TheHiddenCatboy

I know what I’m about to say may get reactionary downvotes, but I think the answer is not overconfidence.

Let’s get real. Jan 2021 until Dec 2024 was a rough time all around. Starting with COVID, then the supply chain disruptions that brought, then the bird flu with chickens and the impact on the cost of eggs, and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the global impact on energy costs, and not to mention the whole rent-seeking, profit-taking megacorpo bullshit we’re still living with, people struggled from 2021 through 2024. This struggle was what caused the Shitgibbon to win more than any overconfidence.

Democrats did themselves no favours, either. When Biden ran against the Shitgibbon, people got the impression he was a caretaker POTUS, someone who would stand up for Democracy in 2020 then run as a Lame Duck until 2024, when Team Blue would select the next generation for POTUS. Unfortunately, nobody stood up. Harris was invisible, and not the attack dog I expected her to be. None of the other Democrats stepped up, either. It was business as usual, not the ‘Democracy in danger’ moment they were portraying it as.

And their handling of Trump? Absolute dogshit. Trump skated on his 6 Jan 2021 crimes, and Death may well take him before Justice does. And obviously, the Dems wouldn’t let him skate if what he did was so bad, right? That’s what many voters, especially low information voters, think about the whole situation.

So, Fall 2024 rolls in, and you’re the typical American voter: a knucklehead who can’t see anything that’s not directly in front of you, pulled a thousand different directions, and trying to decide what to mark on your ballot for President. Eggs are ridiculously expensive. So are so many other essential groceries. High fuel costs are still in the back of your mind. Your kids are duller and dumber thanks to missing the '21-'22 and '22-'23 school years, and you remember missing your friends at Church, the weekly hangout, and work/school those years. And man, those Dems said that Trump was a threat to Democracy and needed to be gotten out of office so America didn’t die or such shit, then 4 years of doing jack and shit and he’s back running for office, and you remember that groceries were affordable and you could fill up your car for cheap when Trump was in office, and now you can’t do any of that, and so you say “Hey, how bad can he really be?” and you vote for him. 77.3 other knuckleheads join you for various reasons, including looking forward to the American Reich and putting those upity minorities back in their place, and bam. Trump 2.0. As the old saying goes, consider how stupid the average American is, then remember that half of Americans are dumber than the average American.

At least now, Trump’s shortcomings are front and centre for a lot of American voters; enough so that 2/3rds of them are saying “yeah, we fucked up putting the Shitgibbon and his Merry Band of Miscreants back in.” Small victories!

I’m not going to begrudge the people who think resistance needs to be more kinetic, but that’s not who I am. I’m fucking 52 years old and have never been a fighter. I barely know how to punch properly, and while I can shoot a gun, I’ve never shot a gun while being shot at, and likely would be as much a danger to my side as to the other side. I suspect a whole lot of that 2/3rds we’re dismissing in the polling is like me. The protests bring us out. Civil war will have us hiding or fleeing.

And like others have said. Trump was so annoyed by our presence he generated AI slop. We live rent free in his head.

I think that is exactly what happened. As others mentioned, the Bell Riots led to widespread clamouring for rights in general. Between the 2024 Bell Riots and the 2063 first contact between humanity and the Vulcans, we have, in Christopher Pike’s own words, “… the Second Civil War, then the Eugenics War, and finally, just… World War III. This was our last day. The day the Earth we knew ceased to exist. What began as an eruption in one nation ended in the eradication of 600,000 species of animal and plants, and 30% of Earth’s population. Global suicide.” And what Captain Pike glossed over? Oh gee, you could write whole books on it. Look up Colonel Green. After World War III, he went on an Exterminatus campaign. Everyone who was not 100% genetically pure, such as Augments and mutants from the war, was exterminated by his faction. 37 million deaths were attributed to him, and he was seen as such evil that an alien silicoid race known as the Excalbians made a simulation of him to understand humanity’s concepts of good and evil.

