I think that part could be inoffensive if they mean people have to talk in class or something like that. The crazy part is "without distractions or prejudgement". It's pretty clear that they mean you can't say that racism is wrong, Nazis were bad, slavery was bad, etc.
We try and they hate us for it. I'm not going to stop trying, but what am I supposed to do.
This fits into a broader dynamic in American politics: Republicans lie about an issue and Democrats try to compromise. Voters see Democrats agreeing with Republicans, so they think Republicans are correct on the issue. Then Republicans run with the public agreement and shift even further.
The most depressing part is that half the country apparently wants to live in knock off 1984.
It's like 35% percent that really knows what's going on, tops. Another 35% are only hearing that Trump is the greatest genius of all time from Fox, OAN, Newsmax, Twitter, and Facebook.
Yeah, they haven't really been trying for a while now. We taught them there would be no consequences no matter what, so they stopped caring.
I've never wanted to burn a flag so badly in my life
A lot of very rich people would rather be slightly richer in a much poorer country. Seems like a bad trade to me, but a lot of rich people get obsessed with money.
I agree. Partly because of things the Trump administration is doing and partly because of how little meaningful pushback there is from the rest of society.
Yes, and it's also paradigmatic that Republicans are actually doing what they accused Democrats of. Not exactly voter fraud, but certainly trying to win elections illegitimately.
I totally agree. It's also maddening that we don't talk about how childish he is. It should be shocking and embarrassing that the president posts like this, but now it's just normal.
And it seems to have poisoned the brain of the richest man on Earth.
Also very unclear why we're supposed to believe that there are massive numbers of vote fraudsters, but they're all on the Left.
I take your point, but I also take these approval numbers with a grain of salt. What matters is how popular Republicans are compared with Democrats. Trump was never broadly popular, but people hate Democrats.
A big part of the problem is that lots of people see a false pro-Trump narrative on Fox, Newsmax, Twitter, Facebook, etc and then, if they even get exposed to mainstream news, they see those folks agreeing out of some bizarre sense of balance or bogus political punditry. It's maddening.
Yeah, or to the Confederacy, the lost cause, and the end of Reconstruction, or the people who insisted on the 3/5ths compromise, etc. There's been a strong radical reactionary streak among conservatives since time immemorial.
Current Republicans are discrediting past Republicans, not making them seem more reasonable. It turns out that almost everyone has been giving Republicans too much credit for decades. As soon as they got the opportunity, they took away every civil liberty that they could.
I agree with your point, but the farther back you look, the more opening shots you will see from Republicans. I think Nixon represented a big turning point for conservatives. He tried to do a lot of what Trump is doing now and Republicans have been mad that Nixon had to resign for 50 years.
I believe that in South Korea you automatically get speeding tickets if you exceed the posted limit. This is another case of horror at the impossibility of a good idea that's already been successfully implemented elsewhere.
I guess we're going to find out whether the federal grand jury process is worth anything.
And sometimes they say out loud what they're doing and people still fall for it. Like when Chris Rufo said he was going to make Critical Race Theory the next culture war.
What's wild is that Republicans regularly govern as a pro-scam party. I don't know what to make of that, except: 1. Americans have trouble imagining that regulation can actually improve anything and 2. Our media environment is awful and totally disconnected from policymaking.
Cold comfort that half the voting public +/- 1 million will vote for someone who will destroy the country because of egg prices.
100%. They're serious about all of the things they say. I'm pretty sure MAGA will cheer if Trump hangs a reporter or Democratic politician. Hell, they weren't joking about hanging Mike Pence.
I understand being mad at the fecklessness of Democrats. There's plenty to be mad at. But the people ruining the country right now are Republicans. We should be mad at the people who are doing bad things, not the people who maybe could have stopped them.
Even "liberal" mainstream media pretends that conservative anti-science idiots have a point. One of the truly damaging things about the failure of the NYT, the Atlantic, etc to be honest about these things: People see absolute insanity on the Right, then the outlets they perceive as Left half agree
I think COVID may have accelerated this, but it's conservative media and social media that did it. Half the country simply doesn't live in reality anymore and they'd rather die or kill their kids than admit it.
You keep saying that Biden or Obama could have done this, which might be true because the conservative supreme court would have let them do conservative stuff. They could not have done whatever ill-defined thing you think they should have done. Nothing you've cited would have constrained Trump now
I'm glad, but I don't trust this until it's people saying they would vote for a Democrat over Trump. It's great that Trump is unpopular, but that's only half the battle in our system.
