Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[Milchshake]

Two things fellow comrades really need to rethink heading into 2026 and 2028:

1. Does calling It a Cult overly simplify the problem of the current Fascism?
2. I really, really used to believed that capitalism was hegemonic and acted rationally to preserve its own power. That was dogma I believed as a leftist until 2024.

Big Pharma and other capitalists will just burn billions so management can bully and sexually harass their employees at will.

[Edge-]

Big Pharma and other capitalists will just burn billions so management can bully and sexually harass their employees at will.

The MBA's have taken over and they are, actually, the least competent and qualified people ever who have no actual vision.

[Paranoid Android]

Before Trump sends armed troops to another US city, just posting a reminder that the states with the higher murder rates are the states in the South.

These are the states ranked by murder rate 2023, starting with the highest:

Want me to do it? Imagine if a Democrat did this to a Red state or area.

It's pretty crazy that Trump has totally collapsed the state of Federalism, when Ya Know they were supposed about the separation of the federal government and states rights or whatever. The irony of the Federal Society and such, which are the Fascist Society.

While before all this happened I was never screaming "Federalism", yet when a President has picked and choose which states are facing the brunt from everything to withholding federal funds, military occupation of areas and cities and very clear will claim voting fraud happening, etc.

[Milchshake]

But guys, theHill said that democarats are liars.

[Endus]

Two things fellow comrades really need to rethink heading into 2026 and 2028:
1. Does calling It a Cult overly simplify the problem of the current Fascism?

Not particularly.

Pointing out the cult-like tendencies of the MAGA movement is important in understanding that there is no way to "deprogram" them without their own buy-in. Cult-like behaviour thrives on being "othered" by anyone not part of the in-group, and they will freely use logical inconsistencies and rejections of reality as confirmation statements that prove shared community, and belonging to that community is more important than anything else. You couldn't tell a Jonestown cultist that there are no aliens coming to take them away on their spaceship and that the Kool-Aid is poison, and they'd smile at you while opening a can of rat poison to dump into the Kool-Aid and insist that you're the deluded one. It's no different here. It's literally a waste of your time to try and rationalize them out of their lunacy. That's what's important about the cult-like behaviour.

2. I really, really used to believed that capitalism was hegemonic and acted rationally to preserve its own power. That was dogma I believed as a leftist until 2024.

This is part and parcel of "Capitalist Realism", a deep set of propagandic talking points that have been repeated over and over as a rejection of observable reality and an argument that capitalism is, in various framings, "natural", "self-correcting", or that "there is no alternative that works". It's all bullshit. The term's a reversal of the term "socialist realism", used for communist propaganda.

Trickle-down economics can be seen as a relatively recent added talking point to this whole mix, but it's been the same kind of bullshit for a couple centuries now. I'll grant that Adam Smith might have just been overwhelmingly naive about human nature rather than intentionally malicious, but most "capitalist" thinkers have been pushing propaganda, not economic philosophy.

Capitalism is a system of individual exploiters twisting every rule they can get away with to maximize their personal exploitation of the labor of others. Anyone telling you otherwise is leaving a lot out. Any single capitalist absolutely will run the greater economy into the ground so long as they, personally, can profit from that decline. That doesn't mean it's true of every business owner, but if they're more responsible than that, they're not acting according to capitalist mechanics and you should really be looking at their activity through more than just a capitalist lens. They're limiting their predations for reasons other than pure capitalistic thinking, and those other philosophical bents deserve the applause for that restraint, not capitalism.

[Dontrike]

Trump, tired of people thinking he's a weak old man that only touches children, wants to change the DOD's name. What is it? Well back to what it was before WW2, the Department of War.

President Donald Trump says he wants to change the name of the Department of Defense (DOD) back to its original title—the Department of War.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, the president said, in part, "It just sounded bad to me, 'On behalf of the Department of Defense?' Defense? I don't want to be defense only. We want defense but we want offense, too, if that's OK. As the Department of War, we won everything, and I think we're going to have to go back to that."

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, standing behind him, said, "That's coming soon, sir."

Trump quickly said, "You let me know if you want to do it."

The Pentagon carried that name until 1949 when it was rebranded amid post–World War II restructuring.

[Edge-]

ah, the only thing donald used to be good at: branding/rebranding

except that this is not only completely pointlessly performative, but also not even good branding

the "no new wars" guy wants to rename a department for "war"? is he planning on starting up new war? sure sounds like it!

