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[–] 105 points 6 months ago (57 children)

I can't wait till a real adult gets in there and unfucks everything this pedophile fucked.

If he hasn't already fucked it into submission.

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  • [–] 70 points 6 months ago (6 children)

    This may not be reversible, some things he does especially involving painting granite, like the OEOB proposal, are not really fixable. So this thing is now coated forever unless it's torn up and replaced, and the coating will break down within years I'm sure.

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  • [–] 32 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    At the very least, this isn't an old/historic pool, the old one was ripped up entirely in 2010 and remade with new concrete.

    So if he ruins it, it'll cost a bit to fix but it's not ruining a historical artifact.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    It's ruined in the short term for sure. It's a reflecting pool, not a swimming pool. It's supposed to be dark, not light blue.

    It's my understanding it is fed with water from the Potomac, so there is no way to keep it blue, there are no filtration systems in place that they can add chlorine to. So the pool will end up turning black again, it will just look patchy and ugly.

    It's so on the nose for this asshole who is unable to engage in self reflection at all to ruin the reflection pool because he doesn't understand what it's for and thinks, "pools need to be blue!".

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  • [–] 62 points 6 months ago (38 children)

    Pre-Trump US is over. You can’t undo the damage he’s caused and go back to how it has been.

    If there are fair elections and the Dems take the House and Senate investigations will begin and his crony’s will close ranks because they are just as culpable. Dems have no interest in a presidential candidate who is just going to ignore the crimes of the past administration like Obama or a wish to return to norms like Biden.

    The left will want these people prosecuted and jailed when we return to power. The right will do whatever it takes to stay in power to prevent this from happening. The oligarchs will do anything to preserve their grasp on both parties so they don’t become targets.

    No matter how it plays out the US will be a turbulent place for at least a decade after the 2028 election.

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  • [–] 18 points 6 months ago (5 children)

    Meanwhile the right owns the supreme court and a lot of lower court judges, so good luck with that prosecution. It will drag out for years and result in nothing.

    The lasting side effect is going to be the rest of the world continuing to think of the US as a joke and all the trade relations they are building now. When the US settles back down they will never again weild the power they once had.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    to be fair us has never been leftists, or had a significant "left" voting or politician, its the most right wing western country out there. we have schumer, hakeem,newsom who are center right, and most of the people in the houses are around the same leaning.

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  • [–] 13 points 6 months ago (1 child)

    It’s over a year into Trump’s term and it’s still crickets from the leftists so I’m voting democrat in the midterms so we can at least slow down the damage he’s doing.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    Pretty sure leftists have been more outspoken than liberals. On the day the court stripped away black representation in congress Chuck Schumer was praising Trump for some stupid horse shit. There's a debate between who's worse between do nothing democrats and fascists who accelerate the pain and force people awake. They're both relatively valid views, but the primaries are the most important election in both arguments.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (27 children)

    Meh, the US was founded by a bunch of slave owning wealthy protofascist genocidal fucks. You can't really recover from country designed by the wealthy for the wealthy.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Yea. This country was doomed from the start. This is just the inevitable end to our fucked up society. The world is better off without this Imperialist shithole helping to rot the world.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    the propagandas worked so well, people dont support any progressive developments in the USA. Its just a slow death/decline for the usa going on for like 50+years. the gop is the bleeding wound, and the DNC is the temporary bandaids.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    Try the last 100 years. The people should have revolted instead of accepting the New Deal concession package. They managed to pacify us to keep the capitalist economy running and then spent the next century dismantling the foundations of resistance.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago (22 children)

    How's that? Every current democracy, including the decently functioning ones, started as an oligarchic system of some kind.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 months ago (20 children)

    Even if we accept that, doesn't the existence of somewhat functional democracies that also started as oligarchies refute the statement that "you can't really recover"?

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago*

    I believe they are saying that since the previous state was not functional, returning to it would not count as recovery and one needs to fix underlying problems that existed for most/all of the USA's history.