So, yeah. The story we get is the realistic story you mentioned. If we are on the Trek timeline, we’ve got some horrible shit ahead of us. We still have the Bell Riots ahead of us (we’re actually past the point in time, but it sure looks like those writers were presentient when they wrote Past Tense Parts 1 and 2 back in 1995!), and we sure seem on course for World War III. The world sure doesn’t need Khan Noonian Singh, though. Between Xi, Putin, Kim, and Trump, we have the megalomaniac asshole niche QUITE filled!!!

And my point is that while on the surface, your point makes sense, and yes, we are on the road to a bloody civil war, your point rings hollow when seen by someone who looks at people who look like you and me abusing them because their skin is darker than ours. This is a real thing going on. It’s a real problem for an awful lot of people. You may think pointing fingers gets us nowhere, but not pointing fingers and calling this out is how we got to where we are now. And frankly, you saying ‘pointing fingers gets us nowhere’ is your privilege speaking. My beautiful Black wife getting called an ape, an n-word, or worse by people who look like me is more important to me than coddling some racist asshole’s feelings. I’m going to call them out every chance I get, and I’m going to call people calling to just look the other way out as well. It’s easy to do that, and in my book, it’s cowardly as well.

If you’re truly on the progressive side of the aisle, please use your privilege to stand up for those who can’t. Otherwise, you’re part of the problem.

Let’s get real, fellow White man who voted Blue. We’re a minority. For everyone like you and me, three more people who look like us voted for the shitgibbon and his merry band of miscreants. In a country with 95 million people counted as White males (who are NOT Hispanic), that’s 56 million White dudes who think the Shitgibbon is on their side. And when we include Hispanics? Well, all of the 6 million idiots who voted for Trump thinking they would be counted among the good ones because they thought their Whiteness overcame their Hispanicness? They’re in the Finding Out phase.

All you can do is say “Hey, I voted Clinton in 2016, Biden in 2020, and Harris in 2024. It’s not my fault 56 million people who look like me shared a single brain cell and elected that shithead into office.” Do what you can to help people survive in the Shitgibbon Era.

They’d not be so forward in polite spaces, but yes, this is exactly what they’d be thinking, and perhaps saying in spaces they don’t think will get into the public, such as encrypted group chats. ;)

Yeah. Because just not looking for new diseases erupting is such a great idea. I hope Europe and China are doing their due diligence, and hopefully we don’t have the next big disease kick off in the USA.

No. It isn’t.

Trump’s schtick is to do things he’s not allowed to do according to precedent. Domestic terrorism can’t be prosecuted. He declares antifa domestic terrorists and promises to prosecute them and everyone who supports them. The US Military cannot be deployed on US territory. He does so anyway. Presidents can’t get rich off the office while they’re in the office. He’s getting and has gotten stupid rich off of his office. And Presidents are not above the law, but with cover from his hand-picked supreme court, he is. What makes you think he won’t deploy the military against Blue States trying to have elections and arrest anyone sent to remove him? Let’s stop giving him cover and prepare for the worst, even as we hope for the best. That away, if he gets thrashed next year in the Midterms and then shown the door in 2028 (to both him and his hand-picked successor if he respects the 22nd Amendment…which is itself not a given), we can sigh a sigh of relief, but if he suspends elections, we’re ready to fight him that day instead of taking a year and a half to gear up.

And that’s fine. Some of us are going to stay in the US and fight the good fight, just like antifa Germans did in the 1930s and 1940s. Others will punch out of this country and find a place where they can survive. Your circumstances will determine which path you take, and that’s OK.

As others have said, this is about the bigger picture. If Clinton was involved with the Epstein Child-Fucking ring, he should go down. Anyone who has been part of the Epstein Child-Fucking ring should go down, honestly. I think that’s the one thing we and Conservatives can agree on. Child Fuckers are bad. Problem is: It’s super-easy to categorise the Other Side as childfuckers while ignoring the childfuckers on our own side. expatriado was just making it clear that they are OK with Clinton (and presumably other Left-leaning childfuckers) being caught up in this if we get all the Republicans involved in this shit as well.

