Will 2026 finally be the year when a critical mass of Americans wakes up and realizes that Republicans always screw up the economy?

Donald Trump inherited an economy from Joe Biden that was perhaps not firing on all cylinders but was in pretty good shape all the same.

For the third straight time, a Democratic president handed a Republican president an economy that was at the least pretty good, and at most (Bill Clinton) really humming along very nicely. And, for the third straight time, the Republican has made things worse. Which also means that Democratic presidents have to clean up messes left by their GOP predecessors.

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[–] 131 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (6 children)

Republicans dont care about the economy, they care about their wallets. They will keep voting for any red tie that makes them pay one penny fewer in April and call anyone who disagrees foolish.

I can't stand these people and im fuckin drowning in them

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  • [–] 31 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    All the ones I’ve met that still support the current government only care about hurting queers.

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  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    What will likely happen is that when we finally get a Democrat in next election, all the bad shit Trump caused will just be blamed on the Democrats who just got into office.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Literally happened when Trump arranged for the military to pull out of Iraq...during the next president's term. I don't remember if it happened after he lost the election or not, but Biden got blamed for how the pullout with no time to prepare went, anyway...

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  • [–] 69 points 5 months ago (25 children)

    I think even if this was on billboards and schools started to teach this basic fact, it would take decades for it to finally sink in.

    I cannot tell you how many "non political" people tend to believe it, too. I could see dumbass cult members parroting nonsense talking points about how magical Republicans are on the economy, but the fact that people that barely pay attention believe it is just exhausting.

    Far too many idiots think: "the government should be run like a business, and Republicans bend over the hardest for business, therefore we should put a Republican in as a President-as-CEO, preferably someone also from the world of business".

    It's all so very fucking stupid, starting with the very premise...

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  • [–] [S] 22 points 5 months ago (19 children)

    In the presence of continued propaganda from the GQP and the duplicity of the Fourth Estate supporting and distributing that propaganda I don't think it will ever sink in.

    Oligarch owned mainstream news providers have become Republican disinformation tools - slightly veiled versions of Fox News held to no standard at all. Facts have little chance against widespread lies repeated constantly almost everywhere.

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  • [–] 18 points 5 months ago

    Hell, even before Faux came along, the mainstream media was and is embarrassingly skewed to the right.

    But that was not enough for the Bircher types. They resented that something like Watergate was allowed to bring down their Nixon. They needed outlets that were ridiculously, cartoonishly even, right wing. And they had the balls to call them "fair and balanced".

    The funniest thing is when you see some Bircher bitching about how Faux is "woke" or something unhinged like that.

    I mean, Network skewered the corporate capture of news quite well, and that was 50 years ago.

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  • [+] -10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (17 children)

    The liberal media helped fascism grow in the 1920s and 1930s in America. They also did the same the second time in the mid 2010s to now.

    edit: seems quite a few don't like to acknowledge reality

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Explain how liberal media supports fascism

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (9 children)

    There have been less than 48 DNC senators for over 13 years now, the majority of the 2010s to now, so I'm interpreting this as you somehow thinking the GOP are liberals...?

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (8 children)

    What do you think "media" means? Does it mean Congress?

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (7 children)

    Ooooh, okay, I get it, you're saying the liberal media somehow enabled fascism while not being fascists themselves?

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

    Take a look at the Behind the Bastards link I shared in another comment in this chain. You too can learn all about it.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago* (5 children)

    Nah you don't have enough credit in my book for me to click your links. I accept your resignation, sucks to suck.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    I mean it's a youtube podcast, but you do you I guess. Enjoy your bubble

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago* (3 children)

    Linking people to videos between 20 minutes and several hours and then complaining that they didn't understand whatever point they have no idea you were trying to make is pure idiocy.

    Why don't you just hand us a reading list and then ask us to decode some vague statement for you, while you're at it? It works so well for those fuckin tankies.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Here's Google's summary of the podcast for anyone too lazy to listen. But you're going to have to read more than 2 sentences so prepare yourself:

    The Behind the Bastards two-part series, "How The Liberal Media Helped Fascism Win," explores how establishment press organizations in the 1920s and 1930s normalized figures like Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. It argues that liberal institutions paved the way for fascists by treating them as legitimate political actors, focusing on order over morality, and failing to sound the alarm until it was too late.

    Key Themes of the Series

    Legitimizing Autocrats: Mainstream newspapers treated early fascist leaders with immense deference, heavily influenced by a fear of working-class uprisings and communism. By focusing on their "ability to restore order," these outlets normalized fascist violence and political subversion.

