Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 451: It Was a Pleasure to Burn

(+) Yeah! (+)

LinkMarioSamus posted...

I am sick and tired of doomsaying coming from people upset they didnt get the result they want.

We're not doomsaying because he won the election.

We are doomsaying because he is actually the president again and he is enacting doom.

I am about to log into work and read an email telling me I can resign and not have a job in 8 months.

Even though I'm not going to accept, the president is insinuating that the IRS doesn't need to exist and could be replaced by tariffs, a concept he still clearly doesn't understand the mechanics of.

That's just news affecting me personally in the past 24 hours, there are many other groups/individuals who are already much more negatively affected than even I am.

Fucking doom.

you know what i'm sick and tired of? people like chaostony and LMS who claim to be on the left but, at this point, are STILL saying shit like "the democrats are just as terrible as the republicans!" and "stop the doomsaying, you're just a sore loser!" quit this disingenuous bullshit and just admit that you don't think trump is that bad.

LinkMarioSamus posted...

I am sick and tired of doomsaying coming from people upset they didnt get the result they want.

No you're not you fucking love it. You've made it your entire life and personality. You have never felt more at peace, and you will gladly destroy any person, society, or country who threatens that peace.

Forceful_Dragon posted...

Even though I'm not going to accept, the president is insinuating that the IRS doesn't need to exist

I was actually thinking about the pros/cons of not paying taxes this year. I'm 1099 and don't pay estimates so I owe quite a bit.

Although I do still have some amortized solar panel credit that I need to cash in.

foolm0r0n posted...

Although I do still have some amortized solar panel credit that I need to cash in.

yeah, I'm in the process of buying a house and part of my loan is going to include the cost of a new roof (which is required because the current roof is garbage) and a solar/battery system (because I'd like to start saving money on crazy electricity prices).

The Residential Clean Energy Credit is supposed to be available until 2032 as set by the Inflation Reduction Act so I can claim 30% of the costs of the solar system as a credit against my tax obligation. It would likely take 3~ years of rolling it over to use the whole credit, but now I don't even have full confidence that this time next year that credit will even still exist on my 2025 taxes.

It would take a significant revision from congress, but Trump has already indicated he is against anything that supports renewable energy so I might just be out 15-16k over the next couple years if that is a change that his administration makes.

Yeah I think after this year I'll still have 2k or so to amortize for next year, but that might just be dead in the water. If that happens, I'm absolutely not paying my 1099 taxes. This year I'll probably do business as usual, though it's a long time until April.

One thing I would like to bet on is that this admin changes the roth conversion ules to make them extremely lax and advantageous. What would happen is they mess with the tax income streams too much, and will have an emergency scramble to find revenue. So they would encourage everyone to do roth conversions, since it's a great way to essentially borrow tax revenue from the future, in a way that only benefits upper middle class people.

LinkMarioSamus posted...

Honestly Im not interested in bringing up his previous federal indictments when the rest of the country both had more pressing issues AND saw Trumps legal problems as tantamount to a partisan power grab by Democrats, who had three of the previous four terms anyway for the first time since 1956. Yes that last part is stupid I agree, but still. I am sick and tired of doomsaying coming from people upset they didnt get the result they want.

I couldn't agree more! It was all just a power grab by Democrats to try to charge Trump with trying to overthrow the government. All he did was try to get Mike Pence to not accept the results of an election, and create a slate of fake electors. Is that really such a big deal? Then he sent a mob to attack the capitol, and threaten the lives of congress. They've clearly gotten over it. We should too. It's obvious Trump has learned his lesson. That's why he pardoned all the people who attacked the capitol. He knew they had learned their lesson too. There's no way Trump will try again. Not like he said 'This will be the last time you have to vote" or anything. And if he did, he didn't mean it like that.

Mr_Lasastryke posted...

you know what i'm sick and tired of? people like chaostony and LMS who claim to be on the left but, at this point, are STILL saying shit like "the democrats are just as terrible as the republicans!" and "stop the doomsaying, you're just a sore loser!" quit this disingenuous bullshit and just admit that you don't think trump is that bad.

Tony is clearly very much on the left, but he has a deep loathing of the democrats and it makes him say silly things.

MitsuruKirijo posted...

