The Real timschochet

I was also joking. I’ve offered my serious opinion on why Trump won and that wasn’t it. But he set me up perfectly.

No. And you have hit the head on one of the main issues I have with the current group of people who call themselves conservatives. You guys aren’t racist (mostly; there are some exceptions) but you think these issues ended with Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Act. They haven’t.

You have pretty much described how he just got elected.

Some of her facts are wrong. Her anger is right. Her distrust of white people, and our arguments, is well warranted.

What will happen? What always happens. Trump and the folks that support him will take no responsibility, and find someone or something else to blame: it was caused by DEI or trannies or an undocumented immigrant, take your pick, there’s plenty of choices. If the disaster is severe it will help the Democrats come into power again, and they will restore the EPA and all the other agencies. And then pretty soon there will be overreach and too much red tape and conservatives will start complaining again and then a few years later the public having forgotten all about the disaster will elect conservatives again who will promptly begin deregulating and the whole thing will start over again.

Thats all right. She’s entitled. She has a right to be pissed off.

I’m certainly not a fan of either Trump or Musk, but I haven’t been offered a compelling reason as to why I should care about this.

Many people here think so. But given the views of the ones that do, I actually find it kind of flattering. So thank you.

I’m going to give you the same answer I gave the MAGA folks: it’s a lot more complicated. Just like @Strike on the opposite side from you on this, you’re trying to simplify things. For example: contrary to what you implied in your post, black people in South Africa weren’t there before the white people showed up. They came there AFTER the white people. Prior to the 1700s the furthest south black tribes traveled was to Zimbabwe, well north of the South African border. So this notion that the land was stolen from them isn’t true. (It was stolen from the bushmen who don’t exist anymore.)

Trump would say “I made a deal with Mexico and Canada!”

I didn’t say they didn’t send them. I said that they’ve sent them before, were planning to send them anyhow, and would have been willing to send a lot more. It was a meaningless offer and Trump grabbed it, because he was looking for a way out. It wasn’t an achievement.

I can’t speak for anyone else but for me that’s an easy answer: because I believe the two most important keys to bringing prices down are global stability and free trade, and currently the Democratic Party is much more about pursuing these two items than the Republican Party. It didn’t used to be that way but it’s that way now. Combine these two items to the fact that undocumented immigrants to this country also help keep prices low, and currently the Republicans are all about trying to get rid of undocumented immigrants, then it’s a pretty easy choice as to whom I prefer on this issue.

Your position isn’t unreasonable. The problem is that Trump is pursuing policies that are almost guaranteed to make prices higher, not lower.

I’m saying that he gained nothing. Trump surrendered.

If we’re talking about the MAGA folks I agree. But most of those who voted for Trump, IMO, are not MAGA types; they just figured (wrongly IMO) that he’d do a better job bringing down prices and getting the border under control. These are reasonable folks; I just think they’re wrong. No doubt they think I’m wrong. In the next election some will vote for Republicans again, and some for Democrats. I just want to get through the next four years without too much suffering.

One of the very few instances in my life where I saw the TV show or movie first, then read the books, and the books didn’t live up to the show. DNF

OK. Please explain the reasonable terms that Trump got from Mexico and Canada, which were not agreed to by those countries before the tariffs.

I kind of look upon Trump as if my sports team just hired a coach I can’t stand and want fired. I’m still going to go to the games and root for the team, even though I know that a losing streak would ensure the coach getting axed. Because it’s my team.

I’m not going to rip you the way these other guys are (because most of them are horrible hypocrites who were positively gleeful whenever anything went wrong for President Biden). But I do strongly disagree with you. I also want Trump to fail to carry through most of his ideas, but I don’t want this country to suffer even for the moment as a result; that’s not worth it to me. Yesterday was the perfect outcome: Trump tries out his horrible tariff plan, gets pushback from the other countries and the stock market, Trump backs off before anyone is seriously harmed. All good.

I’ve taken some of those writing classes too and I’ve always heard that show vs tell thing. But it’s not always true. I’m currently reading The Boys from Bixoli by John Grisham and he’s a big “tell” guy. And for him it works.

You may contemplate writing that, but I guarantee you Trump won’t. To steal an old Yogi Berra joke about Mickey Mantle, Donald Trump is one of those very few people who has written more books than he’s read.

That’s part of it. Another part is that the warlike tribes, like the Comanche, were great warriors and really hard to fight. So the militia had to show they were doing SOMETHING. Incidentally, this same story was repeated almost verbatim during our war in Vietnam: the VietCong would strike our troops, then disappear, then we would raid a village in retaliation, not knowing who was who…you get the picture.

Lol. Of course it doesn’t

If you ever read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee it’s filled with tragic examples of this. Over and over again- peace loving Indian tribe lives next to warlike tribe. The warlike tribe has young braves who raid a white settler, kill the men, rape the women, kidnap the children. The white militia responds by attacking the peaceful tribe and slaughtering dozens of innocent people, men women and children alike. Rinse and repeat.

I promise to draft a meaningless executive order to end a department I have no power to end! You’re right; he’s keeping his promise. Damn impressive. My only question from the story is, what do you mean “begun drafting”? How much time does this take? “I, President Trump, hereby order the Department of Education ended as of today!” What’s wrong with that?