He absolutely has not been “in” for 20 years. Someone will publish his actual record between active duty, active reserve, and inactive reserve. He was in the National Guard as a basic infantry officer. No ranger tab, no SF, hell not even airborne, so let’s stop acting like he’s a badass. He’s perfectly qualified for leading a company-sized unit. That’s it.
He has, in aggregate, around 4-5 years of experience as a junior officer. Most of his time is IRR which has ~zero [1] obligations and is basically just a higher priority draft list for former military.
I know you know all of this, of course, and you’re either defending him in bad faith or pure ignorance, so I’m mostly replying for the benefit of others.
The US has recovered from inflation better than practically any other country. Yes, the last 4 years have been far, far better than trump's first term by any measure you care to mention, except maybe hate, lies and fear.
I’m not a Trump supporter but clearly inflation was worse during Biden than Trump, that’s just a fact. So your claim that it’s on “any measure” is wrong.
Fiscal policy was used to ensure we didn't all starve during the pandemic, and that 2024 didn't do it's best 1928 impersonation. Was inflation worse? Of course. The conditions and context of either presidency aren't even close.
What do you think Biden did to cause inflation? What specifically did he do to cause food prices to rise? Please be specific. Your claim requires at least some thought put in to explain it, not just "prices high, Biden bad".
The money printing started in 2020 under Trump's watch, so if we're going to blame U.S. presidents for inflating prices (?) then it follows that Biden gets credit for the recovery.
No, I'm just pointing out that there are a lot of people who are hyperventilating so hard about Trump's election that their capacticy for honesty reasoning appears to be greatly diminished.
C'mon guy, you seem smart. Use your brain and I bet you can answer your own question. Here's a hint: all else equal, I'd rather have you than a random non-vet in the role.
> You can't even bring yourself to mention that the Defense nominee has actually served in the Army, and is a decorated veteran
The amount of copium with his pick is incredible. Hegseth is woefully underqualified to be the SecDef. He was in Army Natl Guard, not Army. He spent a year at Guantanamo in 2004, deployed to Iraq in 2005-2006 and Afghanistan in 2011-2012. That's it. The rest of the time was ARR and IRR. He has never held any public office at any level.
I'm not trying to dismiss his military service itself, it's fine, but to imply it remotely qualifies him to be the SecDef is beyond reason. He's a junior officer fit to lead a company (100-200 soliders) at best.
It isn't unhinged, or partisan to be extremely wary of everything someone who tried to overthrow the government by insurrection does with their newfound power. Yes, I am frightened by what he has already said, and done. If you aren't then I have to wonder why. He really wore out the "give him a chance" excuse many people made for him in 2016. There really is no "maybe" about it.
1. Trump got the US out of the TPP, which to this economic populist, was amazing. If you think that NAFTA led to the blue collar backlash against the Democratic party that got us to this electoral result, TPP sez, "hold my beer!"
2. Trump bungled the fuck out of his first go round. I expect lots more of the same.
3. There are two other branches of government; we will see how they act. Maybe the Senate Democrats will RtFM section about the "Filibuster" button, especially with Manchin and Sinema gone?
4. Lots of left/center left/progressive media hyperventilation about the potential bad stuff, but only today, after the election did I hear that RFK Jr. thinks that DTC advertising of prescription drugs should be banned, and that SNAP (fka "food stamps") should not be allowed to be spent on (for example) soda. We already regulate what WIC can be used for; why not SNAP? Are there other policies we are not hearing because they don't play as well for clicks? Idk? Yes, I think the guy is misguided on vaccines, horribly so, but post-COVID, we are already in an environment where it is easy to opt out of vaxxing your kid or yourself if you so choose. I dont think RFKJr represents a big change here.
5. Lots of terrible things we were promised during T45 just didn’t happen. The worst, Roe v. Wade, was horrible, yet here in my very red state, we passed an amendment such that, we now have more abortion rights than when RvW was a settled precedent.
Thank you for perfectly exemplifying the tendency to ignore reality while you are hyperventilating.
My primary issue is economic security for all. My polical priorities could rougly be described as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
What you completely seem to have missed while you were hyperventilating, or you are purposely misrepresenting, is my claim that things are not likely as bad as you are still crying about.
Soda was one example of many: obesity is perhaps the biggest current challenge in chronic health care, in America. A while back, a liberal NYC administration went so far as to try to tax soda for just this reason.
But by all means, yell at me more online based on your own strawmen. It's entertaining.
Your ad-hominem "wetting the bed" and "hyperventilating" attacks are pointless, and have nothing to do with reality. And just more proof that it's pointless to argue any of this with anyone that thinks trump might not be so bad. Goodbye.
You must be the little piggy who built his arguments out of straw because I sure never said Trump "might not be so bad." I think Trump is a terrible person!
I do think that Trump's first administration was not as bad as the worst case picture painted by the left about all the terrible things that were going to happen. Democracy held. We even elected Joe Biden (*yawn*).
Trump is absolutely going to try some crazy shit. But if you are going to lose your shit because he nominated some people you don't like, you will be so worn out by all the media circus, when the time your actions could be meaningful, you will be exhausted and useless.
