Biden has announced his race with a speech, and Trump countered with a video containing shockingly direct ideological plans for his presidency. I’d say this is officially the start of election season! I plan to keep a close eye on what the former president of the United States is plotting. He is a tricky man, and a Nazi sympathizer. Don’t believe me?
It’s like McCarthy, Nixon, and Reagan melded to form a Super Republican. His videos outline a plan for a federal government that surveils “Marxist” institutions and polices freedom of expression. I’ll cover his education plans some other time. For now, here is his official statement on his plan for trans rights:
Meanwhile, republicans on the state level are moving to pass 400+ laws attacking existing trans rights across the country. One reads likes this:
Sec.A43.28.AACERTAIN OBSCENE ADULT CABARET PERFORMANCES PROHIBITED. (a) In this section, “obscene adult cabaret performance” means a visual performance that: (1) features topless dancers, go-go dancers, exotic dancers, strippers, or male or female impersonators; and (2) is obscene.
Trump is declaring war on who he calls “leftist freaks.” His hatred for his others is palpable, and he is stoking the fires of hatred across the country in order to persecute the innocent and distract Americans from addressing the rot that is devouring our country whole. The greatest pump and dump in history, that is what Trump is after. He’ll soak up the wealth, and then he will escape into it with his ring of pedophiles, oil barons, and techies while the country dies.
“That’s progress. M&M’s will not be satisfied until every last cartoon character is deeply unappealing and androgynous, until you wouldn’t want to have a drink with any one of them. That’s the goal.”
Trump Jr has called Carlson “an actual thought leader in conservatism.” The guy had his finger on the pulse fr. He spoke so directly to so many issues that Fox News conservatives cared about that he began to mold the very conversations that Republican policy now depends upon.
I don’t think we have seen the last of him. His charisma is perfectly tuned to the Republican dialogue. To those addicted to anger and fear, Carlson is a pack of menthol cigarettes.
Apparently, Carlson was not worth $700 million+ to Fox News. His ability to twist new realities of loathing out of lies ended up getting the company into a massive lawsuit. Was the settlement the desired outcome? I don’t know. A ruling on Fox News might have had negative implications for American Free Speech and journalism at large. But another Carlson will rise again, you can count on that!
“When you are totally turned off, we’ve achieved equity. They’ve won.”
Like the pandemic, Ukraine war, and a number of other slow burn emergencies, most people aren’t going to become aware of this issue until it is knocking at the door. I am talking about the “debt ceiling crisis,” which I am sure will be all over the headlines and the Reddit feeds and Fox News when push finally comes to shove. This crisis refers to the arbitrary limit placed on loans by the Federal Govt. Since the Federal Govt needs to take out these loans in order to pay what is owed globally, capping the Govt’s ability to borrow money will cause it to default on, or not pay, a loan back on time. America has never failed to pay before, and I am sure we won’t fail to pay now. However, the threat of not paying gives the parties of our legislature leverage to negotiate with the executive branch, which is what is going on (slowly) right now. McCarthy, speaker of the House of Representatives, has lobbed a suggestion.
IMAGE CORRUPTED… sorry, the context is lost! Presumably, McCarthy was suggesting cutting spending to lower the deficit?
Well, this is smart! We can save America from global embarrassment and global economic destabilization by increasing the debt limit, and in the process we can start to look at our spending on the whole and trim some fat. We have to trim wasteful spending because the other option, increasing revenue to account for the increasing cost of government, has been declined. So, great idea McCarthy, but what spending do you propose we cut?
During a rent and housing crisis and record inflation to the cost of living, the republican speaker of the house suggests cutting social programs AKA the only way American tax dollars actually directly help real, living Americans. And on top of that, he wants to give even greater kickbacks to our energy sector, which, despite record profits in 2022, has not lowered prices or made meaningful investments in refining capacity beyond what money has been given to them for free by the government in previous spending packages. This is a trend across most of the inflated industries–the government subsidizes them, and the corpos raise prices anyway.
McCarthy is a corporate socialist, which is another word for a shill and a hack. He wants to take money away from food stamps and other programs that actually help people. He wants to take that money use it to line the pockets of people that are already making money. Meanwhile, America still can’t make its own shit. Small businesses are still floundering. I think it is a bad idea to punish the people that are keeping the machinery of this nation running, but this is the Republican playbook every time.
And cutting regulations, HAH! Silicon Valley Bank just failed and almost took the entire economy out with it if not for a rapid bail out, and the Republican plan is to cut regulations further? It seems to me that our eyeballs should be fucking gorilla glued to these people so they don’t fuck up again. With so much of our dollars flowing directly into their pockets, we better keep our regulatory eyes wide open. If I have to prove a thousand different things just to qualify for $100 a month in food stamps, all of these industries recieving McCarthy handouts better be following the rules to a mother fucking T.
And the wealthiest Americans and corporations still pay proportionally nothing in taxes. Shhh don’t say that part too loud.
