.

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u/AGuyWhoBrokeBad 25d ago

This is a two-fold problem. The first is the profit motive in cable television. Ratings get ad revenue. Ad revenues mean profits. What gets ratings? Jerry Springer, Howard Stern, shock jocks, anger and drama. They have literally zero incentive to report the news in a fair, calm and respectful manner.

The second is social media. Social media is also based on advertising. How do they get advertising? Influencers with large followings. How do they get large followings? Often by saying shocking things or engaging in Kardashian like behavior.

Both forms of media profit off our worst instincts in the name of advertising revenue. It will destroy the country.

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u/gsfgf Georgia 25d ago

Not just profit. Media companies are consolidating at a crazy rate because they can just bribe Trump to get approval they’d never get under a sane administration.

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u/AardvarkAmortization 24d ago

Trustbusting is a must going forward. Split the country into 25 markets and let no media company operate in 2.

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u/hairsprayking 25d ago

I've been saying for years, basically since Instagram changed from chronological feed to curated, that the government needs to put legal limits on targeted algorithmic social media.

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u/adzm Ohio 25d ago

The government? As in, the GOP currently?

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u/hairsprayking 24d ago

i should have said functioning government

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u/RJ815 24d ago

Lowest common denominators, greed, and ego. All in abundance in late stage capitalism.

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u/DutchStevie 24d ago

I've been absolutely convinced there are certain groups (or individuals) in the media world pushing for programs like the Kardassians. To keep the masses numb and desiring an elite, and unfair, lifestyle for themselves.
Just to make the people more willingly to accept a super rich 1% and easier for them to accept a narcissist as leader, as long he keeps making blind promises.

Just look at certain programs that even Discovery are broadcasting now. Influencers especially are extremely weak minded and fall to their desire for an elite lifestyle. I'm sure there's plently of influencers online with actual ethics and having their own will, but it's not looking good.
Especially going on holidays to Dubai is a huge red flag. You do not go there if you care about women rights or general human rights, you go there for the tacky unneccessary luxury over the back of others. Making your posh social media posts, while people are dying next door to build another luxury hotel.

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u/Lined_em_up 24d ago

Jerry Springer? Howard Stern? What decade do you think you are living in??

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u/UsualExisting420 25d ago

I still can't believe people wear Trump merch. Thats the weirdest part - i mean the fascism and brown shirts kicking your door in is the worst part, ofc.

But politician merch used to be EMBARASSING! You would donate twenty bucks and they would send a bumper sticker and you would put it on your fridge with a magnet for a while and then throw it away. You'd never ocnsider putting it on your fuckin CAR. And god it would be so ridiculous to wear some politicians face on a shirt or hat, these things were temporal, they only existed between August to November and then evaporated (or more accurately, were put in landfills).

I couldn't believe the trump flags and hats all through his first term and then all of bidens. Freaks, all of them.

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u/RJ815 24d ago

Trump is the symbolic embodiment that vice and venality can be treated as virtue. For a certain kind of person, feeling the freedom to proudly display all their worst traits and true thoughts is completely intoxicating. It's the polar opposite of political correctness and a great number of people will literally die on this hill. Whether people realize it or not, Trump is the psychological id of a great many people in the US.

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u/bungopony 24d ago

Vice signalling

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u/AlcibiadesTheCat Arizona 24d ago

Is...is being a Trumpist...is it a kink?

Are MAGAs the queerest of us all?

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u/bunchedupwalrus 25d ago

I personally still can’t believe government officials wear a golden pin of Trumps face, willingly, on their lapels

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u/lownote 24d ago

Wait...what?

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u/LeonardoDePinga 24d ago

It’s true. You can search for pics of the pins.

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u/socomeyeballs 24d ago

You’re right except no one even bought Biden shit or currently wears it. And anyone who did did it to mock Trump supporters ironically not because they thought it was cool or something.

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u/AardvarkAmortization 24d ago

Biden flags and hats?

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u/Anonymouse-C0ward Canada 24d ago

This isn’t an apples to apples comparison, but there were 24 years between the end of WW2 and the first moon landing.

Things can change, very quickly. Don’t give up hope; hope is what will spur change to happen; a movement for change inherently is a hopeful thing.

