The US has a number of institutional failures that need to be addressed if it’s to have any hope of surviving and the Trump presidency is not only not going to address them, but has for all intents and purposes taken it as its mandate to specifically focus on exacerbating them.

It’s dealing with wealth inequality by increasing it. It’s dealing with political corruption by institutionalizing it. It’s dealing with fragile and ineffective public health, public education and social service systems by breaking them. It’s dealing with rapacious corporations by eliminating constraints on them. It’s dealing with climate change by encouraging it. It’s dealing with diminished international stature by alienating literally everyone. It’s dealing with the threat of economic collapse by destroying international markets. It’s dealing with the threat of social unrest by fanning the flames of bigotry and hatred. And on and on.

It’s essentially the equivalent of a cancer patient taking up smoking. In a house lined with asbestos and uranium.

And at that point, it really doesn’t matter who wants to save them or how much they want it.

I would’ve likely been better off with a broader term - something like “the wealthy and empowered few” - particularly since the subject at hand concerns the United States, in which the line between private wealth and power and political power grows more vague and hazy day by day.

But yes - ultimately I conclude government, since government is the entity that has established the legal fiction of corporations, that has acted to protect the private wealth by which the political influence to establish things like a predatory health insurance system can exist and has utterly failed to do one of the few things that is a mandate for a government from the start - to protect citizens from harm brought by others and/or to punish those who bring it.

Or to be more precise, if the government had done its job of protecting Americans from a destructive and predatory health insurance system (as opposed to literally mandating it), Luigi’s vigilantism likely wouldn’t have occurred in the first place, and certainly wouldn’t have had so much support if it had.

But since they didn’t do their job, it happened, and if they continue to not do their job (as it appears they’re determined), then it will happen again, and worse.

Who said anything about “being shitty humans?”

I’m talking about a very specific dynamic - a civilization in which there is widespread citizen discontent and whether the government acts to alleviate that discontent legitimately or merely acts to divert or stifle it.

The former allows for solutions so allows for recovery. The latter leaves the problems to rot and fester, and is a death sentence.

This is the primary reason that I say the United States is terminally ill - that the only possible future is collapse.

When faced with popular discontent, the leaders of a nation have exactly two choices - to attempt to deal with the issues that cause the discontent, or to refuse to deal with the issues and instead just try to squash or distract from the discontent.

A nation that has chosen the latter is living on borrowed time, since the discontent is still there, lurking below the surface, will always be there as long as the cause remains unaddressed, and will, sooner or later, burst into the open again, even more toxic and violent than it was the last time.

Much though the ruling class might wish to believe otherwise there is no third alternative. There’s no magic wand they can wave to make the discontent vanish. They can either work to eliminate it by eliminating its cause(s), or they can watch while it weakens and eventually destroys the nation.

And the US has clearly chosen that latter path. In fact, it could broadly be said that that’s the exact purpose of the Trump presidency - a concerted and organized effort by elements of the ruling class to establish a government specifically dedicated to refusing to address the causes of discontent and to instead merelybtry to distract from it or squash it.

And it will ultimately fail. It can’t do otherwise.

According to a February Quinnipiac poll, about half disapprove of how Democrats in Congress are handling their job, compared with about 4 in 10 who approve.

How can even 4 in 10 approve? What is there to approve of?

There is no “doing their jobs well” or "doing their jobs poorly " - most of the Democrats in Congress aren’t doing their jobs at all.

1. It doesn’t “expose” anything really, since that implies that it was formerly hidden and it very much wasn’t. Trump and his co-conspirators and mercenaries have been very clear that their position is that the rules only apply to other people literally since day one.

2. Legal concepts are only relevant if they’re enforced - if they’re not, then they’re just meaningless mouth noises that might as well not exist at all. So the real problem isn’t that Trump et al consider themselves above the law, but that damned near NOBODY in the entire fucking government is doing one single thing to disabuse them of that notion.

Nobody’s as bad as he is, but she’s certainly an awful human.

But that’s not really relevant. It’s just that from what I’ve seen, she tries to stay as far away from him as possible - preferably in another state. So I assume being given an excuse to be in a different coutry would be okay by her.

I get the impression that Melania would be fine with that - that she’d take any excuse to be as far as possible away from that stinky lump of congealed fat and bronzer.

As I point out over and over, it’s all actually clear evidence of the simple fact that he’s profoundly mentally ill.

By any objective standard, the man is a raving lunatic, and deeply emotionally disturbed. He not only shouldn’t be president - he shouldn’t even be allowed out on his own. He needs extensive mental health care, or barring that, he needs to be kept away from any opportunity to do harm, because he self-evidently is incapable of moderating his own behavior into anything even vaguely approaching healthy.

And the most insane and incomprehensible part of this timeline, to me, is that there are so many people who apparently can’t see that, when it’s so bludgeoningly obvious, or who can see it but pretend that they don’t.

If I didn’t know better, I’d assume that somebody went out and found a smelly old derelict locked in an argument with God in a dirty alley somewhere, gave him a shave, a suit and a layer of bronzer, and made him president.

And all because Columbia backed out of a $400 million real estate deal with Trump decades ago, and Trump is profoundly mentally ill.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/nyregion/trump-columbia-university-400-million.html?unlocked_article_code=1.5k4._mce.EeQP47eDVqah

And the bidding will start at $1 billion. Do I hear 1.1 Billion?

stop pretending that voters base their entire fucking vote on the identity of the candidate as an excuse to run dogshit neoliberal campaigns.

Preach.

Fat lot of good it’ll likely do, but still.

Anybody who wants to ethnically cleanse brown people in order to steal their land is Trump’s kind of person.

Huh… I didn’t expect Graham to regurgitate a position opposing Trump and Russia.

Somebody must’ve outbid the oligarchs…

To paraphrase the Narcissist’s Prayer, he’s currently moving from “That won’t happen” to “And if it does, it won’t be that bad” and on to “And if it is, that’s not a big deal.”

So expect “And if it is, that’s not my fault” in the not terribly distant future.

Connolly is an accomplice in the coup d’etat.

So… Obama’s state dept used a time machine to put him into office three years after Obama’s term ended?

Seriously, are you that much of an idiot or are you hoping that we are?

Oh absolutely. Filing false financial information in order to inflate value is one of his specialties.

Just a reminder that before he even took office, Trump tried to strongarm Congress into increasing the debt ceiling.

There has never been any intention to actually save any money. That was and is a blatant and obvious lie, as evidenced by the simple and undeniable fact that Trump has already signaled his clear intention to not only increase spending, but to increase it even more than Congress was willing to go along with.

So of course the “receipts” don’t add up - they’re part of the lie.

So… seriously, the Democrats are not even going to try to stop the Republicans who are actively overthrowing the government, but are instead just going to try to make them look bad enough that they can hopefully gain some seats in 2026 running as “not the Republicans?”

Well, then here’s the definitive answer to the recurring question of “will the Democrats learn anything from 2024?”

No. No they won’t.