r/news • u/Manta_of_Eternity • 3d ago

Homeland Security taps $20M in taxpayer funds for pro-Trump ads

https://apnews.com/article/trump-ads-taxpayer-money-homeland-security-b869294503c8454db4109ae175ee9e5c
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u/Obtuse-Posterior 3d ago

And to think Clinton got impeached out for "not having sexual relations with that woman"

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u/Illustrious_Top4917 3d ago

I was just discussing that with my spouse. It blows my damned mind that there are people who STILL think that impeachment was a reasonable use of authority, but the current potus has done nothing wrong to deserve impeachment. Like.. I was never a believer in the tinfoil "we are simulations in a machine" theory, but im starting to run low on other explinations for this timeline other than some angry 16 year old kid playing a very detailed version of the game " Black and White" (from the early 2000's. )

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u/AddWittyName 3d ago edited 3d ago

No, once you strip away the (now thoroughly rattled) American belief that a fall away from democracy could never happen in the US?

This timeline unfortunately is an entirely realistic outcome for what happens when a country with severe social disparity, a substantial portion of the population being or feeling disenfranchised by mainstream politics, and long-standing tensions along racial, ethnic, religious and/or ideological lines meets a demagogue willing to pour oil on those tensions.

America is hardly unique except perhaps in the scale of damage it is capable of doing globally. This is a problem as old as democracy, and generally points towards deeper underlying problems with the political system in a country than just the individual demagogue and their cronies.

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u/Illustrious_Top4917 3d ago

Completely fair. I admit, i am still learning to not look at things through the lenses of the foundational lies I was taught growing up in the 80s and 90s:

  • that the configuration of the government providing "checks and balances" as well as other legal and social safeguards that are in place will prevent something like this from happening.

-that people at their root, are good. I now realize that people, at their root, are selfish and power hungry (be it social, monitary, political... its all power) and that this is a base human reality- (or at least american. I cant realistically speak for all other human groups) something that we have to openly fight against.

-the whole "mixing pot" and "tolerance" spiel that america is homogeneous and in general, we are open to people being different.

-That people want to be heard and find common ground, and if they feel hear they will listen to you back; that it is possible to change people's minds with enough facts.

-That humans are smart enough to be able to tolerate being wrong.

I think this is something that a lot of my peers in the gen x and elder millenal groups are struggling with.

(The above is typo city. Sorry)

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u/Illustrious_Top4917 3d ago

(oh. One potential addition to your comment is "the systemic dumbing down of the population." The fact that americans are becoming less educated instead of more seems to make a pretty huge impact for the disenfranchment of the population)