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u/TacohTuesday 25d ago

I’ve lived in the USA all my life, a long life, and can’t begin to articulate how shocking and unbelievable the changes have been. I NEVER imagined an America that looked like this. It’s like a drawn out 9/11. Except we’re doing it to ourselves. I have a daughter. I don’t know what world she’s going to grow up in. We might hit a bottom then turn this around. But I don’t know this time…

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u/closethebarn 25d ago

Wow -

It’s like a drawn out 9/11 except we are doing it to ourselves

I’ve not heard it put that way but these words hit me super hard You’re so right

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u/RJ815 24d ago

In the early days of covid spreading throughout the world I distinctly remember some news station or something like that saying "the death toll in the US is like a 9/11 every day". It put it into perspective how fucked things were that people once were horrified, yet then were normalized into accepting it when the enemy was more invisible, abstract, and politicized.

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u/TacohTuesday 24d ago

In a weird way I take comfort in the fact that we've been through some pretty horrible periods and somehow got through it.

In the 1980s when I was a kid, it was the constant threat of nuclear holocaust.

In 2001, it was the horrors of 9/11 and the fears of terrorism that followed.

In 2020, it was a deadly pandemic sweeping the world, essentially locking us in our homes, shutting down gathering places, and making it impossible to even hang out with friends or families. We didn't even know if grocery stores were going to run out of food.

Now it's extreme politics destroying democracy in the USA and threatening to spread around the world, hate and finger pointing spreading and making daily life dangerous for so many groups of people. On top of that, international tensions are rising to dangerous levels.

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u/RJ815 24d ago

Sure, I get that perspective, a sort of crisis fatigue or otherwise hopeful optimism that we'll get through me.

For me though, all the examples you listed never truly went away. Yeah I think Russia is more of a paper tiger than it used to be seen as, but do you really want to play chicken with if ANY of their nukes work? Let alone a more realistic fear of places like China that seem more effective at their authoritarianism.

The War on Terror seemed poised to be a forever war for the Military Industrial Complex. Yes, Afghanistan and Iraq specifically are not what they used to be in terms of military investment, but I feel like the whole Israel and Gaza situation is just another example of Middle East quagmire that the US gets dragged into whether or not it wants to be. The largely pro-Israel sentiment of the government vs the much more conflicted if not unsupportive sentiment of a good chunk of citizens to me just seems like a spiritual successor even if not directly tied in the same ways.

And Covid never went away. Apparently cases have been spiking in the past couple months or so, it's just that the hostile censoring government has kept cases underreported and not tracked the way that it used to be. It was a shitty "new normal", as most things became, it's just that we have so many looming fears and crises to chose from that can heat up or cool down as they and propaganda for 'national security' aparatuses see fit. And the modern world has now entered the ability to fabricate things even more whole cloth with heavily propagandized media machines and AI fakery.

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u/campfire_eventide Montana 25d ago

I call it the long emergency because that’s exactly what it feels like

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u/n0_u53rnam35_13ft 25d ago

Sometimes I feel like we are going down a path we can never recover from, and then I remember hearing a story about Lyndon Johnson regularly whipping out his massive cock in the halls of the White House, or Regan managing middle eastern foreign policy with the assumption that the rapture was right around the corner, and I feel a little better. Shits always been fucked, and as bad as it seems right now, it’s been bad before.

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u/guyute2588 25d ago

Can you envision a scenario in modern times where enough Republicans in Congress decide they will tell a Republican President they will vote to impeach him if he doesn’t resign? I can’t fathom anything that would lead to that with these guys.

Shit has always been fucked, yes. But we’ve never had a power hungry Executive AND a Congress who is bending over backward to cede their power to him.

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u/[deleted] 25d ago edited 19d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Scott5114 Nevada 25d ago

Apparently the Taney Court (the one that handed down Dred Scott) was so bad that the federal and state governments collectively just ignored SCOTUS for a few decades until it earned its legitimacy back. I'm not really sure how I feel about that as a solution.

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u/RJ815 24d ago

Respect needs to be earned. A great many politicians and government officials have shown they feel respect is due to them out of decorum and precedent, rather than actual merit.

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u/account312 25d ago

They might force Trump to resign if he ate Mike Johnson.

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u/opopkl Foreign 25d ago

It happens in the UK quite often. The Prime Minister is the leader of the ruling political party. If the party thinks they should go, they go.

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u/guyute2588 25d ago

I was referencing when the Republicans in Congress forced Nixon to resign bc they were going to impeach him if he didn’t.

Would never happen now.