I couldn't agree more! It was all just a power grab by Democrats to try to charge Trump with trying to overthrow the government. All he did was try to get Mike Pence to not accept the results of an election, and create a slate of fake electors. Is that really such a big deal? Then he sent a mob to attack the capitol, and threaten the lives of congress. They've clearly gotten over it. We should too. It's obvious Trump has learned his lesson. That's why he pardoned all the people who attacked the capitol. He knew they had learned their lesson too. There's no way Trump will try again. Not like he said 'This will be the last time you have to vote" or anything. And if he did, he didn't mean it like that.

Honestly I just hope Trumps new coalition actually likes what they have and doesnt feel betrayed, because then itll be priceless for them to come and complain that we didnt warn them.

Mr_Lasastryke posted...

you know what i'm sick and tired of? people like chaostony and LMS who claim to be on the left but, at this point, are STILL saying shit like "the democrats are just as terrible as the republicans!" and "stop the doomsaying, you're just a sore loser!" quit this disingenuous bullshit and just admit that you don't think trump is that bad.

Oh I didnt mean anything about being a sore loser, sorry.

SirChris posted...

Tony is clearly very much on the left, but he has a deep loathing of the democrats and it makes him say silly things.

tony is very much on the "well they're BOTH terrible!!" train, which means he doesn't hate trump/the republicans nearly enough.

i also think kamala was terrible but she wasn't a literal nazi. this isn't the time and place for "both sides" bullshit.

SirChris posted...

Tony is clearly very much on the left, but he has a deep loathing of the democrats and it makes him say silly things.

Like that Biden should've implemented authoritarianism before Trump had the chance to?

Mr_Lasastryke posted...

tony is very much on the "well they're BOTH terrible!!" train, which means he doesn't hate trump/the republicans nearly enough.

i also think kamala was terrible but she wasn't a literal nazi. this isn't the time and place for "both sides" bullshit.

I mean. It probably is the time and place. Not like mouthing off in this thread will make things worse tbf

Biden couldve just went full on banning Republicans from holding any level of office since we all saw what their playbook was, but the mind wash media wouldve made half the country want to go terminate him

There is no sign that Trump's voters are going to feel betrayed. It could happen, but nothing that has happened to date suggests that it will. Trump appears to be putting in more effort to keeping his campaign promises than any president I can remember in my lifetime. And he has a very detailed roadmap in Project 2025 to work off of.

SirChris posted...

Tony is clearly very much on the left, but he has a deep loathing of the democrats and it makes him say silly things.

I think this is accurate. Tony never got over Bernie's loss. He knows that the GOP is objectively much worse, and would never vote for them, but on an emotional level he hates the Dem establishement, especially Biden.

To be fair I never fully got over Bernie's loss either so I get it.

Republicans always get away with whatever they want. Steal an election? Totally okay! Sex with underage minors? It's fine!

Democrats put their hands on the steering wheel at 10 and 3, and everyone loses their minds.

KamikazePotato posted...

He knows that the GOP is objectively much worse,

last topic, he linked to an article (and then passionately defended it) stating that abstaining from voting was totally fine because both sides were equally terrible and "whoever won, we lost."

if he truly knows that the GOP is objectively much worse, he wouldn't do shit like this.

SirChris posted...

I mean. It probably is the time and place. Not like mouthing off in this thread will make things worse tbf

Kinda disagree here. Well, sorta.

I pretty strongly disagree that the energy in attacking the Republicans is the same as in attacking the Democrats. It's just another expression of "Dems are the 'adult in the room' party who must be held to standards and Republicans are actually some kind of force of nature rather than people/officials who have agency and need to be held to account."

To short-circuit the strawman, I'm not saying there's no criticism/attacking what the GOP does - just that it feels like the real energy and vitriol comes out at the Democrats (and particularly "the establishment") and often gets handwaved with stuff like "The GOP is doing what they said they would/they wouldn't listen to us anyway"

I can't take credit for this kind of formulation but I saw it put recently that it's like forgetting the phrase is "Speak truth to power" and instead distorts to "Speak truth to power (if blue)"

idk maybe it's the circles i kind of lurk/read in

Mr_Lasastryke posted...

last topic, he linked to an article (and then passionately defended it) stating that abstaining from voting was totally fine because both sides were equally terrible and "whoever won, we lost."

if he truly knows that the GOP is objectively much worse, he wouldn't do shit like this.

