Trump said "they get it [data] very easily"

[CharonY]

6 minutes ago, MigL said:

The biggest problem, as I see it, is that while you guys ( CharonY, TheVat, Exchemist and INow ) are what I consider critical thinkers, a large swath of the American population is not.
The majority have become the 'useful idiots' of this group trying to dismantle American democracy.

Most Americans don't consider how tariffs will affect their costs or employment. They are told they are the greatest thing, and they believe it.
They are told immigrants are their problem, not thinking about how many jobs immigrants ( and not Americans ) are willing to do, and how the economy and their comfort will be affected.
They are told other people are taking unfair advantage of them, and the right to do so should be taken from them;  they don't think  and realize that the group preaching this is actually targeting them.

And not just Americans.
I have arguments most evenings, and even at work with otherwise intelligent people, Canadians who buy into this crap.

I can somewhat understand how this could happen a century ago, where a few influential people could sway people's minds, but I cannot understand how people are so easily swayed today given the wealth of information sources and viewpoints available.

I think you are touching a range of important points here and I will say that these not only impact politics but also to some degree also science (or at least science education).

The last paragraph is a good explanation on the why, I believe. I think there are a few processes working together to further our idiocracy.

First, there is the flood of information. Originally we thought that was a good thing, and I believe we had some discussions (maybe a decade or longer back) on how competition of ideas could be important to further knowledge in an unbiased way. However, mis- and disinformation is flooding the channels making it difficult to sort through the information.

Second, we are not equipping folks to deal with this information flood. Most people lack the ability to sort through the mess and to filter out the nonsense. In many groups, including young folks, there is a sense that all information is fake, which is a very dangerous situation.

Third, the attention industry, including social media, floods the brain of folks with distractions to make money. Few folks take a breather to e.g., read long texts or even books to contextualize information or try to figure out what is going on. This exacerbates the second issue and makes them even more vulnerable to misinformation.

Fourth, because folks are unable to sort through information and consider traditional sources suspect, they increasingly rely on familiarity with sources to evaluate veracity. This includes shares from folks they know but also influencers. Ironically uncritical use and sharing of information makes folks extremely vulnerable to propaganda, while making them feel to be in control of information flow.

I think we are in the age bracket where we still saw the information age as something incredibly, a way to evaluate human knowledge and revolutionize the way we see and, more importantly, understand the world. We have seen how tedious information gathering is and entered a world where it almost became trivial. What we (or at least I) did not realized at that point is that we would also unlearn our ability to understand information.

I thought the information age would see unprecedented gain of knowledge and a future generation of highly educated and skilled students and scholars who would surpass us without breaking a sweat. Instead we got TikTok and college students who struggle with high-school level questions.

Sorry, sorry, old man and cloud situation again.

[iNow]

38 minutes ago, MigL said:

I cannot understand how people are so easily swayed today given the wealth of information sources and viewpoints available.

The wealth of information is part of the problem. Any ideology or believe, regardless of how faulty or toxic or misrepresentative of reality, can find a home and a pool of acceptance.

No longer are people being ostracized from their family, their home, their village, their town for these beliefs contrary to social norms. Now they're being accepted and finding reinforcement and amplification of these worst parts of their identity. They are told to feel pride for shameful thoughts, and it feels good. 

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

I can’t help noticing that you seem to keep trying to draw attention away from the thread topic, by swerving into generalities, false equivalence and whataboutery.

I thought that was their entire point, their raison d'etre

[TheVat]

1 hour ago, dedo said:

Your post shows an inability to comprehend what will and will not offend massive swaths of voters in the US which is the whole problem in both liberal and conservative ideology

My post made no comment on what offends voters - I asked you to, in accordance with our posting rules here, to support your assettion that LGBTQ persons are proselytizing their lifestyle to others.  I notice you did not do this, and deflected other questions about your assertions with more vague complaints about "insensitivity" to the POV of others and tribalism.  But it appears to me that you are equating a respect for facts and evidence with pejoratives like tribalism and insensitivity - this is specious.  No one is suggesting any political group has a monopoly on facts - only that respect for facts is essential to solving society's problems.  Your marching out tired old RW bogeymen like people performing sex acts on parade floats does not signal to me a respect for facts.  

