I don’t blame Harris but I do blame Biden. Biden should never have run in 2020 and certainly not in 2024. He was a failed presidential candidate in 2008 and earlier, but he used his association with Obama to win despite being a terrible candidate. His ego almost got Trump a second term in 2020 and ended up getting us a Trump term in 2024. Trump is not a good candidate, he’s not supposed to win. He only won and came close because he had the incredible good fortune of running against Hillary Clinton once and Biden twice.

Well that’s infuriating. So these people wanna lock up our elected representatives, then complain when we don’t wanna serve them at restaurants.

Most people just do not think entirely rationally. Take anything that most people believe - obviously religion, but also their favorite sports team, car brand, dare I say linux distro - it’s probably irrational on some level. Instead people believe what they want to believe.

But why would someone want to see their own life as miserable? Perhaps part of it is who we want to be. Most people want to see themselves as having overcome some sort of adversity to earn whatever they have in life, and that creates a bias to see one’s own life as unlucky and miserable. I definitely went through a phase of seeing my life this way as a kid. Now I try, when I remember, to focus on what’s been lucky and not adverse in my life. And there’s definitely plenty in that regard.

It does have precedent though. That’s how Reagan won in a landslide. Very similar circumstances - inflation, small military disaster, uninspiring president. Of course Reagan wasn’t as depraved and dumb as Trump so he won by a lot more.

However inflation definitely has a history of short circuiting voters’ brains. Maybe it has something to do with how the media doesn’t really understand it and does a terrible job explaining it to people. I’d guess at most 5% of voters know that there are multiple inflation measures - some of which were already rising during Trump’s term - and that the typically-reported number is over the last 12 months, not right now (meaning the “record low inflation” at the end of Trump’s term included the whole start of the pandemic when there was deflation). Republicans are great at filling an information vacuum with their narrative, so they said it was Biden’s fault and people fell for that easy explanation.

Not enough innuendo, a lot of missed opportunities. I mean you have cookies and milk, totally unused. Like “fill my stocking with a duplex” could easily have been “fill my stocking with gifts from your sack”. Is she even trying?

Our media is so stupid. The world’s richest man just bought the whole federal government and the MSM reaction is “Ooh, maybe there’s gonna be drama!”

Sane-washing was the wrong word for what the media does with Trump. It’s more like reality-TV-washing. It makes everything he does seem like a TV show that’s not real, and they never talk to or about the real people who are harmed by poorly run government. When was the last time the MSM talked to or about the struggles of a homeless person, someone living in the ghetto, or an immigrant trapped in a broken system? But they talk to and about Elon Musk every fucking day. They’ve spoken more to Elon Musk about immigration than to all (other) immigrants combined.

The media isn’t right-wing or left-wing, it’s entertainment-wing. It’s just a reality TV soap opera focused on characters and personalities, not informing people. We should stop pretending it’s a source of information, the MSM is a source of entertainment.

Eh it’ll be two years before he loses control of congress, and he’s also very, very stupid to the point where he will have a hard time accomplishing his worst ideas. Of course there will be lots of bad decisions and people dying of those bad decisions, but that’s just what we call America.

The only thing worse than big corporations owning the government is big corporations and con artists sharing ownership in the government.

As someone with an NPD “friend” - I have to look beyond the insults and threats and see the insecurities and vulnerabilities behind them. Most people just can’t or don’t want to do that and will be insulted if not scared away by the things my friend says to them. There’s also a stigma associated with being friends with someone who is abusive - I keep the friendship secret from all but my closest friends, who have a hard time understanding it themselves.

Trump promised the social media nutjob faction, the corrupt billionaire faction, and the low-brow entertainment faction that they’d each get to call all the shots. Kinda awkward when they all get in the same room together.