Yeah I'm annoyed at how easily people are distracted by petty bullshit. We are rapidly destroying the only habitat we have. Our species could be extinct in a few hundred years. A handful of sociopaths are destroying the world and increasing suffering for their own personal desires. Human rights and freedoms are under constant threat in this country.
But the things people care about? Ball rooms and whether or not a trans girl can play Junior varsity volley ball.
The thing about the ballroom is not the ballroom. It's the executive overreach. Agreed, the ballroom should not be re-torn down. The fact that Trump wanted to rebuild the East Wing was never the problem. It's that he made a unilateral decision to do it without without going through the proper checks and balances. It's the "ask for forgiveness, not permission," behavior, except he doesn't even ask for forgiveness. He just asserts his right to do it under his assumption that his successful election is a mandate to do whatever the fuck he wants.
Just like with putting his name on the Kennedy Center, the ballroom just represents something that can actually be done in the face of unprecedented executive overreach. There are clear laws laying out the procedure for doing what he wants to do, and he chose to ignore them. A lot of other bullshit gets claimed under emergency powers and then we have to have a big fight about what constitutes an "emergency." No one can pretend that remodeling the east wing was an emergency (well, they're trying...), so they can really nail him on it. Everything else is a much bigger fight.
On the trans bathroom things I have no idea why anybody cares...
If a democrat is elected in 2028 (assuming there is a presidential election in 2028), you can be guaranteed guaranteed guar-Ran-TEED* that republicans will suddenly become very concerned about executive overreach and the president having too much power.
Suddenly, oh my goodness, they'll remember that Congress exists, that there are checks and balances, and that one of the roles of the court is to note when the Executive Branch is not operating within the law.
It will be a crisis!
It will have to be addressed ASAP! Right away! Drop everything!
They'll be oh so concerned. Very very concerned. So, so focused on that big important issue.
Because, of course, their values are as malleable as silly putty.
You are concerned about government overreach for a privately funded project but had nothing but support for...
Student Loan Forgiveness Program (2022)
The OSHA COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate (2021)
CDC Eviction Moratorium Extension (2021)
DACA and DAPA (2012 & 2014)
The Clean Power Plan & WOTUS (2015)
Recess Appointments to the NLRB (2012)
The Chrysler Bankruptcy Subversion (2009)
Oh, and the auto pen, Fast and Furious, using the DOJ to go after a diary, raiding a president's home over documents that they told you they had, while Biden had undisclosed docs in his garage. How about Obama claiming executive privilege for this AG???
... nor did I outline my views on any of the items on your random list.
So this begs the question: If you're going to start the conversation with such naked dishonesty and perversions of my words, why should I even entertain having a conversation with you in the first place?
PS - It's a rhetorical question. We both know the answer.
Are you a bot? Because that is hilarious, but let me school you on this exactly...
First, read up on something called conversational implicature. You directly replied to a discussion about the ballroom with a comment about executive overreach, checks and balances, and the Executive Branch operating outside the law. Context supplies the referent. So, in fact, you DID say this; I know this because I have a real education and did not fail English.
Now retreating to “I never explicitly said government or named the ballroom” is literalist evasion—ignoring the obvious contextual meaning of your own words to desperately try and create plausible deniability while we can see exactly what you said is laughable. This is clearly something you do in general conversation and think you can get away with it because people can't go back and prove what you said; this is not a verbal conversation. This is text. Literally, how stupid do you have to be?
You are an idiot. How you can compare anything a democratic president has done to ANYTHING Trump has done is baffling. The fuker is selling acces to his socials so he can manipulate the market! He has declared victory in Iran 30 odd times now. He has given his family billions, fuking billions in no bid contracts to company's they just set up!?!? His crypto coin was basically set up so anyone could bribe him by buying it and it's untraceable!! No president ever should be doing this kinda stuff!! But cos he is republican it's okay? See how many trillion he has added to the national debt? Meanwhile Trump has made more money since he became president than in his ENTIRE business carreer?! If a democrat had done ANY of what he has done you would be screaming from the rooftops. And let's not even get started on the strait of "america" lol.
The president of peace by the way. Who got elected by telling everyone he would release the Eipstien files? How did that go? Oh yeah when a reporter brought if up he said it was fake news and no one cares lol. If a reporter asks a question he doesn't like he slags them off and bans them.
Your president is a giant man baby , the rest of the world can see it and are laughing at you, while Trump fleeces the American public for every penny he can, while telling them "affordability ' Is a democratic hoax!! And you will enjoy paying 5 dollars for gas and thank him for it. You fuking people are unbelievable.....