 

[dedo]

3 minutes ago, TheVat said:

My post made no comment on what offends voters - I asked you to, in accordance with our posting rules here, to support your assettion that LGBTQ persons are proselytizing their lifestyle to others.

If you don't think the examples I posted amount to proselytizing, then no example would be enough to convince you which is consistent with my point that trying to convince a tribe member their tribe is in error is almost impossible.  The examples give support what I said regardless of whatever disdain you have for those offended by those examples.

Also, the idea that it is a "critical thinking" or intelligence issue is just more disdain and evidence of an obsession with being some kind of patriarch.  Is Elon Musk a critical thinker?  Of course he is, and he is also biased.  Patriarchs are not always in political groups.  If the allegations made about US scientists participating in gain of function research are true, that would qualify for twisted bias among critical thinking scholars.   Lyme Wars is another example.

I once sent a relative to a "critical thinking" specialist in infectious disease not realizing I was walking into the Lyme Wars twisted tribal ideology.  I sent the relative with classic symptoms to someone I thought knew what he was doing.  I even said exactly which tick borne illness the patient had since the patient's dog had recently been treated for the same by a (gay) Vet scholar.  The critical thinking specialist showed disdain for the diagnosis (a common symptom) but ordered titers to "humor me".  Then he went on vacation for three weeks.  The titers came back positive for the exact illness I alerted him about, but no one checked the results or initiated treatment while the patient just got sicker.  When he came back, he was apologetic because he knew he had committed malpractice & he initiated treatment.  Right away I noticed the "guideline" he followed said to give the same dose of the same antibiotic the dog got for a third of the duration and the dog was 1/3 the weight of the patient.  This is a treatment regimen 1/9 as intense as what the Vet had used.  This immediately raised an alarm & as I expected the patient relapsed within a couple days after insufficient treatment.  I did not go back to the critical thinking arrogant quack, but sent the patient to the president of a Lyme organization devoted to treating tick borne illnesses the right way who cured the patient.  I did not realize at the time that the first doctor had a different "disease", the same one driving tribal actors in many venues, inside and outside of politics, and he was goose stepping to guidelines in his specialty when a little bit of effort could have found him the same information I accessed that would have told him the guidelines were wrong.

Current political issues on the right and left are also not do the "volume" of information.  Fascism and Communism swept through modern societies in the early 20th Century long before computers and the internet.  One researcher attributed criminal violence to 4 specific influences, at time of escalating information, having nothing to do with information overload.(Why They Kill... Rhodes).   

[swansont]

14 hours ago, dedo said:

but to do it with an open border

What country are you talking about here? Certainly not the US, which does not have such a policy for immigration.

[CharonY]

3 hours ago, dedo said:

Real or not real is immaterial if it drives people into R wing parties and voting booths.  Insensitivity to other people's POV is part of tribalism & that is what I am saying.  Personally, I like much of liberal ideology excluding what was listed above.  I don't think I am the one here with a "fixed position" likely from training and living in an environment where personal skill alone was not enough to produce a low enough error rate so the opinion of others was actively sought.  Most people in tribes don't have that experience so I understand how they got that way.

As far as right vs left autocracies, I explained that regarding different periods in history.  Communism was the last to be proven a failure in many people's perception also aiding the rise of right.  However, earlier in the 20th C., it was much more popular.  

Ping ponging back and forth between right and left is just a race to the bottom & oblivion. Unlike most tribalist actors, I am not interested in convincing people of my ideology that is always looking to improve, just solving problems.  People who deal with risk consider the consequences of being wrong.  If there is a common cumulative process, & it is not addressed, the world explodes regardless of who is in power & where.   

