It’s not bait to say that I think you’re distracting from an important conversation by trying to play morality police on behalf of a group of people who didn’t ask for help restricting the language used on the internet. You took that upon yourself and decided that this was the time to try to shame everyone else into thinking the same way you do. Quit virtue signaling about ancillary bullshit and get pissed at your government.

I understand why you think it’s not OK to say and I disagree. Call that what you like. It makes no difference to me.

Some people are mentally deficient. Trump shares some common traits with them. That’s the way the world is. You don’t need to police other people’s comparisons.

Don’t make excuses for idiocy. Many of us grew up in those same places with the same ideas you’re talking about constantly thrown at us and we could see this for what it was long before now. Those people don’t see it because they don’t want to and that’s not anyone’s fault but theirs.

Putin could not possibly have any dirt on Trump that is worse than the publicly available knowledge we have of his personality and activities. If he’s working with Russia it’s because he wants to, not because he’s being coerced.

Ok, fine, but is making the president put up collateral going to achieve that outcome? It seems more likely to encourage bribing the president to give wealthy criminals a pardon while ignoring those who can’t pay the toll.

I don’t think money is the solution. The pardon exists to correct errors in the justice system. It is inadequate and insufficient to solve all those errors on its own but it can be useful in certain contexts. I think we should be pardoning more people in a thoughtful way, not less.

Clearly the issue here has more to do with Trump being a piece of shit than it does with the existence of a system for granting clemency. You could make the argument that a review board or some other form of independent review would be a good thing to add to the process but you could also make the argument that the best solution is simply to not make a self-serving piece of shit the President.

What is looking like more of an idiot than he already does going to accomplish? He’s the most idiotic politician in living memory, by far, and there are some absolutely colossal morons on that list. The people who haven’t figured that out are never going to. They will be praising him until the day they die.

You don’t see how a comment about military service being generally unappealing relates to your comment about something making military service less appealing to women specifically?

Military service is already pretty unappealing to any empathetic human being imo

So do I, but this problem is much bigger than one man. He could not do what he’s doing without support from many rich donors and his party (which in turn relies on the support of the 30% of the country that reliably votes for them). Trump and many of his voters may be idiots but most of those other people are not, at least not in the intellectual sense of the word. They are making a calculated choice to enable fascism because they think it’s better for them personally than democracy. That belief and it’s associated threat to our country isn’t going away when Trump dies. In fact, it might get much worse if they can find someone who can advance that agenda without being a bumbling fool most of the time.

They might have some things to say about that if they could read

Are they wrong?

He’s not wrong for being pissed at rural red voters. They voted for this more than any other group and they’re going to be negatively impacted by this more than any other group. Causing pain to others is a primary motivation for many of them. Knowing that, it’s only natural to hope they feel that pain acutely.

Undeveloping? Regressing? Devolving?

Why didn’t you try harder to stop this from happening if that’s all it takes?

Did you just wink at me?

Not from where they’re sitting. We have to make this a true statement through collective action. Lemmy, and other decentralized forms of communication, will likely need to play a central role in organizing those actions. They’re not going to let us work towards removing their power using the platforms they control.

Oh no

6% is farther along than I would have guessed. That actually makes me feel better in a weird way.