(Disclaimer: I voted against Trump and anyone who supported him in my state.)
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It depends…
Do you think Jimmy Carter has seen the season 4 finale of Breaking Bad?
Extremely, tarrifs will erase the middle class. All regulations will be repealed allowing even more corporate power and influence. We’re about to experience the Gilded Age on crack mixed with the burning hells of our mother Earth scorned.
They’re done with the middle class here. They don’t want to raise the poverty level worldwide, they want to bring us down to match the rest of the world. It’s strip-mining time, we’re too expensive for the international rich’s tastes.
Okay don’t rage at me. How do tarrifs affect the middle class?
We end up paying them. Not countries, or corporations. The cost gets passed to consumers.
Okay, but why is that specific to the middle class?
Also, wouldn’t it make sense to tarrif all the businesses who are using other countries for cheap labor?
What good do tarrifs do towards companies if they pass that on to consumers? When will that price ever touch their wallets? Its not specific to the middle class, the poor will also be eradicated. I just thought I’d mention we’re heading towards a shit ass society where you are either poor or rich. Theres no in between, theres no comfort, theres just a boot stomping on the face of humanity forever.
Well it should hit them in the wallet when people choose not to buy that thing because there’s something better at the same price here.
But it doesnt. It hits us in our wallets, dude.
Don’t buy the stuff. Buy the American stuff so it goes back in American wallets. That’s the idea right?
Tariffs will not only erase the middle class but also erase our topsoil like it’s 1924 all over again if farmers aren’t subsidized and everything is left to go fallow. In terms of dollars we’re pretty even in terms of agricultural imports and exports, but in terms of acreage… We push a shitload of soy, corn, and wheat. We’re more than a little fucked in lots of ways if we’re hit with retaliatory tariffs, but the biggest one is if farmers don’t have any reason to plant crops and don’t have any money to do it, we’re doomed for dustbowl days.
Don’t even get me started on water, fluoride is one thing but if they start removing a lot of other stuff like phosphate and permanganate the entire country’s municipal water supply will be as bad as Flint MI.
I’m hoping Trump doesn’t pull off 95% of the stuff he talked about due to unbridled incompetence because if he still manages to pull off 80% of it we’re gonna be fucked
No they’ll keep things like the farm subsidies, may even expand them. The tariffs will leave those out. That’s the socialism their base is 100% reliant on. They won’t risk turning on the rural farmers until the end when it they’re not a threat. They’ve already shown a complete willingness to ignore absolutely everything else until this point.
I’m hoping. Last trade war, Trump basically rolled out of bed one morning and decided to try it on China as some temporary transient thing in order to convey that the US has a lot of leverage (and it blew up in our faces), which is an entirely different beast than unilateral tariffs as part of fiscal policy. I have no clue how much it’d cost to just subsidize everything in perpetuity but I hope it isn’t some ridiculous sum.
He’ll probably do something like allowing us to sell semiconductors to foreign nations in exchange for dropping tariffs on agricultural exports which is also really fucking boneheaded. The art of the deal, giving away the only shit that has lots of value for us. China outpacing the US in tech is something Europe wouldn’t want, but if we cut ties with Europe they’d probably warm up to China and we’d become a really big insular nation that can’t even sustain its economy as is
If he manages to pull off even 25% we will be fucked until the last soul melts on the 200 degree pavement. Its never the time for rehressionism, but now is especially a bad time.
We’re already net exporter of petroleum but they’re intending to carve up our parks and stuff, even though we won’t be able to sell it for more than the cost of producing it. Everyone will slam us with tariffs and go to other countries for their fix, and it’ll be cheaper than bottled water for us.
The idiots who don’t understand what a pronoun is and are terrified of their kids learning about them in English class will have cheap gas, but their kids will endure a literal hell for it.
