Support has consequences.

[lizkat]

I have to keep telling myself this shit doesn't happen when there is a strong middle class and that's on both parties. Trump is horrendous but he would have never reached this elevated status if Democrats did a better job. They've continually flagged the Republican agenda through to first base while ignoring the working class and embracing job killing globalization with no response other than "go to college", as if that delusion would solve everything.

Before Trump Republicans already knew their traditional platform and message wasn't resonating nationally which is why it wasn't that hard for them to let Trump take a dump all over it. Now they would be just as thrilled to be the party that goes down in history as the one that dismantled our democracy. They are a political mass shooting aiming their gun on behalf of anybody who will give them a vote.

I don't always see eye to eye with you in political arena but I largely agree with the sense of that post. The Dems better make good on some of the middle parts of their vaunted laundry list touted over all these years.

I think Biden gets that --and polls do suggest he's not lost the thread yet with a slim majority of all Americans-- but i'm not sure some of either the blue dogs or real lefties in Congress do.

In his favor, I think and hope: some of the Rs in Congress do understand that talking points and Trump-pandering are not going to suffice this time around. They'll make their rounds on TV and run their anti-federal-govt scripts but they'll take the benefits that will accrue to them if enough of the Dems' proposals get funded, so they'll either vote for them or find an excuse not to be present for a vote and also quit putting up poison pill amendments meanwhile.

Americans, even ones who made out ok in the pandemic, do want a floor laid back under the creaky status quo that the stimulus measures have managed to sketch out for a lot (not all) of us. Infrastructure work is one thing that mostly stays onshore (sure, some materials get imported and some intermediate products as well) and the Rs do know that. So it's about jobs added at home, on top of re-openings after the immunization efforts.

The Republicans' jousting now will start to run towards just trying to get a bigger piece of that for their states, while trying to couch those efforts in language that sounds more like their longstanding objections to the overarching policies of Democrats. File under pragmatic hypocrisy. I will enjoy reading tweets later that compare what they say now versus their claims in the 2022 season about how they derailed Dem socialism and kept America safe for free enterprise and small business yada yada yada, meanwhile having voted for Biden's plans and elbowed each other for more of the pie.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

I don't always see eye to eye with you in political arena but I largely agree with the sense of that post. The Dems better make good on some of the middle parts of their vaunted laundry list touted over all these years.

I think Biden gets that --and polls do suggest he's not lost the thread yet with a slim majority of all Americans-- but i'm not sure some of either the blue dogs or real lefties in Congress do.

In his favor, I think and hope: some of the Rs in Congress do understand that talking points and Trump-pandering are not going to suffice this time around. They'll make their rounds on TV and run their anti-federal-govt scripts but they'll take the benefits that will accrue to them if enough of the Dems' proposals get funded, so they'll either vote for them or find an excuse not to be present for a vote and also quit putting up poison pill amendments meanwhile.

Americans, even ones who made out ok in the pandemic, do want a floor laid back under the creaky status quo that the stimulus measures have managed to sketch out for a lot (not all) of us. Infrastructure work is one thing that mostly stays onshore (sure, some materials get imported and some intermediate products as well) and the Rs do know that. So it's about jobs added at home, on top of re-openings after the immunization efforts.

The Republicans' jousting now will start to run towards just trying to get a bigger piece of that for their states, while trying to couch those efforts in language that sounds more like their longstanding objections to the overarching policies of Democrats. File under pragmatic hypocrisy. I will enjoy reading tweets later that compare what they say now versus their claims in the 2022 season about how they derailed Dem socialism and kept America safe for free enterprise and small business yada yada yada, meanwhile having voted for Biden's plans and elbowed each other for more of the pie.

So far with Biden, single payer off the table, college debt relief off the table, and it seems there’s no end to how much he’s willing to compromise down the infrastructure bill. Maybe at the end of it we’ll get a single bridge and maybe a turnpike worked on. Also he and Manchin seem to want to keep the Republican’s favorite tool of obstruction. The only voting reform that will happen will be Republicans suppressing it.

https://www.theonion.com/biden-concerned-ambitious-agenda-could-be-stalled-by-hi-1846958173

I don’t know if pleasing the pre-Trump status quo centrists will be enough because he’s certainly losing those more than 3 pegs left of it and is pandering to another base who will probably never accept him as the legitimate president and believe he’s a communist.

