If I was Zelensky, I’d probably agree to a rebuilt Ukraine with Trump Towers and Tesla factories and all sorts of things. “Just imagine, Mr. President, world class Trump golf course and resort in Crimea— envy of all East Europe!”

Why did that shitty influencer beat up the crazy guy from The Hangover?

You know, despite all the crazies on Lemmy, I still doubt we have people invested enough to bot us. Too small a market share and defederation makes it even more complicated. Our bad takes – 100% genuine!

We’ll see. The guy practically steals political capital so it is unpredictable; traditional candidates usually have to cut deals with folks in house and Senate when a policy would cost that person votes, but he doesn’t play by that because he can just make shit up. Gaetz will be a good test to see if he’s still able to force bad choices on people.

The only upside is he’s also an idiot who doesn’t trust people around him. 2016-2020 was bad, but man it could have been a lot worse if he wasn’t inept.

Yes, I know. Well actually, technically No Child Left Behind was a bipartisan attempt to improve education under Bush but was designed by people with conservative values (hence being a shit show designed to improve public education by punishing it).

But yes, on average, they’ve mostly pushed privatization of education and in more recent years, homeschooling for religious values. Dumbing down of society is probably a welcome side effect of stealing money from kids to fund tax breaks for the rich, though.

Half of voters, and still 47% voted Harris last I checked. And turnout was especially bad, too, hence it technically only being a fraction of Americans. That’s not to say it’s not terrible, but even when Trump didn’t get a majority last two times it was alarmingly high.

But my expertise is in education, I can say definitively that Americans fail at civics and we haven’t done much to fix that in close to half a century. But failing civics doesn’t mean you deserve persecution or deportation or skyrocketing costs or nuclear death-- especially when people can legally lie to you to sway your vote. Systems fucked, but I wouldn’t place the blame on that slight majority of subset of the population.

Well, twenty something percent of citizens voted for him but yes. I don’t think it’ll be quite as bad as he said since there guard rails, but we apparent voted for a full Congress for him too and hoping “sane” Republicans will save us is a fools errend.

But if 2016 is any indication, it’s probably not as bad as brexit, lol. I think we need to leave NATO or something to be that bad. (But, Brits didn’t deserve that, either, nor their crappy Tory leadership. They have my sympathy, as anyone conned by evil people should).

Oh yeah, that multiple organizations things absolutely fuuuucks me since I’m adjunct at multiple universities/colleges. It keeps trying to default me to a place I don’t even work at anymore and somehow still refuses to let me leave it without reinstalling Windows (which I won’t do as I’ll be moving to Linux full time once I do).

What blows my mind is MS fucking bought Skype and somehow Teams still can’t handle video calls correctly. The actual fuck did they do with that acquisition?

Man I still can’t believe America greenlit this reality show for another four seasons. Between this and DOGE, the scripts getting a bit too on the nose.

I would assume Trump knows very little about the different offices, so that tracks. That said, Musks thing probably has very little to do with accountability, lol. They’ll fire competent people and break stuff, just like with X— no need to look at what good they do!

You know, the sad thing is that it’s probably a good idea to trim some programs-- just not put two of the dumbest rich guys in charge.

Before election season even started, I recall a discussion on NPR mentioning that to balance the budget and bring down the deficit, something politically toxic would be required, be it cutting social security or military or dramatically raising taxes.

Too bad this version is probably cutting good stuff to pay for tax cuts for rich (and failing that, passing those cuts anyway)

Well that was a depressing read while holding my 9 month old.

I mean, it’s the whole point of the “states rights” things. Republicans use that hypocritically, but there’s truth to it. But you’re right in that it’s been eroded for a long time; that and the executive branch has gained more and more power too. Constitutionalists should be up in arms but again, hypocrites every last one of them.

He wasn’t able to do it in 2016 for the same reason this time around— probably, anyway. My guess is it’s mostly not a priority compared to enriching billionaires, but also some Republicans probably aren’t that interested in overthrowing State governments (especially Californian house members lol). You also have the issue of compliance, as the military and FBI aren’t exactly Hitler’s generals. Yet, anyway.

You know, at least there’s some solace in knowing Trump 100% didn’t and can’t read Project 2025. He’s still going to bull-in-the-china-shop his way though this but I don’t think he’s going to follow the script exactly.

I generally don’t trust .io for that particular reason. It’s the Steve Jobs of the world picking that for buzz; the Steve Wozniaks of the world would simply choose .org.

And…, to make sure my joke didn’t lead me to find it Woz had a fucking io website, I looked it up and his personal cite is fucking org. Lol

It’s tricky, since you have inherent power imbalances and the jobs dangerous on top of that. I think you can look at Japans older model where they basically just have a pen and paper and chill out in kobans (corner police boxes) to just help people with directions and any disorders. Less heroic TV types and more glorified public assistants.

Would never fly here, but police are adorable in Japan.

That’s the point of police reform. They weren’t prevented because reckless driving isn’t enforced here. The police here suck, and have always sucked, and should be replaced and reformed.

Now, if you’re done misconstruing my argument to fit your virtue signaling, why don’t you say the solution to hit and run drivers, and while you’re at it, street take overs?

Odd for you to call vehicular manslaughter an inconvenience, but let’s be clear: you can both reduce police involvement where it is not needed (such as mental health crisis) while still maintaining some order for actual dangerous offenders. You can also approach a problem from multiple angles, such as making prisons more about rehabilitation than punishment, or addressing future crime by investing in education and family welfare.

None of that means you also can’t address a very local problem of 40,000 annual hit and runs with 8,000 deaths. Living in South LA, you literally see street take overs at least once a week usually with stolen cars. Doing two things at once- that is, addressing the current problems while also preventing future ones- shouldn’t be difficult for someone “doing the mental work” like yourself.