Something I’ve been wondering - now that Donnie’s a convicted felon, is he going to have to take any drug tests? And if so, is he going to pass? I assume whatever he’s taking was “prescribed” by a doctor, but the prescriptions are going to be highly questionable, as would the quantities he’s taking.
Yeah, his new position is that it’s terrible for anyone to even suggest jailing their political opponents, and this is his “could you even imagine me calling for the prosecution of my former opponent, whats-her-name?” argument. Of course, we don’t have to imagine it, so part of this is that he’s trying to gaslight us that he never called for Hillary to be jailed, and certainly never said the words “lock her up” on the numerous occasions when he absolutely did. (I don’t think he’s gotten to denying his most recent comments about how he’d prosecute his political enemies…)
I’m hoping all the wanna be Trumpers begin hamstringing each other as soon as he’s diminished or out of the picture. Donnie being Donnie, he likes to set his underlings against each other, or if anyone shows signs of getting more media sparkle, it hurts his feelers and he’ll undercut them. So there’s not an obvious successor. Since he stands for nothing beyond the glory of Trump, hopefully there won’t be as much of a platform for his fascist fanboys and girls.
Biden is 80yo. Trump is 77yo. So Trump’s age is 96% that of Biden’s. It’s almost a wash. Reporting either age without this context does a disservice to the voters.
If this monster of a human being is a normal person, I would feel sorry for him to have his dementia reported in realtime 24/7 like some wounded animal on display in the zoo. The stress from dealing with tiny bit of consequence for the first time this late in life must have accelerate what should be a smooth sailing to old age turning into an insane anxiety mess. But who cares, he deserves everything coming to him and some more for a multiple lifetime worth of hell he gave other on this planet.
Attrition. I truly believe a lot of what we are going through are old bigots seeing the writing on the wall: the nation is skewing more liberal, more tolerant, and this is their last chance to enshrine their bigotry into law.
This doesn’t mean we can sit back and let time do our work, as we see how easy it can be to turn back progress and poison minds if we do nothing. We’ve made a lot of progress and we have a long way still to go, but as long as we don’t give up hope we’re moving towards a better future.
I used to believe that. Now I think I was about as wrong as a person can be. I changed my view during the Charlottesville riots in 2017 - watching under-25s marching chanting “Jews will not replace us” shook that view loose from me.
I still have no idea why anyone younger than me would hold those bigoted views, but they do.
To echo what the previous reply said somewhat, it’s a mistake to assume all the bigots and fascists are elderly and on their way out. They’ve succeeded wildly in passing on their toxic beliefs to younger generations through their efforts to destroy the public education system, through abusive parenting and church sermons, and through social media that thrives on normalizing and promoting racist conspiracy theories and other misinformation. The poisoning has already happened and those people are gone for good, just like their older counterparts.
I have hope that the overall level of tolerance and compassion is still rising via more people becoming active allies rather than apathetic bystanders, but there will be young people fighting to demolish the progress they’ve taken for granted their whole lives, even after the elders who grew up in the pre-civil rights era are all gone. Time is no cure for human stupidity and hate, despite every instinct saying it ought to be.
Although former presidents retain “president” as a title, “The president,” does indeed usually refer to the contemporary* office-holder. So you can still say, “president Clinton,” but refer to him as the former president.
*If you’re speaking in the past-tense, “the president” isn’t necessarily the current office holder. So you can say “The president was in meetings planning the Bay of Pigs invasion.” without confusion.
Yes. Although addressing the former president is different than referring to him. It is common practice for former ambassadors to be referred to as ambassador even when they no longer hold that post. This can cause confusion when they are working on the staff of an embassy in a different capacity, so it is officially discouraged.
It is always a true statement that “not all {group of people} are {gross characteristic}” but the proportions matter. The younger demographic skews way more open and tolerant than the elders, and while there are young Nazis, the numbers are way below replacement levels. They are dying off, and they know it. If they are going to impose their way of thinking on us, this is pretty much their last shot.
I have no pity for him. But we have been hearing from experts and people who had dementia in their families, etc. since he was in office that he was about to drop off the deep end and it hasn’t happened. I don’t watch him closely enough to say he’s worse than before. I remember everyone saying Reagan was demented, but if he was, his handlers kept it from us. If Trump were to actually die I think they’d go full “Weekend at Bernies” or get Austin Johnson from SNL to take over.
The problem is, the democrats would have to actually do those things. Biden’s not going to pack the court, and voting rights and PR/DC statehood would require overcoming or eliminating the filibuster.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t some “bOtH sIdEs” nonsense, voting blue this year will at least keep the current state of US democracy intact, but actually patching the holes without a supermajority would require the dems to learn lessons they haven’t learned in almost twenty years.
You need more then a little breathing room in 2025 for that, or at least I see breathing room as Trump is out but the republicans hold a majority in both houses.
To get two new (maybe Democratic majority) states you are going to need both houses. To pack SCOTUS again you need to get nominations through both houses, and you also need enough of the old SC to be departing, or you need to play the expanding the court game (which you can do if you hold both houses).
So…I do hope we get both houses and then do a bit of work to make this stop being an endless game of “win this particular election or we all die at the hands of a madman”, but just getting the presidency again is not nearly enough to do that part…
Environmental exposure, disaffection, distraction and scapegoating? I’m not implying that once Grandpa Racist passes away we will live in Pollyanna surrounded by enlightened people. Racism and bigotry will always find fertile ground in which to fester. But the number of bigots is going down, ever so slowly.
Progress and change is slow, difficult, and frustrating. But we are making progress. We had a POC as president, and a woman of color as vice president. A woman won the popular vote for president in 2016. We have greater representation of BIPOC and LGTBQ+ people in politics, business, and culture. We have a long way to go, and sometimes we go backwards, but we’re making progress and shouldn’t abandon hope.
