He’s just a symptom.
The virus being a range of sociopathic beliefs and behaviour justified as “conservatism”.
I blame “Infinite growth”. i.e. Capitalism
Don’t forget leaded gas!
THANK YOU! I keep fucking saying it’s the damn lead. (And other shit, like microplastics in the water, etc) it makes people unable to think rationally.
Yeah, I agree. PFAS, lead, carbon monoxide, microplastics, all the pollutants. It would be naive to think these things don’t impact the mental capacity of the globe as a whole.
I think it is more about too much centralizati and the power that results that leads to corruption no matter the intentions or political system.
It has a vector of a bulbous demographic growth that is the baby Boomer generation. Luckily they are deflating slowly, but every young person must do their utmost to vote.
Yes, but he’s also the disease personified and amplified into a real life supervillain. And the world doesn’t have a superhero to stop him.
I “know” this is a metaphor, and I’m being a wet blanket about it, but I’m saying it anyway. There is no super hero to save anyone from anything, much less a society circulating the drain. The only way to make things better is by getting organized with your friends, family, and neighbours.
Be prepared (collectively) when things go to shit, and actively try to make them better. You can do very little alone, but together the choice is no longer between Hitler and Hitler, it’s change or stagnation. And neither genocide Joe or Cheetos man will lead to any positive progress.
Okay, no more wet blanket…
Supervillain is giving him too much credit. I’ll grant you that he’s a cartoon character, but cartoon supervillains have more complexity than him.
Kanye and Musk embody a nearly identical archetype and we’d have the exact same problem if they ran for president and succeeded. The cult of personality that follows shitty celebrities is a self-perpetuating one. It’s rooted in nasty people admiring how important people can be nasty like them but without tangible social consequences. They form a mob around their cult heroes for that exact reason, strength in numbers. A safe space for the trash of humanity.
People in politics and business find Trump useful because he’ll open doors for them in exchange for attention. They get cozy with leading him around by the nose with that attention until they forget that he will backstab them when they stop giving him that attention or there is more value in betraying them. Musk does the exact same shit, so again, I don’t think that Trump himself is worthy of being viewed in the light you’re giving him. Similarly shitty celebrities are drop in replacements for him, and worse, they might be more intelligent in their cruelty.
Cromulent points all around.
Together we can stop him
He’s a full blown syndrome at this point.
Yup he doesn’t have to win, as long as one of his lackeys do.
Many of whom seem straight up worse. Trump is awful, but at least he’s mostly incompetent at even achieving his own goals. The idea of having someone like Trump but competent is utterly horrifying. DeSantis, in particular.
Donald Trump sucks, but this title is some clickbait bullshit written by a buzzfeed-level journalist.
BuzzFeed news is better than this. They break good news stories. Writers for the Economist tend to be experts at telling us things we already know, years later.
This “man” (and I use that term loosely) was already elected president and served a 4 year term. Everyone who paid the slightest attention knows what he’s about.
It’s the Republican Party in general. Specifically because they’ve largely suborned themselves to Trump’s insanity, because they think they can control him and cement themselves into power. If you remember last time, that didn’t work at all.
Ask McCarthy how things work out when you welcome the crazies into the party and assume you can keep them in line.
And yes, I’m fully aware that McCarthy was one of “the crazies” back when the tea party was considered the extreme part of the GOP.
Richard Pryor had a classic bit about a wino looking down on a junkie. It’s actually classic addict behavior for one user to find reasons they are better than their peers.
I think it worked a lot. look at the judges they were able to appoint
I was more talking about the “controlling him” angle, because he was absolutely unmoored from reality on day 1 and never got any better.
It’s not just him.
In my eyes, the following individuals are dangers to the world and society:
Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Ebrahim Raisi, Ron DeSantis, Mitch McConnell, John Thune, Susan Collins, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, Benjamin Netanyahu, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet, Mike Johnson
And everybody else I hadn’t named but behave similarly to or exactly like these piles of collective shits. What a fucking time to be alive, said no one unironically. Damn I have to keep almost coming back to this comment to edit because of a name of some other asshole I just remembered to tack onto this list, it’s horrible.
Where is Rupert Murdoch? He should be very high up there.
Also Graham, DeSantis, Hawley, Tuberville, Barr, Comey-Barret, Kavanaugh, and basically anyone involved with the national-level GOP leadership. They’re all psychopaths.
add Peter Thiel and Konstantin Malofeev
My eyes mixed up Susan Collins and Tom Cotton, so I said outloud “What did Tom Collins do?”
We do have at least a hypothetical check on people like Trump, it’s supposed to be the other party. Sadly the DNC is corrupt and pathetic.
In 2016, Hillary and DNC signed an agreement so DNC would get a huge chunk of her campaign money, so they cheated and helped Hillary win the primary system. The exact same thing is happening again and the Biden campaign just signed a similar agreement a few months ago.
The people to blame here when Trump wins again will be DNC idiots again.
Certainly this country could find anyone with a pulse that isn’t 80 years and either senile or crazy.
Oh look, it’s both-sides-guy!
Every candidate has that agreement. I understand you’re new to politics then?
This isn’t news. It’s an opinion piece. Could we have opinion pieces in a different community to news articles?
* America poses the biggest danger to the world in 2024
Man we’ve taken that trophy home every year for decades.