 

[lizkat]

Single payer was never going to happen with Biden... or Schumer. Banks and insurance companies still run the table even after all their various mismanagement, incompetence and winking at excessive risktaking or worse over the years. But I still think Rs want some infrastructure money to brag about having nailed down for their own states, so I'm not ready to count infrastructure realities out this time around.

College debt... I can't fathom how we ever got to ripping off students' futures in this manner to begin with, except that simple greed still works in Wall Street and now apparently in the ivory towers of academic administration as well. I knew we were going down a wrong path when all the rage became fancy condo suites instead of dorms for students and marble-floored food courts with hibachi bars. It's all about the hope of enticing wealthy parents to send their kids to school to become wealthy alumni who'll kick in dough for another stadium or library or swimming pool. Yet the schools skimp on paying graduate student instructors and beg for academic chair endowments from dicey foreign interests, meanwhile charging students an arm and a leg for fancy accoutrements. Education itself becomes a pale shadow of purpose there. And where is civilization going anyway, when liberal arts degrees or even pure STEM are regarded as useless compared to degrees in manipulating people into becoming more compliant consumers of retail goods made elsewhere and shipped for sale here to jack up corporate profit margins? Plus we all know rocket scientists who have turned their math and physics degrees into development of investment banking algorithms, e.g. shredding dicey mortgages into tranches of "investment grade" bonds. We pay more to fake alchemists than to actual chemists....

So college debt wipeout would only be the tip of the iceberg in terms of necessary changes to how we view higher education. It doesn't surprise me that the movers and shakers don't want to admit we took a wrong path somewhere and so are reluctant to erase the debt we sold so many kids into signing up for "in order to succeed". See it still works for the top end, the end that buys Congressmen and Presidents and so the federal court appointments.

On next elections, I would not worry too much about losing those just to the left of center. Where are they gonna go with the likes of such fringe artist fans of Trump as Gaetz and MTG on the Rs' ballots? Stay home? That could be lethal for Dems, except that more Rs are likely to stay home next time (or split the party's prospective total haul of votes including indies if they run a third party challenge to Trump-supporting candidates. The evangelicals' fascination with the likes of Trump and his acolytes is fading faster now that they figure they have the federal courts nailed down. In particular the younger evangelicals are looking for real conservatives, not these wacko libertarian types.

But I dunno. I've been wrong so many times the last ten years about where the voters will land (or not bother) that it's probably best I just make sure I still get to cast my own votes. I'm sticking with the Dems so long as they stay even slightly left of center for a change. So far Biden's still in the ballpark for me.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

Single payer was never going to happen with Biden... or Schumer. Banks and insurance companies still run the table even after all their various mismanagement, incompetence and winking at excessive risktaking or worse over the years. But I still think Rs want some infrastructure money to brag about having nailed down for their own states, so I'm not ready to count infrastructure realities out this time around.

College debt... I can't fathom how we ever got to ripping off students' futures in this manner to begin with, except that simple greed still works in Wall Street and now apparently in the ivory towers of academic administration as well. I knew we were going down a wrong path when all the rage became fancy condo suites instead of dorms for students and marble-floored food courts with hibachi bars. It's all about the hope of enticing wealthy parents to send their kids to school to become wealthy alumni who'll kick in dough for another stadium or library or swimming pool. Yet the schools skimp on paying graduate student instructors and beg for academic chair endowments from dicey foreign interests, meanwhile charging students an arm and a leg for fancy accoutrements. Education itself becomes a pale shadow of purpose there. And where is civilization going anyway, when liberal arts degrees or even pure STEM are regarded as useless compared to degrees in manipulating people into becoming more compliant consumers of retail goods made elsewhere and shipped for sale here to jack up corporate profit margins? Plus we all know rocket scientists who have turned their math and physics degrees into development of investment banking algorithms, e.g. shredding dicey mortgages into tranches of "investment grade" bonds. We pay more to fake alchemists than to actual chemists....

So college debt wipeout would only be the tip of the iceberg in terms of necessary changes to how we view higher education. It doesn't surprise me that the movers and shakers don't want to admit we took a wrong path somewhere and so are reluctant to erase the debt we sold so many kids into signing up for "in order to succeed". See it still works for the top end, the end that buys Congressmen and Presidents and so the federal court appointments.

