“The president golfed in Florida Saturday and planned to do so again Sunday, the White House said.”

one might say, hypothetically , perhaps the next mass demonstration needs to be 20,000 protesters marching onto the golf greens in formation and providing this wannabe dictator piece of shit scumbag with feedback directly from his constituents.

he deserves much much worse.

wealthy people are not a monolith. some, those with advance warning (insider advantage) will benefit while others lose out. this is not just about rich vs poor, it’s also ultra rich vs ultra rich, cabals of powerful elites vying for control of global markets in the chaotic aftermath of global financial restructuring.

in addition to buy low, sell high… perhaps even more lucrative, the crash will be used as an excuse for another massive corporate bailout benefiting the wealthiest business owners and will accelerate the transfer of wealth from govt (taxpayers/poors) to private interests (oligarchs and bankers). this happened in 2008, during Covid PPP, and it will happen again.

this would have worked in 2016, I doubt it would now. the oligarchs who put the administration in power want their pound of flesh, and they will get it regardless of whose name is in the daily headlines.

hundreds of thousands of federal workers have been fired, research and education slashed, unprecedented damage done to institutions, and civil rights violations not seen in peacetime in generations. no, I’m afraid ignoring Trump isn’t going to solve anything.

the oligarchs must be stopped. one way or another.

amen.

i concur with your assessment. aside from a miniscule number of spiteful perpetually online leftists, there is no evidence whatsoever that gaza made an impact on large numbers of voters. whether one party represented change/disruption VS status-quo/more-of-the-same is almost certainly how typical Americans framed their decision.

agreed. taxing the ultra rich is the only legal method available to the 99% to redistribute wealth back down the masses who have been systematically robbed and exploited and manipulated by oligarchs. who cares if revenues go up or down? either we tax the robber barons or we seize their assets… or our kids and grandkids will be destitute.

once these assholes are dead by whatever means necessary, we can solve the whole Social Security problem (and many others) by restoring top marginal rates to the levels that built a strong safety net and prevented runaway wealth accumulation in the 1%

during WWII the wealthiest paid between 80-95%. from the New Deal until Reagan destroyed the country in the 80s, top rates were well above 50 percent.

Taxing the ultra rich is how America funded higher education, built the highway system, funded social welfare, uplifted 2 generations, built a global manufacturing and technology economy, and created a prosperous middle class. we did it by keeping oligarchs in check. in a strictly enforced progressively tiered system, top marginal tax prevents the obscene accumulation of wealth

it’s all about how the regulations are designed… for the benefit of corporations? or regular people?

for example, there could easily be rules placing caps on the amount of advertising that’s allowed on any given platform. no fucking way now the government will ever put that cat back in the bag now that the 20 percent of GDP comes from tech monopolies fueled by advertisements.

great analysis. worth the time to finish and absorb. it’s not enough for them to dismantle “woke capitalism”, they are reshaping the notions of what the state is and using it to clear the way for a new economic order which a select few capitalists control.

when the state has become so captured by private interests, whoever controls the state can use it to carve out their own fiefdoms. this may be the beginning of an era where cabals of elites take turns scorching the earth, vying for supremacy using government as a bludgeon against each other.

It is becoming clearer by the day that the war on “woke capitalism” was more than just theater. Trump’s minions really are prepared to take down whole economic sectors—the very summits of neoliberal capitalism—to elevate their own faction of private investment partners, company founders, and controlling shareholders.

How far the war on “woke capitalism” can be pursued without provoking an all-out recession (or intra-capitalist revolt) remains to be seen. What we can be sure of, however, is that Trump’s business allies will be spared the DOGE austerity treatment. As Musk’s raid on the Treasury and Trump’s attempts to interfere with the Federal Reserve make clear, libertarians don’t actually want to abolish the state, much less the massive fiscal and monetary powers embodied in the US Treasury and Federal Reserve. Instead, they want to drastically narrow the scope of beneficiaries to a small group of ultrawealthy private capitalists (company founders or controlling owners) and private fund managers in the world of crypto, security, real estate, and fossil fuels. This group of people is so small that we know their names; their faces are literally stamped onto their own privately issued coins, which will no doubt require propping up by the Federal Reserve in due course. Rarely has capitalist power been so personal, yet so massively inflated by the public purse.

sorry but I think you’re dead wrong. also, we have more than 2 options. we can choose to support the progressives who the DNC has been actively suppressing. that’s a different conversation though.

supporting the DNC only happens when they start supporting The People. I’m old enough to have personally observed just how the national Democratic party operates and how corrupt, ineffectual, and apathetic they are when regular working class Americans need lasting structural changes. all the programs and progress they made has been undone with a half dozen supreme court nominations and a wave of a pen executive order.

they don’t take adequate action and don’t break rules to achieve goals, because they fundamentally misunderstand that sometimes obeying the rules (even in a democracy) is morally wrong. in a society rapidly spiraling towards fascism, they fail to recognize that “trust the system” actually means “just follow orders” and that’s a very bad very dangerous thing.

