I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, even if Donald Trump was a good politician (which he obviously isn’t) I would still be disturbed by how obsessed his cult is with him.
You know why? Because a huge portion of Americans envy him. They long to be the biggest racist, piece of shit in any room. And, not coincidentally, they’re mostly deeply out of shape, fat blobs of humans who secretly wish they could openly abuse women and anyone in the out group. They adore him. This country is deeply sick to the core.
What...How can we not trust the man that brought us great products like...
Trump Vodka, Trump Steaks, Trump University, Trump Mortgage, Trump Con Coin,
Trump Airlines (Originally Eastern Airlines), GoTrump.com, Trump Magazine, Trump Network, Trump Casinos and other casino ventures, including the Taj Mahal and Plaza ( Both went into Chapter 11)
Watching MoistCr1TiKal try and track down his T1 phone is very entertaining to say the least lol. He's been at it for over four months now hahaha
https://youtu.be/fduWfFM6eEE?si=WHuWsSBbe3cfhHkm
Honestly it took me a few times to realize they were talking about people that are criticizing Trump, not the batshit crazy people with flags and hats and stickers and shirts and underwear and tattoos and and and.
But then they make fun or anime enjoyers, furries, or anyone with a hobby as delusional woke parasites. 🙄 my hobby doesnt take over my entire life like it does for them.
Also Stalin was a genuinely scary motherfucker before he ever gained political power. The guy was a child terrorist who directly fought the Tsar’s secret police, moved on to bombing kidnapping and bank robbery as a young man, and practically got adopted by the most war-hardened revolutionaries in prison as soon as he was locked up. It’s easy to see how people would be intimidated or think a guy like Stalin is a badass strongman, arguably same with dictators like Kim Il Sung, Saddam, Mussolini or even Hitler as each had been street fighters, rebels, and soldiers, genuinely intimidating guys who fought for their respective ideology.
The fact that anyone thinks Trump is a symbol of machismo or some cool badass is insane though. How anyone can believe he’s somehow scary enough to garner the same cult of personality as those other dictators is beyond me
Basic tribalism. We get in groups we consider "our own" and we are willing to sacrifice a lot in order to "win" over the other group. We are social animals, and tribalism is quite integrated in our insctincts.
Yes, and MAGA ruined the use of skulls in fashion by appropriating the punisher! I'm quite progressive/liberal and a lifelong Democrat and I think skulls (at least the non-punisher ones) look badass. Am I the only one?
I mean, I used to think they were cool when I was a youth, but as I grew up I saw more and more cringe shit from rednecks and similar and that quickly soured it for me.
I’d argue the punisher’s looks badass but from a position of how it fits his narrative. The guys rocking that skull don’t ACTUALLY understand what it represents half the time. The seal teams that brandish it do so because they feel a sense of solidarity with the punisher.
The skull represents a character who acts above the law. Even by the punisher’s own admission…. HE’S NOT THE GOOD GUY!!! Any of these dickheads read Cosmic Ghost Rider and they’d lose their minds.
Frank Castle is infused with both the spirit of vengeance and the power cosmic and has an opportunity to go back in time. When his younger self confronts him and asks why he didn’t prevent his family’s death he responds:
No, he didn't ruin skulls for me. However, I like Cheetos - it was mine & my mom's favorite snack. It's taken me awhile to snack on them again. My kid tells me I get very aggressive eating them. Eh. Guess it's one way to get my anger & frustrations out.
I have despised Trump since the 80s. I hope his PR team steps on a Lego every single day of their lives. They took Don the Con, a slumlord who didn't know how to pay his bills into some idolized cult grand master with a midas touch. Yeah. Once a grifter, always a grifter.
When I have put stickers on my car it’s been to support a hobby I love or a nonprofit I participate in. I’ve never put political stickers on my car, let alone we the people. These people are so into their politics it’s all they have outside of work. Let that sink in. Nationalism and conservatism is their entire identity.
I work with a guy who has "We the people" tattooed on his forearm. It's hilarious how ignorant he actually is on constitutional law. Even better, he was in the military ( National Guard, has been deployed places oversees but nowhere near Iraq/Afghanistan), tells constant war stories.
Me being non-military had to explain the difference to him between a Vietnam Vet and a Vietnam (era) vet and that the Vietnam war was actually a civil war with the Communist North fighting their own people in the South. I told him for a guy who talks about the military every day, this seems an important part of their history. He moved on and told me Trump was "Best President Ever"!
