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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   13766 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026

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Consequently, they're reduced to playing dumb, either mildly dumb by pretending it's all about the cost of food vis-a-vis other expenses or downright retarded by pretending that the issue is about literal $20 burritos and going "heh, don't you know burritos aren't actually $20". They're basically in the same position as Biden was four years ago; they can pretend nothing is wrong or they can blame the last guy. Neither is likely to work.

As I've said countless times, the main issue of 2024 was prices. Fair or not, that's what it was, and what it continues to be. The no 1 complaint I constantly saw was "Bidenflation". The no 1 sign I saw for Trump was the "Trump low prices, Kamala high prices" one. The most successful Trump ad buy was literally portraying Harris as an idealogical obsessive concerned over unimportant culture war fights (trans people in prisons) over the everyday issues the typical American deals with (prices/jobs/etc).

So what lesson was taken away from this? Nothing. Trump has pressed multiple "slow down the economy" buttons that most presidents would never push with his tariff nonsense and record pace losing war, while spending his time about the same things the typical American doesn't really give a shit about like the reflecting pool or ranting about transgender data centers (no seriously, he seemed to have mixed up "transistors" with "transgender") or whatever else.

Like I believe most of the complaints are pure vibecession both now and during the Biden era, but if you explicitly run on a platform to focus on the economy and lie and say you will lower nominal prices (because you know that's what people want) and then fail to do it, then of course people will be upset. There is literally no way around this, the GOP ran on lowering prices, and everyone can see prices are not lowered. They exploited the delusion there's a fix everything button for votes and then seem surprised that people actually believed in the fix everything button they were constantly told and promised was real.

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