Huh???

Was I drunk? I dont remember this at all.

Edit: Oh youre talking about the Chapo article, and a person in the article said that, not me.

I specifically defended a person in a firmly blue state abstaining.

And if you want to go there, theres a strong argument to be made (that I dont think anyone can disagree with) that Bidens win in 2020 demonstrably pushed MAGA to be even more radical and even more evil, which has caused Trump 2.0 to be worse within the first week. So in THAT case, it really was a lose-lose election.

If Democrats spent 1/5th of the energy they spend attacking disenfranchised leftists like Tony or libertarians like me, on attacking Republicans instead, then no Republican would ever win an election ever again. It's as simple as that.

Thorn posted...

Kinda disagree here. Well, sorta.

I pretty strongly disagree that the energy in attacking the Republicans is the same as in attacking the Democrats. It's just another expression of "Dems are the 'adult in the room' party who must be held to standards and Republicans are actually some kind of force of nature rather than people/officials who have agency and need to be held to account."

To short-circuit the strawman, I'm not saying there's no criticism/attacking what the GOP does - just that it feels like the real energy and vitriol comes out at the Democrats (and particularly "the establishment") and often gets handwaved with stuff like "The GOP is doing what they said they would/they wouldn't listen to us anyway"

I can't take credit for this kind of formulation but I saw it put recently that it's like forgetting the phrase is "Speak truth to power" and instead distorts to "Speak truth to power (if blue)"

idk maybe it's the circles i kind of lurk/read in

The problem is the republican base doesn't know how to hold Republicans to anything other than not being evil enough so complaining about Republicans is ultimately pointless in our setting. Dude tried to get his vp killed and he got voted in again. I don't waste my energy on Republicans atp either cause no one cared to listen whereas some Democrats represent my interests

foolm0r0n posted...

If Democrats spent 1/5th of the energy they spend attacking disenfranchised leftists like Tony or libertarians like me, on attacking Republicans instead, then no Republican would ever win an election ever again. It's as simple as that.

foolm0r0n posted...

If Democrats spent 1/5th of the energy they spend attacking disenfranchised leftists like Tony or libertarians like me, on attacking Republicans instead, then no Republican would ever win an election ever again. It's as simple as that.

I would have settled for the doj bringing charges in a timely manner tbh

I gotta say, given that collaboration is a fundamental aspect of all left-wing politics, I find the way some on the left would clearly much rather be alone and yelling at each other rather than working with people to a mutual aim even if you disagree quite odd. This is of course fuelled largely by social media. To be clear Im not saying this applies to Tony its just something that winds me up to no end about the online left. In all my work volunteering and with the trade union movement, this is very much mostly an online thing!

Anyway since I mentioned approval ratings earlier Trump is already net negative with Morning Consult and Ipsos. That was quick, he may have broken his own record!

SirChris posted...

whereas some Democrats represent my interests

At the federal level is this even true?

foolm0r0n posted...

If Democrats spent 1/5th of the energy they spend attacking disenfranchised leftists like Tony or libertarians like me, on attacking Republicans instead, then no Republican would ever win an election ever again. It's as simple as that.

Patently false. Dem infighting had zero outcome on the actual election. Maybe if it was a razor-thin loss, but...

And if you don't want to get dunked on for libertarianism, maybe try not being libertarian.

foolm0r0n posted...

If Democrats spent 1/5th of the energy they spend attacking disenfranchised leftists like Tony or libertarians like me, on attacking Republicans instead, then no Republican would ever win an election ever again. It's as simple as that.

Exactly true.

Im not gonna apologize for being harder on the group that is supposed to be the good guysI hold them up to a much higher standard that literal Nazis!

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

And if you want to go there, theres a strong argument to be made (that I dont think anyone can disagree with) that Bidens win in 2020 demonstrably pushed MAGA to be even more radical and even more evil, which has caused Trump 2.0 to be worse within the first week. So in THAT case, it really was a lose-lose election.

"Trump is only so much worse becuase we won the last election" is definitely a take.

foolm0r0n posted...

At the federal level is this even true?

Bernie is still alive

I dont know why you insist on rewording what I said to make it sound like Im giving Trump a pass.

Im just pointing out what happened.

LightningStrikes posted...

