United States Politics Thread 47

[Raphael]

If you would compile a list of all the people living in the USA who have some reasonably serious amount of recent Indigenous ancestry, most of the people on that list would be Latin people with mixed ancestry, with only smaller portions of the list taken up either by people who mainly identify as Indigenous, or by the notorious white people with one Cherokee great-grandmother.

'Indigenous' to where? The USA? The Americas?

The Americas.

[malloc]

They could get behind the left. Mamdani is popular last I checked. It's worrying that his popularity is lower than that of the previous corrupt mayors, but that's to be expected of a polarizing figure. Going centrist is to abandon your base.

Sure, although the current crop of Democratic leaders seems remarkably stubborn and unable to adapt. You must admit that the current situation looks pretty bleak on multiple fronts. Perhaps it's simply the fact that I live in such a conservative area, but I have not noticed any discontent with Trump yet, not even with inflation and soaring gas prices. We have quite an uphill battle in developing media able to compete with all those right wing podcasters and Youtubers, challenging the ideological hold of nationalism and religious zealotry, and so forth.

[jcb]

Phew. Better than what might have happened, I guess.

On a cynical note, how many people are, by now, absolutely convinced that Trump achieved a brilliant and historic triumph by forcing Iran to open the Strait, which they, now, are equally absolutely convinced had been closed before the war?

Some MAGAhats are outraged at the war on Iran: "The roster of conservative luminaries rebuking Trump over Iran this week could have been cut and pasted from a list of his most reliable supporters of the past: Tucker Carlson, Alex Jones, Mike Cernovich, former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Turning Point USA's former communications director Candace Owens, among many others."

Predictably, Trump has immediately ditched and attacked these people, as he does with anybody the moment that they oppose or even merely question him.

I know why Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones have all been fighting me for years [...]

[Raphael]

Predictably, Trump has immediately ditched and attacked these people, as he does with anybody the moment that they oppose or even merely question him.

I know why Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones have all been fighting me for years [...]

Even Megyn Kelly? The one who defended Epstein for Trump's sake?

[alice]

How many people remain unoffended by that AI picture of him as Jesus? ("A Red Cross worker"? Don't insult my intelligence!)

[Raphael]

How many people remain unoffended by that AI picture of him as Jesus? ("A Red Cross worker"? Don't insult my intelligence!)

The core very online fash meme crowd, I guess.

[Travis B.]

How many people remain unoffended by that AI picture of him as Jesus? ("A Red Cross worker"? Don't insult my intelligence!)

When you, as a fascist, manage to do something which offends Christian nationalists...

[jcb]

Predictably, Trump has immediately ditched and attacked these people, as he does with anybody the moment that they oppose or even merely question him.

I know why Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones have all been fighting me for years [...]

Even Megyn Kelly? The one who defended Epstein for Trump's sake?

Trump will dispose of *anyone* the moment they inconvenience him.

[Torco]

more generally this war against persia and the way trump's been managing it is eroding the us's grip on its empire: it has reduced credibility in its military capabilities, alienated a bunch of allies, accelerated de-dolarization, pushed countries into adopting the yuan as a reserve currency, and made BRICSPay look like a no-brainer for many countries.

this outcome, though of course not the particulars, wasn't difficult to predict: you'd expect an empire under incompetent rule to become a less effective empire almost by definition.

[Raphael]

Only tangentially related:

For my own amusement - well, for some values of "amusement" - I wrote a lengthy - it was supposed to be brief, but I couldn't keep it nearly as brief as I had wanted - German-language overview the the development of the two main parties in the USA and their composition since the last decades of the 19th century. It's 20 pages long. I thought I'd post it here.

Zip file containing the pdf and the epub version:

[Lērisama]

Only tangentially related:

For my own amusement - well, for some values of "amusement" - I wrote a lengthy - it was supposed to be brief, but I couldn't keep it nearly as brief as I had wanted - German-language overview the the development of the two main parties in the USA and their composition since the last decades of the 19th century. It's 20 pages long. I thought I'd post it here.

Zip file containing the pdf and the epub version:

Das wird nützlich sein, um mein Deutsch zu üben.