Again, some of the mechanisms are well-known, misinformation on the internet, heavily driven by radical-right populist groups and parties: https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612241311886

Often under the guise of free speech or related concepts, they systematically misinform people. And again, not all groups are equally likely to abandon facts.

Also, I have no idea what your various anecdotes about ticks are supposed to tell me. I suspect they are part of your personal experiences that have formed some kind assumptions, but the deeper meaning eludes me. All I can see that there is an MD who you think is incompetent and somehow it is an example of failure of critical thinking? Or maybe not?

Also your sweeping generalizations are obfuscating parallels to the past due to altered mechanisms now. I think Snyder's book (you really should read it) does actually a decent job translating what was happening then to what is happening now. Misinformation was rampant also in the past, but they were broadcasted in different venues at much smaller scale. It was therefore a somewhat slower process but also driven by some more severe challenges.

The same number of folks can be reached now from the comfort of your home. Horse carts vs cars.

Also, I think you are assuming things to have a rather simplistic relationship, a bit like a seesaw or pendulum, where you seem to argue that the rise of the right is somehow just a response, rather than the intended action. In Weimar, the right was not rising as a response to communism, for example. In a way it was the other way round. Communism rose in response to rampant capitalism and corporatism, benefiting nobles and the new class of industrialist. From an US viewpoint you could imagine the robber barons. You have to remember, Weimar rose from the German Empire that went form a monarchy to a republic. In many aspects, conservatism was the default and there were laws to prevent parties with socialist leanings (such as the SPD) from power right to the later parts of the German empire. But their success was ultimately fueled by anti-elite and nobility sentiments.

The KPD (the communist party) was formed as an anti-war outgroup from the socialist parties. In 1920, the governing Weimar Coalition (SPD, Centre (catholics), DDP, a conservative-liberal party) suffered major losses. The communists remained marginal, with major wins for the right wing parties (e.g., DNVP).

In 1924 in the aftermath of hyperinflation (then stabilized), Ruhr occupation, beer hall putsch and so on has seen again losses in the center and only now the far left is also seeing gains, as well as the far right.

I.e., the far right gain was not a response to a far left threat. And again, what we see today is not really a real far-left threat. Instead it is a bogeyman fueled by erroneous slogans (open borders being one). Which makes it even more nebulous than it was in Weimar (though again, being nebulous was a fascist tactic).

Again, no pendulum or seesaw just movement in one direction.

 

[MigL]

3 hours ago, CharonY said:

First, there is the flood of information.

 

2 hours ago, iNow said:

The wealth of information is part of the problem

It cannot simply be the amount of information, but the mind-set of people, and what the consider important or worry about.

There are more online articles right now about T Kelce's brother being upset that people are accusing him of supporting the Eagles over  the Chiefs than stories about a Russian sympathizer, Syrian dictator friendly and Snowden treason supporting ex Democrat , T Gabbard, being sworn in  as Trump's choice for Director of National Intelligence.
( with the only Republican to shoe any hint of a backbone being M McConnell; really ? )

[CharonY]

9 minutes ago, MigL said:

It cannot simply be the amount of information, but the mind-set of people, and what the consider important or worry about.

No, you are exactly right, which is why I think it is together with the other elements (and more which I have not mentioned) that play a role. Basically an emerging property of ignorance.

And I do think that the overinundation with social media shapes what folks are worried about. For example, folks have been complaining about chemtrails and litter boxes in school. They clearly did not get that idea from traditional media.

Quote

There are more online articles right now about T Kelce's brother being upset that people are accusing him of supporting the Eagles over  the Chiefs than stories about a Russian sympathizer, Syrian dictator friendly and Snowden treason supporting ex Democrat , T Gabbard, being sworn in  as Trump's choice for Director of National Intelligence.