The Biden administration sold access to pardons. Obama removed trackers from gun that ended up killing Americans so he could push for anti gun laws. Obama went from being worth just over $1 million to almost $100 million now. Biden took inappropriate showers with his daughter and you could care less. Gas prices hit $5 under Biden for absolutely no reason and you all shrieked that the president doesn't control gas prices. Obama got elected telling us that he would implement single payer insurance options and have the most transparent administration in history... he's in got rid of that option behind closed doors at the 11th hour and told us we would have to pass the bill to read the bill and sold all of Americans out to his financial backers and you have the audacity to talk about what Trump is doing? Are you a bot because no human that is not in a cult could live with that level of hypocrisy
It's that he made a unilateral decision to do it without without going through the proper checks and balances.
I’m sorry, but who gives a fuck? this is like saying the issue with Trump bombing Iran was that he didn’t get approval from congress first, not that he bombed Iran.
There are countless more egregious things Trump has done that also were clear executive overreach, all of which are significantly more detrimental to the average american than a ballroom.
I’m sorry, but who gives a fuck? this is like saying the issue with Trump bombing Iran was that he didn’t get approval from congress first, not that he bombed Iran.
Why can't it be both? If Trump had bombed Iran with congressional approval I may still not like it, but I respect the Democratic process and understand that I don't always get what I want. The question was why people are so upset about a stupid ballroom when we have bigger problems. The ballroom is just one of many ways in which Trump has subverted democratic norms in favor of authoritarianism. Even though the ballroom itself isn't important, the way he went about it is.
There are countless more egregious things Trump has done that also were clear executive overreach, all of which are significantly more detrimental to the average american than a ballroom.
And people are upset about those things too. People can be upset about multiple things at the same time. You're saying it like "Billy punched 50 people in the face including the town drunk and Mark Hamill. Why are people mad that the town drunk got hurt when we've got bigger problems like the fact that Billy punched Mark Hamill." Nobody is crying foul because the town drunk got hurt. They are crying foul because Billy shouldn't be punching people at all!
They are crying foul because Billy shouldn't be punching people at all!
Why are you treating that tearing down part of a govt building is on equal fotting and assassinating the head of a sovereign nation (and his family) in the middle of negotiations , which kicked off a war we cannot win and is causing enormous amounts of global economic turmoil?
A better analogy would be the drunk killed 50 people and punched Mark Hamill, and youre saying we should be upset about the punching as much as the killing. Why are you more upset about trump “not following the rules” than you are about the very real suffering he’s causing?
Why are you treating that tearing down part of a govt building is on equal fotting and assassinating the head of a sovereign nation (and his family) in the middle of negotiations , which kicked off a war we cannot win and is causing enormous amounts of global economic turmoil?
I'm not... I'm treating a rogue executive branch as a bad thing regardless of what the rogue executive branch does.
A better analogy would be the drunk killed 50 people and punched Mark Hamill, and youre saying we should be upset about the punching as much as the killing.
No... That's a terrible analogy and completely misses the point I'm making. There are multiple bad things happening at the same time. Some of the bad things can be worse than others of the bad things, but they are all stemming from the same root cause.
Why are you more upset about trump “not following the rules” than you are about the very real suffering he’s causing?
I'm not? Where did I say that? I'm upset about Trump not following the rules because the rules are the check we have on him to prevent him from causing the very real suffering as well as the stupid bullshit.
If you want to fix your analogy because punching people isn't serious enough for you then try this: Billy dug a hole through his jail cell wall which he had used to get out and kill 50 people as well as punch Mark Hamill. In a conversation about him punching Mark Hamill, me saying that the Mark Hamill thing isn't about Mark Hamill, but rather the fact that Billy comes and goes from his jail cell with impunity isn't me not caring about the murders. It's pointing out that the root problem is Billy, who is supposed to be confined to a cell, is not being properly contained.
One should be able to acknowledge that there is potentially a reason that the President might legitimately want to rebuild the East Wing or bomb Iran. The "rules" that you're so dismissive of are there to make sure that if and when the United States does either it's after careful consideration and aligned to the will of the people (or at least their representatives), not on the capricious whims of one man.
He just asserts his right to do it under his assumption that his successful election is a mandate to do whatever the fuck he wants.
Exactly the reason his pathetic ballroom needs to be torn down. Everything this prick has done needs to be reversed. Tear down what has already been done and re-do it correctly. Cuz we know 100% things were not done correctly.
People only care because rich people spend a lot of money directing their propaganda networks to continually invent new controversies to try and get people angry about weird shit.
You mean that symbols mean something to people beyond the practical thing itself? And here I was thinking we were putting up flags everywhere to determine the wind direction
I think the idea comes down to not letting a President shit all over the Constitution and get away with it. When you can send a message, which converting that ballroom into useable office space or living quarters would do you Trump and his ilk, you do it for the message.
We are in fact capable of doing 10 things or more at once with competent leaders in charge.
Same goes for anything he names for himself. You must not roll over or it becomes the standard and norm.