On next elections, I would not worry too much about losing those just to the left of center. Where are they gonna go with the likes of such fringe artist fans of Trump as Gaetz and MTG on the Rs' ballots? Stay home? That could be lethal for Dems, except that more Rs are likely to stay home next time (or split the party's prospective total haul of votes including indies if they run a third party challenge to Trump-supporting candidates. The evangelicals' fascination with the likes of Trump and his acolytes is fading faster now that they figure they have the federal courts nailed down. In particular the younger evangelicals are looking for real conservatives, not these wacko libertarian types.

But I dunno. I've been wrong so many times the last ten years about where the voters will land (or not bother) that it's probably best I just make sure I still get to cast my own votes. I'm sticking with the Dems so long as they stay even slightly left of center for a change. So far Biden's still in the ballpark for me.

I think Democrats not voting next round is a real concern and even without Trump I think there is still a strong sticking it to liberals drive on the right. Not to mention despite all the evidence to the contrary, some I even noted in my post, the right’s media is still telling their viewers we’re going to slip into communism any day now.

Ironically I think the biggest motivator for Democrats to vote will be the right attempting to block them from doing it. It’s the legislative version of calling Democrat voters deplorables.

 

[lizkat]

I think Democrats not voting next round is a real concern and even without Trump I think there is still a strong sticking it to liberals drive on the right. Not to mention despite all the evidence to the contrary, some I even noted in my post, the right’s media is still telling their viewers we’re going to slip into communism any day now.

Ironically I think the biggest motivator for Democrats to vote will be the right attempting to block them from doing it. It’s the legislative version of calling Democrat voters deplorables.

Right on that last paragraph. The Ds are fired up about Rs' intent to suppress votes in future just because they lost an election. Time was in the USA when you lost an election you sighed and tried harder to get a platform together that would appeal to more voters next time.

But on the right wanting to stick it to liberals in general... that might be weakening in some areas and only partly due to Trump's performance during the pandemic. There's likely a limit to voters buying in to the Rs' "boy calling wolf" routines trying to equate Democratic platforms to "socialism". The Rs may even have crossed that line when they first promised to repeal the ACA but then --after they saw that Americans actually liked some of it and wanted it improved-- couldn't manage to push modifications across the finish line due in large part to schisms in their own party about where to take it.

The GOP leadership really made fools of themselves on that. And the Supreme Court even declined to kill off the entire ACA --"that's not our job" noted Roberts-- so the resentment lingers among Americans that the Rs still seem to stand in the way of fixing up our patchwork access to health care. even though the GOP is no longer capable of antics like bringing up a House resolution to kill the thing several dozens of times in a legislative session.

Now that's a policy issue, the way some of Trump's not-very-popular anti-environmental issues were, and such things ended up taking something of a back seat with right leaning voters as well as the media, during the era of adulation of Trump.

But he's not the King any more, and he left a pile of problems that Biden has been pegging away at. Some of that has been relatively easy and even under radar, involving executive orders that just flipped Trump's EOs into the trash since in some instances, the enabling Congressional legislation was not forthcoming to underwrite those earlier orders. Trump of course was content at the photo ops of him signing the EOs. He didn't even realize some of them would go nowhere thanks to existing requirements for Congressional action to modify certain policies via EO.

Plus Biden's not stirring pots in general the way Trump did. He's the anti-pot-stirring guy, really, and I think has managed to lower the air temperature quite a bit, so to speak.

Of course Trump losing Facebook and Twitter echo chambers has helped a lot. Anyway the public look and feel of Biden's mostly more mild mannered "9 to 5" presidency --and the effectively focused messaging of Jen Psaki-- may even rub lefties more the wrong way sometimes than it does Rs looking for a way to get Biden sideways with the American public.

Biden is hard to sink a tooth into, so far, the Republicans are discovering. He's not Teflon II or anything, just presidential, so we are starting to end up with more policy info on the front pages of newspapers these days. We might even learn to like that again. The Washington Post for instance, continues to expand their international coverage these days. We get to see more of what's going on in the rest of the world, not just the claustrophobic universe that was defined for us by Donald Trump during his time in office.