With the exception of Gaza, this is a list of things that either there's no way Biden could have done or they wouldn't have helped in any way today. I'd be happy to defund ICE, but that would have made the Democrats lose the 2024 election even worse. Be mad at the people who are doing things now
No, that's meaningless bullshit. Tell me what he should have done. I'm not expecting anything because you don't know.
This has been a problem in American politics and political journalism for a long time. Little discussion of policy plans and goals. Lots of talk about horse race BS and who voters would want to have a beer with.
What should Biden have done?
1. No Biden didn't have the same powers. The same Supreme Court that lets Trump do whatever it wants would smack down anything Biden did. Same with Congress. 2. Most of your post is non-sequiturs. Nobody said everything Biden did was good.
We were supposed to do something: Vote for the other candidate. America voted for this. Not sure what you think Biden could have done. Democrats can't fix this when Republicans win elections and decide they're not interested in following laws and norms.
As it was and forever shall be. If there's inflation in 2027, you better believe they're blaming Biden, Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Mamdani, etc.
I think you're being overly charitable. MAGA is happy to pay this tax because they've totally brainwashed themselves into believing that whatever Trump does is good. Real world results do not matter. These are people who happily died by the tens of thousands to stick it to the libs during COVID
I don't see how either, particularly since half the country doesn't want to recover.
But how do they feel about Democrats? I'm glad young people are seeing that Trump is awful but it's only half of the problem
What's really disheartening is that half the country loves it.
Being right means you have reasons for your position that are correct. It's meaningless to call Trump right in this case. He is NOT "right" here. To paraphrase a great philosopher, "you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to him""
I'm sure the writers get paid a lot and there are a lot of other people who work on the show. Colbert's salary alone must be multiple millions. I still don't believe they lost $40 million. If they did, it suggests to me that their whole business is cratering.
Yes, but it's also been here since we reelected a man who tried to overturn an election. As soon as it became clear that one political party is willing to ignore all constraints on their power, those constraints became effectively meaningless.
And a bad idea. I just can't understand why these people think creating a Republican king is a good idea, even as they see how Trump would abuse that power.
I see they're also trying to appropriate "moral panic" to try to make it seem irrational to be upset about immoral things.
You don't believe in fair use?
And we're making it all worse!
How does MAGA feel about Matt Gaetz? I find it weird that he seems to have avoided condemnation for serious moral lapses.
This is such a good point. Democrats' theory of this political moment is that Republicans are going to implode and we should let them instead of doing anything significant. Stop telling people not to watch the implosion, then!
If that's true, Trump's foresight is tremendous. I thought he was just being a scumbag when he was being a sleaze with this pal Epstein. Turns out he was playing 12-dimensional chess to set up distractions from tariffs or something.
Very telling that MAGA is excited about opening new prisons.
Thank god. Most of my remaining faith in America died when Trump was reelected. The rest is going to die the next time Republicans aren't severely punished in elections.
Yeah, I think that's a very reasonable conclusion at this point. I don't know if Bezos intended to kill WaPo as an independent entity when he bought it, but I think he's happy to do that now.
In addition to being morally wrong, I don't think these moves are good for business. Who do they think they're appealing to? I don't think it's realistic that more conservative readers are going to start like WaPo more. Maybe Bezos just doesn't care.
It's good. The most prominent Republican is publicly connected to a well-known pedophile. Republicans have made the case that this is a big deal. Trump is acting 100% shady and on tilt about it. Why would Democrats ignore that? Some people's political instincts are shit.
I think they expected Epstein to be a scandal for liberals.
They live in a parallel universe of right wing propaganda. A lot of things that don't make sense in 2025 America start to make sense when you consider that half of our people get all of their news from Fox News, Newsmax, OAN, and social media.
Truly wild that their goal seems to be injecting more car traffic into Manhattan. Hard to think of a worse idea.
Hopefully people start wondering just how real the "Russia hoax" was. Once you start considering that Trump might be lying to you, he gives you a lot to think about.
Sooooooo embarrassing that this kind of BS works on half the country.
Direct flights between Canada and Mexico are going to be FULL
Those subreddits where people post their text exchanges are exhausting. Those conversations are often weirdly hostile. The best is when someone posts a text exchange and I can't figure out who is supposed to be the bad person in the exchange.
You don't always know what will work. I think it would be madness not to ask the questions that are begging to be asked. Why does the Trump administration keep lying about this? It's the right thing to do politically and morally. I don't think it would take much effort.
Yep and MAGA didn't care when tens of thousands died unnecessarily from COVID. Death is a price worth paying to preserve their partisan identity.
Thanks for doing the work!
One of the scariest things about our current political and media environment is that I'm not sure it will make a difference if babies start dying more often. People won't believe it or won't care.
