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2025 Political Thread

Got online today after waking up and at first was upset by the lack of indignant coverage of this bunker-busting and other Trumpeteer stuff (there is, of course, ordinary news coverage), as there would have been, by the ton, had the media approach been the same as it was during my youth and early to mid adulthood, which of course has conditioned, though not totally controlled, my own responses.

The number of feel-good, fun, and fluff articles ticked me off a bit, actually. This was over all the online major wire services that I follow and the BBC (which I'm going to cut back on for a while as they're starting to give me a severe case of the Spirit of '76).

Only gradually has the realization sunk in this evening that, because editors are not fools, this approach, so widespread before a major US summer holiday and so typical, indicates that most of their readers -- who are in younger generations than mine -- probably ARE responding to all the Trumpeteer-related stuff, including counter reactions, and in an appropriate way, too: meeting this occasion of hatred with an absence of hate.

I'm not worried about the country any more. Folks who are 21 today will be my current age when its Tricentennial rolls around and I think y'all will have as many good things (and heartbreaks) to look back on as I and mine do. :)

Not really related, but still --

 
All dancing Chris Pratts aside ;) , and even the IRL obscenity of the US DHS Secretary's social media lecture outside that hellhole, it is normalized, with recent SCOTUS approval, to ship our undesireables -- the definition will change with time (M. Niemoller) -- to such places and then to take no responsibility for what happens to them next.

Such Evil is beyond the reach of politics (as well as technical US jurisdiction, though still dependent on US $$'s both legal and corrupt). It can only be countered by individual and society-wide strong commitment to Good and then by no one's flinching during the subsequently unavoidable clash with Evil.

That's my definition of normal anyway, olde fartesse though I am and therefore pretty much out of it.

I was raised by generations who did that, or tried to do that (they were human, not perfect, but they had had a solid vision of Good pounded into their heads and hearts by family, society, and media).

Twice, on a global scale. Without Captain America steroids.

They failed, as Kurt Vonnegut and others testified. J.R.R. Tolkien, a Catholic who included God in his Middle-Earth writings, would have called that the triumph of the machine.

But they also gained a happy ending, most of them believing that it was possible, as the many positives of the past 80 years show.

My generation rebelled and refused to pass that same reinforcement of Good forward to following generations, arguing that the many human flaws that failed to be Good actually made Good worthless.

It was stupid and unintentionally cruel of us to expect our descendants to discover for themselves all the Good things that our own ancestors had drilled into us, but we were blinded by our brilliance. Sigh.

Yet some Good got passed along anyway.

Now Evil is trying a comeback, imitating a camel's nose poking through the tent flap.

And we all are back on the horns of the eternal dilemma.

The USA is still the most recent, best, and brightest hope for all mankind, just as it always has been since even before it was called that by a US president in the 1860s.

It doesn't need to be "made great." It is great.

But we all might get some benefit from measuring ourselves against those Americans who have come before us and occasionally succeeded in doing great things, believing as they did in Good.

Sorry for the rant. I don't know much meteorology but can say a little intelligent stuff about geology (and cats/dogs, but that's waay off topic), and would prefer to do that all the time, but the current situation upsets me sometimes.
 
So I'm puzzled. The Republicans and a lot of people on the Republican side pushed the Epstein client list. And now there saying there's nothing there. After that was a focal point for some peoples campaigns. I'm confused
 
At this point, they’re basically lying straight to our faces while we can clearly see wrongdoing going on in the background - the people who were in charge of this “investigation” know that the general population is A) quite dumb, and B) won’t do anything about it regardless of what they say. This past week has been a shining example of the pay-to-win nature of this country, first with the hogwash of a decision that was P Diddy’s convictions, and now this. Anyone who genuinely believed the Epstein list was going to be released from an administration fully entrenched in the crimes committed there is painfully ignorant at best and straight up braindead at worst. Like, when I thought of criminals that were supposedly “dead to rights” I think of Diddy, but since he’s got money he gets a slap on the wrist - so did everyone on the list that supposedly now doesn’t exist! Nothing’s going to happen, unfortunately.
 
slenker said:
At this point, they’re basically lying straight to our faces while we can clearly see wrongdoing going on in the background - the people who were in charge of this “investigation” know that the general population is A) quite dumb, and B) won’t do anything about it regardless of what they say. This past week has been a shining example of the pay-to-win nature of this country, first with the hogwash of a decision that was P Diddy’s convictions, and now this. Anyone who genuinely believed the Epstein list was going to be released from an administration fully entrenched in the crimes committed there is painfully ignorant at best and straight up braindead at worst. Like, when I thought of criminals that were supposedly “dead to rights” I think of Diddy, but since he’s got money he gets a slap on the wrist - so did everyone on the list that supposedly now doesn’t exist! Nothing’s going to happen, unfortunately.
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We live in a world were the likes of Diddy actually just receiving probation even though all of the evidence of crimes is a possibility unfortunately.
 