    Profit and Sensationalism: The U.S. and European press often viewed fascist movements through the lens of sensationalism and entertainment. Publications profited from the dramatic rhetoric and spectacle, prioritizing high readership and ad revenue over journalistic responsibility.

    Both-Sides Rhetoric: The episodes emphasize how "respectable" media outlets consistently attempted to compromise or reason with fascists, mistakenly believing they could be integrated into the existing political framework without destroying liberal democratic norms.

    The "Who Goes Nazi?" Analogy: The series draws heavily from historical sociological frameworks, particularly the classic 1941 essay Who Goes Nazi? by Dorothy Thompson, to highlight how the polite, affluent segments of society often capitulate to or accommodate fascism rather than confront it.

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  • [–] 14 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    Republicucks always said they were fiscally conservative. It's always been what they touted as a defining characteristic when you took idealogy tests.

    Turns out, that was all lip service. At least for the last few decades.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    They just want a strong Daddy type (or a facsimile of one, like PEDOnald, who strikes me as one of the most effete people in the public eye, but I digress. It doesn't have to make sense to people of average+ intelligence) that tells them it's okay to say the N-word, grab women by the pussy, burn whatever you want and cut everything down, and own the libz by rolling coal on bicyclists and sneaking meat into the diets of vegans or whatever.

    That's pretty much it.

    All the other lofty rhetoric coming from conservatives is just window dressing.

    Of course the donor class running the party just wants tax cuts and businesses to be completely unrestrained by law.

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  • [–] 64 points 5 months ago (11 children)

    They won't.

    Many of them are stupid. Many are poorly informed.

    But many of them are operating with stupid axioms. They would rather suffer and die personally if it meant those people got it worse.

    If you offered free health care, guns, and hamburgers to everyone but it meant that black people got it too, a lot of Americans would say no

    The Confederacy should have been burned to the ground, its leaders and supporters hanged and their bodies left to rot in the sun.

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

    Amen. Instead they were coddled, allowed to put up statues (of their loss lmao), and left to fester.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    If anyone out there has any good recommendations for books about what happened after the war and why the losers just got to walk off the field, I’d appreciate ‘em!

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago

    Long story short the Union was worried splitting the country or hamstringing the southern economy would weaken the US and make it vulnerable to other world powers (we weren't one yet). Much like Ukraine now, we were a former colony fighting a brutal war with the newest tech (which later revolutionized warfare eg trench warfare a la Longstreet) and there were military observers, advisers, and adventurers from many other countries here watching everything go down. Also they were sniffing around for weakness.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago*

    It's not about the confederacy itself but look up the book "Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth" to learn how a relatively unimportant location in Texas has become an international symbol of defiance and American spirit... when it was a bunch of slave owners invading Mexico, ignoring the laws, then stealing the land.

    The book covers the history of Alamo, and the battle of the Alamo is only in the first quarter, it goes all the way to modern era. It helps show how that group twists myths to their advantage.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    The people in charge of surrendering didn't want to die, and wanted to continue to live cushy lives. Most of the Union didn't want to march all the way to the gulf killing every confederate on the way there. Even today, a good chunk of the south holds resentment for losing the war as badly as they did. When faced between allowing some shit bags to get off with a slap on the wrist, or murdering half the country and drawing out the war, the choice was pretty obvious.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago

    The Confederacy should have been burned to the ground, its leaders and supporters hanged and their bodies left to rot in the sun.

    I come from the south, I know my heritage has a confederate officer in it.

    John Brown did nothing wrong.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    They are easily manipulated by propaganda, and Republicans have weaponized that for years, leading to where we are today. They've used that propaganda superiority to define and control the messaging for decades, all of it negative and self-serving.

    So the Dems should do the same thing, but with POSITIVE propaganda, and pound them relentlessly with new messaging, accompanied with positive reinforcement, and take control of the definitions and messaging.

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  • [–] 47 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    The worst part is that this time the effects are affecting everyone in the world. Fuck you trump. You fat cunt 🖕

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  • [–] 36 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    "Will 2026 finally be the year when a critical mass of Americans wakes up and realizes that Republicans always screw up the economy?"

    I live in a red state.

    LOL. LMAO even.

    They WILL vote against their interests as long as the R is next to the name.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    Leftists are just too ethical to trick them like Sinema or Fettermam (even though progressive policy is extremely popular when you don't say it's progressive).

