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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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It's over for me.

We pretended that senile rambling old man was a president for four years and now the country is more divided than ever. I am ashamed of how I have treated people while I have been under the influence of that horrible man who helped break this country.

I say helped break because he didn't do it alone. Every person who covered for him, who made excuses for him, who refused to see that there was an old man with no control over himself (he was leaking constantly, he couldn't keep a secret. He couldn't keep a secret.) has some share of responsibility in this.

This is a serious situation that we let get out of control. And we need to be united, and I wish I had been able to admit that Trump was a divider sooner.

  • -78

As far as I know, nothing in my life has ever been seriously changed by any of the last few presidents. If I was not paying attention to politics between 2008-2016, I could easily have assumed that a Republican was president. Likewise, if I was not paying attention to politics between 2016-2020, I could easily have assumed that some Democrat was in office. Likewise, if I was not paying attention to politics now I could easily believe that a Republican was president.

There are of course people whose lives do get significantly affected by who the president is, but I do not think that I am one of them and I am not sure that there are really very many of them in America. Presidents have more of an impact on foreigners through their decisions about the geopolitical and military leadership of the American empire and about immigration policy enforcement.

Iraqis and Mexicans have reason to care who the US president is. But for American citizens, is the impact really that much? Presidents are just all slightly different flavors of rich bullshitters who do not have much power to impact domestic politics anyway. I care more about who wins the presidency because of how it will impact foreigners than I do about how it will impact Americans because who wins the presidency might determine the lives and deaths of tends of thousands of foreigners, but it will likely do little to impact Americans much one way or the other.

As for the country being divided, why should I care?

I know that you are trolling but it is an interesting topic anyway.

This has been my position for a while, but I sometimes find it hard to support, like, I can't always rebuff arguments about supreme court, executive orders, etc. They do sorta matter, but it isn't apparent until some time has passed. For instance it took a decade for the effects of Clintonian repeal of Glass-Steagall, the creation of DHS, or Obama's NDAA2012 to become apparent. What seems to be the case, to me, is that the combined effect of the past 40 years of presidential politics is an increase in elitism and consolidation of power and wealth. There's a problem with the brain, not with a particular hemisphere.