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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: April 24th, 2023

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  • Trump thinks he can trade a few weeks of bad headlines and market hit, for some magically reappearing domestic manufacturing. It doesnt work that way. Even if it were possible, it wouldn’t create positive economic conditions on any kind of timeline sufficient to offset the negative effects real consumers are already experiencing.

    A few weeks? Try a few months. Or years. I think Trump is fine with bad headlines for months on end.

    The positive interpretation is: Trump’s confident that he’s right. He’s confident America will be better off under his tariff plan. OR he’s confident he can use tariffs to force trade deals that benefit America and exploit the rest of the world. And he knows voters have short memories. As long as the economy is strong in fall 2026 he can take credit for it and give Republicans overwhelming electoral victories at the federal and state level.

    The negative interpretation is: Trump doesn’t care about public opinion because he doesn’t think elections are going to matter anymore.

    Either way, what the media and the voters think about tariffs now doesn’t matter to Trump. Trump does what Trump wants and the rest of the world submits to him. It’s everything he’s always wanted.






  • Right. Now is the right time to start.

    But it’s too soon to tell if that effort will accomplish anything, because the effort has to be sustained through 2026 and 2028.

    And the people showing up waving signs have to become politically active - not just showing up and going home, but writing their congresspeople and boycotting companies and knocking on doors to get out the vote and so on and so forth. Bernie and AOC can stump all they want. If they don’t inspire people to act it means nothing.

    The Democrats need a grassroots movement - as angry and passionate and hopeful as the Tea Party was - not just speeches by celebrity pols. It’s too early to tell if liberal citizen voters will accept their responsibility to build that movement.


  • Save your praise until they actually win some victories. Marches and rallies are a good start, but they don’t necessarily translate into political action. Remember the women’s marches in 2017? The largest single day protest in American history and it did exactly two things: jack and shit. People went out, waved signs, went home, and Trump flipped three court seats and ended Roe.

    Bernie in particular has always been great at turning out a crowd, but he’s never been able to turn that into political or legislative victories.









  • Quick history moment:

    The US government has always treated politically motivated vandalism as domestic terrorism.

    The FBI defined Earth First!, Earth Liberation Front, and similar radical environmental groups as terrorist organizations decades ago, because they spiked trees and burnt subdivisions and SUV dealerships.

    The Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act makes it an act of terrorism to vandalize a factory farm or animal research lab - even nonviolent protest that “intimidates” employees is illegal.

    Some of y’all are acting like burning car dealerships was protected speech before Trump. Come on.