No war but class war.

Machiavelli told rich, power-hungry shitweasels centuries ago that the best way to stop the people from fighting the shitweasels was to get them to fight each other.

That hasn’t changed.

Yes and no, I’d say.

I don’t think he ever does anything because he’s been bribed to do it. I don’t think his ego could withstand that.

I think he does whatever he does because something about it appeals to his childish nature (often because someone else, like Miller or Vought, has framed it in a way that will, then whispered it in his ear). He certainly does collect bribes whenever possible (and brazenly, though predictably with no response from the media or the corrupt supposed opposition), but I think they’re more an effect than a cause - that once he decides on something he wants to do, he looks around for someone who’ll pay him to do it.

I really do think that the ultimate driving force behind everything Trump does is his profound mental illness - his delusional narcissism, his grotesque egotism his complete sociopathy and his stunted emotions.

He’s effectively a big overgrown toddler, demanding whatever it is that he wants for whatever reason he wants it, then throwing a tantrum if he doesn’t get it.

I don’t think, inside his own mind, getting rid of wind farms is fundamentally any different from getting a Nobel or building a ballroom or renaming the Gulf of Mexico - they’re all just things that he wants a certain way, and the fact that he wants it is, to him, enough. There doesn’t have to be any other reason, because in his own delusional, narcissistic, egotistic and childish mind, whatever he wants is axiomatically beautiful and perfect, and anyone who denies it is a nasty person being unfairly mean to him.

Note that none of that is intended as an excuse. I think it all makes him more - not less - of an existential threat. For exactly the reasons I just listed, it’s that much more important that he be removed from office as quickly as possible, because there’s no limit to the harm he might do.

Conveniently enough, all of that also provides the perfect opportunity to remove him, since he’s obviously deeply mentally ill, and therefore unfit for office.

Now if only we had some politicians with some principles and some determination, but both are in vanishingly short supply…

Or more precisely, Trump is winning the fight to cripple the US’s ability to compete in the alternative energy future.

And all because he’s a petulant, vindictive, entirely self-absorbed manbaby who never got over the fact that he could see wind turbines from his Scottish golf course, and his tantrum didn’t make them go away.

Seriously - how long are people going to keep pretending that Trump is sane?

In an administration stuffed to the gills with dangerous lunatics, Miller stands out on both counts.

He’s clearly a full-blown psychopath, and an existential threat to the US and the world. He doesn’t just need to be removed from power - he needs to be committed.

I think we’re approaching a point at which the universal international response to the latest Trump bullshit and bloviations is going to be “Go fuck yourself.”

That makes more sense

It’s long been understood that one of the simplest and the surest ways to maintain the loyalty of the violent thugs you hire to oppress and kill on your behalf is to let them loot their victims.

Huh… so Russia is coming to the rescue of ICE…

He needs a 5150.

Since pessimism is at least as much and almost certainly more of an effect than a cause, one needs to look to see what’s causing it.

But of course, that would lead to conclusions The Economist would never publish.

If you can be effectively censored by the banning of a site flooded with CSAM, that’s very much your problem and nobody else’s.

Because he’s an ICE agent, which is to say, a poorly-trained, violent moron.

Yes - this is not Reddit.

Which is exactly why I’m not going to stand for a poster trying to saddle me with some asinine strawman version of my actual points.

The other poster self-evidently believed that I was either so stupid that I actually believed that “this is all the fault of the Democrats” or that I was so stupid that I’d let that ridiculous strawman slide. And in either case fully deserved a verbal smack upside the head, and that specifically because this isn’t Reddit. Leave that sort of cheap, intellectually dishonest bullshit there.

I hesitate to post this, but…

I actually have experience with that.

And unfortunately, nothing I did worked, and ultimately I had to get away to save my own sanity

The problem was that she had effectively perfect defenses. In most cases, she could twist whatever I said to further “prove” that she was right and I was wrong, and in the rare cases in which I managed to say something that finally backed her into a corner from which she couldn’t spin it back against me, that, to her, just “proved” that I (or, often, “everybody”) hated her / wanted to hurt her / didn’t care about her / wanted to see her suffer / etc.

I never once, as far as I could tell, actually got through to her.

The media was making the democrats out to be the ones shutting down the nations airports.

So?

Exactly as I already said:

no matter how much they tried to dodge the responsibility, the majority of people blamed Republican intransigence for the shutdown

That’s what the polls consistently showed, and notably that was in spite of the fact that so much of the media tried to pin the blame on the Democrats.

So your claim here isn’t just irrelevant - it’s actually part of the support for my position. Yes - the captive media tried to blame the Democrats. But the people weren’t buying it.

But Schumer and the Democrats folded anyway.

and further empower the republicans

Nobody is empowering the Republicans more than Schumer and Jeffries and the rest of the establishment Democrats, who can’t even be arsed to do their jobs

You might be a russian troll…

lol

Of course not. Don’t be a simpleton.

The Republicans rather obviously bear the lion’s share of the blame.

However, that was the Republicans’ designated role from the start. Their job was to represent the interests of their plutocratic cronies and patrons by killing a program that spent money to benefit poor people, so they were just doing what they were meant to do and what they were expected to do.

On the other hand, the Democrats’ job was to protect a program that benefitted poor people, and they miserably failed at that job. In fact, they didn’t even simply fail - they forfeited. They gave up even trying.

And they very much deserve condemnation for that.

Remember when the government was shut down specifically because the Democrats refused to go along with a bill that ended the health insurance subsidies, and they had the Republicans up against the ropes because no matter how much they tried to dodge the responsibility, the majority of people blamed Republican intransigence for the shutdown?

Then remember how the Schumer-led Democrats just completely folded, passed the bill, then stood idly by as the chance to extend the subsidies vanished?

Every single one of those stinking traitorous shitbags needs to be primaried.

Reminder that the President of the United States is profoundly mentally ill

I’ll go one better - if the DNC hadn’t interfered and fucked us over, the people would have elected Sanders in 2016 and we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.