You have more confidence than I in the Constitution at this point.

In Eve Online, when a capsule was destroyed, a frozen corpse was left behind.

I knew someone who would go around collecting corpses. A battle is going, he'd be out there scooping them up. He's running a hauler, and this was the day that when your ship got destroyed, every bit of loot went out in individual units, so when a pirate would try to shake him down he'd respond with "If you blow me up, you'll crash back to desktop."

That was how he played the game, gathering corpses.

My dad has been saying that the Republicans were going to be the ones taking guns when people go on about "gun grabbing democrats" since Reagan apparently. I was only long enough to hear him say that around Bush era onward but this is my shocked face that he was right.

Our state regularly pulls this nonsense. Vote to keep right to work from happening, then vote in republicans. Vote to expand Medicare, vote in the people who prevent it even though we voted it in.

You load sixteen tons, what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt

Saint Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the company store

Hooooooooooooooooooboy. Mainly, he got lucky in time. WARNING, WALL OF TEXT

This is a continuation of the build up to the original civil war in America, when post reconstruction under a President who was sympathetic to the confederates after Lincoln was assassinated. You've had generations still calling for civil war (spend 30 minutes around a group of Texans and see if you can get out without hearing them declaring Texas never signed to become part of the union again). With the "war of northern aggression" myths that are pervasive you've got people believing that it was DC that invaded the south instead of the south attacking first, as well as "states rights" making it seem like big government is picking on the states.

Into the racism territory, the original civil war was about slavery. Full stop. If you have questions, please refer to declarations of causes of secession from Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas (which its formation was specifically stealing it from Mexico to become a slaveholding state), Virginia, then look at the Constitution of the CSA Article I, Sec. 9(4), Article IV, Sec 2(1)(3), Sec 3(3). States rights indeed.

This may seem odd to dredge up all of that but living in the South this has been the drum I grew up around my entire life and spoken of as gospel. Am a descendant of a Confederate officer and people tell my family that we should be proud... I'm proud of my parents for responding that he's a traitorous piece of shit and deserved to be hung. This offends the locals in modern era. Now with jobs that had me traveling, you find the Virginia battle standard (that's not the Confederate flag, the actual Confederate flag is mostly white, then they changed it to the "blood dipped banner" with a red strip at the end because the actual flag looked too much like a flag of surrender... ironically changed the month they surrendered. Whoops) all over the country in small communities. It's weird to see "It's heritage, not hate" in Ohio. So the ghosts of the Civil War are not yet gone.

But lets get out of the Civil War and move to more modern wounds the country still has festering. The Civil Rights act when taught in schools is almost treated like it was ancient history... my dad's high school cancelled prom because the principal would not have the first integrated prom in the state, people are still alive from that era and anyone thinks hatred was overblown, Eisenhower had to send the 101st Airborne and federalize the Arkansas National Guard to protect 9 students because the Governor mobilized the National Guard to bar their way into the school. Following Ike, you had JFK a Democrat who ran with LBJ, the running mate was chosen because LBJ was your old school southern Democrat, wildly racist, which spoke the language of the very angry South. JFK was pushing integration, but as VP, LBJ actually seemed to spearhead it harder than JFK, and when he became President after JFKs assassination made it a point to continue integration full steam ahead (not a saint, his words to people still racist... he was a complicated figure in history). He signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1968, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and changed politics in the country for the foreseeable future, the Southern "Dixiecrats" felt betrayed by the Democratic party. This was added on by the Southern Strategy pushed by Nixon and his political strategist Kevin Philips.

The words of Phillips himself in 1970, warning: language of the era

From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.

During the Nixon era, the War on Drugs started up. Former Nixon Domestic Policy Chief John Ehrlichman told outright the war on drugs was made because you couldn't arrest people for being against the war or black, so tie weed with hippies and blacks with heroin and now they had a ready made excuse to disrupt communities, arrest leaders, raid homes, and vilify them on the news. Another one of those talking points of the Republicans you hear about today was a Nixon favorite "the Silent Majority". We all know about the Watergate Scandal, and if you don't good lord a writeup of it would take up more than I've written now, but an overreach of Nixons power and lead to his impeachment trials. So Nixon is a shamed president, we don't need to look at him anymore... Except many of his policies are quietly still used by the Republicans, which shouldn't be a surprise, one of President Trump's political consultants, Roger Stone, has a tattoo of Nixon on his back.

Against the war... RIGHT, another boogeyman of the US: Communism. Understand Fascism, Socialism (often attributed to Communism, since we're talking US politics, the words are interchangeable even though in reality they are not), and Anarchy were political theories that butted heads about the same time. During WWII it was even in the US "we gotta stop the communists" and of course the Cold War made it worse. Containment, the US doctrine to prevent the spread of Communism started roughly with Truman, as put in by Nixon on the trying to go against hippies, the attitude continued and still Communism is a bad word today. Good lord that discussion is its own article, but good to remember that we have situations like McArthyism, a second Hooverism where persecution against left wing individuals under the guise of "weeding out communists" has happened and getting called for now where people were encouraged to turn in people suspected of communist sympathies, happened a lot in Hollywood, so a distrust of the conservative crowd of the liberals and such like the "Hollywood Elite" is ingrained in our society for nearly a century.

