I’m calling it. The Fed will start gradually lowering its interest rates down to near 0 as the stock market booms with cheap money. The news will show troubling social and geopolitical problems that will be quickly swept over by the latest Dow Jones and S&P 500 values getting to absurd heights. People will start grumbling about the nation’s problems again while Trump will say it’s the “Deep State” causing all of this and pointing the finger at Democrats and undocumented immigrants.

Inflation starts to spike again at the start of the 4th year of Trump’s presidency. Even more people will start to go homeless as the average monthly cost of a 1 bedroom apartment soars to $3k. If Trump is still “healthy”, the Supreme Court will declare a sitting president can hold on to power during times of emergency and cancel US elections.

“It’s simple, really. We liked the way things were four years ago,”

You liked living in a crumbling economy riddled with mass unemployment and caused by a fumbled pandemic response that resulted in thousands of preventable deaths? Because that’s where we were 4 years ago. That’s the economy Trump gave us the first time.

Reading that article is a serious indictment of economic literacy in the United States. People don’t understand what role the president plays in the economy, what causes inflation, or how and why interest rates change. They draw really superficial causal links and don’t think about it after that; it’s fact to them.

It’s reasons like this education may be the single most critical issue, since we can’t make progress on the climate or anything else if the population is incapable of critical thinking. I hate to say it like this because it feels patronizing, but Jesus fucking Christ.

Some immigrants, once they become established in a country, will then seek to stop other immigrants, even of the same ethnicity, culture or ancestry, from doing what they did. They’ll pull up the ladder behind them.

“We saw a huge difference when Trump was president,” Dietzler said, adding that he was drawn to Trump’s embrace of former Democrats like Robert F Kennedy Jr

These people are morons. And they’re happy about it.

We liked the way things were four years ago,

Apparently I am the one who has been living in an alternative reality for the past eight years.

All the headlines today are about how the democrats screwed up. What I have not seen discussed is how in the everlivingingfuck any person could possibly vote for Trump. There was nothing good about his presidency. By all measures, he was one of the worst presidents in American history (while Biden was one of the best in modern times).

We all, myself included, need an education about what the president does and how they can impact kitchen table economics. I mean, I find it hard to grasp that people would vote for Trump just because the cost of bread is up while ignoring the pages of lies, indictments, convictions, rapes, bankruptcies, coup attempts, impeachments, not to mention hate speech. I hope people still don’t have the belief that the US president has any substantial impact on gas prices. The economic efforts of the Biden administration have fixed everything that Trump screwed up.

I still don’t think people know what inflation is. And while we all have the world’s information in our pockets, no-one cares enough to look it up. Inflation goes up because the demand for goods is higher than the supply - meaning either we were buying too much crap and/or there were environmental variables decreasing supply. Inflation happened because of the government stimulus checks, supply chain issues, and disease spread across livestock - it’s a feature, not a bug. I get that all they care about is their grocery store bill but a basic understanding of economic policy would go a really long way. The Democratic policies, past and proposed, put consumer (and livestock) protections in place to prevent or minimize price gouging and monopolies and supply chain disruptions. The Republicans fight these bills because it would cut profits for corporations. Voting for a Republican is a vote for less regulation - it’s the regulations that keep prices down. Unfortunately, government moves slow AF so a lot of times these regulations don’t have an impact until the next president’s term.

By all accounts, Trump is going to drain our wallets. I am terrified. I haven’t had a raise in over ten years. I don’t really have a skill set that can transfer well to other companies. I’m a renter with an amazing landlord (relatively cheap rent) but I was hoping to buy a house sometime in my lifetime. What Trump has proposed is going to substantially raise the prices of good and services. The Republican agenda is to strip the country of public services and make them private enterprises - raising the cost of living for everyone. I really don’t know what I’m going to do for the next four years.

It’s not the faulty of Democrats. It’s the fault of the media and capitalism. It’s the fault of crumbling journalism as people choose hot take emotional rage bait over educating themselves to understand why we are where we are. It’s the fault of the DNC and RNC being too powerful and their fight against reasonable elections such as RCV or STAR voting. It’s the fault of corporations controlling congress. The conspiracy that no one wants to acknowledge is that we’re moving towards a country that is privately owned by a handful of billionaires.

“It’s simple, really, I’m just a piece of shit who doesn’t give a fuck about anyone but myself and I’m dumb enough to think that our beloved Leader won’t fuck us when he starts fucking the rest of the country”

Y’all can be furious with this guy if you want, but he’s probably the most important person to be listening to. The block that determines elections has always been the sizable mass of extremely low information voters who don’t have any strong political affiliations and vote mainly because of some vague sense of civic duty.

They aren’t interested in economic and foreign policy debates. They don’t care about intangibles like democratic norms and the rule of law. They don’t want to hear your class analysis or how qualified you are to give it. The only question they’re considering is “Has life been going well for me and the people in my community that I care about?” That’s it. It’s a vibe check.

Good vibes? Vote for those in power. Bad vibes? Vote against those in power.

This is the voter you need to convince if you want to win.

It’s simple, really. We liked the way things were four years ago

You can’t fix stupid.

“It’s simple, really. We liked the way things were four years ago,” said Samuel Negron, a Pennsylvania state constable and member of the large Puerto Rican community in the city of Allentown.

His buddy called your homeland garbage.

He didn’t give a shit.

Gee, what didn’t we have yet four years ago? Oh, that’s right, a global pandemic shutdown and the resulting stimulus. Definitely the fault of the Dems.

The president doesn’t have magical knobs that will lower the prices of eggs or fuel.

We are still feeling the effects of post-Covid economy, materials and products got expensive and most never came back down. The president can’t do anything about that unless they are going to interfere with the free market. Really ignorant of people to vote for Trump on that basis.

Exactly how Hitler got in.

“beset on all sides, with idiots”

There’s going to be a lot of extremely obese leopards around, with all the faces they will be eating.