I mean, perhaps I am in my own bubble, but in my feeds that is literally on top. I have way down something about sports. The other news I see are regarding talks between Trump and Putin. But at the same time, I will also acknowledge that there is so much going on that I do selective reading (I am not sure where the lawsuits regarding federal grants are, for example though my colleagues will tell me, for sure). And given the fact that Trump tries to suck out all the oxygen, I am sure I am missing a lot stories. But that exactly is the tactic of flooding the zone, it is virtually impossible to use normal news to stay on top of these things. As such, it is easy to miss and/or deliberate zone out of important events (I just hope that there are good long-form articles to summarize aspects at least).

9 minutes ago, MigL said:

( with the only Republican to shoe any hint of a backbone being M McConnell; really ? )

I guess he is on the way out.

 

Edit: I just realized that a dog show is also on it. I have no idea why. Perhaps the algorithm figured out I am an immigrant and wants to make a menu suggestion?

2 hours ago, swansont said:

What country are you talking about here? Certainly not the US, which does not have such a policy for immigration.

And worse than that- this talk has led Dems starting with Obama to align their border approach with Republican desires. And it is startlingly clear that it did not matter. At best it motivated Reps to become even more extreme, so just they can "outshine" efforts by Democrats.

[TheVat]

4 hours ago, dedo said:

If you don't think the examples I posted amount to proselytizing, then no example would be enough to convince you which is consistent with my point that trying to convince a tribe member their tribe is in error is almost impossible.

 You posted no examples.  Still waiting.  I have only seen vague rumors.  No evidence, no social science surveys of voters, no documented cases of whatever the hell it is you're claiming LGBTQ people are doing.  

And "a tribe member" is a weak ad hominem, not an argument.  I'm an Independent, conservative on some fiscal issues, left-leaning on many social issues, libertarian on others, with a pinch of pre-Lenin Marx on some labor issues.  On having public discourse open to all ideological perspectives, I'm a classic liberal.  Like a lot of people, I have no tribe or specific location on a political map, and so I find your comment offensive and ignorant.  Instead of listening to people here, you are soapboxing one idea and dismissing any critique as "tribal."  

2 hours ago, CharonY said:

For example, folks have been complaining about chemtrails and litter boxes in school

Litter boxes?  Clearly I've missed that one.  Do they not like getting their dainty little hands dirty?  

[CharonY]

9 minutes ago, TheVat said:

Litter boxes?  Clearly I've missed that one.  Do they not like getting their dainty little hands dirty? 

Oh yeah, that was one of the things that blew even my cynical mind (in this case it is about cat litter boxes). There is even a wiki for it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litter_boxes_in_schools_hoax

But in short, there was a hoax that claimed schools would put out litter boxes for students who identified as cats or furries or something like that. And then this thing spread among conservative media leading to very upset parents. Utter failure of critical thinking.

[toucana]

7 hours ago, dedo said:

 

Also, the idea that it is a "critical thinking" or intelligence issue is just more disdain and evidence of an obsession with being some kind of patriarch.  Is Elon Musk a critical thinker?  Of course he is, and he is also biased.  

Elon Musk is a self-medicating  lunatic who treats his bi-polar personality disorder by taking ketamine, a veterinary anaesthetic normally used for sedating horses, but also used in recent years as a recreational drug.

Here is a CNN news report from March 2024 in which Elon Musk discussed his ketamine usage

:https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/18/tech/elon-musk-ketamine-use-don-lemon-interview/index.html

And here is a blog post discussing his hypomania:

https://gwern.net/note/elon-musk

If you saw his recent  'presser' in the Oval Office at the White House, then you would probably hesitate to to describe him as any sort of  'thinker' at all - in the commonly understood sense of that word.

[dedo]

6 hours ago, CharonY said:

Also your sweeping generalizations are obfuscating parallels to the past due to altered mechanisms now. I think Snyder's book (you really should read it) does actually a decent job translating what was happening then to what is happening now.