And they’ll think Trump’s doing a good job for all of it, blame some totally unrelated shit for our interest rate being at 25%
I’m over it. Be fucking stupid. Sell shit out for cheap. Stain the future with the blood of our children. We are out of time on the climate. The Earth will swallow us as our madness consumes us. Its a triple pronged rape of humanity’s future.
Ending farming and allowing nature to return would prevent a dust bowl. Allowing a field to go fallow means that a whole lot of plants start growing.
It might do that in some fields but it’d take ages in those spots where all you see is corn as far as the eye can see. Might be switchgrass growing in a drainage ditch but it’d just creep in like capillary action on a paper towel. You’d need to have people out there casting seed at least
That’s because it is soil that has been destroyed through decades of mismanagement. That is what caused the previous dust bowl.
Time to stock up on the automatic rifles they want us all to have so much, and learn carpentry to build some guillotines.
Maybe the French will help us again, they’ve got some experience with this.
We dont need guillotines. We need to heal our culture and unify Americans by ending the two party system that thrives off our division. We are so big we should be lead by a coalition of factions. Not whatever the fuck this is.
Ah yes, the same rhetoric that got us into this mess. Do nothing that actually makes a difference, but try to “fix” it from within. Meanwhile everything is being stolen with intentional legal loopholes.
How do you propose removing the two party system, which the two parties comprising the entirety of the government have every incentive to keep because it’s the only reason they have the power they do? The only way, as designed an within the existing system is to get enough representation in to force that change, which means replacing 2/3 of Congress essentially at the same time to force super majorities on both sides.
Do I need to remind everyone that the French Revolution eventually fed their own into the guillotines? No? We’re just keen on repeating every bit of history until we’re baked off this rock? Okay. Let’s do that instead of trying to ratify citizen petitions, getting collective action, and actually building a unified ideal over time. Nah, thats much too hard. Buy some wood, meet up with the three other willing people, and go stand outside some politicians house with a guillotine while he calls his donners all scared and they write up more protest laws.
Let’s do that instead of trying to ratify citizen petitions, getting collective action, and actually building a unified ideal over time.
Those work on a local level, not federal. Citizens have no control of anything Federal. The Federal government doesn’t have to listen to the citizens at all. The only consequence for them is during re-election. There they’ll just gerrymander the districts to force a win either way overall.
The federal government relies on each branch overseeing each other. And the Republicans have a stacked blatantly partisan Supreme Court that gave the office of the President total immunity. And a Republican majority in both sides of Congress completely willing to let Trump do what he wants as far of the plan.
Fixing this at a federal level will require getting to the exact opposite point we’re at now since we’ve allowed it to get to this point.
Then local it is. We gotta do something or die my guy.
Why do you need to learn carpentry? Isn’t it a slot with a big metal blade? Add a rope so you can pull it up, and let it go to make it work…
You don’t want it to fall apart after one use, see? Need to make sure it can stand up to the job. We don’t want to build to Harbor Freight standards here. Take pride in our work.
Look, I’m no guillotine-ologist, but I think if I was going to construct one I would forgo my usual method of measure once and cut 5 to 10 times until I have to go get another board because I’ve destroyed the last one.
Nothing will happen. We’ll all get up in the morning, maybe eat some breakfast, go to work, come home, play with the kids, eat some dinner, may shag your wife/husband, go to bed. Repeat. I can’t wait for four years to fly and be just as boring as the last four years.
O, to be so proverbially blissful.
O, to be so unrealistically terrified. Filled with misery and woe.
Living up to the middle of your username, I see.
Gottem
surprise pregnancy, wife suffers from complications, isn’t allowed to abort, dies painfully
That could have happened in specific states anytime in the last 2.5 years. That’s not specific to the next four years.
surprise pregnancy
or rape. even incest. better not live in a red state if you have ovaries.
Oh, my sweet sweet summer child…
Actually, maybe that’s what life will be like for a white, upper middle class, cisgender-heterosexual married male in his late 30s-40s, but for anyone who isn’t that… oh boy are we fucked.
Well, I guess you better hurry up and become those things.