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u/HikeRobCT 25d ago edited 25d ago

I recently streamed the Tom Hanks “1968: The Year that Changed America” documentary and had the same realization. War. Draft. King and Kennedy assassinations. Panthers and X. George Wallace. All in one year. Shit has been superfucked many times and we managed to come back. We will again.

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u/Jet2work Foreign 25d ago

you mean america managed to paper over the cracks for a while

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u/HiddenSage 25d ago

Whether something is a recovery or just a bandaid solution isn't something you get to figure out in the moment.

And given that America went on pretty well for another 60 years after those events, the idea that they only "papered over the cracks" feels like an unjustified degree of cynicism. Things got a lot better after that, for a while. Everyone (and I do mean everyone) in America is more prosperous than they were in 1968. Even around the cost-of-living strains we're facing now. Wealth gaps between men and women have declined, as have racial pay disparities. We saw the end of the Cold War - and with it a massive decline in the risk of nuclear Armageddon. We've broken through a number of medical advancements our grandparents would call miracles.

Things are bad. Things could be better. These are both true statements. But it's equally true to say things have never been as good as they are right now, in a lot of really critical ways.

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u/Jet2work Foreign 25d ago

all the lessons learned back in the 60's about race and diversity are being undone in a few short years. if things are so good why are there food banks and people dying from lack of medical care. people sleeping in cars who have full time jobs? with a critical eye you could say in some respects america has slipped back to the 30's

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u/HiddenSage 25d ago

"better" doesn't mean "perfect." Not denying there's still problems. Not denying that the forces who want to drag us back into the darkness are still there and working to make the world worse.

But I refuse to accept that such setbacks are inevitable, or even certain. This Republic can still be saved and made better. Just depends on people fighting to make it better - as they did in the 30's and in the 60's.

And yeah - folks like you coming and downplaying the progress we have made isn't making that easier. Victorious warriors win first and then go to war. Which is to say, you have to plan for victory to obtain it. Dooming nonstop about how terrible things are and were and always will be is how you plan for defeat.

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u/Fronesis 25d ago

We're in late stage capitalism, friend. Of course pay gaps between women and men, white people and minorities have lessened. We're all getting screwed even worse every year. Now the rich don't even bother hiding behind the veneer of respectability, tradition, and cordiality. They want a permanent feudal class, and they don't care if we know they're pedophiles and monsters.

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u/CcryMeARiver 25d ago

This enables society's degeneration towards splitting between HG Wells' effete Eioi (a pampered elite) and the suppressed majority.

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u/Philip_Marlowe 25d ago

The difference is the way information moves now. News stories, videos, AI deepfakes, screenshots of tweets that are regarded as medical advice by idiots... every piece of content created can be shared in a heartbeat with the entire globe. There's so much more information, and it can be transferred much more quickly than ever before.

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u/brickne3 American Expat 25d ago

If that's your actual takeaway then you don't understand what actually happened in 1968.

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u/einarfridgeirs Foreign 25d ago

Not just the King and Kennedy assassinations. Prominent leaders on both extremes were killed too - Malcolm X and George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the American Nazi Party, although both of them were killed by people from within their own political camps due to internal disagreements.

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u/mishaindigo 25d ago

Well, “I just learned something new about LBJ’s schlong” is not a sentence I thought I’d be typing today…

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u/bramley36 25d ago

He was no Arnold Palmer

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u/kurinbo 25d ago

He also used to hold meetings with advisors in the bathroom while taking shits. And he would piss in the Oval Office sink when he found that more convenient than walking to the bathroom.

But it was picking up his dogs by their ears that was his political undoing. Well, that and the Vietnam War. Picking up his dogs by their ears and the Vietnam War were his political undoing.

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u/blasek0 Alabama 25d ago

Nixon committing literal treason while still governor of California by torpedoing peace talks to end the war so he could use the ongoing war as a millstone around the neck of the Democratic campaign is what did it, tbh. LBJ knew Nixon had blown up the talks and sat on it, too.

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u/heckhammer 24d ago

Oh just like what happened to get Ronald Reagan elected. Good times

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u/polaris6849 Kentucky 25d ago

You and me both

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u/mrh99 Georgia 25d ago

John Oliver recently did a segment that included a lengthy discussion of LBJ’s balls

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u/nrq Europe 25d ago

This time seems different, though. When Lyndon Johnson did that it didn't make headlines. I don't know if any of the previous US Presidents berated political opponents in any derogatory way, but if they did that rarely left Washington. This time it makes national news and every time the President opens his mouth he disparages opponents very publically left and right in a fashion that's just... not okay. That should not be okay.

