“I voted for these absolute shitbags and my party is turning this country into a complete joke - why so hostile?”
RIP the environment, human decency, healthcare, etc.
That may be but the situation has changed. Trumps approval ratings are MUCH lower than they were when he first took office or when election took place and keep dropping on a day by day basis. It’s no longer about the boogeyman Clinton, and once the time bombs of tax raises go into affect and hit a lot of the current GOP base (in addition to not bringing the jobs a lot of the voting based promised for) I do believe there will be a backlash.
Plus like you said, less than half the majority of Americans voted for Trump and he won. That’s significant because voting turnout was abysmal, but I also believe that people who didn’t vote because they either assumed Trump wouldn’t win or didn’t like either candidate will vote next election because things have just been crazy bad (just on a PR level right now with potential for legitimately bad in the short term future).
I think it’s a backlash that will come too late unfortunately, but better late then never I guess.
Making America Great Again. For the donor class.
Explore why I think “Oh god, get the fuck over yourself” , F*** Republicans and “I’ll see you on the farm” like it’s a horrible situation is directed at me personally? Done.
I read a lot of these threads even if I do not participate, it gives me a sense of what people who have different takes than me think. I’m not here to improve manners in P&R. I’ll participate in good faith, or I’ll go back to avoiding this section.
Hey man, if you feel like I’m attacking you personally for voting for these shitbags, regardless of never mentioning you by name or anything, I can’t really help that. If you feel like I’m calling you out, personally, for voting for people who just passed legislation that will negatively effect pretty much everyone I know, I’m not gonna apologize because oh poor you, suddenly you feel like a victim. People who voted republican helped lead to the situation we’re in now, and if you don’t wanna own your part of that, including how shitty I feel, then go back to your fantasy world where everyone fucking agrees with you or whatever.
Somewhere @ArmandoPenblade is tenting his fingers and going in a Palpatine voice, “Release your hatred…”
That seems disingenuous. You replied “get the fuck over yourself” to Neal and that’s what started this rage kerfuffle.
This cannot be true. Firstly, presumably even you think that there are some things government does that are vital, so therefore you could not possibly support lowering taxes below a certain threshold. Secondly, lowering taxes without regard to who it affects clearly could land you in a deeply regressive tax situation which even conservatives agree would result in plutocracy.
It’s part of a slow decline. Wealth and income inequality will be exacerbated… it’s hard to see how anyone would think that is a good thing.
I’m curious to know your stance on these important Republican beliefs:
- Nazis are good people
- Global warming is fake
- Trump is a competent, amazing leader
- The media is the enemy
- Pedophilia is cool
In good faith, and frankly because it’s going to be cathartic for me to type it out: the big problem is that for most of us, this isn’t lower taxation. My “natural” political affiliation is the classic New England Republican: economics supply/demand/capitalism background, socially liberal, fiscally conservative in the “pay for what we’re doing” sense. If this had anything to do with making government more efficient, getting more for less, or lowering taxes in a way that would drive consumer command and help the greater economy, you could probably get me on board! Instead, from my point of view, this:
- is, on average, from a slight tax cut to neutral for Americans making under $200K in the short term
- is, on average, from neutral to a slight tax increase for Americans making under $200K in the long term
- creates a big group of losers: 10-20% of Americans in certain situations (which, not to take it too personally, targets me pretty specifically) will come out as significant losers in both the near and long term
- creates a big group of winners: Americans who are going to benefit significantly from this long-term are those with incomes over $500K, those who have estates in excess of $11 million, and those who get the substantial majority of their income from places other than labor/W2 income
- fixes a corporate tax rate that has been a problem, but not in a way that makes sense: there is a real constituency for a “lower the rate, narrow the deductions, net neutral revenue but much more straightforward” approach to the corporate tax (this is not that!)
- addresses repatriation of foreign profits in a way that encourages moral hazard more than anything else (2004 also did this, and companies were right to hide their profits in the interim, since they’re getting a deal again)
- includes, from all accounts, a number of specific carve-outs that literally no one has a grasp on yet (e.g. exemptions specifically for that one college or for Maine homeowners), and are likely to distort markets for decades to come
- creates a substantial long-term national deficit burden that will be borne by future generations, for (according to virtually all credentialed economists) minimal to no gain for the overall economy
- creates a redistributive effect where a government that represents 40-45% of the American population is specifically targeting the other 55-60% with the policies included in the bill - elections have consequences, and they can do this, but I can’t imagine it working out well long-term
The last couple of points are what push me, if not to the “dystopian nightmare” rhetoric you allude to, to believe that this is a potentially crippling long-term blow to “America as we know it”. Not only does it increase the debt dramatically, but by doing so it critically limits options in the future, whether that’s for infrastructure investment or for any crises that come up. I also specifically avoided talking about the backdoor ACA repeal aspects of this. And we’re not actually getting anything productive out of it for the overall economy!
It gets someone like me - who, again, in a sane world I’m a technocrat socially liberal Republican or a fiscally conservative Democrat but generally a centrist and a capitalist - thinking thoughts like, “If this really runs its course for the next decade, and there’s any sort of recession on top of it, the only way to fix this is going to be a complete sweep by the leftist wing of the Democrats, and it’s going to take some policies that people describe as ‘confiscatory’ and ‘punitive’ to those who have been hoarding wealth, because that’s the only place the assets required to fix this problem will exist.” Even outside of the horror of thinking in such long, run-on sentences, all of a sudden I’m pretty damn close to the workers seizing the means of production. Not where I want to be. Also not great for my mental health in the interim.
(Separately from the policy arguments, I think there’s a moral and ethical argument that anyone who has been deficit trolling for the last decade and then votes for this bill should be permanently banned from any public position of power. Intellectual dishonesty is deeply offensive. To me, clearly not to everyone.)
So much this. I was coming here to reply to Neal’s post and how it lacked nuance and sounded far too mimetic of “let’s drown it all in a bathtub”, but Kyrios’ post occludes any blather I might spit out as I sit here fuming over what future my young children might have left to them.
This is where my repugnance turns to absolute anger and hatred. Maybe we’ll move to Iceland.
Thank you.
No, he replied to my post about working in mines and farms as if I was personally attacking him, whereas I didn’t mention him at all until he replied to that post of mine.
Well, he said he lives and/or works on a farm. I’d be offended too.
How the hell am I supposed to know he worked on a farm? I even said I wasn’t attacking him personally.
Plus I’d like to think that folks around here are smart enough to, with the inclusion of mines in my comment, get the context of it.
But hey, I apologize, farming is a noble profession I’ve got nothing but respect for. In the direction we’re going though, we’ll all be farming for the landowners who own us all before too long.
Well, you could take a step back and explain that you didn’t mean anything by it. As opposed to doubling down on the anger.
You all need to get the fuck over yourselves.