[Breccia]

Tax rate for ultrarich drops dramatically after GOP tax cuts

The effective tax rate for the U.S. population as a whole is about 30 percent, and for people with the top salaries, it’s about 45 percent. But for the 100 wealthiest Americans, it’s 22 percent, according to a study published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

These drop-offs are correlated in the study specifically with the 2017 Trump tax cuts, also known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

“The tax rate of the top 400 fell significantly at the end of our sample, a period that includes various economic and policy changes, including the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” the researchers note.

The study is by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, economists at the University of California who are two of the foremost experts on global wealth inequality, a trend that has exploded in recent decades.

"Oh please, how much of an effect could that really have?"

They noted that while the wealth of the top 0.0002 percent was the equivalent of 2 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) in 1982, it has hit 20 percent of GDP in 2025, with about three-quarters of the rise being attributable to the top 100 wealthiest people alone.

As a fraction of wealth, as opposed to income, taxes paid by the top 400 dropped from 2.7 percent prior to the 2017 tax cuts to 1.3 percent afterward. The U.S. doesn’t tax people based on wealth, only based on income, though the Supreme Court has recently shown openness to considering a wealth tax.

Surprisingly, the lower tax rates for the superrich are due in part to a low amount of private business income. Pass-through businesses that generate taxable losses are cited as reducing the tax burdens for the wealthiest Americans, allowing them to offset taxes owed on other income owed on other income sources like wages and dividends.

The centerpiece of the 2017 Trump tax cuts was the reduction of the corporate tax rate from 35 to 21 percent, a change that made a big difference for the billionaire class.

Hey, remember when the Tax Cut for the Rich was being planned and most people said "well why wouldn't the rich people just declare themselves businesses and pay lower taxes?" and Trump cultists were all "no, they wouldn't do that!" They did. Dig far enough back in this very thread and you'll see most of us called it, and everyone else was a Trump supporter who also called it but lied about it.

And, in exchange for this lowering of the tax rate for the mega-rich, Trump is raising prices of food and housing, cutting social services and medical care, and sending in troops to US cities.

[En Sabah Nur]

Trump: "The whole issue of the women. Comfort women. Very specifically. We talked and that was a very big problem for Korea, not for Japan. Japan was, wanted to go, they want to get on. But Korea was very stuck on that."

Just once, I'd like Trump to at least know something about a subject before he opens his perpetually-pursed lips...

[Doomcookie]

It's valuable to have your conversation partners on record for locking people out of their bank accounts as a consequence of peaceful protest. Standards bend when the politics is reversed.

You are on the record supporting the rape and murder of children.

It's important that people remember who they are dealing with.

- - - Updated - - -

It's more a Trump thing to accuse people of dishonesty then drop some modifiers in front of the names, but this may be the Left imitating Trump as the new strategy to beat Trump. I am grateful that America did not lock people out of their bank accounts for their protest, and I wish Canada would aspire to at least that level of freedom in the future.

Well, it convinced you to vote for him, and defend rape.

So, does that mean you are switching sides?

- - - Updated - - -

The malicious dishonesty of calling people dishonest and labeling them, while doing their utmost to avoid directly addressing claims or argue on substance. No, you can't subscribe to both the "Fuck Off" school of political disagreement and then claim "clutching pearls" when it's pointed out.

"Fact twisting" are exactly the words I'd use to describe acceding to Canada's use of emergency powers, as if it were a counterexample to America's. Ned was darn right to sieze upon Phaelix's "The reality Canadians don't want to admit: the same can be said of literally any country, including Canada," and fact twisting and lying and dishonesty were feeble attempts to deny that the comparison was appropriate and well-chosen. I do indeed wish the left would abandon the use of labeling and dismissing inconvenient conversations as "lying and fact twisting," since self-examination on the use of power from other countries' chief executives is instructive. I didn't see one person deny the protest was peaceful, nor deny that the bank accounts were frozen, so I don't think key facts are actually in dispute.

You labeled yourself.

[Edge-]

Tax rate for ultrarich drops dramatically after GOP tax cuts



"Oh please, how much of an effect could that really have?"



Hey, remember when the Tax Cut for the Rich was being planned and most people said "well why wouldn't the rich people just declare themselves businesses and pay lower taxes?" and Trump cultists were all "no, they wouldn't do that!" They did. Dig far enough back in this very thread and you'll see most of us called it, and everyone else was a Trump supporter who also called it but lied about it.

And, in exchange for this lowering of the tax rate for the mega-rich, Trump is raising prices of food and housing, cutting social services and medical care, and sending in troops to US cities.

remember that time kansas (i think) did this very thing and, in a few years, the republican legislature had to override a republican gubernatorial veto because this tax cut absolutely gutted the states finances?

fun times to try that policy again on a national level after seeing it absolutely fail monumentally at the state level!

- - - Updated - - -

Just once, I'd like Trump to at least know something about a subject before he opens his perpetually-pursed lips...

what the fuck is he talking about and why is he bringing up comfort women?