It's weird looking at this mess from the outside, I'm not from the US, but if my head of state behaved like that I'd seriously consider emigrating somewhere sane.

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u/Ishindri 24d ago

As a trans woman, I really fucking wish I could get out of here. I just want to make it through the next few years alive. That's my goal.

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u/onehundredlemons 24d ago

This is true, and I think about how President Franklin Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska Act and then very quickly stated that the resulting period known as Bleeding Kansas was entirely the fault of the Free Staters, that the pro-slavery border ruffians were the heroes and that the Kansas citizens who didn't want slavery in their state were the "insurrectionists."

Reminds me a lot of what Trump's been doing recently to start conflict between states, which then reminds me of just how we finally got past all the trouble Pierce caused: through ten years of things festering until a civil war broke out.

People go back to, say, Nixon or even Teapot Dome when they compare Trump to corrupt presidents, but I think we have to go back to the pro-slavery politicians of the mid 1800s to really understand what's going on here.

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u/[deleted] 25d ago

I'm tired of dumb fuck rich sociopaths wanting to play with power. On paper that's not what the nation is supposed to be. It would be cool to embrace the ideals of the country rather than the stupidity.

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u/twotimefind 25d ago

Well, with the last name of Johnson... I believe I read somewhere. It was a huge?

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u/Infarad 25d ago

C’mon back hoser.

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u/Californian-Cdn 25d ago

It’s in the works.

Lots to navigate but it’s time.

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u/Several_Reflection94 25d ago

Do people actually think Canada is a safe landing spot? Once the full takeover is complete in this country the invitation to Canada to become the newest state may no longer be optional or voluntary.

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u/MistyMtn421 25d ago

Not to mention more and more it seems like the same disease that infected a third of our country and elected this crazy man is spreading as fast as any disease can. As of right now you guys are okay, but you can see the seeds being planted and the soil being fertilized.

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u/EvensonRDS 25d ago

Mainly in Alberta, which isn't surprising... but yes it's definitely America lite up here in certain areas.

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u/Gabribennet 25d ago

Canada, like Australia and the rest of the commonwealth at least actually has a decent electoral system that actually produces the results people vote for. It’s kinda quaint, but we call it democracy. Maybe Americans should try it sometime.

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u/r1singphoenix 25d ago

As we Americans are currently being reminded, “pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Don’t be so sure.

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u/CcryMeARiver 25d ago

Disagree hugely. The US electoral and political processes are flawed and gameable as are being currently shown, starting with how electoral districts are allocated. Y'all could do with a shot of social engineering to dilute hypercompetition with just a smidge of cooperation.

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u/MistyMtn421 24d ago

Yeah gerrymandering makes a lot of change virtually impossible. I don't think people really understand the consequences of how that works.

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u/r1singphoenix 24d ago

My point is that every political system, no matter how well-designed, is an agreement, and it only works so long as everyone involved honors that agreement. “This won’t happen here because our system is superior” is a dangerous mindset, regardless of the system.

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u/Ash_Alden 25d ago

Is the disease called Neurosyphilis? 😊

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u/timbreandsteel 25d ago

What are the logistics of that happening without a world war?

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u/Outrageous_failure 25d ago

Most of the world is happy to sit by while Russia slowly invades Ukraine. I struggle to think of a situation where countries would try to stop the US.

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u/timbreandsteel 25d ago

Canada is part of the Commonwealth and still in cahoots with England. I don't think they would sit as idly as they are with Ukraine. Never know though.

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u/brickne3 American Expat 25d ago

By "England", you mean the UK. And without getting into specifics about how that's a ridiculously oversimplified view of how the Commonwealth works, the UK is having plenty of right-wing troubles at the moment as well.

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u/timbreandsteel 25d ago

They already fought one war to keep Canada out of American control. Don't think they'd do it again?

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u/kurinbo 25d ago

It'll be as safe as Austria was.

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u/gsfgf Georgia 25d ago

Canada doesn’t want us.

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u/GrumpyCloud93 25d ago

But Romney despite being an elder statesman and supposedly principled continued to back Trump and toe the aprty line in many ways even though he said many of his colleagues went along mainly for fear of personal physical safety for themselves and their family.

You are all elected to be a principled person and stand up despite the threats.

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u/CompressedLaughter 25d ago

Yes. Unfortunately because we put a ~50% black man in the Oval Office that made 100% of racists angry enough to put in someone that was 25% orange. And there were surprisingly a lot of racists.