Not that I expect we will. The Epstein Files will be curated so they only hit Dems as long as the Shitgibbon is in charge.

My wife and I have location sharing enabled in case something happens to one of us. We usually don’t use it, but its good to have when we need to meet up at an unfamiliar place after something goes sideways for one of us.

But if your SO doesn’t trust you enough to allow you private moments and would accuse you of cheating, your relationship isn’t based on trust and thus is very weak.

It’s ugly, and it looks like it jumped off the screen from the Cyberpunk 2077 world. It’s poorly built and ineffective at the job it was designed to do. And then Elon did his thing, and now it’s irrevocably tied to a dead Mid-20th Century ideology that the entire world fought to dismantle. I’m glad it’s falling by the wayside. An object lesson – don’t build stupidly engineered items, and don’t tout murderous ideologies that get a majority of the world against you.

But a good third of our country will celebrate it even as the leopards eat their faces, because at least the leopards ate the faces of people they hate.

Seems like the mistake here was surprising a judge in their courtroom.

I see you avoided answering my question, so it’s a lot harder to give you hard facts, but let’s look at a hypothetical purchase in Lithuania.

First, you don’t seem to understand how tariffs work. We don’t pay tariffs on exports. We pay it on imports. Let’s say you sell a widget from your page for $10. To get it into the USA, I’d have to pay you $10, and Uncle Sam $2. Doesn’t matter how much you sell or don’t sell. The shitgibbon has demanded his 20%, and so if I were to buy something from you, I’d have to give $0.20 for every $1.00 I give you.

But that’s just the start of the hurt. European Union countries are likely to tariff us back. So if you order your raw materials from the USA, your own country is gonna be standing there with its hand out. That 4.56 EUR you were going to pay a US company also has a 0.91 EUR extra charge added to it by your country. So you raise from $10.00 to $11.00 to make up that extra 0.91 EUR…which then means I have to pay $2.20 to the Shitgibbon, pushing my price up to $13.20 US, JUST so you can still make your profit target.

Some countries are mulling export taxes as well. Ontario, for example, is putting a 25% export tariff on electricity shipped to the northern US. If Lithuania decides that widgets need a 20% export tariff, now, suddenly, your 10.04 EUR item now has Lithuania holding its hand out looking for 2.00 EUR. You’re not gonna want to eat that, so your price needs to increase so you get the same profit as before. Let’s say…13 EUR to make up the tariff margin (you end up giving 2.60 EUR to Lithuania, and are still giving 5.47 EUR to your supplier, leaving you with 4.93 left over), and now I’m paying $14.21 plus $2.84, for a total of 17.05. And this is all before you start talking about charging me even more.

Digital products may currently escape this, so if you’re offering software or PDFs or NFTs or whatnot, you might indeed be not worried about the immediate nonsense going down.

I have no problem with you if you’re raising your prices on platforms that take a bigger cut of your sales. I’d suggest you shop around for better platforms, and nothing says you have to use US platforms. I’d support you on an EU platform if that meant I paid less and you got paid more. It just seemed you were saying you were going to target Americans more just 'cause. We didn’t all vote for the Shitgibbon over here.

As for your last three paragraphs? Yeah. “Preaching to the Choir” is what I’d tell you on that. Yes, the tariffs are stupid. And Trump is golfing while the economy burns.

I think that’s a reference to the Civil War movie a while back.

Nothing says a wall can’t have a door in it. If you want to come here, and aren’t a total douchebag, we can let you in. Maybe even let you stay if you want to. 🤣

Every place in the world has douchebags in it. I’m sure that the share of douchebags even among California voters is actually much larger than 38.3%, once you figure in the assholes who voted for someone else beside Trump (not to mention the people who didn’t vote at all). And you guys have your own Trump, Poilievre. Every country has assholes. Don’t forget that.

If it ends with us cutting Trumpistan/the Neo-Confederacy off, I’m good. Just hope we have enough time to get decent people out of the Neo-Confederacy.