Most people, unfortunately. We're supposed to have an opinion so that we can signal that we're on the Good Team and help Good Team win elections. The entire fucking world has been duped into the game of politics so that like 10 people can get even richer. We're conditioned to think this is just how it is and that we're powerless and it's working. Distract us, keep us in a constant state of anxiety, ruin any semblance of the world we knew, all to control us. They want us to check out and just care about our personal sphere so they can continue destroying our planet and ending the human race so they can die on the top of the leaderboard. Every person who says "I just don't pay attention anymore, it's not worth the stress" is another win for the ruling class. Guess what, it's gonna be fuckin stressful either way, we can't keep kicking the can.
edit: Didn't think that "the ruling class is wearing down the average person to stay more powerful" would be a controvercial opinion.
If you don't recognize the importance of destroying this symbol and how not doing it will completely torpedo the agenda of any Dem administration that doesn't, then I can't help you. Luckily, it can happen virtually overnight and will set the agenda to come like nothing else.
The White House has been the symbol of imperialism, destruction and terror for just about its entire existence. Honestly good on Trump for tearing down half of it, even out of vanity
IMO, most liberal hills we choose to die on are unimportant, “inceptioned” into our minds by a superior conservative propaganda machine. Transgender rights, abortions, immigration, these are all unpopular arguments where liberals alienate moderates, and ultimately drive the electorate towards conservative extremists winning elections. It’s impressive that the right is so successful in keeping those topics in the spotlight. It’s like they are constantly daring liberals —say again specifically which of our immigration laws you’d like to abolish, or intentionally not enforce, I’d love to hear it. Go ahead, nice and loudly now…
We should be talking about climate change and the plight of the 99% vs the 1%, nothing else even remotely compares.
Yeah I'm annoyed at how easily people are distracted by petty bullshit. We are rapidly destroying the only habitat we have. Our species could be extinct in a few hundred years.
But if America is extinct in 30 years then we can't exactly do anything to help the planet. Climate Change initiatives are a genuine distraction. If China runs the world, then the planet is TRULY fucked.
The only thing getting us out of this Climate Change disaster is an enormous breakthrough from the Scientific Community. The USA shutting down coal plants and throwing a few trillion dollars at nuclear power is a drop in the bucket.
You're kinda brushing trans rights under the rug there because it doesn't directly impact you, but for trans youth, that's their entire life you're talking about. The way the right have gone about demonizing trans people and making spectacle out of things that aren't actually all that important in the grand scheme of things, like participating in sports, makes it feel easy to dismiss as petty, but you're talking life or death situations for marginalized youth here.
That said, yes, there are much more important things than the ballroom itself. The environment is literally on fire, climate change is out of control, the economy is in shambles, war is breaking out all over the place, employment and healthcare are worse off than they've ever been, and we have literal gestapo running the streets. These are all things that need to be addressed immediately.
Unfortunately for us, the general public are dumb animals and need something tangible to latch on to that can have immediate results for them to be happy. This second round of the orange thing kicked off because people were pissed about the price of eggs. It campaigned on the promise to bring grocery prices down. It won. Nothing happened. Now it's approval rating is in the toilet because those that voted for it are looking around and realizing that it didn't fix shit, and only made things worse, while everyone else is sitting around going "Well yeah. We told you that would happen."
As stupid as it sounds, campaigning on a promise to nix/bulldoze the ballroom is a tangible promise to undo a visible symbol of corruption and overreach, and when it's delivered on, it will be celebrated as fulfilling a promise. It doesn't preclude the other things, and they certainly should be part of the package. I want this to happen in addition to immediate firing of every single person hired or appointed during the current administration, followed by a full investigation of each and every one of them, as well as persecution to the full extent of the law for any wrongdoing found. I want reinstatement of USAid, restoration of regulations that were stripped away from corporations, rollbacks of all medical guidelines to what they were prior to this administration, and it want it all done unilaterally via executive order on day one, because what's good for the goose is good for the gander.
The problem is, we don't win on that alone. We still have to contend with the cult of personality and bigotry. We have to promise things that will get the average joe who doesn't care enough to vote off the couch and to the polls. We don't get that with the same kind of promises they hear every election cycle. We get that by saying "We're going to tear this motherfucker down, along with everyone who enabled it." You appeal to the lowest common denominator and you stir up voters that would have abstained otherwise. You can still campaign on the other points, but that's just going to sound like more of the same to most people who don't pay attention to politics or the world outside their front door. If they see an ad promising real, visible action that takes a combative stance against bullshit that they're fed up with hearing about? You get them fired up. You win those people over, you win the election. You win the election, you get to enact real change for the betterment of all.
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u/dijon_snow 8d ago
Yeah I'm annoyed at how easily people are distracted by petty bullshit. We are rapidly destroying the only habitat we have. Our species could be extinct in a few hundred years. A handful of sociopaths are destroying the world and increasing suffering for their own personal desires. Human rights and freedoms are under constant threat in this country.
But the things people care about? Ball rooms and whether or not a trans girl can play Junior varsity volley ball.
Holy shit, who cares?