I read it (Audible)  have posted that everyone in Congress should have read it.  Your disdain is just one more example of patriarchy.  I am not claiming the left wing created the right wing.  I am claiming that the same process that causes the R wing to do all the things complained about on this thread, also caused the left wing to do things that lost millions of independent voters shifting the balance to the right.  

 

6 hours ago, CharonY said:

Also, I have no idea what your various anecdotes about ticks are supposed to tell me

The anecdote was to show the effect of the common process in non-political arenas.  The specialist was not incompetent but made a series of errors because he goose stepped to guidelines in his specialty that were wrong.  A little bit of effort on his part would have shown him that.  Eventually the guidelines were changed.  In addition to the bad guidelines, his disdain or patriarchy contributed to his errors.  Had he told his staff to be sure to check the labs which is pretty basic, he would have at least done something right.

Don't understand your historical review of the rise of the Nazis and the Bolsheviks.  I assume you mean it was caused by events of the time, not from a similar process to what is going on today.  On that we can just agree to disagree.

It is more fruitful to ask is there a problem to be solved as I don't want to discuss my theory more on this thread.  Feel free to rant all you want about DT.  It won't solve anything.  If you can think of a problem to be solved, that could be interesting.

[MigL]

20 minutes ago, toucana said:

Elon Musk is a self-medicating  lunatic

Both, the 'wanna be Emperor' and his 'first Buddy', have no clothes.
And all the Republicans are afraid to tell them.

 

20 minutes ago, dedo said:

Don't understand your historical review of the rise of the Nazis and the Bolsheviks.  I assume you mean it was caused by events of the time, not from a similar process to what is going on today.

That's another big problem ...
People who don't understand, or willingly choose to ignore history, are always surprised when the same shit happens again.
And not 90 years ago with the NAZIs and Fascists, but as recent as 2016-2020.

[dedo]

26 minutes ago, toucana said:

f you saw his recent  'presser' in the Oval Office at the White House, then you would probably hesitate to to describe him as any sort of  'thinker' at all - in the commonly understood sense of that word.

He is a "thinker" enough to have launched successful companies, to understand financial audits, he codes, he studies physics, is the richest man in the world so he knows how to invest, & likely more.  But he is very biased.  I disagree with him almost every day.  Your post was funny though.

[CharonY]

18 minutes ago, dedo said:

I read it (Audible)  have posted that everyone in Congress should have read it.  Your disdain is just one more example of patriarchy.

I am somewhat surprised then that you seem to repeat some of the issues that have been outlined in the book.

Quote

Don't understand your historical review of the rise of the Nazis and the Bolsheviks.  I assume you mean it was caused by events of the time, not from a similar process to what is going on today.  On that we can just agree to disagree.

The point is that despite the fact that we do not have communists on the street, we got fascists authoritarians in power. They took the power and folks supported them. No one made them. Heck they had to invent an all-powerful gender identity conspiracy to build a new bogeyman. With bathrooms as the battleground.

Again think about Snyder's book and consider what he explicitly points out.

19 minutes ago, dedo said:

t is more fruitful to ask is there a problem to be solved as I don't want to discuss my theory more on this thread.  Feel free to rant all you want about DT.  It won't solve anything.  If you can think of a problem to be solved, that could be interesting.

As you have the read the book, there are a couple of suggestions there. One is somehow to bring the public to focus on facts (Chapters 10 and 11). Avoid amplifying falsehoods (such as "open borders"). Don't blame the issue on the ominous others (be it the left, antifa, immigrant or whatever). Investigate specifically how the folks who took over power got it. It is never because someone else made them. It is because they dismantled institutions, made people believe lies en masse and avoided any responsibility by blaming others for their actions.

So our job is to identify these things, and demand from our leaders to do better and hold them accountable. That being said, once they have successfully dismantled all these institutions who could do that (say, the judiciary), it will be too late.