    I imagine the GOP would actually do something about it though, unlike the Democrats

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    I imagine the GOP would actually do something about it though

    My state has a supermajority Republicans for the last ten or so years. The cities police are under control over the state instead of the cities themselves. Crime has risen... but they still parrot that "liberal cities are crime infested" (feature not a bug), we can vote on bills through a petition process, they're trying to kneecap that, while the past few bills pass overwhelmingly progressive parts but the Republican supermajority either reintroduces the bill with confusing language to overturn it, overturns it directly while saying "People didn't know what they were voting for", or just outright ignores it (We put into our constitution for medicaid expansion. They've not implemented it in over five years, just ignoring it). We're now a flyover state that is about to get rid of income tax and increase sales tax, despite the two major population centers are right on the border for other states.

    Yet our idiots that live here keep voting for these assholes.

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  • [–] 28 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    It's not even the wrecking of the economy that really gets to me about this latest Republican administration. That's a pattern for sure, but this admin grifts right off the top, in plain sight. The Trump phones, the ballrooms, the sweetheart deals for friends, the IRS decision that puts taxpayer funds directly into the President's pocket.

    I can't think of another admin that has so openly stolen from US citizens.

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    For me it's how they murdered millions of people by cutting USAID and suing to keep the ready-to-distribute aid locked up in a warehouse until it expired.

    Honestly, the crypto bribes and the epstein files are all pretty bad, but that murder of millions by starvation for no point but cruelty itself is what gets me.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    That is a good point. There's a lot of overt cruelty which seems to Literally exist to "own the libs", as Onion-y as it sounds. It's quite disgusting considering the party pretty much owns everything at the moment.

    Schoolyard charades, but with higher stakes and real, human victims, at scale.

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  • [–] 26 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I've been waiting 20+ years for Republicans to wake up. They will never wake up. So many uncrossable lines have been crossed and yet they still maintain their momentum and people fall over themselves to vote for them in elections.

    The problem is twofold:

    1. Most people are chronically unaware or ignorant of who represents them. Even terminally online political junkies often don't do any research into the candidates they vote for, and they don't follow up on whether or not their campaign promises were fulfilled. They lock in and vote R all the way down the ballot. To be completely fair™ and balanced™ - Democrats are also guilty of this and will happily vote for the D all the way down the ballot which is how we end up with progressive candidates running 3rd party in primaries losing to DINO incumbents.

    2. There is too much disconnect between which parties in government are responsible for which policies. Many people believe the president has far more power than they actually do. In reality, outside of executive orders and appointing SCOTUS judges, the largest political impact a president has is to be a veto on legs. Congress are the ones who truly hold the power, but because you are represented by one U.S. house representative for your district and two senators for your state, it's easy for people to think that their vote for those seats, win or lose, has little impact in shaping national policy. But even when their party has a majority (albeit slim), Republicans rarely draft any kind of legislation that is aimed to help their constituents or fulfill their campaign promises. People never check their reps voting records to see that they barely show up for their jobs, and that when they do, it's usually to cast a deciding vote against something that would help their constituents tremendously if passed. It all circles back around to people not bothering to do research or follow up with their votes in any way.

    Voting to a lot of people is a team sport, and if their team is winning then all is right with the world. The bad things are happening because the others caused it, or are preventing it from being fixed. It can never be because they made a bad decision and voted in someone terrible into office. It's always someone else's fault. If good things are happening, it's because they made the right decision all along and they are succeeding in spite of opposition - no need to even bother checking if the guy who represents you voted in favor of the good thing or not!

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  • [–] 43 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    every 4-8 years. then they forget in 2.

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  • [–] 20 points 5 months ago

    The fact that they'd rather have a convicted felon pedophile in office promising to detain/deprive other humans of basic needs and deport them from the country with no due process for the heinous crime of being here illegally, over a woman... speaks volumes.

    Racism/misogyny/bigotry are top priority.

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  • [–] 19 points 5 months ago

    They won't.

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  • [–] 38 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    We've seen Republicans wreck the Clinton economy and the Obama economy, both of which were very good. The one-term Biden economy wasn't sturdy enough yet to withstand their bullshit as well.

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  • [–] 31 points 5 months ago* (1 child)

    Plus, it was so devastated by Trump and Covid, that the best Biden could do was save it from absolute and utter disaster.

    Which he actually did manage to do

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  • [–] 10 points 5 months ago

    Yeah it was never great, but sometimes great isn't on the table. It was better than most countries were doing and it wasn't crashing. In fact the biggest thing you can say about it is every year a crash was expected and avoided

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago

    The one-term Biden economy wasn’t sturdy enough yet to withstand their bullshit as well.