I'd sing "things are looking up" but of course there's a long laundry list of things that that former guy sent down a perilous path while he was prez, and some of them are now dicey international relationships. Time will tell more about whether they can all be repaired. With luck the American voter will learn to give a damn about stuff like that and stop gazing at their own navels in the reflected light of the former circusmaster. He got a lot of us pretty hypnotized there for awhile. But nowadays I'm not sure the Republican pols taking a re-up on Trump support have got time on their side. Reality might be setting in again for a change. Our shared reality, not the fake news Trump was and still is pitching just to his own base.

 

[JayMysteri0]

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1401024476029108229/

 

[SuperMatt]

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1401024476029108229/

Makes you wonder if any reps did something similar before Jan 6… maybe that’s why some republicans don’t want a commission.

 

[Huntn]

I have to keep telling myself this shit doesn't happen when there is a strong middle class and that's on both parties. Trump is horrendous but he would have never reached this elevated status if Democrats did a better job. They've continually flagged the Republican agenda through to first base while ignoring the working class and embracing job killing globalization with no response other than "go to college", as if that delusion would solve everything.

Before Trump Republicans already knew their traditional platform and message wasn't resonating nationally which is why it wasn't that hard for them to let Trump take a dump all over it. Now they would be just as thrilled to be the party that goes down in history as the one that dismantled our democracy. They are a political mass shooting aiming their gun on behalf of anybody who will give them a vote.

Racism and tribalism is incredibly powerful in our collective psyche. I can’t disagree with you other that substantial pushing back against racism and religion, even spending billions on the poor in the 1960s was not enough to overcome it. Over 150 years after the Civil War we are still infested with racism and collectively we as people are still ME>WE.

A good question is what can Democrats/Liberals do better that will be received by the vast majority positively when we have 40% who don’t want to play, have their fantasies that they are devoted to?

 

[Huntn]

So far with Biden, single payer off the table, college debt relief off the table, and it seems there’s no end to how much he’s willing to compromise down the infrastructure bill. Maybe at the end of it we’ll get a single bridge and maybe a turnpike worked on. Also he and Manchin seem to want to keep the Republican’s favorite tool of obstruction. The only voting reform that will happen will be Republicans suppressing it.

https://www.theonion.com/biden-concerned-ambitious-agenda-could-be-stalled-by-hi-1846958173

I don’t know if pleasing the pre-Trump status quo centrists will be enough because he’s certainly losing those more than 3 pegs left of it and is pandering to another base who will probably never accept him as the legitimate president and believe he’s a communist.

I think we can agree to identify the primary source of our problems as STUPID, coming from a particular political corner. If you want to ask why Democrats have not done more, look at the situation in this country for at least the last 10 years, more like the last 40 years, we are not a coherent team, we are seperate times fighting for different things.

And now one of those teams is actively subverting democracy in the US, and instead of having 70% putting the hammer down on this BS, we have some 30% ambivalent, 40% in on the plot to turn the US into a Facist theocracy with another 12% likely to fall on the breaking bad side because for whatever reason they dislike Federal Authority.

This makes it extremely difficult for the Dems to get anything done. Those elected seats must be actively supported by a clear majority or nothing good will result.

The most ironic thing about this is that most of these people were never part of the GOP not really, even as they thought they were members of the country club and voted for nails in their own feet.

Trump is the darkness. What is even more disturbing is that these same losers flock to a flagrantly corrupt sociopath and the COT because they are either gullible fools or are anarchists at heart, would love to see the system torn down, so for many of them, they can act on their worst impulses with perceived impunity.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

I think we can agree to identify the primary source of our problems as STUPID, coming from a particular political corner. If you want to ask why Democrats have not done more, look at the situation in this country for at least the last 10 years, more like the last 40 years, we are not a coherent team, we are seperate times fighting for different things.

And now one of those teams is actively subverting democracy in the US, and instead of having 70% putting the hammer down on this BS, we have some 30% ambivalent, 40% in on the plot to turn the US into a Facist theocracy with another 12% likely to fall on the breaking bad side because for whatever reason they dislike Federal Authority.

This makes it extremely difficult for the Dems to get anything done. Those elected seats must be actively supported by a clear majority or nothing good will result.

The most ironic thing about this is that most of these people were never part of the GOP not really, even as they thought they were members of the country club and voted for nails in their own feet.

Trump is the darkness. What is even more disturbing is that these same losers flock to a flagrantly corrupt sociopath and the COT because they are either gullible fools or are anarchists at heart, would love to see the system torn down, so for many of them, they can act on their worst impulses with perceived impunit.

