Hardkill

Although Professor Lichtman incorrectly predicted the 2024 election, he provided valuable insights as a US historian on how President Biden will likely be remembered and his lasting impact on the country:

Just as men are socially conditioned to not cry as much as women, women are conversely socially conditioned not to come off as angry unless they happened to be more in a position of power such as teacher/principal in a school or a boss in a company and they rightfully yell at the student or employee for doing something very wrong. Other examples of this being considered acceptable are a female drill instructor in the military aggressively yelling at new recruits or subordinates or a mom yelling at her kids for bad behavior. Yet, even women in those kinds of positions are still discouraged from displaying as much anger as men who hold the same kinds of positions of power. Otherwise, women and girls who express anger will often be labeled as "emotional," "hysterical," or "aggressive," which can be damaging to their self-esteem and relationships. Women of color are especially subject to stereotyping and tropes, such as the "angry Black woman" or the "submissive Asian woman." These stereotypes can be even more damaging and limiting to such women. Even Kara in Supergirl had to be lectured by her boss about how it's a bad look when any woman comes off mad: Yet, when a man unleashes his rage (at the right time of course), especially in response to a perceived injustice or threat, it's often viewed as a sign of strength, authority, leadership, and masculine. White men are especially more allowed by society to display aggression and anger more so than men of color are, unless we are talking about a typical country in Africa that's ruled by black men, a country in Asia that's ruled by asian men, a Latin American country that's ruled by Latin men, or a country in the Middle East that's ruled by Arab men. This is one of my favorite scenes from Boys. Billy Butcher came off as a real badass leader who knows how to command the room like a real man: I bet most people who watched this were like "God damn! You got balls of steel! You showed them whose boss!"

Here's what Leo said about Afghanistan: If you blame Biden for Ukraine, then you would've blamed Trump for it too if it happened under his watch. In fact, Trump would've let Putin take all of Ukraine just because he's been in bed with Putin. The military-industrial complex and the rest of the deep state are primarily to be blamed for pushing the US and NATO to provoke Russia into attacking Ukraine. Obama and every other Democratic president before him would've done very much the same thing as Biden did. The Bushes and Reagan would've been way more hawkish on this matter if it happened during either of their presidencies. We have no idea how much influence these powerful lobbies have on even the President of the United States.

Dude, almost nobody in the US cares about Afghanistan anymore. People were so sick and tired of it. Also, the people of Afghanistan made it clear enough that they wanted the Taliban to rule the country because that's the kind of regime they believe in. I used to worry about those people's rights and freedom being taken away from them, but I eventually learned that the people in that country did not want westernized democracy because their culture is far too underdeveloped for it. They want authoritarian governance, especially in the way of Islamic fundamentalism. Plus, Biden was the first president in decades to not start any new wars or preside over wars with US boots on the ground, he still faced criticism. To put this into perspective, let's look at the conflicts during the presidencies of his predecessors: George W. Bush: Initiated the War in Afghanistan (2001) and the Iraq War (2003). Barack Obama: Continued the War in Afghanistan and initiated military interventions in Libya (2011) and Syria (2014). Donald Trump: Continued the War in Afghanistan and initiated airstrikes in Syria (2017) and Iraq (2020). Moreover, his planning of uniting NATO and Ukraine against Russia was so brilliant and so successful that it has been widely regarded by experts as being one of the greatest foreign/military triumphs by the US in the history of the country. Besides the defeat of the Soviet Union and the ending of the Cold War under Reagan/HW Bush during the late 80s to early 90s, the prevention of Putin and Russia from taking over much of Ukraine will go down as arguably the greatest success America has ever had since the end of WWII under FDR/Truman.

I think the point of what Dr. K is saying is that many young men, especially, many white men feel like the Democratic party has been leaving them behind, while feeling like the Republican party cares about them a lot more. That's because even though Trump and the GOP have no good policies for addressing the anxieties or problems of younger men, Trump and the Republicans have done a lot more than the Democrats have to reach out to, relate with, and feign empathy with younger men in recent years.