 

 

[dedo]

2 minutes ago, MigL said:

People who don't understand, or willingly choose to ignore history, are always surprised when the same shit happens again.

You likely have not read many of my posts as my premise is exactly that history is now repeating because the same process that gave rise to the Nazis is creating events of today.  Nice avatar & maybe my favorite actor.

[CharonY]

1 minute ago, dedo said:

You likely have not read many of my posts as my premise is exactly that history is now repeating because the same process that gave rise to the Nazis is creating events of today.  Nice avatar & maybe my favorite actor.

The issue is you identified correctly that folks vote them in because they are afraid of something. What you miss or at least do not seem to acknowledge is that the threat is something that the right has constructed so that folks allow them to grab the power. And this is the crux and what Snyder alluded to when he shortly discussed Schmitt. Make people believe that the situation now is exceptional. Make them afraid without any evidence and they will hand you their liberties on a platter.

And as I mentioned the only part one can nail them down is somehow convince folks that there is a reality. Otherwise anything you try to do in good faith to address these fears will be ignored (like the increasingly aggressive stance of Dems on border crossings).

[dedo]

1 minute ago, CharonY said:

So our job is to identify these things, and demand from our leaders to do better and hold them accountable. That being said, once they have successfully dismantled all these institutions who could do that (say, the judiciary), it will be too late.

You may be right.  One possible future is the US becomes a fascist state. If the Congress had read Snyder's book they may not have confirmed the ideologues that they confirmed.   I don't think that is the most likely though, and hope the institutions will survive.  Another possible future is the US abandons Ukraine, Russia wins, genocides another 10 million people & attacks the next in line.  It could be a rough ride.

[CharonY]

26 minutes ago, dedo said:

If the Congress had read Snyder's book they may not have confirmed the ideologues that they confirmed.

No that wouldn't have happened. The power grab is not one of Trump alone. Over half of the congress have worked towards the goal. Collectively they have erased January 6, they have invoked the culture wars even way before Trump was a candidate. Heck, they looked at Project 2025 and decided to like it. They just want power.

The voters are those who should have read it, but as MigL mentioned, they probably wouldn't have understood.

Regarding Ukraine, it is possible that they will abandon Ukraine. But regarding deaths, the dismantling of USAID will ensure that there will plenty of them coming in pretty soon regardless.

Edit to add: reports are coming in that in various parts of the world nutrient paste funded by USAID has run out. Children are starving now. Meanwhile close 500 million in food might be rotting because their delivery has been cancelled. All that to "prevent waste". In addition, Ebola outbreaks might expand. Both, the callousness as well as shortsightedness is astonishing and with regard to critical thinking that goes beyond just being biased. After all, just a few years ago we learned collectively how much diseases respect borders. And because of the pace of freezing and firing people something like 8 billion dollars cannot be tracked anymore, because the folks responsible for it are gone or have no access anymore.

Again, just because someone made tons of money it doesn't mean that they are critical thinkers. If he was he might have figured out that the systems he is breaking are vastly more complicated than those he used to deal with. Even if we assume that he has no regard for human life in the first place.

 

[dedo]

2 minutes ago, CharonY said:

And this is the crux and what Snyder alluded to when he shortly discussed Schmitt. Make people believe that the situation now is exceptional. Make them afraid without any evidence and they will hand you their liberties on a platter.

Yes & they may look for scapegoats among the vulnerable.  The biggest protections is the institutions though, that Congress weakened by rubber stamping nominees.  There could even be some sort of "crisis" to justify martial law before the midterms.  I doubt even Maga would blow up something themselves, but they could ignore or discount intelligence of an attack & allow something to happen.  US networks reported Israel had the Hamas plan before the attack.  However, we are supposed to believe no one of importance looked at it.  

[CharonY]

1 minute ago, dedo said:

The biggest protections is the institutions though, that Congress weakened by rubber stamping nominees.