We should remember that most Americans still live in blue states with sane governments. The federal government can’t just barge in and do whatever it wants, and if tries to do so, the social contract that binds the nation together is broken and secession becomes a real possibility. But that’s unlikely because Trump is far too clueless to know about any of the problems he’ll run into if he tries to implement any of his plans.
Which is fine for him because it was always a con anyway. He talks and acts out of his ass. What he will do is anyone’s guess, but it’ll at least be restrained by what’s realistically possible.
And what about project 2025. That total teeheee not our plan teeheee thing …
And what about the ones, like me, in red states? How fucked are we? (I know the answer and hence drunk and high rn)
Join us in the PNW! We have legal weed!
Realistically people should start to self sort and leftists should start to purchase and train with guns if they don’t have them for their family’s protection.
I’d love be as optimistic as you but unless Trump changes his mind the US will get a brainwormed fanatical anti-vaccier in charge of deciding which vaccines are safe to use. Even if the states don’t cooperate with trump’s agenda there are so many long standing federal institutions which till now you’ve never needed to think about that are about to get wrecked.
The Federal government CAN just barge in. We specifically designed the structure that way. Federal supercedes state.
He will absolutely move the military into a blue state to force compliance. This is how the next civil war will start. Red Force and blue resistance.
Federal laws trump state laws every time, those blue states will be just as shit as the red states in no time
Support from local and state governments does make a difference though. While federal agencies can still enforce these laws, local/state agencies could look the other way. Cannabis is still federally illegal, but some states have basically said “no thanks, we’re good as long as you stick to our rules on it.”
It comes down to how much state governments want to go to bat for their constituencies and how much the federal government wants to press the issue. All else being equal, I’d rather be in a state that stands up for my rights than one that doesn’t.
As somebody who has lived through the end of a democracy, trust me when I say the federal government will steamroll through local and state governments
Where, if you don’t mind me asking?
Sorry, I’m not going to give details for my own safety
Totally fair
My so called blue state of California just voted against minimum wage increase, against rent control, against banning slavery, and for increasing the war on drugs. At least this time we narrowly voted to approve gay marriage (unlike last time where we banned it)
7
Probably fine
Trump was pretty ineffective in his first term, largely because he did a terrible job of supporting people who really agreed with his agenda, and an even worse job of removing people from influential positions who didn’t.
He said during his campaign that he knew much better who to trust, but now he’s got Elon Musk and RFK Jr. prominently featured. I don’t think he has learned anything, and I think he will be just as ineffective this time.
It’s possible that some of the Republicans in Congress will support more of his agenda, but even there if they have to overcome the filibuster, I don’t think mass deportation, a federal abortion ban, or most of the rest of the potential worst of it is in the cards.
They’ll kill off the filibuster as soon as it gets in their way. They don’t care about tradition or institutional continuity. And anyway, the Democrats seldom resort to the filibuster, they just bend over.
Trump and Musk will have a power struggle within a few months. Trump hates the idea that someone’s richer than him, and will want to humiliate him. Trump will dump RFK Jr too, as soon as Jr gets more publicity than Trump. What will be semi-permanent are the careerist shitstains like the Speaker, the God-botherers with their crusade against women, and the anti-immigrant scum.
I reckon that in all likelihood the Project 2025 folks will piss him off at some point and he’ll just throw a tantrum and refuse to work with them. Doesn’t mean he’ll suddenly turn into a leftist, but if he doesn’t play ball, they’ll have trouble getting anything passed.
anywhere from not really, to literally world war 3.
trump is a loose cannon.
We do not win here.
Some of you people didn’t pay attention to the Congressional results and it shows.
What do you mean ? (The house is on track to be won by the gop. The senate is won by the gop. I just want to understand your point.)
“Not really” isn’t an option.
The question isn’t how fucked America is, that answer is some shade of “very.”
The question is who is going down with us.
Ha gotcha, thank you
We’re going to have a great 4 years. The first 2 will be amazing if we actually get a super majority.
