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36
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Add "cause and effect" to the list of things he does not grasp or pretends not to. There wasn't some time lord showing people the parade would be too festive. It's a decision made by birthday party attendees in advance which reflects poorly on his ego so it needs to be blamed on anybody but him.

  • Usually when people are asked when America was Great™ they'll point to the burgeoning middle class of the post-war economy of the 1950s. Sometimes they'll point to separate drinking fountains however we'll ignore racists for now. The economic nationalists won't like it when you point out the thriving economy was partly the result of other economies still receiving from war, but more importantly for the middle class there was a 94% marginal tax rate for income over $200,000 in 1945, which meant dollars were circulating and demand was created for more jobs. The trickle-down clowns who insistent the rich getting richer is good for the economy would be slightly more credible, if they weren't the very same people saying the poor demanding higher wages is bad for the economy. As Nick Hanauer put it:

    We plutocrats need to get this trickle-down economics idea behind us; this idea that the better we do, the better everyone else will do. It’s not true. How could it be? I earn 1,000 times the media wage, but I do not buy 1,000 times as much stuff do I? I actually bought 2 pairs of these pants, what my partner Mike calls my manager pants. I could’ve bought 2,000 pairs, but what would I do with them? How many haircuts can I get? How often can I go out to dinner? No matter how wealthy a few plutocrats get, we can never drive a great national economy. Only a thriving middle class can do that.

  • So you agree tax cuts for the rich are bad, or do you actually believe the wealth inequality and political bribery this enables is a net good? It's clear the trickle-down bullshit doesn't work as evidenced by stagnant wage growth.

    I would recommend supporting progressive candidates instead of simping for the people who enacted the laws which have destroyed our middle class. Pointing out corporate Democrats exist and vote with Republicans to protect their shared donors is valid, as long as you can recognize that Republicans cry about the deficit whenever they are not in power, and when in power spend like drunken sailors, increase military spending, and continue to use the deficit they grew as a cudgel to dismantle only the parts of the administrative state they disagree with. I'm not that stupid, and I doubt you are either.

  • Trump ran budget deficits every year he was president, added trillions to the national debt with a tax giveaway to the wealthiest humans in the history of our planet, and before he was president a second time was trying to make Republicans shut down the government if the debt ceiling wasn't eliminated entirely. Don't hold your breath waiting for those tax cuts to trickle down, or for any cuts to 'defense' which is nearly half of all discretionary spending. The GOP plan is to further increase defense spending by an additional $100 billion, and $1.5 trillion in spending cuts which is not even half of their proposed $4.5 trillion tax cut. They only care about spending cuts when they can dogwhistle and lie to their base about $50 billion going to USAID just for condoms, despite their entire budget for aid to prevent foreign instability amounting to like, 3% of discretionary spending, because they have a very low estimation of their voters' math abilities.

  • There's the context of Trump riding the wave of right wing rage with his claims Obama was born in Kenya. Shortly after he paid a bunch of hourly extras to form a crowd as he descended a golden escalator to launch his 2016 campaign claiming Mexico was sending rapists, and a cadre of WWE fans, white supremacists, credulous evangelicals, and reprogrammable meatbags who tuned into Fox News decided politics was interesting again.

    For most of these people if you start asking which years America was great versus not great they might admit some of the Bush years were sub-par (because of those OTHER people who hate freedom), and preach about the good ol' days when we drank water from a hose. Where everybody treated each other right, unless you were a person of color in a sundown town. They will retcon any facts you present and claim you are cancelling them and it's no fair remembering the past, as they have been conditioned to believe faith is a virtue. The Bible's "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" fucked up my brain for too many years of my life. I wish it was easier to fix this, but a useful quote I remember when I break off most discussions with my dad is,

    If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic? -Sam Harris

  • For a fun science experiment, you can ask friends and family whether the knives whisper to them as well. If you are rigurous in your methods you may learn whether the source is the knife, or your brain, or according to that one relative, Illuminati broadcasts from the COVID microchip.

  • Sync for Lemmy @lemmy.world

    Keyword filtering is great