Do you think the people who are mad about immigration would vote for Democrats? I see two sides to Democrats' problem: 1. Trump is immensely popular with a large minority of the country. 2. Democrats are deeply unpopular with a large swath of society. I worry that even if 1 gets better, 2 won't
Good. They're probably NIMBYs who bought two apartments and combined them into one and do everything they can to block any new building.
And that Republicans are willing to tolerate death rather than reconsider their partisan identities. COVID was a stark illustration of that fact. School shootings are another regular reminder. Add this to the list.
I do not understand this logic. It would be political malpractice to ignore the most prominent Republican's ties to a public pedophile. Democrats don't even have to make the case that this is a big deal. Trump and MAGA have made that case already. There are real, reasonable questions to ask.
If there was a list with Democrats on it, don't you think they'd be selectively leaking that? I do.
The most prominent Republican is being extremely weird about a famous pedophile that he was friends with. I don't understand the political case for not highlighting that fact at every opportunity. Ask every question.
You're probably right. Now that I'm thinking about it, they're probably mad about Epstein because they think a bunch of liberals were going to get caught up.
Do you think MAGA would ignore them? I'm open to that possibility, though there seems to be at least a little pushback on the bizarre Trump BS on Epstein.
It's a confusing post, but CBS News seem to be the bad actors here.
The most prominent Republican is deeply connected to a known pedophile, wished another convicted sex offender well for no apparent reason, and keeps lying and covering up his pedophile connections. Why would Democrats ignore all of that? I really don't understand it, either morally or politically
The question is why Trump keeps lying about this and I think it's reasonable to ask. It makes Trump look bad and he deserves it.
I almost appreciate that they're just openly pro-dictator now. No hiding.
Indeed. Secret police also didn't want to be "doxxed". They were secret.
What about the South Korean example of stopping an authoritarian takeover? I don't know if I need Jeffries and Schumer to lead the resistance, but I'd feel better if they were participating.
Yep. The military is walking around American cities. Legal niceties are less important than reality
Great point. Mainstream media gives false balance, which reinforces the rhetoric from Right Wing propaganda media. Half the country hears two messages: Right Wing media tells them Trump is right about everything and mainstream media tells them Trump might be right and Dems are a mess.
Dominance isn't winning arguments, it's being repeated enough to be perceived as correct. More than half the country hears constantly that the Left is just peddling grooming and communism. They believe it
No no no. That's obvious nonsense. Every other god was made up by humans, but the god we were raised to believe in is real. /s
The layman's perspective is more useful than legal doctrine now. Trump gets the presumption of regularity and Biden didn't. Partisan expectations are more predictive than whatever passes for legal reasoning
Yes a thousand times and it's so obvious. Remember when critical race theory was awful or gay marriage was going to destroy society? They barely even try when they come up with their bullshit these days and it still works. Goes to show how powerful the right wing propaganda machine is.
Also a reminder that everything that happens gets reported as "Dems in disarray"
The subway is a big part of what makes NYC great. It's madness to think that everyone in New York would be happier if we were driving everywhere.
At least they're making it clear that they're not path forward. I like some people at NYT, but overall the paper might be doing more harm than good these days.
Wow, that's depressing and seems right to me. Hard to imagine that turning around any time soon.
This is descriptive, but I don't know if it really answers my question. The area is red because the people vote red. Nobody forced them to do that.
He sucks, but is it wrong to also ask why his constituents elected him? They just had to vote Republican for some bullshit reason and they got what they voted for.
He sucks, but how am I supposed to feel about the people who rely on Medicaid who voted Republican? I don't want them to suffer, but they chose this.
I strongly suspect that Bezos, Musk, and their ilk think AI will take so many jobs that they'll better off with fewer Americans around.
Good question, but also important to consider who they will blame while they're sitting in their own shit. I think there's a good chance that they'll blame Democrats and immigrants, no matter what happens.
Half the country will destroy the country rather than vote for a Democrat. At least half of the media will destroy the country rather than accurately report on Republicans or support a progressive.
If something is good for the economy, MAGA is probably against it now. Immigration, higher education (and primary education), research & development, infrastructure, cheap renewable energy, trade, etc etc.
I'm a little puzzled by this. Maybe I'm missing some serious pushback from greedy, but less ideological rich folks. Musk is publicly complaining, but it doesn't seem to be breaking through. I think part of the answer is that most of the Right is drunk on right-wing media.
100%. They think everything that goes wrong is Biden's fault. Hell, they blame Biden for the things they didn't like about the pandemic response in 2020.
I agree with all of this, but I am skeptical that actual degradation of society would convince conservatives that they were wrong. I assumed that they would just let Fox News tell them that everything was going great and ignore their actual lives.