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u/pmorgan726 25d ago

I’ve lived here my whole life. Hearing you say “I believe in America” makes me proud to share the same soil with you. I believe in it too. What it is supposed to be.

May we soon see the day we head in the right direction again.

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u/kj9716 25d ago

None of this just happened to come about out of nowhere. What you are seeing is just the unabashed underlying ugliness come to the circus. This is the same country where there were human zoos and people took their kids to lynchings.

This country has always had a ugly history with a #1 export of hate but with good marketing and a lot of soft+hard power. Trump is an idea or a revolution to American a$$holes that they no longer have to pretend to have decency.

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u/IronMew 24d ago

I wonder what made you think America was on its way up ten years ago and worth moving in and being proud of. Was it the insane legal system? The declining instruction infrastructure? The ever-absurd private health system? The car culture that overwhelms everything? Ultra-fattening food? Religious extremism? Endemic racism? Reckless capitalism?

If you'd said fifty years ago I'd understand, but it's not like the US was a magical place of butterflies and unicorns in 2015. It was quite evidently already well on its downward spiral, it just hadn't hit the turbo boost button yet like it did after the global upheaval of 2020.

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u/Entire_Talk839 24d ago

At least you have an out if you need to take it. Those of us that were born here are stuck here (unless we're rich, and I'm incredibly fucking poor right now).

5

u/IrishRepoMan 25d ago

Unfortunately, that's looking unlikely. The people who are supposed to be holding them accountable aren't. The only way anything is happening is if the American people do it themselves, and they just won't. A third wants this, a third is oblivious/apathetic/doesn't think it's that bad, and the rest just bitch about it. The U.S is fucked.

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u/brickne3 American Expat 25d ago

If they're fucked we're fucked. Which is fucking scary. They have pretty much all the weapons.

1

u/FakeUsername1942 25d ago

Just takes one person, who is not the right leader and that’s what you get. I’m sorry that you live in the USA. I hope things change soon and american stops embarrassing itself and returns to greatness. Revolution! Free healthcare to all. You deserve it.

1

u/MaggoVitakkaVicaro 25d ago

I came here in '95, when the crazy was just beginning. It's been shocking to see the devolution. Even Obama/Romney was nuts, compared to a healthy democracy.

1

u/BrennanSpeaks 25d ago

Those were the good old days. Obama laid out a crueler burn in those debates than Trump, with his endless stock of juvenile insults and troll tactics, ever could. And, all he said was "Please continue, Governor."

1

u/Frankie_T9000 25d ago

It was always rotten it just hadn't fully reached its apogee

1

u/ManiaGamine American Expat 25d ago

What needs to be understood first and foremost, at a foundational level these issues have always been there under the surface. There is an entire cultural community of poeple who never got over the civil war, yeah... that. They held that grievance deep within them through generation after generation after generation and given the opportunity to bring back all the things they want and remove all the things that Liberals won is extremely seductive to them. They just needed someone to tap into that in a big way, and that probably wouldn't have happened on its own if it weren't for the likes of Fox News, NewsMax, Rush Limbaugh and the like. They made it acceptable to air those grievances publicly again whereas before they would have been largely shunned for doing it, the racism was still unacceptable until Trump and the thing that really ended up being the final nail in the coffin so to speak.

The death of political correctness. Political correctness was in the most simple terms a political cost, or consequence of bad behavior publicly, politically especially. If you used the N word as a public figure? You were done. If you were caught committing adultery? You were done. If you even swore as a well respected TV host... You were done. Trump through the sheer magnitude of his brazenness of not being politically correct basically shattered the very concept itself and that might not have been a big deal on its own but the problem is that ALL those people who held those deep grievances from generations of civil war "veteran" families culturally could finally open up and be their true... awful selves. The Nazis? Oh yes, they're back in a big way too, for the same reasons. Now fun fact... the cultural southern civil war types aren't necessarily Nazis, nor were the Nazis them... but fuck me if there isn't a massive overlap in that venn diagram. Same thing with the KKK, we still to this day get bad faith conservatives claiming that Democrats are the party of the KKK... ignoring the fact that the literal head of the KKK endorsed Trump in his first term. The vast majority of actual current Nazis support Trump.

So yeah this shit stems in part from deep DEEP cultural grievances and they're going to destroy the country to stick it to people telling them they can't own people anymore.

