Specineff wrote:Where are those who praised Trump as the absolute best thing that could happen to the country, and gushed over every piece of shit that spawned from his mouth?
Read any "Trump Voters: One Year Later" piece you can find and you'll hear the same thing: yeah, he's coarse, but he's lowering my taxes, he's getting rid of excessive regulations, he's pulling out of bad agreements, he's finally doing
something on immigration. I'd absolutely vote for him again.
This is why I simply can't get terribly excited about the Mueller investigation; even if there
is something legitimately criminal there (as opposed to "poor judgement") and Trump himself (as opposed to his subordinates)
is found to be directly complicit in it, all the country gets out of it are 1) President Pence, and 2) Half the electorate feeling even more justified in their "See? He was right, there WAS a conspiracy out to get him!" vantage point, and a significant portion of the media ready and willing to reinforce it, so when another screaming joke with vague, magical promises heads to the podium in 2020, they're just as ignorant of how the country and the world actually work as they were in 2016 (and just as proud of it - screw those elitist "experts", right?), and absolutely
raring to send him to the Oval Office.
Democracy doesn't work without an informed and empowered electorate; when so many of us, even with such constant access to information, are so easily convinced of
categorically false things - and, more importantly, take a sick sort of
pride in that ignorance and have plenty of authority figures to cheer us on - we're not making informed decisions at the ballot box, we're chasing shiny objects, and will keep doing so until we either wise up or the country collapses in on itself.
-The Government is in shutdown with a Republican majority in both the Senate and the House. (But it's all those Democrats' fault, Trumpdammit!)
Last I checked there was a pretty even split between people blaming either party for this mess; again, I wonder how much that might change if more people knew the actual timeline of the issues attached to the spending bill, but it's a purely academic question, because the top beneficiaries of the free market don't want an informed consumer base any more than those of the political system want an informed electorate. Bonus:
Blast From the Past!
-Mexico isn't paying The Holy Orange One a single flat penny for his wall.
As with everything else, the administration has been on each and every side of this issue by now, since it doesn't operate under anything resembling a "philosophy" or "worldview" outside of "what happens to benefit me right this second?" and, once again, its base doesn't seem to give a damn. Whatever cockamamie excuse/s they eventually settle upon to be able to say "we did
technically keep that promise", I guarantee they will pay exactly zero political price for it, and the few who dare pursue the issue will be shouted down.
-His executive orders are being challenged and thwarted as unconstitutional. (And thank God the Supreme Court will hear this)
This, if you ask me, is the most stinging reminder of how utterly impotent the "resistance" has been outside of making a bunch of cacophonous noise - even before Trump was the nominee, Congressional Republicans
stole a Supreme Court nomination in broad daylight, and - again - have suffered absolutely
nothing as a result (and they couldn't even draw on history for a dose of their usual "oh, the other side has done this before" whataboutism, because it's completely unprecedented in our history; not that it even mattered!). Just
try to imagine if the Dems had attempted to pull a stunt like that - there'd be blood running in the streets. Over here, everyone's just kind of given up on even
mentioning it; apparently they still have
there you go again nightmares when they sleep. The same ones they've been having
since Election 2000. Some fucking resistance.
-There's no replacement for Obamacare... I guess that "Day one" thing was an alternative fact referring to day one after his third term, right?
There was never a replacement for Obamacare, because the GOP doesn't
want one - remember, back before the ACA was passed, they clambered over themselves to sing the praises of the wild-west "system" we already had, pre-existing conditions and skyrocketing premiums (you think they're bad
now? Head on down memory lane and recall what happened when the free market
really worked its magic) notwithstanding. If they do manage to bring down the ACA (they've certainly sabotaged it effectively enough at the state level, where GOP governors would rather let poor constituents die than accept Medicaid funding, and now at the federal level thanks to the rollback of the mandate), any "replacement" they cook up will look a
lot like the pre-ACA landscape did...though they'll keep their own taxpayer-funded coverage, of course, as they move on to further slashing Medicare and Medicaid.
Forgive me for not having a particularly rosy outlook, but there's a good reason all those Trump voters are feeling so self-satisfied, and it's going to be a long time before the bite marks on their backsides bleed enough for most of them to start asking questions - and most of us are too busy repeating the (fun!) mistakes of the past half-century to realize just how deep a hole we're in.
) we're already well on our way there, from the top down!