Amazingly different views of America presented in less than a month, one presenting confidence in American traditions and values, by the millions, on No King's Flag Day and the despair and cynicism of this extremely well publicized Epstein coverup/decision.

Guess which one I believe is the real face of America.

Nice ugly skeer, Trumpeters and co-aristocrat wannabes. But for what? Nothing, really. People can't live on despair and cynicism, no matter how thoroughly you keep kicking them/us down and shoving it in our faces.

If you want popularity, let alone greatness, you crazy ambitious wannabe cosmopolitan elitists and your major media supporters, you might want to try a different approach, something along the lines of what has been the essence of America for centuries, something most of the rest of us can support, something that is very familiar and was merely suggested on June 14th.

After all, this is the USA: the most you can be is celebrities. Isn't that enough for you?

If not, there are plenty of places globally where you can buy or marry into aristocracy and even royalty. And if that doesn't feel the same and doesn't float your boat, maybe you just should cross America, quietly and anonymously, and look into the faces and share the lives of the hundreds of millions of reasons why this country really is and always has been great.
 
The Biden-era national party leadership faces quite a challenge: winning control of Congress while not losing control of the Democrat party to a bunch of 20th-century-style populists who, in these hard times, actually expect it to do something useful.
 



This is why I predict that 2026 will be the worst year for weather if these irresponsible shenanigans continue. The Texas floods back in June were not just a tragedy, they were a warning.
 
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UncleJuJu98 said:
Trump in his own words doesn't want the support of those who are obsessed with the release of the Epstein stuff. And is now calling it fake news.

Umm...
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If people still think he’s somehow fit to lead this country after this complete ****show, they’re genuine robots, and there isn’t any saving them.
 
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slenker said:
If people still think he’s somehow fit to lead this country after this complete ****show, they’re genuine robots, and there isn’t any saving them.
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Kind of like the people who voted for Biden throughout the primaries.

Part of the problem is decent people don't care to run these days because of all the dirt that will be thrown at them, so we get stuck with narcissistic octogenarians whose ego will not allow them to get out of the way and younger sleezeballs who are going to continue to do more of the same. Any politician that steps out of party line gets ostracized.
 
I wonder if this is why King Donald let it be known that he is mulling 30% tariffs against the EU -- it puts the lie to his claims about "destroying" Iran's nuclear program (if true, no such talks would be needed).

If only that man could simply disconnect his ego and his claims...

In other "bull in the china shop" bullying news, I wonder if any taxpayer dollars are being used to fund his lawfare against the Wall Street Journal's free-speech coverage of the Epstein thing?

If so, that suit needs to be shut down immediately. If not, well, let's be sure to hand Congress completely over to the Dems -- with all their many faults -- next year and take away the tie-breaking power of Crown Prince JD (who now owns both the negative tariff AND "big beautiful" mess fallout to come -- something to keep in mind for '28, if voting is still legit by then, though with our luck, if it is, the only TOP -- not GOP -- alternative will be De Santis).

Meanwhile, I wish the GOP stalwarts would man and woman up; admit the party is dead and gutted for a trophy hide that the Trumpeteers are wearing proudly; and form a new party framework**. Unlike Elon's, it would have plenty of bottom-up support, if they want it (as opposed to just making it a club for their preferred billionaires, which is not how I read the current -- and few :( -- GOP politicians, who really are paying a price for their commitment to past principles now).

It's easier to drop out of the national scene and work at state level for a while, but the problem with that is that the move leaves an unnamed "Uniparty" in national control, hiding behind two major but essentially meaningless brand names. And it is not inactive.

---

** Radical, yes, but as a Whig -- who had served and been served by that fine old party for decades but rode to the White House as one of the OG members of a new party -- said in a different context and a time of different storms: "The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion."

That is always the American challenge. We can, and I think will rise to the occasion again, with a new party name for what really would be the GOP minus the selfish, hate-filled, cynical, fascist internationalist modern elements. Haters gonna hate -- you can't reason with them, but it's always good to stand up for what you love, even if the times require it to have a different name.

What would that name be? Dunno. I'm old and irrelevant (if opinionated to a fault ;) ), but there are people out there in their 20s to 50s-plus who would give that needed new party birth as well as a good name in every way.
 
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...or we could just go on playing "Cheat the Prophet."

Maybe it's not a good time for anything new. After Obama spoke up -- what a shock, the sane sound of a voice from the Before times! -- I realized that many Americans might just be letting the two extremes shout themselves into oblivion, and their water-carrying "media is the message" groupies collapse under unbearable loads of gravitas, cynicism, and trendiness.

Meanwhile, perhaps it is best to fall back and spend some thoughtful time on identifying and caring for what really is important, what really is worth carrying over into post-Boomer America, what new possibilities might actually work for Americans headed for their country's tricentennial.

And then, whenever the time is right, perhaps tomorrow or next month, perhaps many years from now...the extremists' nightmare will happen:

xkcd.com

Wake Up Sheeple

xkcd.com xkcd.com
 
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