Hard disagree on this. This has Trump’s stench all over it. Every person being tapped for these positions is a Trump sycophant, and none of them are even remotely qualified to do the job he’s trying to assign them.

I agree that Trump is not good at planning, well, anything. But none of this feels like a plan. It’s all: “I like PersonX. I will hire them.” If it feels like a very stupid, short-sighted, and childish thing, it’s because Trump is a stupid, short-sighted child.

There is no plan for what happens if Gaetz doesn’t get confirmed, just like there was no plan informing his selection of Gaetz. If Gaetz doesn’t get confirmed, Trump will make a few all-caps posts on Truth Social, and then nominate another sycophant. He’s got so many to choose from these days.

Oh, don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll fall in line in a couple of days and act like Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

This is very clearly an example of bad AI, but maybe it was trying (and failing) to convey this?

Basically, 1/3 + 1/9 + 1/27 + 1/81 + … + 1/3^n = 1/2.

Probably not. But maybe.

Speaking as someone about twice your age, one of the most precious skills I’ve developed over the years is setting and sticking to boundaries. Being insulted or belittled by someone who wants to consider themselves my partner is a major boundary violation for me. This is the type of thing that I don’t give second chances for.

Being hurt by the person you love is something that will happen on occasion. The important thing is intention. If someone I love hurts me because they were careless or in the moment, didn’t think their actions through, that’s conversation time. If that person hurts me because they are angry at me and have a desire to inflict pain, that’s an ending of the relationship.

You deserve to be loved by someone who will not see you as a punching bag. Someone who will lift you up, not tear you down. Your boyfriend deserves to be single until he fully deals with his anger issues.

God damn, people make me hate people.

Jesus - that is fucking crazy. Wonder how many of these casualties are Koreans.

God, I hate how accurate this is.

That’s super sweet of the little girl to reassure the demon like that.

And even if he hadn’t made that abundantly clear, he’s obviously in bed with Russia. Like… it’s completely mystifying why any Ukrainian (who doesn’t hate Ukraine) would want to vote for Trump.

Ukrainians for Trump is even more mystifying than women for Trump, or gays for Trump, or basically any group that isn’t white, cis, male, heteronormative, and some combination of stupid and evil for Trump.

Takes all kinds, I guess.

Nope. The Green party’s got their candidate on the most states’ ballots, and they only managed to get 38 states. Granted, it’s still mathematically possible, considering the threshold is 270 votes, and the states that have Stein on the ballot comprise 440 votes… but still. Would be incredibly, almost impossibly difficult.

Along that same vein… “Spaceship Captain With Tight Trousers”

And that alone would be enough, but add to that the fact that they cost about 100 grand a piece, and yet they are essentially held together with bubblegum and shoestring. Bro, you paid a year’s worth of salary for the average middle class person to drive around an ugly, falling-apart piece of shit created by a fascist. Yeah. We’re gonna point and laugh at your dumb ass.

They’re not evil, they’re not idiots.

Hard disagree.

But if someone just votes for the other main party to the one I do, who cares?

People who will get hurt by that other party gaining the presidency, or people who care about people getting hurt. Or just people with an ounce of empathy.

None of which seem to apply to you.

Fuck that, and fuck you. They made their bed. Lying in it is the natural consequence.

For me, it’s super easy. My “normal” relationship with Trumpers is one of intense scorn and derision because they’re terrible people that I want nothing to do with. So nothing’s going to change for me.

It’s pretty simple: they willingly sacrificed every last ounce of humanity for a grifter / bully. They’re not coming back. Chasing after the relationship you used to have with them before they decided to embrace virulent hatred is a losing proposition. Sure, you can mourn that lost relationship, but hoping that they’re going to magically see the light and stop being the human equivalent of anal warts is only going to cause you further disappointment and pain.

Calling him a comedian is being overly generous.

Are you unfamiliar with the concept of humor?

When there were three TV stations, did any of them highlight police brutality? Overincarceration? The military industrial complex?

This is a very fair point. True, having very limited news options didn’t allow for a lot of deviation in agreement on observable reality, but to your point, it could also easily paper over a lot of very ugly parts of the actual reality. Chomsky writes quite a lot about this in his book “Manufacturing Consent”, which basically is a dive into how media organizations can be used as the propaganda arm of the government. Everything from choosing what you show to choosing how you talk about things goes towards bolstering an underlying narrative that you want to project.

I’m not sure what a solution would look like, if one is even possible. But solution or no, the narrative divergence in this country has primed us to detest each other, which is the first crucial step towards mass violence.