THE MODERN REPUBLICAN PARTY, good lord we finally got here. It can really be chalked up to their patron saint Ronald Reagan. Old Ronald pushed a lot of the economics that are still worshiped by the right wing today, as well as much of the political control. He was an odd duck, not a politician, but an actor who got a cult of personality going and a massive following that felt he could do no wrong. Wonder who that sounds like? No idea. Again, another point where I could go a long time how his administration shaped the country but there's a really important one that explains how we got here. The 11th commandment

Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.

Look at the Republicans for decades after that. They softballed each other while holding Democrats to a higher standard. Republican does something distatetful the Republicans would protect, but a Democrat do something and hang them out to dry. This became the main doctrine of the Republicans, lockstep together and do not faulter. Clinton sleeps with someone, Impeachment trial, W starts wars with countries not involved in 9/11 nada, Obama and Biden impeachment inquiries for.... reasons? The republicans started their "win at all costs" move, a lot spearheaded by Mitch McConnell (yet another... good lord long article)

This is going to seem like an aside, but is important, during this, 9/11 happened and the real advent of 24/7 news cycles showed up. This will be important because this beast lives on advertising, it's a for profit business, and so keeping butts in chairs and eyes glued to the screen is very important.

So in comes the turd in the punchbowl, Donald Trump. He doesn't believe in rules. He is more intimate with guys in drag than the truth. He's ran as a democrat to get president, failed miserably. Ran as republican, failed miserably. But the perfect storm happened. A black guy is in the White House! 24/7 news is blasting anything they can. Trump has been able to stay in media and keep crowds entertained, honestly his true talent is working crowds. So he finds that "birther" conspiracy and ran with it, all the major news networks were happy to parade Trump on and give him free publicity, Fox because he's helping spread hate against the Democrats, CNN and MSNBC happy to show him off because "haha, look at the dumb conspiracy nut" and gave him ALL of the press. Then the primaries came after Obama, and a pile of Republicans, all following the 11th commandment are together, being nice, cordial, while jockying for who's in charge. And Trump ignored the rules, tore each and every one of them apart, so the divisions of a pile of candidates who softballed and he threw elbows landed him the nomination.

I want this understood, this is still VERY MUCH an ELI5, truncated and painted with the broadest brush explanation of what's going on. I could go into fuckups of the Democrats, that Bill was the beginning of the end of the actual left wing to corporatism or the running of Hillary being a dumb move, but you asked about what did Trump tap into. The TLDR is "We're still dealing with shit that came up before Lincoln was elected."

I think the funniest part of this is I wandered over to the conservative areas of the internet to see the reaction and they're fighting each other on how to feel about this. They all hate Mamdani, but half are as anti-Israel and "America first" that they're asking why there's an Israel Day parade and screaming at the pro-Israel groups that are mad at Mamdani for not going.

If nothing else, him doing this has given a fun show.

Turbotax, H&R Block, and the other tax companies are massively wealthy companies that actively lobby to push laws to keep them from being simple. There are states that they have managed to bar the same thing from happening in.

No, I live in the US and in a red state.

Seriously, the news is trying to spin it as "Oh they changed their plans" but seriously they've been hyping the fuck out of the visit and suddenly it's "JD is joining but they're only going to a military base"

Even the dumbass republicans are going wtf.

The fact that it took a second administration to figure this out is absolutely baffling to me.

There's a weird moment where it's "Fuck, here we go aga... wait... it's not our fault this time?"

The Walton Family has heavily put money into The Heritage Foundation.

The man did more after his presidency to help people than many do their entire lives. One can agree or disagree on his policies as a president, but he kept working with his own two hands to help people almost all the way to the very end. It says a lot that I recognize that about him far more than his legacy as President.

I don't feel for him. I live in Missouri which is the state that keeps getting more and more red while shitting on everyone every step of the way. If he couldn't figure that out he's an idiot.

If he was of voting age to remember the last time Trump was in power, he's an idiot.

He's crying now, but the second things are working okay for him and he has a chance to hate again, he'll start hating again.

I have no use for these assholes anymore.

I work as a biomed, our hospital had to buy completely new sets of a type of ultrasound machine we have. Why?

Because in order to do the yearly preventative maintenance you have to go through the manufacturers program to test calibration. They stopped supporting it this year and shut it down. Legit these machines were working just fine, but now in order to keep up with verifying accuracy they're essentially bricked. They did it on the exact day they hit the year mark that they legally were required to support in order to sell medical grade equipment passed.

This is only going to get worse, not better.

Fucking hell, I'm supporting Nestle on a situation?

I want off this fucking roller coaster.

US Here, poked my head over in conservative circles, they're cheering for this.

These are the same people who want to "close the borders" to everyone, mad at immigration, "America First." Idiots...

I love seeing historic pictures like this that speaks of different times and in no way shape or form have any relation to what's happening nowadays so that we can look at how much further we have progressed from the past.

Y'all, I live in the US. Listen to this. We had the same shit conversation with Harris. How many people I had to tell this "A vote is not a valentine, you're not professing your love for the candidate,. It's a chess move for the world you want to live in."

Yes, I'll agree our Dems can suck, and I'd love someone else... but for the love to my neighbors up north, don't do the same dumbass move the US did and go "Eh, they're not good enough" and bring in someone who's a terror.