The America Great Again Thread

Space wrote:
Check out this video from this search, trump zelensky dinner dc video https://share.google/8OYLU4Xc4d6YWJkiN

zelensky clearly knew the assignment - i'm impressed with how well he held it together/on the inside. i would not have done nearly as well.

hutch wrote:
I don’t want to

really?  why?

love this -  https://x.com/PabloReports/status/1958648318856503762

reminder: there is no bottom

trump is clearly taking lessons from his idol in ruzzia…

not sure this will survive an encounter with the courts, but TBD.

Mike Madrid @madrid_mike
What’s it called when the government owns the means of production?

I still say this is more fascism than communism. It’s business and government working or colluding together. If government had full ownership and picked all the workers and they were all government workers it would be communism.

On the other hand historically government and business worked very closely together in Japan but am not sure I would call it fascism.

To me this is also a lot like China…

It's great to hear a that trump is clean on the Epstein case, I mean I totally trust a woman facing a 20 year prison sentence who is in her 60s

Curious to see if subsequent to the “investigation” they charge and arrest Bolton. I expect they will and the message will be pretty loud: criticize Trump and we may arrest you.

Please don’t ruin the World Cup, please don’t ruin the WC , please don’t!

https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/46050685/2026-world-cup-draw-kennedy-center-washington-dc

I puked in my mouth

It's a superstition nearly as old as the World Cup itself: Players on national teams around the globe believe that touching the trophy before their team actually wins the tournament on the field can spark bad luck.

Even Infantino noted that the trophy is "for winners only," but then he added to Trump, "And, since you are a winner, of course you can as well."

If Trump somehow kills soccer, I’m down for a third term and some more fascism.

Julian, wrote:
If Trump somehow kills soccer, I’m down for a third term and some more fascism.

Too funny!

Earlier show times, the end of soccer
Something for everyone in this administration

It appears that in the end everyone has their price for giving up on democracy….

It reminds me of a recent column where Sullivan said many Americans just didn’t believe democracy was worth it. It got me thinking that hey maybe a sizable group of Americans (35%} don’t care if we are in a democracy cause they don’t see themselves benefiting from it. It’s beyond the fact that they don’t like the Democratic Party; they just don’t care all that much for democracy itself because nothing gets done, the politicians benefit while their own lives get crummier. As obvious as this point is I hadn’t ever thought about it this way. I always accepted and assumed everyone else also accepted that democracy was the best system and that immigration fueled and replenished our country. Yet another sizable minority don’t care for immigrants or believe immigration makes us great but in fact believe immigration harms them and America. And still another big group doesn’t believe America profits from its post WWII role as leader. Obviously a lot of people are in all three groups: anti-democratic, anti-immigrant and anti-foreign involvement.

The reality that the American dream - the idea that anyone can make something big of themselves by hard work- exists less and less in reality (Carlin famously riffed on this “and you have to be asleep to believe in it”) that inequality continues to dramatically increase to obscene levels, and that upward mobility is increasingly limited has discredited democracy and the whole American dream in the eyes of many Americans. I think many Americans don’t see themselves benefiting from democracy , immigration etc and see the whole thing as rigged.

I mean when government isn’t perceived to be improving the lives of the governed it loses legitimacy in their eyes. When people consider government- democratic or not- to be illegitimate they may legitimize another form of government, even a dictatorship.

Actually I think Carlin’s line was “they call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe in it.”

I really don't like this two wrongs make a right, but the cards are getting stacked against the dems, so I am not sure what to advise them to do

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/redistricting-arms-race-states-addition-texas-california-parties/story?id=124855541

hutch wrote:
It got me thinking that hey maybe a sizable group of Americans (35%} don’t care if we are in a democracy cause they don’t see themselves benefiting from it.

i think it's a similar situation to vaccines: we've had it for so long that we take the benefits for granted - so we forget that there are in fact benefits, and folks are free to focus solely on the negatives.  in some parts of the world, mothers carry their kids across mountains to get them to a vaccination clinic; while here we have (vaccinated) protesters blocking access to vaccines, because they read an article on mercury content and they're free to be more concerned about than getting a disease known to kill.  in several countries right now, people are protesting in the streets to obtain democracy; while we here take our democracy for granted and would rather watch a re-run on TV instead of doing the absolute minimum to ensure we have free and fair elections.

Yeah there’s some of that…. But there’s an element of truth to the fact that our government has let us down for at least 25 years. I don’t believe we’ve had a successful presidency since Bill Clinton! Our form of democratic government seems largely unable to get anything done and it doesn’t even seem very democratic thanks to Citizens United, gerrymandering, the electoral college, interest groups, etc. Look at how difficult it was for Obama to enact healthcare reform - it was like pulling teeth to get anything done- and I think we would be hard pressed to say he “fixed” the problem….more like a short term expensive patch.

I guess it’s easy to be pessimistic these days.

sweetcell wrote:

hutch wrote:
It got me thinking that hey maybe a sizable group of Americans (35%} don’t care if we are in a democracy cause they don’t see themselves benefiting from it.

i think it's a similar situation to vaccines: we've had it for so long that we take the benefits for granted - so we forget that there are in fact benefits, and folks are free to focus solely on the negatives.  in some parts of the world, mothers carry their kids across mountains to get them to a vaccination clinic; while here we have (vaccinated) protesters blocking access to vaccines, because they read an article on mercury content and they're free to be more concerned about than getting a disease known to kill.  in several countries right now, people are protesting in the streets to obtain democracy; while we here take our democracy for granted and would rather watch a re-run on TV instead of doing the absolute minimum to ensure we have free and fair elections.

So what have you been doing to ensure free elections?

finally the imporant stuff, gotta get those flag burners