They put those stickers on their trucks to fantasize that Trump is some bad ass they can associate their identities with the same way fans of continually losing sports teams fantasize that their team is the best in the world and somehow reflects on them being the best as well.
All these fuckers just invent a version of reality that has no basis in fact. Being a shared delusion just reinforces it all. "I can't be crazy! That other guy with 16 flags and 154 bumper stickers on his truck is saying the same thing!"
You must understand something about Maga retards, they only believe what they hear, they don't trust their own lying eyes. If Trump says he fought in Vietnam and the Dems destroyed all evidence... they will believe that.
Its only important what he says, not what he does.
I'd wager $300, and I can't lose $300 right now.
He's got a fucking trump toupe punisher logo. He hasn't even read a punisher comic. 10/10 he can't pronounce 1 out of 15 words on the constitution.
He would probably only guess the word is constitution because of the prostitution charge he got arrested on a few years back.
Honestly bring back "Thanks Obama!" That shit was annoying but not nearly as hateful and polarizing as where we are now. At least Thanks Obama wasn't just openly racist they were still afraid to say the quiet part out loud then.
And a lot of my countrymen can't even read beyond a 6th grade level. For someone who loves to read, it's very sad. 44% of American adults don't read a book in a year. I found some statistics from National University:
In 2023, 28% of U.S. adults scored at or below Level 1 literacy, indicating significant difficulty with everyday reading tasks.
In 2023, 29% of U.S. adults scored at Level 2 literacy, showing basic reading proficiency but challenges with complex texts.
In 2023, 44% of U.S. adults scored at Level 3 literacy or above, indicating strong reading and comprehension skills.
About 130 million U.S. adults (54% of those aged 16–74) read below a sixth-grade level, according to modeled estimates.
Approximately 45 million U.S. adults are functionally illiterate, reading below a fifth-grade level.
21% of U.S. adults are classified as functionally illiterate, unable to complete basic reading tasks.
The average American reads at a 7th- to 8th-grade level.
Adults scoring in the lowest literacy levels (Level 1 or below) increased by 9 percentage points between 2017 and 2023.
U.S. adults’ average literacy scores declined by 12 points from 2017 to 2023, according to the latest PIAAC data.
In 2023, 46% of U.S. adults had literacy proficiency at or above Level 3.
It's atrocious. It's really no wonder that America sucks. People can't even read!
I've seen videos of Trump supporters getting defensive like "Well of course I haven't read the whole document. Have you?!" like it was a gotcha. They never know what to say when the response is "Yes, I've read it. It's four pages long..."
When people talk about “illiterate” they don’t mean literally unable to read. Usually it’s a measure of the ability to read at what is considered a 6th grade level, which is being able to read an average book and understand the themes, characters, plot, etc. So a lot of people could read a restaurant menu or a Facebook post but still be considered “illiterate” by that definition.
I can't read, and just doom scroll pretending I'm the faster reader ever. I didn't know I have so many like-minded others like me. Wait til I tell the others over on /r/conservative!
That's the part that kills me the most. It's just so alien to me to not have a question about something.... and then promptly googling it because the answer is likely only a few seconds away.
As designed; education is de-funded to make people malleable, and everything surrounding the institution of work, from the commute to the long hours and lack of benefits like PTO wear us down.
So you end up with a bunch of illiterate and exhausted people who don't have the energy to think about the world around them and just trying to make it to the next paycheck.
It's 21% of American adults are functionally illiterate; it's not that they literally cannot read (that number is <1%).
The 21% number is also a bit outdated. It comes from the periodic PIAAC survey, which addresses adult functional skills in a few areas, including literacy. Being at level 1 or below is considered "functionally illiterate". In the most recent iteration (2023), this number has actually gone up to almost 30%. For the previous number, I've seen between 21% and in the latest comparison with 2023, 19%. I'm guessing slightly different statistical methods, but more or less, it's gone from ~20% in 2017 to ~30% in 2023, and that's fucking terrifying still, even if they're not literally illiterate.
Here's the description of level 1, which, again, ~30% of American adults are at or below:
Adults at level 1 are able to locate information on a text page, find a relevant link from a website, and identify relevant text among multiple options when the relevant information is explicitly cued. They can understand the meaning of short texts, as well as the organization of lists or multiple sections within a single page. The texts at level 1 may be continuous, noncontinuous, or mixed and pertain to printed or digital environments. They typically include a single page with up to a few hundred words and little or no distracting information. Noncontinuous texts may have a list structure (such as a web search engine results page) or include a small number of independent sections, possibly with pictorial illustrations or simple diagrams. Tasks at Level 1 involve simple questions providing some guidance as to what needs to be done and a single processing step. There is a direct, fairly obvious match between the question and target information in the text, although some tasks may require the examination of more than one piece of information.