We are wasting water on these large fields of cut grass. We aren’t even growing them out and cutting them for straw or carbon capture or something. Are you a member of the British nobility? No, you are an AMERICAN PATRIOT, so start treating your property like one!
I like the extra art that comes with a lot of manga. You know, the art that shows all the characters doing stuff that doesn’t relate to the story at hand? Like the old DBZ cover arts that had the characters riding cool bikes or cars:
The American government, using more sophisticated technology than balloons with sensors on them, has been revealed to be doing exactly what we knew they have been doing all along: spying on everybody.
What else is our massive intelligence apparatus supposed to do? Sit around? Look inward? With smart phones, we do the spying on ourselves for them. We walk around with a GPS that tracks our emotional trends and personal interests.
So yes, when I balk at the spy balloon drama, this is why. Americans simply do not know their history. We are the most aggressive meddlers on this Earth. From South America to Africa to the South China Sea, our deep state will spy on, assassinate, and influence anything and everything.
Benjamin Netanyahu is solidifying his own power by rebalancing the government to his liking. Checks and balances be damned. Where have we seen this before…
Anyway, I feel like this is the sort of power grab that you disagree with on democratic principle alone, but Yoav Gallant looks at the political unrest and massive social upheaval overtaking Israel differently. He is concerned that all this tomfoolery about judges and presidents and votes is distracting Israel from the constant threats that assail it.
“”The rift within our society is widening and penetrating the Israel Defense Forces,” Mr. Gallant said in a televised speech. He added: “This is a clear and immediate and tangible danger to the security of the state. I shall not be a party to this.””
Israel is a clusterfuck, in short. I am not going to read much further into this article because it is talking about a government system that doesn’t even have a fucking bill of rights, but it seems like old Ben wants to give parliament (whatever the fuck that means for Israel) the power to choose supreme court justices… which is sort of OP because the judiciary is meant to be entirely independent from the legislative branch of government in order to be able to critically evaluate and interpret the laws that congress creates. If supreme court justices become yes-men for congress (is happening in the USA rn), then corruption is pretty much guaranteed. You are basically handing parties and think tanks ideological free reign because the supreme court can affirm or deny any policies it disagrees with. Having an independent judiciary guided by a dedication to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is really important.
But again, Israel doesn’t even have a bill of rights so what even are the guiding principles that the supreme court should follow? I assume that question is really deep and complex. Food for future research.
Possible Source: THE CONTROVERSY OVER ISRAEL’S BILL OF RIGHTS by Ruth Gavison
The other day I was at a restaurant in Waterville Valley NH after a trip skiing, and the dinner conversation dipped political for a moment. A childhood friend of mine expressed a viewpoint that I had not heard or thought about in some time:
“America does everything for the world. We help everyone else out, but the second we call for help the rest of the world goes silent.”
Every American has a little WWII soldier in his heart hoisting up the American flag over Berlin. What happened after WWII, though? We don’t like to think about that part.
I think our sense of the world is naive, and I include myself in that American we. I don’t actually have a single clue what Chinese people or Russian people think about Americans, but I think we are less important, and certainly less lauded, than we desperately want to be. We make up, what, 5% of the global population?
Another friend of mine, Josh Hoffman, gave me a figure once that stunned me:
During the 1850s, around when Americans were gearing up for the Civil War, the Chinese were going through what is known as the Taiping Rebellion. Let’s say half a million people died in the American Civil War. The Taiping Rebellion lasted over a decade and 20 million people died, a figure that Wikipedia likens to the first world war. Those numbers don’t really make sense to us. Think about how impactful the American civil war remains to us even centuries later. We still feel the aftershocks and the resentment. Other countries feel that kind of shit too on scales that we literally cannot imagine. We are so utterly consumed by our own story that we ignore and even reject the histories of other nations.
There is a lot of history out there. A lot of this history is bigger, older, and longer than our own. We should seek to understand this world rather than shred it to bits.
Of all the stupid shit I have created over the years, this half-assed meme hit a nerve. You can attack Republicans. You can attack Democrats. You can attack Communists and you can attack Nazis. But, when you start to point the finger at the mirror, and suggest that something like the American appetite might be responsible for bad, you hit something unsettling.
Ron DeSantis talks about wanting to make Western History a required course in higher education. He is wasting his time; Americans have a grandiose sense of their place in the world already. Each and every American, from their first Fourth of July, feels that they stand at the vanguard of Democracy. No matter how many decades pass, I think we look at old pictures of WWII soldiers and feel we see a piece of ourselves. And I think a lot of us have this unfaltering sense that the world owes us something.
Now, reach into your pocket or across your desk or whatever and pick up your smart phone. Wow! That technology is the stuff of dreams. Ask yourself, Where was it made? Who made it?
Try to put yourself as an American and as an individual in perspective. Blow that perspective way up, let your mind wander across the globe to all these places where the magic things come from. That’s all I am trying to do with these memes.
We live and breath Western History every single day of our lives, Mr. DeSantis. Americans need to wake up and see where the rest of the world stands.