    IIRC it was said that the economy at the end of Biden's term was amazing.

    Trump has been uniquely economically irresponsible. Stuff like the tariffs changing every week is just insanely stupid.

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  • [–] 18 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Conservatism heavily relies on lifestyle marketing. You're not voting for promises, but for a lifestyle.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago

    Their mantra is FREEDOM, despite wanting to do nothing but take away everyone else's.

    But the freedom they're talking about is Freedom To...not Freedom From...

    As in freedom to be an unrepentant racist, homophobic , transphobic asshole.

    Meanwhile the otherside is losing their freedom from hate, torment, persecution...

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  • [–] 18 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    Biden had the post COVID and global inflation crises to deal with, every nation suffered the same, some more than others, the US less than most. He didn't do too bad.

    Trump doesn't give a rats ass about the economy, his entire purpose was to enrich himself and his friends.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago* (3 children)

    Biden (and now Trump) also had that pesky little commitment to giving billions of dollars to a genocidal apartheid ethnostate with free healthcare.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (2 children)

    Israel controls America's politicians because the supreme court enabled systemic political corruption by foreign states

    That really needs to be repealed

    Supreme court decisions that harm national security should be reviewed by the military and a special politically balanced court, the system places too much power in the hands of too few individuals. Lifelong jobs for politically appointed justices are you nuts. It's a platform for tyranny.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Israel controls America's politicians because they are either quietly-corrupt feckless liberals or openly-corrupt fascists. Sure, fuck the Supreme Court too 100%, but you shouldn't absolve people for the blame of their own actions / decisions. The politicians still choose (mostly) to take the money.

    Otherwise I agree yeah.

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  • [–] 12 points 5 months ago

    You're making the mistake of believing them when they use "good economic management" as the reason behind their vote

    It's a lie

    They don't really care about the economy.

    "The Economy" is lofty, worthy, and who could argue against someone who is for a stronger economy?

    They will vote republican because republicans don't just allow their hate and ignorance, they tell them that they are righteous for it

    Not one of them could tell you what GDP means, or how fiscal policy affects inflation, but they can tell you exactly who is on the long list of people they hate and fear

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  • [–] 10 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Not saying it was all Clinton, but Bush inherited a great economy, which he nuked by deregulating Wall Street.

    Obama inherited that, did all the best to right the ship.

    The orange kid-fucker tried taking credit for the state of the economy within months, and got laughed at. his shitty policies and robbing the nation let the economy slip but his complete bumblefuck of COVID lead to another crash

    Biden inherited that, did whatever he could but the reds lead by that ancient fuck mitch outright said they would block any and all meaningful legislation just to make him look bad.

    orange rapist somehow sleezed his way back in and is now on a blatant power grab, openly embezzling money, and the economy is 1 bad day away from a total collapse...which I am almost expecting.

    Why don't right leaning people see this? Because anyone over 40 joyously watches focks nooz, oann and all those other blatant propaganda outlets while the rest listen to blowrogan and other right-winger propaganda podcasts (usually dark-funded by Russia, Israel, etc).

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  • [–] 5 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Bush had a lot of other major issues that affected the economy. Mainly being a puppet for his father and the other cronies obsessed with oil in the Middle East. As usual Americas obsession with the Middle East is both hindering and actively destroying us.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    Yeah I left out the whole part of Dick using the war for his companies to get no-big contracts. But the biggest one is Wall Street. Because much like COVID, it was at the tail end of his term and left as a mess for the next person to clean up...and ultimately get blamed for

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  • [–] 10 points 5 months ago

    And, for the third straight time, the Republican has made things worse.

    this completely misunderstands their popularity in the first place.

    They're alright with that along as its worse to brown people, gays, trans etc who after all are causing all this /,s

    that the rich hucksters make away with the bank is a price they're prepared to pay as they put a maga hat on face full of shitty teeth because they can't afford decent dental care.

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  • [–] 17 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

    Every damn time the Democrats take over they decrease the deficit. Then when Republicans take over, they increase the deficit. Then, come the generals again, the Republicans blame the Democrats for the deficit - every 👏 damn 👏 time 👏 - and their voters still swallow it. This is because of several reasons:

    1. Voter turnout has been historically low the past decades
    2. The Democrats take "the moral high ground" and avoid pressing issues
    3. The Republicans go low and lie their asses off
    4. The Democrats - AGAIN - won't press them

    The progressives need to dump the moral high ground. They need to say aloud what everyone knows: the Republicans have been ruining the economy for decades. They need to encourage voter turnout and to call the Republicans anti democratic because they want degenerate lowlifes who watch chud streamers to go against the teachings of Christ and turn the US to Russia #2.