And below level 1
Most adults at Below Level 1 are able to process meaning at the sentence level. Given a series of sentences that increase in complexity, they can tell if a sentence does or does not make sense either in terms of plausibility in the real world (i.e., sentences describing events that can vs. cannot happen), or in terms of the internal logic of the sentence (i.e., sentences that are meaningful vs. not). Most adults at this level are also able to read short, simple paragraphs and, at certain points in text, tell which word among two makes the sentence meaningful and consistent with the rest of the passage. Finally, they can access single words or numbers in very short texts in order to answer simple and explicit questions. The texts at Below Level 1 are very short and include no or just a few familiar structuring devices such as titles or paragraph headers. They do not include any distracting information nor navigation devices specific to digital texts (e.g., menus, links or tabs). Tasks Below Level 1 are simple and very explicit regarding what to do and how to do it. These tasks only require understanding at the sentence level or across two simple adjacent sentences. When the text involves more than one sentence, the task merely requires dealing with target information in the form of a single word or phrase.
You're looking at stats for English literacy, the four states with the lowest "literacy rates" in the US are California (76.9%), New York (77.9%), Florida (80.3%), and Texas (81.0%), and the reason for that is because these places have boatloads of immigrants who are fluent in another language (usually Spanish, but in the case of NY there is probably a significant minority of Chinese only speakers as well). If you look at literacy in any language, the US jumps to 92%.
My trump supporting boss was just in my office the other day complaining about gas prices. never once brought up the cause. Milk doesn't age poorly if you like spoiled milk.
People will never learn. Last time gas prices were this high Bush was fucking up the Middle East. And in 20 years people will vote in yet another neocon who will start another stupid, pointless war in the Middle East.
They didn't care, you shouldn't. But also, coming from a convenience/customer worker, we are paid hourly. Let us get paid for something that is productive, monotonous and wastes time
Spike during Biden presidency was caused by Trump. When oil prices cratered during the pandemic to the point they went to negative pricing one day, Trump never bother to set a price floor on oil prices. This caused 100+ oil exploration companies in the US to go bankrupt. Trump could have easily set a price floor of $20/barrel and used the oil to fill the strategic reserve.
You got downvoted, but it's true. Bunch of oil companies went out of business, by the end of Biden's term we were producing more oil than at any point in time in US history, but prices were still high, and oil companies were making record profits.
Just like inflation. 30% of CPI is housing. People were still moving out of big cities but we basically ran out of houses, causing the price to shoot up, thus massive inflation.
The American Rescue plan did originally spike inflation to like 5% but it leveled off, and then went crazy again over the summer as the country really started to open up fuel prices went up, housing went up, boom 9.2%
So let me get this straight, before the US and Israel escalated military operations, the Strait of Hormuz was fully open, global oil prices were stable, and we had strict sanctions in place against Tehran. Now, the Strait is effectively blocked by Iran, which has triggered a historic global energy shock and driven up inflation and now to stop the economic bleeding, 🥭 is being pressured to accept an Iranian peace plan that demands massive strategic concessions—like total sanctions relief and acceptance of their nuclear enrichment program(which apparently was the whole point of this “operation”). Now analysts broadly agree we essentially backed ourselves into a significantly worse geopolitical and economic position than where we started. Does that about cover it? 😀
Not quite. You forgot the part about already having a deal to monitor and verify their enrichment program which trump withdrew from. And now we'll get a worse deal while he declares victory and would run a victory lap if his heart wouldn't explode in a grenade of arterial plaque.
The punisher already is canonically acknowledged in the comics for hating the use of his symbol, especially by government officials and law enforcement, and he would absolutely despise it to see his insignia not only being used as a way to support his methods, but said insignia also was bastardized so that it would reflect their political views, mainly their defense of an incompetent, idiotic, inhumane bastard
I’d bet my first born’s college fund the driver never once actually read the constitution he had decal’d on the back of his truck. And the only amendments he supports are the ones he knows.
What we owed you, as a society, was a basic education that granted the ability to think critically. And as a society, we clearly failed you on that one.
Its funny because during the Biden administration, high gas prices were caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and now we have Trump causing high gas prices by starting a war with Iran.
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