I.e. people who convince themselves they're very special little boys and girls.
That's humans' reason to be. There is not a philosophy or religion on earth that doesn't exalt man's place on earth and in the universe. Even those who speak of subjugation to a divine power presupposes that any such power has a reason to be interested in them and offer them sustenance, guidance and protection. Considering the age and size of the universe ,I tend to feel such arrogance is a bit undeserved.
Oh, I know. Like most here, I grew up in the crimson depths of evangelical land. The entire ethos of the place was I am special, you are special, we are special [but really I’m most special]. Ttump and rfkj have that extra special layer brought on by having never felt loved, and/or antisocial disorder.
I think there is a pretty strong possibility that that is correct, although I do think that a potential silver lining is that for as chaotic and generally ineffective as the first Trump administration was outside of the successful implementation of the tax cuts, there were at least mostly reasonably competent adults in the room in the cabinet positions and in key administration positions. This time around, there will be exactly zero- maybe one if you consider Marco Rubio. MAGA is extremely effective as an oppositional out party, but extremely ineffective as an actual governing party. There are going to be so many unequivocally unqualified and outright disqualified people in almost every administrative position in Trump 2.0 that I think there is a good bet that there will be tons of unimaginably stupid incompetence. That’s not to say that they won’t do some damage – in fact I am sure they will. But I think that a possible saving grace for the next four years is that this administration is going to be so full of so many actually come up legitimately stupid people who are not good at getting anything done other than performative political theater for 30% of the US population.
Another reward for Elon. Potentially more important to him than EV tax credits.CNN (@cnn.com)
The $7,500 tax credit for buyers of electric vehicles could be vanishing early in the new Trump administration, but that might actually be good news for Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk, one of President-elect Donald Trump’s most prominent backers...bsky.app
They wagered that they could easily pressure Trump while in office to pursue his policies that are favorable to them and not the ones that are unfavorable to them.
Comments like that one by Woodward are ones that I think may not really be helpful at this point. Like, if you say Trump is going to make himself emperor, then anything short of that will feel not that bad. Save the outrage for when he actually does the imperial shit. I really think that's part of the problem with how voters reacted to the last Trump presidency - until COVID it really felt like things were business as usual, when liberals were all doom and gloom about how Trump was going to be a dictator. (Of course it's absurd that people just basically choose to forget COVID and J6, but, well, we can't really fix that at this point.)
To be fair there were numerous stories pre-election about the fact that tariffs would raise prices. But no one should be surprised that a company like Wal-Mart wouldn't speak out against a Trump presidency during the election.
Then they should keep their yaps shut after the fact.
I don’t think any of those quotes was attributed to Psaki, but I agree with the point about “worst case scenario” talk. It sets the lowest bar possible, on every front. He could clear every one of them and still cause immense harm, but the table is set for MAGA to say “see, he wasn’t that bad.”
You're right, it was Woodward to Psaki, I've corrected.
I mean, Wal-Mart is a craven profit-seeking company, but I'm not sure I agree with that.
