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I'm not saying they don't want the pool to fail; I'm saying they want the pool to fail because its failure could be held up as evidence of Trump's incompetence. Why else would they care? (I agree they wouldn't particularly care to fix it if it were up to them and there was no political dimension to it at all; but I don't think we'd be seeing the same jeering enthusiasm for watching it falling apart.)
Yeah, that's the rationalization. They don't want the pool to fail as such, they want the pool to fail because of Trump. But then, next time, it will be because of Vance or *because of Rubio. And then when they're in charge of fixing the pool, there will be all sorts of other reasons why it can't be built: environmental review, DEI impact, it's not a good use of money when there are starving children in Africa, etc. etc. etc. There will always be some reason why, when they literally cheer for the algae, it's not literally cheering for the algae as such, it's knowingly self-ironic in the context of hoping Trump fails to clean the algae. And you're stupid if you don't understand the distinction. But the distinction is invented. The point is never about fixing the pool, the point is for them to be right.
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