If Trump were as authoritarian as some people seem to think (and not just a bumbling idiot & egomaniac, as I tend to think), it seems like he would have used the pandemic to exert real power instead of what he actually did, which is sit around watching cable news and tweeting.
Obviously, these dumb attempts to rewrite the election as stolen are disturbing and problematic (though they'll fail) but the dude's ego is the size of Trump Tower. He's grasping.
And not just the pandemic. He also could have used the riots this summer to impose martial law and he just talked about without actually doing much of anything. He's a very bad dictator.
Someone else on here said Trump is Berlusconi, not Mussolini, and that is exactly right.
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Why are people mad about Hillbilly Elegy, again? Seems like the more appropriate response is uh... sad.
Still watching but the one part I’ve found kind of ridiculous so far is when JD says something like, “We don’t say ‘redneck.’” The only people I’ve ever heard object to that term are Seattle liberals.
I guess it’s derogatory but in the part of Appalachia I’m from it always seemed more of a descriptor than a slur and plenty of rednecks proudly called themselves rednecks
I get that people think one thing is more valid that the other. I do too! But don’t pretend that a protest or an election celebration or a march isn’t going to spread Covid when a football game is. Just be honest!
I think socialist's best chance of getting a bigger social safety net, a wealth tax, a Green New Deal, etc, would be to talk about these things without mentioning the word socialism
At least until a few more generations die off
FWIW I'm not a socialist because I think government is incompetent and I would never want those fools to own the means of production but I do think we should do a better job of taking care of poor people, the planet, etc
The thing that is so frustrating to me about the NPR-style post-election analysis that I’m listening to right now is that they seem to think there can only be one single explanation for Trump’s over-performance.
That explanation—surprise—is bigotry. It’s racist voters, it’s sexist voters and it’s so obvious that there’s no other explanation worth exploring. The end.
Of course, they ignore that Trump appears for have done quite well among minorities compared to previous GOP candidates. They ignore the rioting/looting that hit cities across the US, they ignore that people (including POC) care about things like taxes & public safety & jobs.