Right - it would be more accurate to say we are going back to the status quo under Biden.
Just watched Justin Podur’s video from yesterday. I’ve always appreciated his thoughts over the last 1.5 years because he seems to always have a realistic take.
And sadly, he seems rather pessimistic about the current situation with Gaza and Yemen. It looks like Israel wants to resume war and genocide - not just in Gaza, but in Yemen and Lebanon as well. And while the US was previously holding them back a bit, they seem to be all on board now with being a partner in death and destruction. The prospects for continuing a “ceasefire” seem pretty grim right now.
The media keeps repeating “he supported Hamas”, which isn’t even true but also… it is unequivocally 100% legal to say you support Hamas in the United States.
Slowing inflation is fairly straightforward and easy to do: just make it so people can’t afford things, that will bring down inflation very rapidly. Of course that comes at the cost of massively increasing poverty and desperation, which is precisely what he did. Milei stans focus on inflation and the stock market because those are the two measures that look good and are also disconnected from the real economy. He did it all on the backs of the poor and retirees. And this isn’t some temporary setback, this situation is essentially locked in unless policies are reversed. On top of that, Milei’s policies have led to an incredible de-industrialization of Argentina. If his policies are allowed to continue, Argentina’s economy will be dependent on resource extraction and agriculture - a combination that sets you up for exploitation from the nations in the global north.
The West: “best I can do is a lecture”
Based on my professional experience, I tend to think the stock market is “efficient”. Not efficient in allocating resources, but efficient in that current prices reflect all the information we currently have. You have an uncountable number of people (many outside of the US) who will trade on amounts of mispricing and arbitrage that are incredibly small. For that reason, I think it would be hard for capital to manipulate the stock market one way or another. The Fed, on the other hand, I absolutely believe can (and may very well be) manipulate things towards certain political outcomes they want. Trump is trying to politicize the Fed (of course it’s already politicized, but ostensibly is independent) and take away that independence, as well as get them back to ZIRP. I could certainly see the Fed responding accordingly, but can’t say if that’s what’s going on one way or another.
I know someone who knows a current US congressional rep. From what they tell me, as bad as the average Redditor understands politics, Redditors actually understand it way better than this particular rep. It makes me realize that the people who “run” this country don’t actually run it, and if they were ever on their own without the guiding hand of the bourgeoisie, this whole thing would crash and burn in like a week.
I feel like it has to be perfectly ok to say “I hope John Fetterman has another stroke and this time it kills him”, because it’s his own body doing that violence after all…
This is a great example of why opinion polls of Americans regarding foreign policy or really about anything outside of the borders of the US is completely pointless. Americans do not have a goddamn clue about the wider world and care even less.
Saw that the US stock market is now down after opening ok, and spontaneously started singing “down down to goblin town, down down to goblin town”
I wish this actually was a crash, but the reality is that stocks have inflated so much since COVID and especially over the last year, they have so much further to fall before we are even back to that level.
Not to mention a weaker dollar means all those cheap imported consumer goods that help keep the real wage lower will get significantly more expensive.
Part of it starts with their love of the Roman Empire for largely white nationalist / reactionary reasons. Then add the fact that a lot of Americans hate reading but love quotes, and Meditations is very quotable. So they pull these snippets out and share them, and they think it makes them look smart.
Cis people, by and large, hold transphobic views.
While I don’t disagree, I also think these transphobic views are not deeply held, core beliefs for most cis people and their views are pliable given the appropriate pressure.
I am old enough to remember what is was like for gay and lesbian people in the 90s. Most het people had homophobic views and an issue like legalizing gay marriage was out of the question. But then there was a push - largely in media, definitely not in the political sphere - for acceptance. And in a relatively short amount of time, homophobia became (for the most part) socially unacceptable, and views changed.
Most cis people have at best, given thought to trans issues for about 30 seconds of their lives. At one point I myself had transphobic views, because similarly I had never really thought about it or knowingly interacted with someone who was trans. Once I actually engaged with an honest understanding, my transphobia fell like a house of cards.
This is a huge problem with not only politicians, but the media taking a step back on trans rights. Transphobic views can change but there needs to be pressure applied.
It seems this plan doesn’t address the root of the problem, so I can see how parents might get upset. It sounds like there needs to be some fundamental restructuring of the university system or something like that.
Hasan banned (or just suspended?) from Twitch for saying “if you care about Medicaid fraud you should kill Rick Scott”. Don’t know yet how long the ban is but I’ll update with an edit when I see it.
https://xcancel.com/hasanthehun/status/1896633995661922675#m
Kissing his ass but not apologizing is probably the right strategy when dealing with a hyper-narcissist like Trump tbh. They just take apologies as a sign of weakness so they turn the screws even harder.
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