I gotta say, given that collaboration is a fundamental aspect of all left-wing politics, I find the way some on the left would clearly much rather be alone and yelling at each other rather than working with people to a mutual aim even if you disagree quite odd. This is of course fuelled largely by social media. To be clear Im not saying this applies to Tony its just something that winds me up to no end about the online left. In all my work volunteering and with the trade union movement, this is very much mostly an online thing!

Anyway since I mentioned approval ratings earlier Trump is already net negative with Morning Consult and Ipsos. That was quick, he may have broken his own record!

That's because they are now realizing that they don't have the votes to win even if they worked together. Because they refuse to lift a finger to work with the groups of people who could actually win an election with them.

I'm not sure if there's a way to get honest and accurate data on how trade union members voted in the US 2024 election, but I suspect they went massively for Trump. Even while union leaders voted unanimously or almost unanimously for Kamala. The Democrats at this point are utterly unable to articulate what they want to do to help people economically [read: put money in their pockets]. They talk about taxing the rich, but people are not interested in that because they don't see how it helps them, only how it hurts the rich. If you proposed taxing the rich more and cutting taxes on the poor, that would be different because it would actually provide more money to poor people. But Democrats don't even promise that.

I didn't think you were giving Trump a pass, but you were blaming Dems for him moving right simply for winning.

Trump literally tried to overturn an election. Not really sure he's so much worse than last time as he is more of the same, but working faster because he knows how it's done now. He's also seen that nobody on the right will challenge him, and the left are powerless to do it.

I dont agree with that, but its highly possible that Trump winning 2020 may have been the more favourable outcome long-term, given that it would have led to the Republicans getting an almighty kicking in 2024 like nearly every other sitting government did. And in this reality Trump is doing everything he was going to do in 2020 with some worse new additions. His cabinet would be less insane. But the thing about counterfactuals is, you cant actually know if theyre true or not.

Overall the best timeline would have been for Hillary to win 2016 and use actually responding to COVID in 2020 to coast to an easy re-election. Even that results in a Republican victory in 2024 though, but it probably wouldnt be Trump at least.

red_sox_777 posted...

That's because they are now realizing that they don't have the votes to win even if they worked together. Because they refuse to lift a finger to work with the groups of people who could actually win an election with them.

I'm not sure if there's a way to get honest and accurate data on how trade union members voted in the US 2024 election, but I suspect they went massively for Trump. Even while union leaders voted unanimously or almost unanimously for Kamala. The Democrats at this point are utterly unable to articulate what they want to do to help people economically [read: put money in their pockets]. They talk about taxing the rich, but people are not interested in that because they don't see how it helps them, only how it hurts the rich. If you proposed taxing the rich more and cutting taxes on the poor, that would be different because it would actually provide more money to poor people. But Democrats don't even promise that.

Im not in the US, but union members went +8 for Kamala.

LightningStrikes posted...

Overall the best timeline would have been for Hillary to win 2016 and use actually responding to COVID in 2020 to coast to an easy re-election. Even that results in a Republican victory in 2024 though, but it probably wouldnt be Trump at least.

Hillary wins 2008.
Romney wins 2012 (because let's be real Hillary loses here)
Obama up for 2016 and 2020

Also prevents that "I can't believe it will go down in history as a pivotal moment in world history" roasting of Trump by Obama over birtherism.

Hillary winning 2016 just delays the general trends one election, while ensuring the Democrats and Republicans who have governed using Reagan's economic principles since 1980 continue business as usual with no change whatsoever. The real consequential election was the 2016 primary - if Bernie won, he might have been able to ride the wave of change rather than Trump.

KamikazePotato posted...

Patently false. Dem infighting had zero outcome on the actual election. Maybe if it was a razor-thin loss, but...

It's not about infighting at all (especially since non-voting leftists and libertarians aren't exactly "in" with Democrats). It's about the fundamental symbiosis between Ds and Rs that leads to a lack of opposition to Republicans when & where it matters most.

KamikazePotato posted...

And if you don't want to get dunked on for libertarianism

I've never experienced that so I dunno if I want it or not.

I have experienced liberals desperately needing a win to distract from the fact that their policies have directly contributed to the build up of modern fascism over the last 20 years. I'm glad to be a source of artificial glee in that time. But at some point you gotta wake up and do something.

