Literally yes. The Pharisees of Jesus’ time were the conservative religious hardliners of Israel, having drifted significantly from their original theology because of political expediency, pushing their version of morality under the threat of harm; and Jesus represented a challenge to their power.

So more than just “would’ve,” they (well, their first century predecessors) did.

JD Vance does.

Trump said the 2016 election was rigged, and he won that one. He claimed that the 2024 election was rigged before it had even occurred. This is just the playbook. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t have to in order to work.

Right, see, that’s what I was concerned would happen.

The administration is young, though. I mean, they’re definitively not, but like… it’s early in the term.

Whoa, dang. I did not know that.

Thank you for the info.

There is no think.

There is for me, I’m no expert. Glad to have confirmation from one, though.

I’m not saying it’s a direct cause,

Certainly can’t help.

Sigh.

It’s unnecessary. It’s stupid. But at least it’s not actively harmful, I guess.

Edit: Nope, actually, it definitely is.

Some people come out of it better than others. You likely overcame a significant challenge in becoming so.

Heritage Foundation: “We want him to be a neutron bomb”

Trump: “I’m going to be a neutron bomb”

Musk: “I’m up for neutron bombs!”

CEOs: “Can you only neutron bomb some things?”

Trump: “No.”

CEOs: “Eh, he probably doesn’t mean it.”

Media: “Trump not going to be a neutron bomb, everyone says”

Voters: “…eh? Sorry, is there an election or something?”

I think there’s a significant correlation with lead poisoning due to leaded gasoline, too.

Does that make it better or worse that he’s a rube instead of a grifter? I can’t figure that out, tbh. Probably one of those two, yeah.

To his (very, very faint) credit, he did do the right thing when it mattered: he certified the election, even when a mob had threatened his life previously.

I think, in contrast to a lot of other republicans in office today, Pence actually believes all the stupid stuff he says. The end result is mostly the same (regression, a rise in fascism, etc); but I think he somehow managed to come by it honestly.

But that’s what I’m saying. 20 years ago, those people were at least somewhat fringe; I was pretty closely adjacent to them geographically. The shifting of the Overton Window has led to them seeming somewhat reasonable to a decent chunk of people.

I mean “just enough” in terms of uncertainty, not in terms of the number of news organizations.

Though I also think that there’s a matter of degrees here. Some news orgs are doing some heavy water-carrying, normalizing a lot of really non-normal stuff. Some are definitely trying to hedge their bets, being as deferential to the regime as they reasonably can in hopes that they can fly under the radar. And some of them are actually doing really good and unbiased reporting work, but not rising to the occasion of providing the necessary context required to show how much of a crisis this administration is.

And of course there are full-blown propaganda factories, and fully-independent news sources doing great reporting with great context. But both of those are pretty uncommon.

The movement of the Overton Window has caused some significant issues, that’s for sure.

I think your original estimate is correct, but the problem is that they’ve captured enough media outlets that sow doubt about right-wingers’ true natures to make another 20-30% just uncertain enough to vote for the nazis.

Agree with your remediation, though. Confederates, Nazis, and J6ers are enemies of the state and should be forever barred from holding public office.

I mean, it depends on whether you mean “can say some words” or “can actually carry on a conversation.” The speech thing can vary pretty widely; I’ve got an 8-year-old who was speaking in complete sentences by, like, 20 months, and an almost-3-year-old who was speech delayed and is really only just grasping the idea of expressing his preferences to us with words. Our other two were in between those two extremes.

You’re not wrong, though. In any case, he is not fully-developed as a human adult.

I don’t think Trump ever developed a theory of mind when he was a child.

“Theory of Mind” is the developmental change where you realize that other people know things that you don’t know, and you know things that other people don’t know. It usually shows up before you turn five, kind of concurrent with a solid grasp on language. But I don’t think he ever got it.

So he doesn’t understand how people could know words that he doesn’t know (“groceries”), he doesn’t understand how people could understand the importance of things he doesn’t understand the importance of (pretty much every government agency), he doesn’t see any reason for social supports (because, see, he doesn’t need them). And, paired with his obvious narcissism, since he loves himself, he is psychologically unable to conceive of the idea that other people could exist who don’t love him.

Under this framework, he can never be wrong, because he literally knows all the things (the hurricane path map). He can never have done anything wrong, because he knows what’s best. And he can never have broken any promises, because he knew what would happen and made the choice on purpose.

But he’s also been around for long enough to prove all of that untrue, so he’s had to carve out little exceptions for himself: specifically, that (1) everyone who doesn’t like him isn’t really a person, they’re actually evil and bad and nobody likes them (because he doesn’t); (2) everyone who knows something he doesn’t is either keeping secrets or a super-genius, depending on whether he likes that thing or not; and (3) when his actions have negative consequences that actually affect him, it’s because of one of those evil not-people plotting against him.

So, anyway, when you call Trump a toddler, you’re actually giving him a few extra years of credit that he hasn’t earned.

Given Trump’s actions over the past three months, this isn’t a prediction, but a threat.

“I’ve got a tariff and I don’t know how to use it! Now lower interest rates or the economy gets it!”

I have one that was proven false, and then later re-proven true: the existence of the brontosaurus.

When I was in elementary school, we were taught that they existed, they were big, etc. Then, at some point while I was in college, I discovered that actually what we thought was a brontosaur was a brachiosaur or an apatosaur. And then, when my kids went to school and learned about the brontosaur, I discovered that actually, they did exist!