Save your energy. Stop acting like the person in the movie who loses their shit at the first sign of crazyness and is a net detriment to the team. This isn't the fight, dude.
I'm not sure how "liberal" the soda ban was. It was championed by Michael Bloomberg, who was at least nominally a Republican during his tenure. I know Bloomberg is trying to rub his nutsack all over the Democrat party now, but that's fairly recent and while he was mayor of NYC his administration was not considered "liberal" at the time.
Harris outperformed Biden among only two demo groups[1]:
-College educated whites
-People with income > $100,000
Please, consider the possibility, that the Dems are now the party of wealthy elites, and that the diverse coalition making is happening on the R side of the aisle.
A diverse coalition is also what enabled the N side of the aisle to take power in Germany in 1933, so that's not exactly an argument against the comparison made by the grandparent.
I've had multiple friends ask to start training with me at my Muay Thai gym here in Brooklyn over the past week. At the very least self-defense is starting to cross people's minds.
Me. I am. Trump keeps making jokes about a third term, about not leaving, and about getting republicans to keep him in power. But there’s also that one that wasn’t a joke where he actually tried to stay in power by targeting the most symbolic moment of the electoral vote certification with a violent insurrection.
So yeah, it’s me. I’m calling him a fascist and I’ve been buying guns and gear because of it.
To me, the most interesting part of going to our local gun range is seeing, in fact, that my political opponents are, at root, sensible humans who are generally motivated by the same Maslow's hierarchy of needs as I am.
I mean, iirc the Germans were buying guns to fight Actual Communism and other far-left boogiemen they perceived to have infiltrated their political system.
The road from there to Actual Fascism was enabled and supported by a diverse working class coalition who was fed up with the status quo and in a dire economic situation.
Ah yes, the party of wealthy elites wants to tax incomes more than 400k, tax capital gains, is pro regulation. Whereas the party of working class wants to eliminate income tax, institute worldwide tariffs, is anti-regulation to the point of wanting to bring asbestos back. Makes total sense.
My conclusion from all of this is that most low-information voters really do make their decisions based on personality and message, rather than ideology or policy.
Dems always shoot themselves in the foot by putting up candidates that middle america just can't seem to relate to.
Trump might be the epitome of what middle america hates: a privileged city landlord who lives in opulence. But it doesn't matter, because he speaks their language.
Kamala only sounds smart and educated to other smart and educated people. She sounds snooty and condescending to everyone else.
I also think calling them "low-information" is incredibly ethnocentric, to the point of offense. Perhaps they just weight their information differently, especially when they exist at different levels of Maslow's hierarchy? It is hard to be "enlightened" (which probably in and of itself means different things to different folks) when youre hustling for food and rent. Poverty is exhausting; poverty impacts higher cognition.
Meanwhile, the Dems are seen as the party of DEI, which are wayyyyy above base survival needs, accoring to that hierarchy.
Edited, to respond more substantively with a quote from your source:
>Linguist George Lakoff has written that the term is a pejorative mainly used by American liberals to refer to people who vote conservative against what liberals assume to be their own interests and assumes they do it because they lack sufficient information. Liberals, he said, attribute the problem in part to deliberate Republican efforts at misinforming voters.
I get your point: condescension against low-information voters doesn't help.
But I think that your argument that the term "low-information" has no use just because it's been used with condescension by some is incorrect.
Instead of wasting cognitive energy of finding a new term for the same exact group of people, I think we should focus on treating them with the respect their sizable number of votes deserve.
Of course -- I don't expect people grinding paycheck-to-paycheck to be spending time mulling over their political ideologies or the merits of proposed policy proposals. And in fact, that's exactly my point. I'm not disparaging their situation, I'm describing it.
No one said a thing about race. Look up a definition of "ethnocentric" please; ethnocentrism also refers to cultural normativity. Specifically, I was referring to the following idea which can be found on the Wikipedia article on the term "low information voter":
>Linguist George Lakoff has written that the term is a pejorative mainly used by American liberals to refer to people who vote conservative against what liberals assume to be their own interests and assumes they do it because they lack sufficient information. Liberals, he said, attribute the problem in part to deliberate Republican efforts at misinforming voters.
It seems to me you are the one applying racial priors to my comment.
I'm not trying to convince anyone that she is. My point is the opposite: that many people do not. If you don't, then great, that's what I'm talking about.
Correct, my point and the point of the article I am citing is that there are outflows of vorers from the Democratic base (I hesitate to say party, because, clearly these people aren't Democrats as much as at-best-former-democrats) leaving the Democratic party to be more and more white, wealthy, and educated.
I believe we are seeing the beginning of the end of the Democratic party as we know it.
It's just kind of stupid analysis. And definitely not "the beginning of the end of the Democratic party as we know it".
Biden got 87% of the black male vote, Harris got around 78%. And yes, that is a 9% swing. But there were less voters overall as well. And I'd also hesitate to extrapolate a trend from a single data point. Because Hillary Clinton got 81% of black men. Closer to Harris than Biden.
But when the Republican party showed these "outflows of voters", no one talked about the death of the Republican party.