I hate to say it OP, but I really don't think he legitimately lost the election. Yes, Musk greatly contributed to Trump's win by polluting the entire X platform with endless amounts of misinformation, right-wing propaganda, and anti-mainstream propaganda. That caused a lot of people on X to be brainwashed into voting against Harris. However, there is no definitive proof that Musk, Trump, or anyone else who is a part of the MAGA cult in America had somehow rigged the system by actually causing widespread voter fraud such as voter suppression to such an extreme or unprecedented scale. Also, Musk buying votes in swing states like Pennsylvania was totally illegal, but I highly doubt that was nearly enough to swing the election to Trump. It's absolutely disgusting and infuriating that Musk and other right-wingers and right-wing outlets such as Dan Bongino, Candace Owens, the Daily Wire, Alex Jones, and Fox News keep getting away with rotting people's minds but unfortunately none of that is illegal.

I get how angry some of you guys are about Biden for trying to run for re-election. Tragically, he is and will continue to be blamed for paving the way for Trump's return to power. Obviously, a big part of why Biden wanted to run for re-election was because of his ego. However, I don't think that Biden was being extremely selfish firmly believed that it was because Biden really thought that he was the country's best shot of defeating Trumpism once and for all given that he was the only person ever who ever defeated Trump before. I really thought that he could've defeated Trump had his party united behind him. He was the incumbent president and incumbency advantage and if you look at historical precedent incumbency has always been a tremendous advantage, especially for the POTUS. Also, the rest of Democratic leadership including Pelosi, Schumer, Jeffries, etc. should accept their real share of the responsibility for their party's loss in 2024. They too are also at fault for ruining it all. In any case, what about how extraordinarily well he governed the country as president?

Since around the early 2000s, most rural Americans have usually voted against their own economic interests by voting Republican in elections. This voting behavior may be influenced by various factors, including the pervasive presence of right-wing propaganda. But rural America used to be largely populist, with voters supporting progressive candidates who advocated for farmers' rights and labor reform. The Democratic Party's New Deal policies, implemented during the Great Depression, resonated strongly with rural voters, who benefited from programs like the Agricultural Adjustment Administration and the Rural Electrification Administration. Why do you think that is in your opinion? Is it because Democratic Party has become increasingly too socially liberal and too culturally diverse for them since the late 1900s? Is it because of how increasingly polarized the media landscape has gotten? Is it because of the significant decline of union membership in the US since the 1970s and 1980s among rural Americans, which has caused many to lose their sense of community and shared identity, and have driven them to join conservative groups such as gun clubs, Turning Point USA, evangelical church groups, and right-wing online outlets? Is it because they fear that anymore liberal/progressive economic reforms will also help out racial/ethnic minorities, immigrants, poor people in urban areas, people who aren’t Christian, and so on? Is it because the Democratic Party stopped reaching to most rural Americans for too long?

Here's a take from Dan Pfieffer on Democracy Docket on why more rural states have gotten so red:

You know, I've encountered a lot of Brazilian women who are very forward with me sexually. For years, I've been chatting with an attractive girl who lives in Brazil through social media and not only have we connected with each other well as friends we also have gotten very sexual with each other a number of times without any pay. We actually got very sexual with each other right away the first time we met each other. Another Brazilian girl I met near where I live a while ago, was very flirty with me telling me how cute or handsome I was. We got very touchy with each other before we kissed. Is it more of a thing with Brazilian women to be direct sexually/romantically even though men are generally expected to initiate everything?

Mr. Locario, who is black, said that when he went to Brazil that they were very forward with him.

Yeah, that's what I think it is. Though I wonder why women there are more sexually liberated in a country that's less developed and therefore more tradition-oriented than America is.

It's not just MAGA republicans. It's also the more Reagan-type Republicans who have no idea how much their policies or ideas are hated by most Americans and who have this fantasy about their party one day going back to being like that of Reagan. Don't they ever realize why the Republican party has never once won a supermajority of Republicans in either chamber of Congress since around the days of Teddy Roosevelt presidency in the 1900s decade whereas the Democrats have had supermajorities in either or both chambers of Congress a number of times since 1900? Also, moderate Democrats have to stop playing whiffle ball and play a lot more hardball.

Huh? I don't understand what you're saying. Also, I haven't had to give any money or get them something else like a green card.

