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tl;dr: It seems almost impossible to judge the validity, reliability and authenticity of the goals and states principles of those outside of your circle. Do they actually believe it, do they actually think it's true, will they actually do it? Eg, "No new wars" and the Kamala deadenders who run the D's to pick an example from each ruling tendency.
I come here to-day to humble brag about my money, but in a culture war way; and to share my sure to succeeded investment system. This is financial advice, and you can trust it! (This is not financial advice, do not trust me.)
I've recently made a bit of a small amount of a fuckton of money based on starting amounts; took my fuck around money and plowed it into you guessed it, oil futures and related industries before it became clear that no, he really is that stupid. I'm up a lot on top of my previous gains from betting (read: instructing my investment guy who tells me which southeast asian restaurants are for real) to bet as if the various Trump economic policies would:
Not meaningful increase productive employment in the US.
Not help the balance of trade issue.
Not hem china in in any way, and in fact increase their gravity as an economic center.
Not lower the debt at all, public or private; and in fact increase the debt massively. (This one didn't amount to much, there isn't much money to be made here until the US starts to go downhill for real, so it's just positioning for now.)
This compounding my gains during the Biden boom times, I am up quite a bit, so much in fact that It no longer is fun gambling haha stonks money and now I'm worried about what it does; so I'm taking it as far out of the US economic sphere as it is possible (which isn't that far) as a hedge. I would buy gold with it, but I kinda think that it might not be a good idea right now, I don't know.
As to the culture war angle: If by merely assuming that the ruling party will fail at all it's stated goals and betting against them no matter how flimsy the reasoning gets, I make a killing; how does it keep on rolling? How do people wake up and see the all the red arrows, all the "I'm warning you!"s becoming "I told you so!"s and stay hype?
It would be one thing if there was some sort of big social project that the party was ride or die for; but even it's most sacred commitment (deporting non-whites) was limited in scope (non white, but not the ones the boss or his friends or his allies rely on, H1Bs for all and Farm Scut work for everyone south of the border!) and on the optics chopping block after all.
Where is the there there? It is it all vibes, or do people really, truly believe that there is a plan?
And the actual point of the whole post: Would it be possible for such a person to convince me, even if they truly ment, and even if they were right? It's hard to imagine anything but events changing my mind at this point, especially since my fuck around money is too ballin' for the FDIC to handle anymore off of them being wrong so far.
I'm concerned I've fully closed my mind to my opponents here, but I'm also concerned that if I opened it an inch more my brain would fall out.
Congratulations! I am always happy to hear about a fellow Mottizen prospering.
There are several major administration priorities, including (1) beefing up immigration enforcement (such as by increasing integration between federal immigration authorities and local law enforcement), (2) going after racial and gendered DEI policies and set asides (e.g., the VRA's "majority minority" districts, which SCOTUS seems likely to strike down and federal contracting laws), and (3) clearing state voter rolls and voting policies of tactics amenable to machine-style vote banks (e.g. the practice of receiving mail-in-ballots after election day)
It's just that a lot of this stuff is being done in quiet backrooms with a lot of very unsexy administrative law wrangling, and so doesn't make headlines.
However, on the broader point about there not being some sort of "plan," I completely agree with you. Trump clearly plays things by the seat of his pants, and there simply isn't the personnel infrastructure around him, either qualitatively or quantitatively, to carry through some sort of grand bizarro-Great Society-level legislative initiative. Plus, Congress is very close to becoming a completely vestigial organ, and so is in no fit state to draft, amend, approve, and push through such legislation anyways.
I just don't believe any of that is real, I guess. DEI to me was always a pride flag on the lockheed martin float type of situation; the only population that REALLY got anything out of it was women, specifically white women, specifically white upper middle class women, and they are still going to get exactly as much preferential treatment (deserved or not; I'm not even making a value judgment here) as before.
On top of that, until I see movement on actually enforcing use of E verify with universal fines, It's all immigration theater. We know what actually stops people from coming, we simply choose not to do it because it hurts the bottom line for the people in the R coalition with the juice.
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