Maintaining an empire is hard work. You gotta pick a random little country to kick the shit out of once in a while or else the other little countries start getting ideas. /s
Decisively not the 40s tho 👍
Global warming and its not close. Especially if the trend over the last 6 months holds.
The US government is a major factor in determining what gets done about global warming. If the USA gets locked into antidemocratic fascism and climate change denial it will exacerbate global warming everywhere. That’s what the Republicans promise.
The fact that Trump presents such a threat to the world after four disasterous years as President, after attempting to tamper with the electoral college votes, voting machines, after publicly professing his admiration for criminals and despots, because of an elections and politicians that can be overtly bought because the Supreme Court, which itself has been corrupted by bribes and influence allows it to be, may just well bring down the Republic. We are at the point where wrapping oneself in the flag and spewing fascist screeds is considered patriotic, whereas preserving the Enlightenment principles on which the Republic was founded is considered dangerous and subversive. Even if Trump died today, another strongman, probably less stupid than Trump, would take his place, and likely succeed in destroying the Republic. The founders of this country could never have imagined the effects of hate-filled mass media on a population when their main means of information dissemination required imprinting and transporting paper.
He’s not a dangerous man. He’s an old fat idiot. The dager is the braindead americans who support him.
He’s an old fat idiot.
Hitler was a buffoon too, but still very dangerous. Trump will go for dictatorship and promises vengeance against his perceived enemies. An idiot with unchecked power is dangerous.
He’s an old fat idiot.
Yes, but he’s an idiot with a large group of cultlike followers. That’s what makes him dangerous.
And the people in his administration that carry out his orders. But that’s the same all over the world and rarely are bad leaders ignored or overthrown.
Not just Trump, look at the rise of right-wing extremism happening the world over, it’s not a coincidence
indian here, don’t forget modi.
I want to believe that his election loss and absolute shitshow he turned it into with the insurrection and all has sealed his fate and he will never actually win half of America again. He’s a joke. A criminal. He fooled people once but some won’t get fooled again. SOME. All it takes is a small percentage of voters to just stay home and he’ll lose. He can’t win. He’s a loser. He can’t win.
Then I look over at fucking Biden and it’s like… shit.
My brother in Christ, lots of people love him. Lots are morons.
Most important election ever and it’s a rapist piece of shit vs a roomba.
I know a lot of people love him. 30% of the country are his forever and that’s that. But those people aren’t enough to win on their own. He won because Republicans lined up to block Hilary.
In fact, Hilary is the best example of what I think will go wrong for Trump. Hilary was a very strong candidate. But maybe 5% of Democrats just didn’t care to turn out for her: a mix of not liking her, being too progressive for her, maybe being sexist, and just presuming she would win.
That little bit of slack did her in.
Will Trump experience that “little bit of slack” in 2024 compared to 2016? I think he will. In 2016 he was a wild phenomenon, an outsider, a rock that lots of otherwise reasonable people decided it was time to throw at the system.
He doesn’t have all that mystique this time. He’s not a disruptive new challenger from out of left field. He’s last year’s loser and a confirmed criminal. He will turn out his 30% base just fine. But is he going to get as many black and latino votes again? Are “fiscal conservatives” going to trust him again? Have 5% of Republican voters been turned off by all the Trumpism? Because our electrons are razor-close. That tiny bit of difference in turnout is everything.
Brother, Hillary was a fucking failure.
Trump will have no slack. Those of us who don’t care are against him now. Carrot over Trump.
Nah, it’s climate change, but sure Trump’s not good either.
That’s the rub - drumft part deux will seal the deal on climate.
Last chance. Act now to stop this fucker.
He is backed (and controlled) by pootin.
Pootin is using social media to target impressionable idiots.
Said idiots raise the din of idiocy and drown out reason. Etc. Etc.
Absolutely nothing will happen to protect Americans from climate catastrophe if Trump is reelected. And if America doesn’t act the rest of the world simply has no hope.
Trump is a moron and a speed junkie. The Heritage Foundation is the true threat, theocrats with billionaires funding.
Yeah Trump too though.
I feel this was a long term project by the wealthy. Cutting Education funding, propaganda networks etc. Trump is the leader of their cult of personality. In a functioning democracy like Norway the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. In America they rule over workers like dictators. But the type of government could eventually turn on them. This project 2025 is the billionaires way to cement their rule. They’ll come for the rest of the world too eventually, if climate change doesn’t get in the way first. The rest of the world needs to pay attention, the results of this election will reverberate for decades.
The press just can’t stop talking about Trump. I feel like they wouldn’t be so popular if they didn’t receive so much press coverage.
But it brings clicks!
Has anybody read the list of indictments just on the federal documents case? It is not going to end well for him, most likely:
31 counts of retaining and failing to deliver national defense documents under the Espionage Act. Each of these charges is for possession of a separate, specific document. Ten of these documents were handed over to the government in June 2022, and the other 21 were recovered in the August 2022 search.[30]
According to the indictment, the 31 documents describe:
- U.S. nuclear weapons;
- foreign military attacks, plans, capabilities, and effects on U.S. interests;
- foreign nuclear capabilities;
- foreign support for terrorist activity;
- communications with foreign leaders;
- U.S. military activities;
- White House daily foreign intelligence briefings;
- potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack;
- and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.[31]
He is a traitor through and through, and this is going to make his life painful next year.
And yet… He’s probably going to remain free, untouched, highly supported, and be on the ballot as a real contender for reelection. Something’s not quite right with that picture.
we are so fucked…