Then again, has anyone noticed how conservatives and MAGA keep getting very shocked by a lot of the center-left victories we have had in the past? Even though the Left and Dems lost in 2024, the Republican party lost an extraordinary amount of big elections from 2017 to 2023. They were supposed to win the 2022 midterms when the Democratic party did uniquely well. Also, since 2022, Democrats have kept growing their power significantly at the state and local levels of government. Conservatives are just as delusional as liberals are in their own way. They are less developed overall, they are still stuck in fantasies of wanting to bring back the "good old days" that will never come back because they will never work again. Centrists/moderates are perhaps the most ground or pragmatic compared to staunch liberals and staunch conservatives. However, even moderates can really be more delusional about certain things than left-wingers and right-wingers are. For instance, moderates like Manchin and Sinema were so delusional, even more so than Biden himself was about being able to bring the country back together through bipartisanship. They eventually had to admit that the old days of great bipartisanship are gone. Moderates tend to be more spineless. Look at what happened with Merrick Garland and how he fucked up his prosecution of Trump by waiting too long all because he was too afraid of being deemed too partisan if he went ahead with the matter much faster and much earlier than he and his team did. Moderates get easily taken advantage of from less moderate people.

I wonder what happens if Musk bans all accounts of those on X who speak out against Trump.

Yeah, I feel that way too.... I generally don't believe in owning guns, but given the extraordinary circumstances we are in, I think we may need them.

Unreal..... I now want to just give up on humanity. Everyone who voted for him deserves to be deceived by him.

I really hope Trump is not serious about raising the average tariff rates on all imports, including raising the tariff on Chinese imports, to what they were during the Great Depression-Era. Not only would many millions of Americans be significantly poorer than they are now, but it could become a big contributing factor to another severe recession if not a depression in the future. The Smoot Hawley Tariff of 1930 (which imposed the second-highest tariff rate in U.S. history, after the Tariff of 1828) completely backfired by worsening the Great Depression. There's a reason why America has kept the average rate on all imports, especially the average rate on dutiable Imports, to very low levels since the late 1940s (post WWII). In fact, Ronald Reagan's presidency began a new trend of lowering tariff rates down to another level and that trend continued on as a precedent that lasted all the way to the end of Obama's presidency. Trump has been trying to change that precedent ever since his first term as president and Biden continued it but did it in a much more intelligent manner. Now Trump wants to take that into overdrive and for very dumb and antiquated reasons.

As I've already mentioned in my previous post on this thread, real wages for most workers in America have actually outpaced inflation for almost 2 years now. What's the issue is that the general level of prices of goods and services for Americans today are about 20% higher than they were around 2019-2021. According to economist, Mark Zandi and his team, you have about half of Americans whose real income increases have either barely kept up with or have significantly exceeded that of the cumulative inflation from over the past 3 or 4 years and you have the other half of Americans whose real wage/salary increases have not kept up with the cumulative inflation from over the past 3 or 4 years. Plus, even though mortage rates and Fed Fund rates have actually been historically average since 2022 and have been going down significantly since late 2024, many Americans are still having trouble tolerating even those levels of relatively normal rates largely because of the growing housing shortage we have had and was never seriously addressed since the end of the 2008 financial crisis. Also, credit card rates have been at such unprecedented high rates for years now that it's become truly usurious. That too has also been hurting many people in the US. Believe me, I've been keeping track of all the data on all of this stuff obsessively like every other day since inflation first became a problem in 2021. It's like I've been learning to become an expert on the economy for years. Last but not least is the fact that the widespread discontent many people have had over inflation and general level of prices in our country has been disgustingly amplified by the extreme negative partisanship, ridiculous drama, and the never-before-seen amount of misinformation out there from the right-wing media, the far left media, and the alt-media. The mainstream media outlets for years have done a terrible job in counteracting the falsehoods and toxic mischaracterizations of inflation and high prices projected by all of the anti-mainstream media outlets out there and the more reasonable progressive media outlets have still not been anywhere near as robust as they need to be to combat all of the misinformation and false narratives on this issue. The brain rot in this country is so real.

Alright fine... Then, I'll try my best to ask questions more judiciously.

Oh yeah, this wealth inequality situation we have going is still an absolute injustice. I was just pointing out some of the positive things that have actually occurred at the same time regarding wealth in our country that a lot of people probably don't realize.

This is why the Democrats and the Left desperately need to build a powerful left-wing media ecosystem to defeat Musk and the Right on the messaging war.

Sorry, but I don't think it's fair to say that I need to think for myself above everyone here. At least unlike a lot of people on here, I am more willing to learn from someone like you with more of an open-minded. Also, I can't believe that you think that my questions are so trivial. Another thing is that I haven't been just asking questions on this forum. I've also been giving my fair share of knowledge, understanding, and answers on various things to many people on this forum over course of several years. Very heartbreaking and demoralizing....

Yeah, they now work for them. However, isn't the CIA part of the deep state? If it is then aren't they able to pressure Trump to sign onto pro-Western policies such as continuing to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia?