With Trump any apparent step forward inevitably turns out to be ten steps back.

I wouldn’t be surprised if literally Kid Rock was named and confirmed as the next Secretary of Defen- sorry, let me put on my 12-year-old edgelord voice- “War.”

If it helps: https://archive.ph/aOMy3

“Those people are inherently bad and I’m inherently good, so it’s not ok when they do it and ok when I do it.”

That’s effectively it.

Essentialism is the philosophy that they themselves don’t know is driving their actions. Trump is good, so when he breaks the law, it’s immoral to punish him. Protestors are bad, so even when they follow the law they deserve punishment.

At their level of understanding, similarly guns and the second amendment are needed to defend goodness from badness. Therefore there’s no contradiction.

The sheer amount of people who don’t understand (a) Trump is a textbook malignant narcissist, and (b) those with malignant narcissism literally cannot recognize other valid interests except their own, is astounding.

Trump’s campaign to “Make American Great Again” was not for even one second him putting America first, it was merely adding “America” as a synonym for “Trump” to his personal lexicon.

Really interesting article - one of the more insightful theories I’ve seen for truly understanding why people are attracted to the right’s outright lying and bad faith posturing.

You might be right, but I think the question is, “does my commitment to the cult outweigh my commitment to self and empirical reality?”

I think like in any other cult that fleeces its members, the answer for many is, “yes.”

“… And it’s not weird! Collectible avatars, it’s a good idear.”

Don’t threaten. Just sue him. Their entire strategy is to delay, because justice delayed is justice denied. Suing is the start of the process, so start it already, stop threatening to start it.

When you think of Elon panting for Trump’s attention, who in turn is acting out of unresolved need for his daddy’s attention, it could be argued our entire democracy is being dismantled to please the dead Fred Trump.

Actually a really nice question, lets me think of how to make things better rather than just complain.

1. Implement ranked choice voting across all elections. Undo all gerrymanders and make intentional gerrymander a criminal offense not protected by legislative immunity

2. Pass immediate media/content law package, including laws limiting media ownership, limiting social media reinforcement algorithms, deep & persistent AI content watermarking and anti-disinformation rules, anti-propaganda laws, and content labeling for entertainment/opinion versus news programming.

3. Pass public option healthcare of some type and set hard limits on our of pocket yearly healthcare expenses for private insurance at livable levels.

4. Pass wealth and profit reform laws to set a CEO-to-lowest-paid-employee distribution ratio for all profit beyond $1m yearly net profit, and tax rates and wealth caps to discourage grotesque wealth accumulation (TBD, but let’s say if you have more than $1b, most personal income will be taxed or business income redistributed to workers).

5. Initiate global democracy reforms with all of the non-authoritarian governments and come up with global steps to counteract right-wing propaganda (primarily from Putin), revitalize democracy, and reverse the negative effects of globalization on the public to legitimately answer authoritarian populism.

Bonus:

Government reset: Publicly and immediately prosecute the law-breaking currently happening and reestablish rule of law, undo basically every action of Trump.

Reform immigration and law enforcement: cut DHS and ICE to the bone and rebuild into an immigration support system. De-militarize local and state law enforcement and retrain every single cop to actually serve and protect. Support with laws requiring mandatory reporting of police brutality or law-breaking, with criminal penalties for failing to do so.

Anti-enshittification laws: Saas business models heavily regulated, laws that limit companies’ ability to data mine and exploit, laws that grant personal ownership of attention (i.e., your attention is not a public resource companies can freely mine with ads), stronger monopoly enforcement to prevent thr terminal stages of enshittified platforms, require giving users the option of staying on prior software and T&C versions.

Worker protection laws: Codify union rights into new laws and incentives for unionization, with anti-corruption package to reduce chance of capture.

Reform Congress to re-establish proportional representation. (Too much here. BMaybe go unicameral, expand house, expand Senate - all constitutional amendments but hey, why not.)

Easy-peezy.

I mean, Democrats have a history of terrible negotiations. I think republicans are correct that if they win the PR war democrats will fold, even if I wish it weren’t so.

Historically, republicans take every opportunity to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, and democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.