The first year will be him living off Bidens reduction of inflation. EVERY policy Trump has discussed increases prices. So we will have hyper inflation.
Name One policy he has discussed that will cut costs in his 4 years please.
Well he’s going to try to lower energy prices and cut taxes on paychecks as much as possible plus cut taxes on social security. So that’s multiple things in one little sentence lol
The lowest energy costs are in solar and renewables, which he has promised to slash all investments that Biden put into place for those. So energy costs would go up long term…not down. Also the impact on the environment will be more for fossil fuels so it will cost more to clean up long term. (more expensive, not cheaper)
As for cutting taxes on Social Security, what is it going to do? He’s also mentioned cut backs to social security, but we haven’t seen any numbers for it, so we don’t know yet. We do know Obama tried to up the the salary limit for minimum wage for overtime requirements from 23,000 to over 47k but the courts blocked it. Then Trump set it at 35k. Biden has upped it to 55,000. Trump has said he wants to bring that back down. You know, because all those hard working Americans who make 40k a year don’t deserve to make overtime I guess.
Let me put it this way: we will see the true beginning of WW3 in the Baltics. Trump will predictably not act upon that and the response will be 100% up to Europe itself.
That response better be an armed one, and quick too, or we all better start practicing cyrillic here in W-europe.
Regardless if we are lucky, “only” tens of thousands will die. More likely it will be millions.
So yeah, Trump kinda bedazzled us there, no way around it. Won’t be until the people who voted him in will start hurting personally that they’ll finally realize they’ve been conned. But too little too late.
Oh he’d act. He’d assist Russia and be the other Axis power.
Germany’s fatal mistake in WW2 was not being America instead.
Who, exactly, is to take its place along with the British Empire and USSR in holding back fascism?
Won’t be until the people who voted him in will start hurting personally that they’ll finally realize they’ve been conned. But too little too late.
Cute that you think they won’t just blame Mexicans when they do start hurting.
As long as they have a group to scapegoat
With AMOC collapse underway, the entire planet is fucked. Hope this helps
most problems are state level problems, so generally unaffected, but any interstate, constitutional amd international problem is up in the air
The truth is it’s unlikely anything historically big is going to happen in the US. We saw what Trump did last time he was in office, and it was really bad, but it was recoverable. The fear isn’t that it’s likely, but that it’s far from a non-zero chance, and there’s very little we can do about it. That uncertainty is scary when we’ve had a relatively good time in recent decades.
Will we see a sudden shift toward a state where you can get jailed or murdered for being a dissident? Maybe, but probably not.
Will we see an escalation of the wars involving Israel, such that we see a WWIII and/or the first nuclear strike since WWII? Maybe, but probably not.
Will we see economic collapse causing widespread hunger and homelessness that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression? Maybe, but probably not.
The only thing that’s really a guarantee is that we’re another four years away from dealing with climate change, and while that’s massive for humanity down the line, individuals currently living in the US are probably going to be mostly fine. Not to say nobody will be affected - hurricanes, floods, fires, and so on - but it won’t cause catastrophic failure of society in the near future.
Counterpoint (and please, I am literally begging you to talk me off this cliff): Trump didn’t know anything about being President the first time. I believe that he thought Presidents could do whatever they wanted. The team he had around him, while you can call them assholes and pieces of shit and every other name in the book, understood how the government and the Presidency worked and were able to reign him in.
All of those people are now gone and he will be surrounded by purely yes-men. He will promote the Generals who will be loyal to him, not the country or the Constitution. Couple that with the newfound Presidential immunity, and Trump has all but free reign to do whatever he wants. He will also appoint judges, like Aileen Cannon, who are loyal to him. Those judges, thanks to the Supreme Court overturning the Chevron deference, will now be the “experts” instead of federal agencies.