I see a big part of the problem as the Democrats moving towards right of center starting with about Clinton. They pretty much forced the Republicans to go to the fringe far right because that's all they have left. Not even Reagan could win in today's Republican party. Democrats will throw out a social justice bone from time to time, but economically they have firmly been Republican.

I take some small comfort in believing the main reason Republicans are cowering behind Trump and not putting out any big ideas or platforms is because they don't have any that would be popular and sooner than later the things they do support will blowup in their face. One by one their unsustainable policies will collapse under the weight of their stupidity. Guns, God, and protecting fetuses doesn't pay the bills.

 

[Huntn]

I see a big part of the problem as the Democrats moving towards right of center starting with about Clinton. They pretty much forced the Republicans to go to the fringe far right because that's all they have left. Not even Reagan could win in today's Republican party. Democrats will throw out a social justice bone from time to time, but economically they have firmly been Republican.

I take some small comfort in believing the main reason Republicans are cowering behind Trump and not putting out any big ideas or platforms is because they don't have any that would be popular and sooner than later the things they do support will blowup in their face. One by one their unsustainable policies will collapse under the weight of their stupidity. Guns, God, and protecting fetuses doesn't pay the bills.

Part of the game is getting elected and holding office. Moving right to win a seat, really should not result in the Republikans moving further right just because. But the GOP has been marching right for the last 40 years, taking a substantial number of citizens with them, and now they are so far right, they can no longer abide by democracy, some form of fascism/deceit/corruption is a better fit for their ability to win.

And the reality is that the people who are elected are just a reflection of the voting populace. So for every Jordon, Gaetz, or Greene we definietly see districts were stupid, selfish, or some other negative quality, outnumbers for lack of a better term, real Americans, people who actually support the principles the country was founded upon. And the reality is that right now these Right wingers are working to destroy the country, by legislating a coup at the State level in multiple states.

The threshold is when any State passes a law that allows the legislature to overrule the board of elections and decree their preferred candidate is the winner, and if the Supreme Court allows this to stand, all bets are off.

When I’m put it in these terms, if a lot of minds don’t change in the next 4 years, I see Constitutional American values withering on the vine, fascism taking root, or a guns blazing Civil War. Personally, I desperately hope the minds change, and I don’t live to see the latter.

 

[lizkat]

And the reality is that the people who are elected are just a reflection of the voting populace.

I honestly believe the other reality is that some of the voters electing these morons are not even in touch with reality. They're fed up over this that or the other thing (and not without reason in a lot of cases) but they've lost or never had a grip on how to make pols responsive to them. So now it's down to a kind of grim game, like throwing birds at authorities... or the insanity of proving government is pointless by electing pols hellbent on making it pointless.

There's no point to voting for such candidates short of letting off steam but it probably feels great at the time. It's a gigantic F U to everything left of the glue that holds things together.

Meanwhile the effect of treating one's vote that way is disastrous over time and gives us the likes of Jim Jordan, Louis Gohmert, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert and the queen of fake realities, Ms. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

One doesn't know what to make of them. They're not about democratic governance. They make a mockery of it on a daily basis. And the people who put them in those chairs didn't expect governance from them, either. They expected what they're getting, a circus that says "see how silly all this shit is?"

And what to do when the party behind them, the Republicans hijacked by Trump, just sees these officials as acceptable placeholders while it tries to muster up state level muscle enough to --as you have pointed out-- just decree the Rs as winners of elections no matter the results.

The rest of us aren't necessarily standing around just gawking but I don't think many of us feel like the Dems have a handle on how to put a halt to this behavior on the other side of the aisle.

I'm hoping the revival of competent governance during the Biden administration will remind people that government serves a practical purpose. That policy differences are what matter --even within a given party, yes-- and so those are what need to be debated intra-party during primary campaigns. The time for just another round of competition to see which Republican can outcrazy his opponent in calling for destruction of federal government capability was over a long time ago. I hope we haven't let it go on past point of no return.

 

[SuperMatt]

I honestly believe the other reality is that some of the voters electing these morons are not even in touch with reality. They're fed up over this that or the other thing (and not without reason in a lot of cases) but they've lost or never had a grip on how to make pols responsive to them. So now it's down to a kind of grim game, like throwing birds at authorities... or the insanity of proving government is pointless by electing pols hellbent on making it pointless.