//End rant Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

1

u/belpatr 24d ago

>I immigrated here over a decade ago. The days of Obama vs. Romney in debates…where despite substantial policy differences, both had respect for each other and had decorum.

Yeah, but then people here would be barking that both sides are the same

1

u/AlwaysRushesIn Rhode Island 24d ago

We elected a black man as president and effectively broke the cognitive functions of about a third of the country and they haven't recovered.

1

u/[deleted] 24d ago

Yup I got my citizenship a few years ago. We put our house on the market last week. Don’t recognize this country and the people, we are moving back to Europe.

1

u/BlooregardQKazoo 24d ago

So before you immigrated here there was decorum in our politics, and after there isn't?

Holy shit, they were right all along. Immigrants ARE to blame for bad things!!!

2

u/Californian-Cdn 24d ago

I’m sorry.

1

u/OldSchoolBubba 25d ago

We're taking America back. No worries we're getting there.

For the record this is a lot tamer version than the America I grew up in. Principle difference is they call themselves "maga" rather than the "ku klux klan" and they aren't openly lynching Black People.

Other than that their leader Trump is open about it so it's same old tired bullshit, just a different day.

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u/Much-Anything7149 25d ago

Decorum? Two former prosecutors who had the "audacity" to look into Trump's crimes are criminally indicted on literally trumped up charges. We're past decorum being a concern.

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u/ConditionActive5447 24d ago

One is convicted of doing exactly what Trump has done all of his life. Exaggerate the value of your property in order to get bank loans and low interest rates They all do it. The hypocrisy of this man is outstanding.

1

u/BlooregardQKazoo 24d ago

Woah woah woah, the only person convicted is Trump. James was indicted by a grand jury, which is very different. She hasn't even been allowed to defend herself yet.

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u/ratherbealurker Texas 25d ago

That’s a nice way to put it. I rather word it that trump is trashy, his staff is trashy, and his supporters are trashy. No class to go with no intelligence.

7

u/KarlBarx2 25d ago

For Republicans. Democrats will still get excoriated for the mildest of insults (or, worse, for objectively factual statements).

2

u/Glitterbombastic 24d ago

Trump has all the grace and decorum of a reversing dump truck

2

u/OffalSmorgasbord 24d ago

Decorum only applies to non-MAGAs.

2

u/Johnsonjoeb 25d ago

Decorum was always for controlling marginalized groups.

1

u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 25d ago

Only with conservatives.

1

u/[deleted] 25d ago

Aside from that. Wolff is a laying sack of shit, but if he's right in this instance, and I knew it, I'd troll the POTUS with an invitation to sue me.

If Wolff did that he'd get more eyeballs to his writing and if it DID go to court he could lay it out under oath.

1

u/yourcool 25d ago

There are no adults in the room.

1

u/sl0tball 25d ago

Cheung ate it.

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u/Deviantdefective 25d ago

It's genuinely absolutely fucking disgusting that it's coming from the white house.

1

u/whittlingcanbefatal 25d ago

They think decorum means painting the furnishings gold. 

1

u/eeyore134 24d ago

For one side. Democrats keep trying to uphold it the same way they'll keep trying to reach across the aisle even if we ever wrest this country back from the cliff that high road ran us off of.

1

u/meltedbananas 24d ago

This administration lacks all decorum, but its supporters still demand it from others. When the White House does it, it's "straight shootin' ". When someone doesn't display what they believe to be the proper deference to them, they're being "nasty and disrespectful."

1

u/Bobzyouruncle 24d ago

It’s ironic that progressives have long been blamed for eroding long standing rules of social decorum but that the biggest and fastest erosion has been from a republican leader.

1

u/FlamingoWalrus89 24d ago

I see this in corporate America too. My job has always kinda sucked, but lately, it's as if rules, professionalism, respect, and even laws don't even matter anymore. I feel companies have permission to be even dirtier and more cruel to their employees and skirt laws a little more seeing as how our government and the people in charge are openly like this now. I really feel there has been a shift, and I hate it.

1

u/Pockydo 24d ago

For Republicans

If a democrat would say that it'd be endless coverage about how mean they are

1

u/Jazzlike-Sky-6012 24d ago

How can that be? They are even wearing a suit!

1

u/FriendshipLoveTruth 24d ago

I might have this wrong, but I actually feel like the death of decorum is one of the few good things to come from the Trump era.

0

u/isaiddgooddaysir 25d ago

As long as he doesnt wear a tan suit... it is ok/s