    In git terms: Reverting the branch to the pre-2016 state will not be enough because the issue was caused by old technical debt and one will have to refactor that as well.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (13 children)
  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (12 children)
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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (9 children)

    Wealth inequality is a consequence of the existence of markets, and long predates "fascism." I guess you are using that term in some kind of hyperbolic sense, but I don't think these type of word games are very constructive.

    As it happens, inequality has been moderately successfully addressed since the advent of progressive taxation and welfare states, and some of the democracies we are talking about are among the most egalitarian societies in human history, certainly when it comes to post-neolithic times.

    Even aside from oligarchs behind the scenes, it is no surprise that voters' interests and desires do not align very well with policy in the US, where a two-party system with legalized bribery is in place, and voting rights are unequally weighed and conditional. These factors are either not at all or to a much lesser extent relevant in top-tier democracies.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (8 children)

    Thank you for responding, but please provide evidence of a country without an ever widening wealth gap or go home.

    I get you don't understand fascism. It is okay. As Mussolini put it is corporatism. The evolution of corporatism is a corportocracy. Corporations are the dominant form of all social constructs currently regardless of governments or cultures.

    I also understand you are under the illusion that any country that exists provides the rights that human beings deserve. There is no country that exists that deserves humanity.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (7 children)

    There are many examples of economies where wealth inequality is not "ever widening." Even in very recent US history there have been times of decreasing inequality, such as in the wake of the Great Recession.

    Sustained decreasing trends have been observed in many Western economies in the period from the late 19th Century to the 1980s, when many of these economies introduced redistributive measures.

    Corporations are the dominant form of all social constructs currently regardless of governments or cultures.

    Markets and inequality also long predate corporations, which emerged in the early modern period.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (6 children)

    So then you can provide no example. As I have researched, there is no nation currently that has the trend of reducing the wealth gap. I understand you do not view this as proof and that is okay.

    I brought up the fact that corporations are currently the dominant social construct in our society regardless of country. You can agree or disagree.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (5 children)

    Here is one example of an economy where wealth inequality (quantified using the Gini coefficient) decreased somewhat in the period 2011-2022.

    I brought up the fact that corporations are currently the dominant social construct in our society regardless of country. You can agree or disagree.

    It's hard to agree or disagree, as it's not clear what you mean by "dominant social construct." Compared to what?

    What I do certainly disagree with, is that inequality is necessarily related to either corporations or fascism, since both concepts are much newer than inequality.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

    https://nltimes.nl/2026/05/06/rich-get-richer-dutch-tax-system-widens-income-disparities

    "Between 2011 and 2019, the wealthiest 0.01 percent of households’ income increased by over 70 percent, "

    You got me excited for a second, but I have already done this

    "wealth inequality is high, where the richest 10% hold 56% of the total wealth (as of early 2025 data), compared to the bottom 90% sharing the rest."

    Also, the Dutch are fascist as fuck. Not as in fascism = bad but as in fadcism = corporatism.

    https://newint.org/migration/2025/can-dutch-fight-fascism-head

    As far as explaining what the dominant form of culture means here is an article based off the movie corporation. Obviously this is a US perspective, but all my research indicates that corporations are dominating all of Europe as well.

    https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/a-critical-look-at-the-corporations-dominant-role-in-society/

    I never said fascism is the only cause of inequality. It is the evolution of corporatism which I believe has evolved into a corportocracy. The revolving door between private and public and regulatory capture have created the reality that corporations are the ones crafting and getting the majority of all policy passed around the world. While in the US is extreme at almost 90% of all policy, in Europe it is slightly better with 70-80% of all policy.

    This is what dominant means.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (3 children)

    There are different measures of wealth inequality, and they are going to give different results.

    For income inequality the typical approach is to consider the distribution of income post-transfers by Gini coefficient. In this sense the Dutch economy has among the lowest inequalities in the world (Gini ~0.26-0.29 depending on the estimate and methodology), though still a bit worse than the most equal societies (Gini ~0.23-0.25). (By comparison, the US is around 0.40-0.42.)

    wealth inequality is high

    Compared to what? What it should be? Other countries? Other times? For much of history, most people weren't even allowed to own property aside from their personal belongings. Do I, personally, think inequality should be reduced? Yes. But let's not deny that these societies are among the most egalitarian in history, "corporatism" or not, and the feudal and ancient civilizations were all invariably much worse.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (2 children)

    Yes, there are countless way to measure these metrics, thank you for taking the time to explain this. Also, in this particular area of Europe are some of the best wealth distributed areas on Earth.