There's no point to voting for such candidates short of letting off steam but it probably feels great at the time. It's a gigantic F U to everything left of the glue that holds things together.

Meanwhile the effect of treating one's vote that way is disastrous over time and gives us the likes of Jim Jordan, Louis Gohmert, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert and the queen of fake realities, Ms. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

One doesn't know what to make of them. They're not about democratic governance. They make a mockery of it on a daily basis. And the people who put them in those chairs didn't expect governance from them, either. They expected what they're getting, a circus that says "see how silly all this shit is?"

And what to do when the party behind them, the Republicans hijacked by Trump, just sees these officials as acceptable placeholders while it tries to muster up state level muscle enough to --as you have pointed out-- just decree the Rs as winners of elections no matter the results.

The rest of us aren't necessarily standing around just gawking but I don't think many of us feel like the Dems have a handle on how to put a halt to this behavior on the other side of the aisle.

I'm hoping the revival of competent governance during the Biden administration will remind people that government serves a practical purpose. That policy differences are what matter --even within a given party, yes-- and so those are what need to be debated intra-party during primary campaigns. The time for just another round of competition to see which Republican can outcrazy his opponent in calling for destruction of federal government capability was over a long time ago. I hope we haven't let it go on past point of no return.

Many people no longer know (or maybe don’t care?) what is true anymore.

For example, Snopes was considered for many years to be a great source for debunking hoaxes or lies. Enter politicians like Trump who lie constantly and become popular, with their message repeated and amplified by Fox, OANN, Breitbart, etc. Now you’ve got a large number of people who claim Snopes is partisan. No, they are not. They didn’t change. It’s just that one party is spreading so many lies, one cannot believe reality and still buy the party line.

Even MacRumors forums have decided not to enforce their hoax rule because such a large number of people believe so many lies and hoaxes. They don’t want to ”fact check” or be the ”truth police.” The reason? They would lose many forum members that no longer live in reality.

 

[lizkat]

Many people no longer know (or maybe don’t care?) what is true anymore.

For example, Snopes was considered for many years to be a great source for debunking hoaxes or lies. Enter politicians like Trump who lie constantly and become popular, with their message repeated and amplified by Fox, OANN, Breitbart, etc. Now you’ve got a large number of people who claim Snopes is partisan. No, they are not. They didn’t change. It’s just that one party is spreading so many lies, one cannot believe reality and still buy the party line.

Even MacRumors forums have decided not to enforce their hoax rule because such a large number of people believe so many lies and hoaxes. They don’t want to ”fact check” or be the ”truth police.” The reason? They would lose many forum members that no longer live in reality.

It's alarming that even appeals to "please, let's just look at the reality for a minute" across the political divide within families often don't seem to cut it any more. People even now are still trying to reach out to heal campaign-season wounds and they're not making much headway at it. Unfriending people in FB isn't the half of it... there are separations and divorces over all this BS.

So yeah, it's scary. Who could have imagined we'd land in a time during the vaunted "information era" when there would be so much deliberate misinformation out there? Especially the sort that projects a lie in the form of blaming someone else for spreading some other lie?

It's too much to sort out for most of us, scrabbling to pay the rent or keep food on the table, get the kids to school on time, figure out why the washing machine doesn't work.

And I guess we forgot that everything is about marketing now. So we live in a time of the proverbial firehose of information, seeking to separate signal from noise for ourselves. As a result, a lot of siloes get constructed, perhaps unwittingly at first and then thanks to marketing efforts, they get hardened into new sets of core beliefs. Thus later on, no consensus can be arrived at, on even what matters, never mind what's "true" or "false", "real" or "fake".

The hijacked GOP's competition to define to American voters "what matters" manages even to differentiate between "true" and "real", and so contributes to a convenient tossing of discarded truths into the "fake news" category.

It doesn't even matter that on some things, Americans agree across the aisle. Voters don't want to believe that either any more, since pols insist everything is partisan, and it's a fact that Congress critters often deliberately set up amendments they can vote for or against to create a partisan-flavored record for their future campaigns.

Folks who follow politics all know that by now and call it "voting for it before they voted against it". Yet the behavior persists on both sides of the aisle. It's meant to give shelter to someone voting a party line (either one) but the Republicans have taken it to new lows over the past 12 years. The titles of some of their bills have been laughably, alarmingly reminiscent of Orwellian upsidedownness in that their purpose has been the exact opposite of whatever the bill title brags on.