If you mean agencies, they are not actually protective as they are part of the executive (though they can only be abolished by congressional order, from what I understand). So at best they could slow down orders from the POTUS but not really in an active act of defiance. And while they could resist unlawful orders, Project 2025 plans to oust folks (which Musk is doing now) to ensure compliance (or Gleichschaltung).

The institutions that actually protect against a power grab would be the other branches of government. However, executive and legislative are now fairly aligned and the highest instance of the judicial branch (SCOTUS) apparently also has loyalists, which makes things tricky. I.e. the latest development seems to suggest that they are happy to heap power to the presidency. We are, to be frank, in what scholars have called a constitutional crisis, as the institutions (as in the branches, not the agencies) are creaking in ways they shouldn't be.

[exchemist]

6 hours ago, CharonY said:

If you mean agencies, they are not actually protective as they are part of the executive (though they can only be abolished by congressional order, from what I understand). So at best they could slow down orders from the POTUS but not really in an active act of defiance. And while they could resist unlawful orders, Project 2025 plans to oust folks (which Musk is doing now) to ensure compliance (or Gleichschaltung).

The institutions that actually protect against a power grab would be the other branches of government. However, executive and legislative are now fairly aligned and the highest instance of the judicial branch (SCOTUS) apparently also has loyalists, which makes things tricky. I.e. the latest development seems to suggest that they are happy to heap power to the presidency. We are, to be frank, in what scholars have called a constitutional crisis, as the institutions (as in the branches, not the agencies) are creaking in ways they shouldn't be.

Indeed. Vance and Vought have questioned whether the Executive needs to comply with the courts. The marshals who enforce court orders are part of the DoJ, now led by Pam Bondi who promotes the myth about the 2020 election being stolen. So she can just tell them not to do their job.

Furthermore SCOTUS has ruled that the president is above the law in respect of his official duties. Whether those executing his orders can claim the same immunity vicariously remains to be tested.  

So it looks to me as if both legislative and judicial pillars of the constitution are already being neutralised.  

It seems to me that all now depends on whether Trump and co decide to call the courts' bluff, given that they have the means to do so. My guess, drawing on the lessons of history, is they will do this by stealth, progressively, rather than risking a high-profile showdown that could attract unfavourable media attention. So some compliance but not 100%, to push the edge of the envelope and make it seem as if the courts are nit-picking pedantically over the non-compliances. This will then open the way to arguing the courts are being unreasonably obstructive - followed by more brazen ignoring of their rulings. 

And then we will have the full-on banana republic, in terms of governance.

Next stop, manipulation of electoral processes to ensure the ruling party can stay in power indefinitely.  

 

[iNow]

9 hours ago, toucana said:

ketamine usage

I’m not here to defend Musk nor the choice to self-medicate, but encourage you not to so flippantly dismiss ketamine as a very helpful and viable treatment option for many millions of people, nor to use it as a rhetorical cudgel against those who choose to take it as you did here. 

1 hour ago, exchemist said:

Next stop, manipulation of electoral processes to ensure the ruling party can stay in power indefinitely.  

That was technically the last several decades of stops with gerrymandering and voter ID laws 

[exchemist]

5 minutes ago, iNow said:

I’m not here to defend Musk nor the choice to self-medicate, but encourage you not to so flippantly dismiss ketamine as a very helpful and viable treatment option for many millions of people, nor to use it as a rhetorical cudgel against those who choose to take it as you did here. 

That was technically the last several decades of stops with gerrymandering and voter ID laws 

Yes but once they are confident they can safely ignore the courts, it will be a whole new game. 

[StringJunky]

43 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Yes but once they are confident they can safely ignore the courts, it will be a whole new game. 

It'll be ironic if the 2nd Amendment fanatics start turning their guns on Trump and his allies eventually, when he likely turns his back on them. The 2A is, after all, intended as insurance against a tyrannical government.

Edited February 13 by StringJunky