    This does not make it okay though, as you point out yourself. As fascism grows in power this wealth gap will continue to grow as it has in all but one place in Europe for a little amount of time. I believe it was Slovakia, but it had been awhile since I read about it.

    Currently this wealth gap is increasing in the entire world which has lead me to the conclusion along with other research that fascism has captured the world's economy and has for some time.

    Fascism doesn't have a real left/right ideology either, but it will happily stroke the far right since their message is so effective due to propaganda. Fascism represents the monied interests and in theory if these entities were altruistic we would be living in a different world. So ultimately it is a cultural problem rather than a system issue which in a lot of ways is a bitter pill to swallow.

    This does raise the question of inevitability. Will capitalism and fascism inherently lead to these wealth gaps that allow monied interests almost complete control of government policy. So far it appears so.

    Is this a bad thing? I tend to believe yes due to several major issues with the top being environmental degredation and the next being arms proliferation. Human suffering due to these two issues is enormous and there doesn't appear to be a way to counterbalance this.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (1 child)

    I think what you're still missing, aside from the situation of the "wealth gap increasing" being a bit more nuanced, is that extreme inequality long predates corporations and capitalism. Therefore, using these concepts to attempt to explain it begs the question of what happened before.

    Again, wealth inequality is primarily a consequence of the existence of markets, capitalist or not, corporatist or not. The modern market economy in fact allows societies today to much more effectively combat the issue. The Bible doesn't mention progressive taxation, estate taxes and welfare states since those societies never had the administrative capacity to organize it.

    Now, you can argue that current societies that do use these tools effectively (certain European countries) should increase the degree of progressivity of taxes, and I would agree. But it has absolutely nothing to do with corporations or capitalism directly. The influence of moneyed interests in these countries, while arguably still too large, is not anywhere near the overt bribery and naked corruption we can observe in the United States.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

    I totally get you are in denial about fascism around the world. Imperalism is not unique to the US nor is supporting genocide. We can see Germany and the UK both supporting Israel full heartedly. Many European countries are extremely corrupt as well, like France that supplies weapons to kill civilians all over the world. Furthermore, issues like anti-muslim sentiment abounds.

    The US is horrible for sure, but Europe does everything the US does. Just like your belief that inequality predates modern markets so does European imperialism predate the US.

    You are also horribly in denial of the reality of capitalism. It is out of control in Europe. While it may be slightly better at initially spreading the wealth around once corporations take over exploitation and wealth concentration abound.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (3 children)

    You gotta be careful or you'll cut yourself on all that edge

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    Please, that is just the tip of the iceberg. I will gladly bring receipts.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    I produced evidence, I don't speak other languages so my ability to conduct this type of research in other countries is limited. As I explained, my personal metric is an ever growing wealth gap.

    Since I have provided evidence and I have done extensive research let's turn this around. Please provide evidence of a country without an ever growing wealth gap and maybe I will believe we are not living in a fascist world.

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  • [–] 14 points 6 months ago*

    Undoing this damage will require the US to take a long hard look at itself and I don't think there is the impetus to do that.

    Why would, for example Europe, want to get back in bed with the US as long as the GOP who caused all of the problems still exist? We could have 8 years of stability and then some other insane republican gets in and it's back to square one again. The better option is to just label the US's politically unstable, and not have anything to do with them anymore.

    If you want the rest of the world to trust you again you're going to have to put these idiots on trial, give them serious prison sentences, and then change the stupid constitution so that convicted criminals are ineligible for office and the president isn't God emperor, they have some limits on power. Also having the president elect court justices is obviously stupid as well, fix that.

    Of course none of this will happen.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago* (2 children)

    Unless, by some miracle, a Mamdani presents themselves and gets elected through ruthless force Obama-style, nothing is changing. The centrists will gladly let his monuments and statues and gold leaf stand as long as they continue to personally benefit from it all.

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