Dancedreamer posted...

I didn't think you were giving Trump a pass, but you were blaming Dems for him moving right simply for winning.

Trump literally tried to overturn an election. Not really sure he's so much worse than last time as he is more of the same, but working faster because he knows how it's done now. He's also seen that nobody on the right will challenge him, and the left are powerless to do it.

Let me ask you a question, do you think Dems did everything they should or could to protect us from Trump?

If your answer is no to either question, you should be mad at them too!!

Dont let the binary of our electoral system convince you that you have to always defend our team. If the quarterback drops the ball, even if he was getting blitzed, that doesnt mean he played well.

Dancedreamer posted...

"Trump is only so much worse becuase we won the last election" is definitely a take.

It is objectively true, in hindsight, that Trump winning in 2020 would've resulted in a better 2025 overall

Thorn posted...

Also prevents that "I can't believe it will go down in history as a pivotal moment in world history" roasting of Trump by Obama over birtherism.

My personal fixation in this regard is the Comey letter, which I'm like 99% handed Trump 2016. Fuck James Comey.

Best timeline:

Jesse Jackson wins in 1988.

LightningStrikes posted...

Im not in the US, but union members went +8 for Kamala.

According to polling? I can't prove it of course, but I'm skeptical. The past 3 elections have shown that pollsters are not able to properly control for the effect of Trump voters not wanting to say that they are voting for him, and my intuition is that union members would be sort of the eye of the storm for this effect.

foolm0r0n posted...

It is objectively true, in hindsight, that Trump winning in 2020 would've resulted in a better 2025 overall

Actually, I do lean towards this idea, BUT it's valid to argue that Biden's historic and radical anti-inflation techniques resulted in the best timeline for Americans. We'll have to see how bad Trump ruins the economy this time to see if that's true or not.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

If your answer is no to either question, you should be mad at them too!!

I am mad at them. But I don't think they're to blame for what Trump does. Trump and Republicans and all the voters are responsible. And I'm mad at them more than I am Democrats.

https://www.slowboring.com/p/throw-biden-under-the-bus

Hey, funny enough, I closed the topic where Im being told the leftists always attacking Democrats is annoying and opened up Twitter to find Matt Yglesias, a textbook Lib who hates Leftist, basically saying the same thing.

tl;dr we need to blame Dems (and mostly Biden) for their loss or theyll lose again

Dancedreamer posted...

I am mad at them. But I don't think they're to blame for what Trump does. Trump and Republicans and all the voters are responsible. And I'm mad at them more than I am Democrats.

Theyre not to blame for what Trump does, theyre to blame for what Trump can do.

I think people need to realize something - if COVID didn't happen, Trump would have won 2020 in a landslide.

KamikazePotato posted...

My personal fixation in this regard is the Comey letter, which I'm like 99% handed Trump 2016. Fuck James Comey.

oh for sure

If you restrict it to the last decade that's probably the top one. I'm just saying on a "best timeline" front if you extend back another 10 years you probably prevent Trump's rise entirely if it's Hillary who wins the 2008 primary instead - no Birtherism so Trump doesn't use that tide of racism to rise to prominence in right-wing politics, if you move the divergence point to 2016 even with a Hillary win Trump would have unleashed MAGA on the GOP - though the establishment probably crushes it after a loss to Hillary in a "literally anyone else and we could have won!" thing that they were all clearly setting up before the actual election results came in but you've still opened the box, etc.

2016/2020 Obama may activate similar forces, IDK, because now we're too far out from the butterfly to really say (I mean arguably even predicting the next presidential cycle is too much when you're doing what-ifs like this but eh)

The Democrats will struggle to win elections until we somehow disentangle news media from the various right-wing billionaire oligarchs who bought it piece by piece over the last decade. That's the #1 issue by far, more than everything else combined.

Whether or not Dems have effective policy or do good jobs honestly doesn't matter. Why would it when 95% of the country will never learn about it?

LightningStrikes posted...

Overall the best timeline would have been for Hillary to win 2016 and use actually responding to COVID in 2020 to coast to an easy re-election. Even that results in a Republican victory in 2024 though, but it probably wouldnt be Trump at least.

Absolute worst timeline. Trump likely would've come up anyway, even with covid. Hillary is a genocider and close Epstein ally too.