it’s not a group worthy of my support, not until they do better.

relevant links if you’re at all interested in understanding my perspective better (or just follow my comments):

The Alt Right Playbook: You Go High, We Go Low (InnuendoStudios, YouTube)

The Rules Serve Us, We Do Not Serve Them (Parkrose Permaculture, YouTube)

you’re right, unfortunately, we live in a time when people won’t take action until they either experience the consequences personally or they’re pushed beyond a breaking point.

perpetual gradual harm reduction and backsliding is imperceptible and slow enough to be normalized. but sudden changes cannot be ignored and often radicalizes people in response (or at least forces them to ‘take sides’ in a battle).

one of the major challenges of liberatory movements is not enough people join the cause and instead wait things out. these so-called centrists and moderates only have this option because they have socioeconomic privilege compared the most oppressed groups.

therefore we must then consider strategies to capture their support, including shocking their sensibilities with outrage, or even potentially stoking fears that they could be next. “what if they close my alma mater too or what if my kids’ college gets shutdown also?” etc etc

I have a different view. he had two bad choices available and he chose the worse one.

he and the establishment Dems (hehem, Biden) as well as turncoats like Lieberman/Sinema/Machin/Fetterman who were inexplicably allowed to caucus with the party) are precisely why we’re here today watching the rise of fascism and oligarchy. from failing to seat a supreme court justice under Obama, sabotaging Bernie (twice), fielding awful presidential candidate after candidate, allowing the military to expand endlessly, not codifying Roe (and doing nothing in response to it’s overturning), to censoring Al Motherfucking Green…

the entire “opposition party” looks weak and disorganized and incapable of fighting every time a crisis arises. the party needs more progressive leadership and they need to realize that sometimes it’s appropriate to break a few rules and take risks on big power plays. and forward popular plans that will actually energize the base.

these ‘play it safe’ supposedly harm reducing tactics are why we’re here today. they had 8 years since 2016 to come up with ways to combat trumpism and the best they could do, after flopping on the election and then peacefully handing over power to a sociopath and a nazi billionaire - was… write an op ed in the New York Times.

I’m done with this group of shit heads. there are better senators who should be in charge. we need people getting mad and breaking shit, not another patronizing speech about having patience until the next midterm.

supporting a cause in person shouldn’t be underestimated. freedom of assembly is our constitutional right, it is a powerful way to connect with others and sends a message that you won’t just hide in your house while our communities are being attacked by the ultra wealthy.

thank you for having the courage and determination to make the drive and participate by yourself. hope you’re able to convince some friends and family to come with you next time there’s a chance to stand up and exercise your rights.

opposition party? these motherfuckers may as well be on the same goddamn team.

i think the commenter is just baffled at how drastically overvalued (over hyped) so many stocks are - a well known problem where speculative over investment can and does distort the whole economy and has power over the whole population. see for example, speculation bubbles like the dotcom overvaluation or subprime mortgages, or Theranos, or Bitcoin, or even how Tesla stock was being traded higher than the next 6-8 major car companies combined.

in other words, stock prices are a bunch of bullshit.

stocks arent exactly the same as “money” in the common sense so it confuses people when headlines say money was lost or wiped out. but stocks are similar to money in that they are placeholders for value, however much more susceptible to wild devaluations. because ultimately they’re just speculative bets on what something is worth and can fluctuate rapidly, as rapidly and suddenly as human emotions.

it’s so much more than stocks. stocks are mostly vibes and short term get rich schemes for already wealthy people. they’re Pokemon cards for the finance class, creating almost nothing tangibly beneficial to society. hype and FUD in an endless cycle.

you can’t eat stocks. you can’t warm your house with stocks. you can’t manufacture solar panels with stocks.

real wealth, the serious fuck you Big Money, depends on the ownership and distribution of real resources: real estate, agricultural land, factories, pipelines, commerical buildings, capital infrastructure. these are what the ultra wealthy buy up during recessions and then charge rents and leases for everyone else to pay, forever. forget about owning land or a home, your kids can’t compete with someone paying cash on a 600k house or snatching up entire portfolios of hundreds of rentals in a single purchase.

bailouts and blank checks given out as PPP loans to “business owners” during Covid redistributed wealth from the taxpayers (government) into the hands of the wealthiest people in the world. they can then convert their Pokemon collections into real wealth generating resources. government bailouts to corporations become an engine for not just making the rich richer but the types of assets they then acquire using that money cements them at the top of the wealth generation food chain forever.

Trump 2.0 is engineering another massive redistribution, even bigger and more focused on real estate than before. he made his fake reputation on real estate. loyalist oligarchs who bank rolled dark maga will be handsomely rewarded with the newly emptied government office buildings and public lands.

and your kids and grandkids will be homeless.