Yea, I’m over here thinking the writer is an optimist if he thinks the moral collapse is complete. We’ll see some new levels of horror before it’s all done.

A term I heard growing up was “Even a blind pig finds an acorn”

Do not forget this is the president who got chummy with North Korea last administration. Really can’t be surprised after that.

I think the funniest part of this is I wandered over to the conservative areas of the internet to see the reaction and they’re fighting each other on how to feel about this. They all hate Mamdani, but half are as anti-Israel and “America first” that they’re asking why there’s an Israel Day parade and screaming at the pro-Israel groups that are mad at Mamdani for not going.

If nothing else, him doing this has given a fun show.

I mean… conservatives.

There are some places where the leadership has to turn to whatever their followers say.

Trump did push Operation Warp Speed to help push the COVID vaccinations faster through the regulations and manufacturing.

The fascinating moment was watching him become an anti-vaxxer. He had a speech gently encouraging people to get the vaccine, saying he got it, and said it should be anyones choice but he suggests they get it. The crowd turned on him and booed and he immediately dropped it. After that day he was pure antivax.

It means there is potential to get some nonsense conspiracy from the ground up under these assholes. It’s hard, but its possible.

reducing men to women’s roles

It will be this. 100% this. They don’t hate women and see them as nothing more than breeding stock.

Conservatives love women, when they also do what they say, stay in the kitchen and “do womens work”

This is why I can’t ever say Trump is my most hated person/person who did the most damage to the US.

The Trump administration is EXACTLY what Moscow Mitch wanted, he’s just pissy that he lost control in the process.

This is one of those troubles with the whole “communist” and “capitalist” things. None of them are actually truly what they say they are.

China and USSR started competing hard core on the global scale in the capitalism games, and lets be honest, look at China now and it’s fully on the capitalism train while still calling communist.

But that isn’t to say the US is any better on the capitalism wagon. The US is quite happy to drop capitalism if a company desires it. This is where we get our "too big to fail"s or companies that are given “loans” during the pandemic that they never have to pay back.

It’s almost like the terms are a joke by the upper echelon to fuck with the rest of us.

I hope he’s right.

I’ve also lived in the south and I’ve seen the pro-confederacy movement get stronger as I grew older, so I don’t agree that it’s on its last breath… but I really do hope I’m wrong.

Having grown up in Arkansas, the thing that surprised me the most was that this wasn’t near Harrison.

But it’s in the Northeastern Corner near Pocahontas, yup, still makes sense.

I can understand that.

However I grew up in the US south. My response was “Yea… that sounds about right…”

I imagine the GOP would actually do something about it though

My state has a supermajority Republicans for the last ten or so years. The cities police are under control over the state instead of the cities themselves. Crime has risen… but they still parrot that “liberal cities are crime infested” (feature not a bug), we can vote on bills through a petition process, they’re trying to kneecap that, while the past few bills pass overwhelmingly progressive parts but the Republican supermajority either reintroduces the bill with confusing language to overturn it, overturns it directly while saying “People didn’t know what they were voting for”, or just outright ignores it (We put into our constitution for medicaid expansion. They’ve not implemented it in over five years, just ignoring it). We’re now a flyover state that is about to get rid of income tax and increase sales tax, despite the two major population centers are right on the border for other states.

Yet our idiots that live here keep voting for these assholes.

It’s not about the confederacy itself but look up the book “Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth” to learn how a relatively unimportant location in Texas has become an international symbol of defiance and American spirit… when it was a bunch of slave owners invading Mexico, ignoring the laws, then stealing the land.

The book covers the history of Alamo, and the battle of the Alamo is only in the first quarter, it goes all the way to modern era. It helps show how that group twists myths to their advantage.

The Confederacy should have been burned to the ground, its leaders and supporters hanged and their bodies left to rot in the sun.

I come from the south, I know my heritage has a confederate officer in it.

John Brown did nothing wrong.

“Will 2026 finally be the year when a critical mass of Americans wakes up and realizes that Republicans always screw up the economy?”

I live in a red state.

LOL. LMAO even.

They WILL vote against their interests as long as the R is next to the name.

I’ve also been in construction long enough to know there are faster ways into a house than through the doors if I’m trying to be dishonest.

Only super tangentially unrelated, I had a friend ask if he should get me a lockpick set. I told him I tried to learn, it’s not my thing, it doesn’t make sense in how I feel. He asked what if I needed something open.

“I have a sawsall with a demolition blade. There are very few things I cannot open.”

I think the United States as we knew it is dying

I grew up in the US south.

This IS the US as I’ve known it.

The rest of the country got complacent about the people that supported the splitoff faction that wanted to own people as backwoods hicks and not as a viable threat despite them infesting many of the states that literally sent men to die to stop them. Laughed when they said “The south will rise again” despite them having an outsized power in politics and when called out were nice when they said “It’s heritage, not hate.”

They were ready to arrest those who went against the president during Bush Jr era. Nixon welcomed them into the fold after LBJ pissed off the Dixiecrats by signing in the Civil Rights Acts and every Republican since, just as the Democrats did before. The country never finished the job and now the house is infested.

“we’ll burn that bridge when we get to it”

I use that so much I legitimately forget the whole “cross that bridge” when I’m in serious conversation.

I am sad I only have but one upvote to give this post because it’s the correct answer.