But we're in the era of "so what?" nowadays. It's a kind of shorthand for "I can't sort this out so I don't believe you." I've heard it said that the die-hard Trump rally base folks don't really believe the stuff they're told, things that they repeat and swear allegiance to. They're in it for a sense of belonging to something "real", but their single reality is just that they are still among those who swear by Donald Trump.

That they're simultaneously supporting fakery, projections and grand lies simply doesn't matter. They buy the imagery. They bought in when Trump's EPA stuck a picture of coal mining on its webpage and deleted references to climate change: "coal is back!". Well coal isn't back, any more than are the offshored jobs he promised to bring back. But that didn't matter, any more than it mattered that some of the EOs Trump signed landed in court and then went promptly to the trashbin. Yet Trump followers see no irony in the fact that the GOP now thrashes Biden for using EOs to reverse Trump-era policy shifts... and if you point that out, yeah, the response is "so what?"

 

[lizkat]

Further to the point about how our sense of everything as partisan and so everything gets viewed through the lens of "if it's not from my party then it's crap": a recent poll went about testing that in Oklahoma... and yeah, that's how it is any more.

From a FiveThirtyEight piece that was about assorted polls and related issues:

In a just-released April 12-19 survey, Cole Hargrave Snodgrass & Associates, a pollster in Oklahoma, told half its respondents that “it has been proposed [bolding is mine] to increase Amtrak passenger rail service in Oklahoma by having a train run from Oklahoma City north to connect with other existing lines in Kansas as well as increasing frequency of service to Ft. Worth” and asked whether they were in favor. A whopping 71 percent answered in the affirmative, while only 15 percent said they opposed the expansion.

But unless you live in Oklahoma, the really interesting thing in this poll was how CHS & Associates posed the question to the other half of the sample. The pollster told them that “part of the federal infrastructure plan unveiled by President Biden [italics are FiveThirtyEight's, bolding is mine] will increase Amtrak passenger rail service in Oklahoma by having a train run from Oklahoma City north to connect with other existing lines in Kansas as well as increasing frequency of service to Ft. Worth.” Among this half of the sample, only 57 percent said they were in favor, while 29 percent were opposed.

So if it's your guy making the proposal to fund some sort of improvement that's fine but if it's from the other guy then no way, huh? We are getting past stupid in buying into how partisan everything's being made.

 

[JayMysteri0]

Update:

One part of congress may not have the integrity to do what needs to be done, fortunately that isn't an issue in some states.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1403221500597919744/

Big surprise. Only bigger surprise is the lawmaker's vote for himself. Going down true modern republican all the way

 

[User.168]

.

 

[JayMysteri0]

The consequence?

Your stupidity will continually be exploited by those whom you follow or imagine think like you

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1404327376549412867/

Update: It's now popular on Facebook, as others are turning it into a meme claiming they've brought tickets ( unlikely ) & making jokes. The image is a photoshop of a basic ticket template, with the information added in the middle.

 

[Chew Toy McCoy]

My question is if they managed to kill and/or take hostage some members of Congress, then what? They get hailed as heroes and get to return home with awards and prizes?

No politician or party has anywhere near the support of half the country. Did they honestly believe the people who don't support Trump would just sit back, accept their actions, and hand them over a victory? If Bernie won in 2016 and a bunch of Bernie Bros similarly stormed the capital after he lost a second term would the Trump supporters go "Totally get where they are coming from and it was mostly just a handful of knuckleheads getting out of control."?

 

[Pumbaa]

My question is if they managed to kill and/or take hostage some members of Congress, then what? They get hailed as heroes and get to return home with awards and prizes?

No politician or party has anywhere near the support of half the country. Did they honestly believe the people who don't support Trump would just sit back, accept their actions, and hand them over a victory? If Bernie won in 2016 and a bunch of Bernie Bros similarly stormed the capital after he lost a second term would the Trump supporters go "Totally get where they are coming from and it was mostly just a handful of knuckleheads getting out of control."?

Why yes, hailed as heroes!

The election was stolen. Trump won both the popular vote and the electoral college in a landslide. Of course they would be celebrated as heroes for putting everything right! And they are the silent majority anyways, the only opposition is a small minority of loud liberal cheating pussies (yeah, important to use something non-masculine as derogatory insult).