[Kaleredar]

Two things fellow comrades really need to rethink heading into 2026 and 2028:

1. Does calling It a Cult overly simplify the problem of the current Fascism?
2. I really, really used to believed that capitalism was hegemonic and acted rationally to preserve its own power. That was dogma I believed as a leftist until 2024.

Big Pharma and other capitalists will just burn billions so management can bully and sexually harass their employees at will.

They are acting in a self-preservational manner. The top are extracting as much wealth as possible to jump between sinking ships.

[DarkTZeratul]

hat the fuck is he talking about and why is he bringing up comfort women?

It's in the context of Korea also meeting with Japan, and that has admittedly been kind of a historical issue between them, that Korea's still kind of pissed about it and Japan refuses to apologize.

Also Trump is trying to take credit for the productive meeting the leaders of Korea and Japan had with each other, which occurred before the president of Korea even met with Trump.

[Belize]

Trump, tired of people thinking he's a weak old man that only touches children, wants to change the DOD's name. What is it? Well back to what it was before WW2, the Department of War.

Nothing says Nobel Peace Prize like... Department of War...

[Captain N]

Nothing says Nobel Peace Prize like... Department of War...

I mean I know it's supposed to be fiction but...We've reached the point where the overlap of 1984 and Trump and his Cult is a perfect circle.

"War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength"

[btlcryct]

I mean I know it's supposed to be fiction but...We've reached the point where the overlap of 1984 and Trump and his Cult is a perfect circle.

"War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength"

I mean, he's used the 'peace through strength' soundbite before and his idiots have been parroting it:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...dministration/

[En Sabah Nur]

what the fuck is he talking about and why is he bringing up comfort women?

Oh, he was sat beside the South Korean president. So a perfectly normal thing for him to try and talk about. Yup.

Also...

Trump: "China intelligently went in and they sort of took a monopoly of the world's magnets. Nobody needed magnets until they convinced everybody 20 years ago, 'let's all do magnets.' There were many other ways that the world could have gone ... we're heavily into the world of magnets now."

[Malkiah]

[*]Does calling It a Cult overly simplify the problem of the current Fascism?

i strongly believe so, yes - and more specifically, it creates a false belief that all of this is the grand design one idiot and if he just goes away everything will be magically fixed and all of our problems will go away, which will lead to a complacency the next time there's an election.
"oh well trump was the real problem so this new republican isn't as much of a problem, we should give them a fair shake" ... and that just isn't true.
donald trump is a simpleton who had no ideology 10 years ago, who was easily and guilelessly steered in a particular political direction by the US regressive movement.
when he's gone the next republican will be every bit as bad, in fact probably a lot worse because chances are good they'll be more competent, and every smug "leftist" on this forum will be a perfect representation of the broader US culture when they say "oh well republicans learned their lesson with trump! i hated that guy so none of these people will vote for this new person" and then everyone will go shocked pikachu face when a republican wins again and shit continues to spiral.

this isn't "a cult" in the western cultural sense of the use of that term, the whole US regressive schtick is the same as it was when it manifested as the TEA party, which is the same as it was when it manifested as the compassionate conservative, which is the same as it was when it manifested as the moral majority, which is the same as it was when it manifested as the religious right - it's christofascist authoritarian racist bullshit that has always existed in US society because that is literally what the government was founded on.
it's been here since the early 1700s, it has had several periods of remission and then reemergence, and sadly we're living through a flare up right now.

[*]I really, really used to believed that capitalism was hegemonic and acted rationally to preserve its own power. That was dogma I believed as a leftist until 2024.

capitalism is like... well i hate to use a biblical reference but it's quick and it's easy: capitalism is like Goliath. it's in the position it's in because it's just bigger than everyone else and more powerful in a sheer brute force kind of way.
it's not clever, it's not efficient, it's not planned, it's just gigantic and unwieldy and so feels omnipresent because it overshadows everything else.

[Edge-]

Oh, he was sat beside the South Korean president. So a perfectly normal thing for him to try and talk about. Yup.

Also...

Trump: "China intelligently went in and they sort of took a monopoly of the world's magnets. Nobody needed magnets until they convinced everybody 20 years ago, 'let's all do magnets.' There were many other ways that the world could have gone ... we're heavily into the world of magnets now."

oh my he listened to the insane clown posse this morning again, didn't he.

[gondrin]

Just once, I'd like Trump to at least know something about a subject before he opens his perpetually-pursed lips...

I read that 5 times now and still cannot figure out what the hell he is talking about. Like this is something an AI Chatbot would spit out after trying to output something for the first time.