In America, every once in a while the people seem to vote based upon the economy. They, for a time, seem to acknowledge that the statistics may even be wrong, and that way too many people in the country live in abject poverty. Then, they elect a Republican, and they forget they ever gave half a shit about poor, working poor, or homeless people.

We are a deeply unserious country full of deeply unserious people.

Published by no shit magazine first

Because they have to work

Can’t Bolsonaro just catch COVID for the 90th time and die in prison already?

Oh come on, he has power, he’s the podcaster-in-chief!

I’ve heard it said that historically when a country or empire starts collapsing, for some reason, the people and government often paradoxically behave in ways that speed up that collapse.

Yeah I mean setting aside the facts that Germany was literally split in half for 40 years after WW2 and governed by outside forces for a time, was basically forced to enact reforms to prevent the elevation of fascists to their government again, and had a thorough set of war crime trials (a process created from the ground up specifically for Germany), they basically just whistled dixie and the world started trusting them again when they elected a different chancellor. /s

As for Trump’s supposed “immunity,” I think we’ll eventually discover that it isn’t as wide-reaching as many think, and especially as he thinks. SCOTUS said he has immunity for his official presidential duties, but that’s a serious limitation.

It’s not a big limitation for Republicans. They can simply make the argument to a sympathetic Supreme Court that the charged violation was part of his official presidential duties.

That’s the thing in general as well. “The law is the law” is a meaningless platitude. Humans interpret (and reinterpret) the law as they see fit. We also pick and choose which portions to enforce.

That all set aside:

On July 1, 2024, the Court ruled in a 6–3 decision that presidents have absolute immunity for acts committed as president within their core constitutional purview, at least presumptive immunity for official acts within the outer perimeter of their official responsibility, and no immunity for unofficial acts.

(Emphasis mine)

“At least presumptive immunity” is another bit of legal worminess that makes whomever is president with a sympathetic make-up on the Supreme Court effectively a king with one exception reiterated throughout the opinion: impeachment, conviction, and removal.

Sure, there’s “unofficial acts”, but that is another bit of subjective non-sense that can be argued away before the trial even starts.

The idea that “the law applies to everyone” is not shared by our current Supreme Court. Despite Democrats being fairly useless and spineless, this part of the deconstruction of our country (along with the disastrous decision in Citizen’s United) belongs solely upon the shoulders of the gowned guys and gals of the Supreme Court. He acts with impunity because he can. He acts without fear of prosecution because his supplicants in Congress and the Supreme Court allow him to do so.

I agree that saying “non-voters voted for” anything is basically absurd, but people sitting on the couch rather than voting did affect the outcome of the 2024 election. A bit over three million fewer people voted in 2024 than 2020.

We are still a nation of laws, and they extend to all of us, including Trump.

This is not true according to the Supreme Court: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States.

He’s just choosing to break them openly, because he knows the Dems are too cowardly to stop him, and he is 100% right.

Once you accept that the highest court in the land is the one who decides which people are subject to the law, the path for accountability for Trump within the status quo of the system only has a single outlet: impeachment, conviction, and removal from office (followed by subsequent prosecution in the criminal system outside of Congress).

While impeachment has occurred (or been threatened) multiple times, nobody has ever convicted a president nor removed one from office in the country’s history. The “Dems” – who you are somewhat unjustly demonizing here given the current make-up of Congress – got the closest anyone has ever gotten to removing one in Trump’s second impeachment.

The status quo responded by saying “he’s close to out of office anyway, it doesn’t matter” and then allowed Trump’s propaganda machine to re-write history and turn the participants in the January 6th insurrection into pardoned, misunderstood heroes.

Inside the system (which you still think will save us), the “Dems” also attempted (though halfheartedly) to prosecute Trump after he was out of office, and this Supreme Court carve out for a sitting President was the reward for them trying to enforce the law under Biden.

The Democrats have plenty of blame to take here for the rise of Trump both generally speaking and in particular him being allowed to run for and win re-election. But they did much more than any single Republican has ever done to stop Trump.

I’d argue that Biden’s true mistake was not acting as Lula did and arresting Trump immediately upon entry to office.

Alright relax pluribus

We’ve seen with Ukraine that drone warfare is highly effective and if the US wants to clear a supposed guerilla location they’ll just carpet bomb it all.

That’s what you get from Ukraine? Cuz what I got is that a dime a dozen drone can take down millions of dollars of military equipment. Our shit is bloated, expensive, and built by organizations that rival the largest governments on the planet in terms of bureaucracy. Do you remember any of that recent shit with Boeing?

In this scenario, we’re Russia.

It’s easy to move in and destabilize a government. It’s another entirely to control a whole region that doesn’t want you there.

We can compare this to Vietnam or whatever, but a lot has changed in 50 years and with Venezuela it’s clear that South America is not ready for this type of aggression.

Why Vietnam? Try Iraq or Afghanistan except the destabilized nations we’re “building” are in our backyard. Great. 👍

Yep because they’re doing such a great job running the states that we need a massive imperial empire run under the same governmental structure. /s 🖕

Great idea to start riling up lots of countries that don’t have to cross an ocean to fuck with you.

/s

It’s so ridiculous when they can’t even effectively govern the fucking country they already have.

If they’re are covered, why or how are they out of pocket?

Saw him live delivering his “fuck Tiger Woods” and “fuck Lance Armstrong” set a long time ago. It should be noted how prescient this was because neither of those celebrities had their fall from grace yet. He was ranting against the very idea of celebrity worship and being told who to admire.

Some people in the audience left after that and he responded by saying it was going to get a lot fucking worse so it’s good that you’re leaving.

Dude was a fucking legend, and I’m still happy that I saw him before he died. He ruled that room, and I’ve been to other comedy shows, but none in my experience captivated the crowd and spoke as much truth as he did.

It’s a big fucking club, and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the club.

is it bad i’m just kinda glad they finally went completely masks-off?

I understand this take, but honestly, there are things missing from it.

I think, like Vonnegut wrote, that we are what we pretend to be, and when we let them as a society get away with not even pretending to be good people…we worsen society overall.

There is another element to this as well, IMO, which is that people are mostly animals: monkey see, monkey do. When people see these psychopaths in high-powered positions getting away with whatever they want, they are more likely to model that behavior as well.

I’d rather have a society where everyone is pretending to be nice over one where people feel free to be the absolute worst version of themselves. I also think that being who you are pretending to be has a good side. People can “pretend” to be good and become better because of it.

People think that the more these people are obviously evil, the less the public will agree with them and the more precarious they’ll make the entire escapade. I think that the 2024 election and all of the events of 2025 have proven that notion is a dangerous fiction.

Dude has been saying for 20 years that we should’ve stolen Iraq’s oil. Yet somehow everyone acts surprised when he does pretty predictable things like this.