Trump wants Greenland again - Oh, and the Panama Canal too.

[exchemist]

22 minutes ago, iNow said:

He’s already pulling federal funding for those who had any protests in the last few years (like over Israel’s role in Gaza), and is canceling student debt relief for anyone engaged in “improper activity and serious crimes” which they’ve defined as including support for diversity and DEI. 

Yes, well, that all fits then. So there will be a new McCarthyism in the universities. 
 

The big question in my mind is whether the American public cares about any of this stuff. Or are they happy to try a spot of fascism?

[iNow]

14 minutes ago, exchemist said:

The big question in my mind is whether the American public cares about any of this stuff. Or are they happy to try a spot of fascism?

Depends on which half you ask

[exchemist]

1 hour ago, iNow said:

Depends on which half you ask

What was behind my question was the degree to which the average Trump voter really thought he or she was voting for authoritarian government and the suppression of the checks and balances of liberal democracy. My impression is that a lot of voters are pretty unengaged and just vote on the basis of things like gas (or egg?) prices. It seems shocking that they could vote for someone that tried to overthrow the result of the last election, but did they actually think about that?  

[Phi for All]

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

What was behind my question was the degree to which the average Trump voter really thought he or she was voting for authoritarian government and the suppression of the checks and balances of liberal democracy. My impression is that a lot of voters are pretty unengaged and just vote on the basis of things like gas (or egg?) prices. It seems shocking that they could vote for someone that tried to overthrow the result of the last election, but did they actually think about that?  

I think many Americans have known that something major is wrong for quite a while, but we've all been so indoctrinated NOT to blame the wealthy that it's pretty easy to distract us with various "enemies from within". Some saw the insurrection as just a repudiation of the status quo, and failed to sense the significant threat to the democracy (or they may blame democracy for not giving them more than a single vote). I've had to explain to MAGAts that the insurrectionists didn't just protest the vote count in accordance with their constitutional rights, they did something the Constitution absolutely forbids them from doing, and NONE of them already knew that. 

What's shocking is the pace the Republicans are setting for destroying the American culture and economy. I don't understand how the big corporations figure they'll prosper when nobody has any money left to buy their products, either from price gouging or losing their livelihood or having their pensions and Social Security robbed. These corporations don't make much off the 1%, it's the rest of us that keep them profitable, so where is this leading? Does anybody in corporate land think it's a good idea to remove spending power from your customer base? Or are they all sitting on so much cash that they feel they don't need us to consume any more?

[TheVat]

A lot of voters don't absorb much economics, either in school, or from life.  So when the CBO (congressional budget office) puts out a report a few years ago on, say, the Green New Deal, in which a vast assemblage of experts do a cost/benefit analysis and find something like cost = 150 billion, benefits = 750 billion, they might as well be announcing the results in a vacuum.   People are information poor (partly due to an information glut, without gatekeepers to handle it), and settle on cynicism about any value to understanding numbers, statistics, or causality.  And there's enough of a germ of truth in their cynicism, especially about statistics, to perpetuate that condition.  

There are many things that are of value to human beings that are still mostly invisible to the market, based as it is on consumerism.  And it's a lot of trouble to figure all that out and realize that you driving a personal car and paying $3 per gallon of gas is building up all kinds of social costs and ecosystem service costs that will come around a bite you and your children in the ass.  You might sense something is wrong, and get a few bits and pieces, but you can't engage with some collective plan where society evaluates what makes life pleasant, and assigns values to experiences that aren't material stuff - those neatly tracked fungible goods that reduce complexity to a seller and a buyer and a pile of stuff in your home.  Much easier to think that feeling of something wrong is a group of Others, and be led by a demagogue.

 

 

[CharonY]

8 hours ago, iNow said:

He’s already pulling federal funding for those who had any protests in the last few years (like over Israel’s role in Gaza), and is canceling student debt relief for anyone engaged in “improper activity and serious crimes” which they’ve defined as including support for diversity and DEI. 

On top of that, they have paused all NIH funding and are cutting all contracts that somehow in their syphilitic mind involves DEI (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00703-1). In cases where the activities are not related to DEI, but contain DEI-related words (who knows that that means as their search words also included for example "woman"). Ultimately they want to control language and how folks are allowed to think about things. This also demonstrates why they were so afraid of pronouns or related language. They were just projecting and thought that the progressives wanted to do the same.

 

7 hours ago, exchemist said:

What was behind my question was the degree to which the average Trump voter really thought he or she was voting for authoritarian government and the suppression of the checks and balances of liberal democracy. My impression is that a lot of voters are pretty unengaged and just vote on the basis of things like gas (or egg?) prices. It seems shocking that they could vote for someone that tried to overthrow the result of the last election, but did they actually think about that?  

I actually think they do, but not deeply. They were made more afraid of immigrants, women, trans folks and whatever they could come up with, so that they eventually thought that fascism is a fair trade for security.

Note that Trumps supporters here and elsewhere keep mentioning that that someone (usually the left or the elites) made them do it. Thereby, they can reject any accountability in the resulting consequences. It is pretty much textbook and incredibly well documented. But then, who reads nowadays anymore?

[iNow]

3 hours ago, CharonY said:

Ultimately they want to control language and how folks are allowed to think about things

It also allows them to control the “market” wherein exceptions are granted to supplicants while anyone showing opposition continues to be shutout. Same is happening with tariffs actually. Only those who kiss the ring and pay the corrupt bribe get to play.