I don't agree that it's locked in, but we are certainly at the presupace. You and I are still talking about this without significant fear of the secret police knocking down our doors, so we aren't there yet.
Tinidril
joined 2 years ago
The Director of the United States Marshals Service answers to the president. They protect the judiciary, but they aren't it's police force.
Federal law enforcement ultimately reports to the president, not the judiciary. Maybe that was a mistake, but there is nothing the judiciary can do within the system if the executive refuses to enforce against itself. Maybe they could go outside the system but, so could you.
Or maybe they were looking at their own lives and the lives of people around them? After decades of gaslighting from both parties it's no wonder that Americans don't trust the statistics they are offered.
Biden did do a lot of economic good and it's true that income inequality was reduced on his watch. However it wasn't the kind of fundamental change required for most people to actually experience it in their lives.
Marginal changes around the edges also don't add up to any kind of narrative that Democrats can use to drive participation. Trump supplied a narrative that Biden could use against him in 2020 but, by 2024 that story was old. The narrative around Trump in 2024 looked more like a classic hero arc than the classic Bond villain he was in 2020. The Democrat's narrative was about technocratic competence, something I appreciate but not terribly engaging. Biden's debate performance and late withdrawal also ran counter to that story.
It might sound silly or flippent to talk about narratives, but anybody in marketing will tell you that the narratives around a product usually matter more than the qualities of the product itself. There are effective narratives that Democrats could use, but those narratives cast wealthy Democratic donors among the villains, and most don't have the courage or integrity to do that.
No, there absolutely is a coherent plan, it's just that part of that plan is to create chaos and the appearance of incoherence. We absolutely should keep that straight.
It's also true that Trump's orbit contains a lot of other useful idiots, but they are hangers-on, not who I would consider to be his handlers.
Of course it does take a certain kind of idiot to ever embrace fascism, but we can't mistake that for incompetence.
To be fair, Trump really is pretty stupid. His handlers aren't.
the people that can afford those can afford a lower than desirable resale value
You sound unfamiliar with the average American consumer. Americans tend to buy the most car they think they can afford. They also might have been counting on the fact that electric vehicles cost more up front, but return that value and then some the longer you drive it.
it doesn't really look like the used market for these has taken that hard of a hit either.
If it does, I might go out and buy myself one. As I said before, we don't want these vehicles to be retired before their time.
At the very least debadge that heap, when I see that I like to think the owner is trying at least.
I would definitely suggest that people do this, but I wouldn't call it "the least", at least in regards to owning a Tesla. Removing the badge is probably the most effective thing they can do. That stuff gets noticed and has an impact. If they sell the car, it will just be bought by someone else and continue to be a billboard for Elon. I see a lot of Teslas in my area and have been looking for badge removals or "Elon bad" bumper stickers, and so far have just seen one without badges.
I could see this administration contracting for 100k cybertrucks for the USPS right before shutting down the USPS.
Plenty of Teslas were bought before most people had any idea that Elon was a fascist sociopathic asshole. Not everyone who bought one can afford to just dump a functioning vehicle with shitty resale value. Anyways, we don't really want to see every Tesla on the road retired at the same time, so somebody will be driving them.
Cybertrucks are a bit different in my estimation. Anyone who bought a Cybertruck should have known who they were buying it from. Those owners bought that car to signal something, and I think it's fair to let them know that the signal was received.
But he kind of is. I guarantee that most of the politically ignorant folks in the country think he's a Democrat, and he did run for the Democratic nomination, and he does caucus with the Democrats.