    The high road doesn't work and actively empowers the Republicans.

    EDIT: fixed bad framing in regards to the deficit.

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    The deficit goes up exponentially faster under Republicans

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago (1 child)

    Sorry, wrong framing. I did mean that the deficit increases under republicans and down under democrats.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    I understood your point, but I was more trying to call attention to the rate they spend. Democratic leadership doesn't run a surplus since the 90's but they spend at a significantly lower rate than Republicans, who scream about any money that is not spent benefiting their specific interests

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  • [–] 15 points 5 months ago

    “When will Romans learn the truth? Caesar is…”

    “When will Russians learn the truth? The Aristocracy is…”

    “When will Germans learn the truth? The nazi party is…”

    Going by history, the answer is, if ever, at the end.

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  • [–] 20 points 5 months ago

    No, because the media is controlled by Republicans.

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  • [–] 7 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    Just read an article that says fox news has about 3x more viewership than CNN or NBC and the article was stating that CNN was up 11%.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    I used to worry about this, but these days all of those are right wing trash owned by billionaires. There is marginal difference between them.

    They all enabled Trump just to different degrees.

    We need to get more people watching independent media online.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago

    OLD joke:

    Q: What's worse than a "tax-and-spend" Democrat?

    A: A "spend-and-spend" Republican.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 child)

    The problem is the majority of Americans are still not very involved in Politics at all. They might vote, they might watch the news sometimes, but they don't follow it daily or look into politicians or political events.

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  • [–] 6 points 5 months ago

    The extreme majority of people know next to nothing about the economy. Their entire knowledgebase is stock and grocery prices.

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  • [–] 11 points 5 months ago*

    You know, it's interesting, I've been now around long -- you know, I think of myself as a young guy, but I'm not so young anymore. And I've been around for a long time. And it just seems that the economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans ... We've had some pretty bad disasters under the Republicans. -- DJT 21 March 2004

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago* (3 children)

    We've known. But liberal purity politics got us trump anyway. But at least some first world brat can pat themselves on the back and say they didn't support a genocide by voting for a candidate that would not have declare war on Iran. Real good guys, I'll be sure to say thanks as we are all hauled off to a death camp

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago (2 children)

    Vote for this genocide or you get that genocide?

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    More like same thing except republicans lie to right wingers and democrats lie to right wingers too and ignore leftists. I know genocide doesn’t seem that bad to you but it is a deal breaker for some. Shocking.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago

    A little late now. We're heading for Great Depression 2.0, and Republicans are in charge for the foreseeable future.

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  • [–] 4 points 5 months ago (4 children)

    The median voter will never realize. They will always forget and eventually get scammed again. I haven't made peace with this, and feel a kind of grief about it, but it's the truth. We are trapped in this cycle of idiocy.

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  • [–] 3 points 5 months ago (3 children)

    This is why a large part of me wishes you had to pass some kind of baseline intelligence test to vote. I regularly go on nextdoor to discuss local politics and basically every argument with a conservative feels like arguing with a mentally handicapped person. They only read headlines and aren't smart enough to question their sources of information.

    Recently they were up in arms because the conservative paper claimed the mayor's office wasn't being transparent. Actually reading the article it says the reporter requested an interview on the spot and halfway through it an assistant told the mayor they need to move on. Not even noteworthy but it was enough to get the trolls riled up

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago

    The real fix would actually be REQUIRED voting from your phone. Most people hate the Republicans. They win because they cheat, when more people vote their shitty ideas and candidates get obliterated

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  • [–] 2 points 5 months ago (1 child)

    I totally get what you're saying. Nextdoor really is an unpleasant view into how unintelligent everyday people are. I've seen it too. I try to be a humanist but they make it hard.

    If we prioritize education they fail. That's why they attack public education with everything they have.

    On the other hand, during Jim Crow they had poll tests that were weaponized to keep black people from voting.

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  • [–] 1 point 5 months ago

    Yup, that's why I said a part of me. The other part understands that ultimately it would be twisted and used as a barrier against "the undesirables."

    Education is definitely a great weapon to combat the oligarchs manipulation but we're not even funding it correctly currently in the US. It'll take generations to rightsize and we'd still be dealing with a large amount of stupid people who no amount of education would help.

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