Edit: Ach, es ist eigentlich das Deutsch!

[Raphael]

Das wird nützlich sein, um meinen Deutsch zu üben.

Thank you! Feel free to post any questions or comments you might have.

("mein" Deutsch)

[Travis B.]

Wann bekomme ich die Chance, soll ich das lesen.

(Aber mal im Ernst, das Deutsch borgte das vom Französisch wie gesehen?)

[Raphael]

Wann bekomme ich die Chance, soll ich das lesen.

(Aber mal im Ernst, das Deutsch borgte das vom Französisch wie gesehen?)

"Wenn ich die Gelegenheit bekomme, werde (will)/sollte (should) ich das lesen."

"Chance" is, I think, mainly used in the context of odds in German - "keine Chance!" or "Wie gut ist die Chance, dass...?"

[Travis B.]

Wann bekomme ich die Chance, soll ich das lesen.

(Aber mal im Ernst, das Deutsch borgte das vom Französisch wie gesehen?)

"Wenn ich die Gelegenheit bekomme, werde (will)/sollte (should) ich das lesen."

"Chance" is, I think, mainly used in the context of odds in German - "keine Chance!" or "Wie gut ist die Chance, dass...?"

dict.cc used "Chance" in almost all of the phrases related to English "when I get the chance", which in idiomatic English has nothing to do with odds; I thought it was strange myself.

[Raphael]

Edit: Ach, es ist eigentlich das Deutsch!

Nein, "mein Deutsch" war richtig.

[Raphael]

Just discovered this on Bluesky four months after it got posted:

https://bsky.app/profile/lastpositivist ... 5k3v22bs2k

I think the median voter believes in Natural Prices, and these are about how much things costed at the most recent point in their mind where they felt relatively financially stable. They expect politicians and businesses to honour this and take steps to ensure things cost their Natural Price.

Would explain a lot.

[Raphael]

Only tangentially related:

For my own amusement - well, for some values of "amusement" - I wrote a lengthy - it was supposed to be brief, but I couldn't keep it nearly as brief as I had wanted - German-language overview the the development of the two main parties in the USA and their composition since the last decades of the 19th century. It's 20 pages long. I thought I'd post it here.

Zip file containing the pdf and the epub version:

I've made a new thread for this here:

https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?t=1725

Please post any further comments on it there.

[malloc]

I think the median voter believes in Natural Prices, and these are about how much things costed at the most recent point in their mind where they felt relatively financially stable. They expect politicians and businesses to honour this and take steps to ensure things cost their Natural Price.

Sorry for sounding accusatory, but it sounds like you're implying that people should just accept that everything costs more instead of taking out their frustrations with inflation on politicians. I agree that people have reacted quite badly to inflation, electing dangerous reactionaries like Trump at least partly on promises that he would reduce prices, but I also understand why people are frustrated. Technology has dramatically improved productivity over the years and it makes no sense that goods are only getting less accessible when presumably they are easier to produce than ever.

[Raphael]

I think the median voter believes in Natural Prices, and these are about how much things costed at the most recent point in their mind where they felt relatively financially stable. They expect politicians and businesses to honour this and take steps to ensure things cost their Natural Price.

Sorry for sounding accusatory, but it sounds like you're implying that people should just accept that everything costs more instead of taking out their frustrations with inflation on politicians. I agree that people have reacted quite badly to inflation, electing dangerous reactionaries like Trump at least partly on promises that he would reduce prices, but I also understand why people are frustrated. Technology has dramatically improved productivity over the years and it makes no sense that goods are only getting less accessible when presumably they are easier to produce than ever.

I was quoting someone else, though I sort of agree with them.

Since the start of the decade, there have been several interruptions of major parts of supply chains. You can't really avoid inflation when people want to buy more stuff than the amount of stuff that's around.

That said, the complaint here is not about people hating inflation, but about people having impossible expectations about what can be done about it. Smart policies can sometimes slow inflation down, but they usually can't revert it. Really competent leadership might, with a bit of luck, make sure that the difference between next year's prices and this year's prices is smaller than the difference between this year's prices and last year's prices. But even the best leadership generally can't bring last year's prices back.