I do agree that there probably won’t be a sudden shift, but there will be a shift and we will feel it in almost every aspect of our life. He supposedly promised to put RFK Jr in charge of numerous health agencies and campaigned on getting rid of the Department of Education. And I very much recall at least two instances where he said this is the last election you’ll have to vote in. Is he going to find/create a way to suspend the 2028 election and stay in power? Who’s going to stop him?
It is worse.
Trump started with either incompetent yes men who didn’t know how to govern or competent yes men who tried controlling the damage that the President caused.
You now have a group of coordinated people who see Trump as willing to agree with whatever as long as he looks good enough.
And I very much recall at least two instances where he said this is the last election you’ll have to vote in. Is he going to find/create a way to suspend the 2028 election and stay in power? Who’s going to stop him?
That’s why I said it’s possible, I just don’t think it’s probable. People are loyal to Trump until they’re not. Nobody’s loyal to him because they like him or they think he’s a good guy, or because they think he’ll bring the country prosperity. They’re loyal because they think they can get something out of it. Most people aren’t in a position where they’re willing to give up literally everything to help this particular asshole become a dictator. Those that are are typically incompetent - see anything and everything related to stealing the 2020 election. They tried a LOT of things, but nothing came even close to working.
So they’ll try again, and I don’t think anybody’s doubting that. And I don’t think our institutions are particularly strong, but they’re probably strong enough to stop that kind of incompetence from leading to a dictatorship.
On top of what you just mentioned, rather than Trump surrounding himself with incompetent toadies and yes-men, I think a lot of smarter, more powerful, and more dangerous people have taken the last 4 years to worm their way into his ranks.
He’s established himself as a useful idiot. During his first 4 years we saw the idiot part glaringly. It was scary and embarrassing, but we scraped by and experienced a few years of relatively boring politics. My big worry is that we’ll see the useful part exploited much more effectively this time around.
We saw what Trump did last time he was in office, and it was really bad, but it was recoverable.
Except putting people in cages at the border and separating children from families. Many families still have not been reunited.
Except the million people that died from Covid-19 due to the government putting the economy over human lives.
Except the stuffing of judicial positions, including the supreme court, that same court that basically made him a king and free from any consequences from all the laws he broke.
Except for our air, land, food and water becoming more toxic and polluted due to Trump’s rollback of EPA protections.
Except all the pregnant women who are dying or forced to carry their rapist’s baby due to that packed court overturning roe v wade.
Except the people of color who rebelled and rioted during the george floyd protests but then the government showed up in unmarked vans and took people away, while the police shot more innocent people and busted heads, and almost nothing changed for the better regarding police violence.
Except the trans people who are now illegal in the state of Florida for having a driver’s license that matches their gender identity, or the bounty on trans people in a town in Texas, or the governor of Texas trying to get lists of trans people to hunt down and prosecute. Or insurance companies refusing to cover trans-related healthcare. Or trans people being shunned by their peers and excluded from sports. Or the violence against LGBTQ people that’s doubled in the last year. All enabled and emboldened by Trump and Trumpism.
I haven’t recovered from any of this shit.
With or without Trump, the new normal is fascism in America. Every american needs to fight every bad policy, every bad law, every bad decision, every threat – every day – until there are no more fascists in power.
Let me be clear here. If we have a global nuclear war, that’s not recoverable, because every human on earth will be dead. If we enter a fascist dictatorship with today’s technology, that may not be recoverable, because we may see the permanent end of anything resembling a democracy.
I’m not saying there weren’t horrific atrocities committed during Trump’s reign. What I’m saying is that so far, there’s a chance future generations can live better lives.
Finally a level-headed take. The world isn’t ending overnight, it’ll just get shittier
Let’s be real we are fucked no matter who the president is. With or without him the world is headed down the toilet.
There was a slim sliver of hope left that we might reduce the acceleration towards the planet becoming largely uninhabitable for most people, but that is gone now, many of the brakes we had before are about to come off
depends on how much of his immunity he chooses to exercise. also be intrtesting to see how many of the new repuglicans fall into line with his shit policy
