9 ms·

> Wow this administration is f*ing batshit insane It's reasons why this that I refuse to associate with Republicans in my daily life anymore. They are undeserv

• philipallstar 1y ago
  Haven't people been saying this for a decade now? The democrats purity tests make this test for copper look like child's play.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • duped 1y ago
    Donald Trump did get elected about a decade ago, so sure?
    • philipallstar 1y ago
      Indeed. The worst purity test to fail is being an ex-Democrat.
  • Mtinie 1y ago
    I’m genuinely interested in which “purity tests” you are referring to. I’m all for bi-partisan ridicule if it’s warranted.
    • throwmeaway222 1y ago
      https://nypost.com/2025/08/25/opinion/dems-nix-45-woke-words-from-vocab-privilege-birthing-person-latinx-intersectionality-and-more/ https://nypost.com/2025/08/25/opinion/dems-nix-45-woke-words...
      • miltonlost 1y ago
        An opinion article from the NY Post. Neat.
        • philipallstar 1y ago
          Isn't it better to argue the content than ad hominem the source?
          • cosmicgadget 1y ago
            Hold on I will have an LLM write a 40-page rebuttal and when you don't read it I'll accuse you of ad homineming the AI.
            • philipallstar 1y ago
              Well, either you've just invalidated the concept of ad hominem being bad, or you haven't. Which is it?
              • cosmicgadget 1y ago
                False dilemma. I have illustrated that distrusting slop and a propaganda magazine isn't ad hominem.
          • RankingMember 1y ago
            That source lost its right to the benefit of the doubt long ago.
            • philipallstar 1y ago
              No benefit of the doubt required. Either read the content and comment on it or don't comment.
              • RankingMember 1y ago
  • wasabi991011 1y ago
    So your claim (based on your link downthread) is that - new regulation changing trade in a way that companies are struggling to follow is child's play compared to - a memo from a think-tank suggesting a particular choice of words ?
  • 8note 1y ago
    what actually costs something though? you want to pay more in taxes for everything because you dont like the high standards democrats have for themselves? some democrats also want to raise taxes? why not support them if you eant to raise taxes?
    • philipallstar 1y ago
      Democrats don't have high standards. Joe Biden was "in office" but with debilatating mental decline while other people did everything, and the Democrats were all in lockstep totally fine with this, until the one day they weren't and everything got reversed.
• MSFT_Edging 1y ago
  I'll associate but sorta make fun of them in conversation. It's not the most productive but for all the pain their "opinions" create, the least I can do is make them feel the group believes their opinions to be ridiculous as the group all laughs. I don't think they should get civility outside of the voters booth if they're uncivil within the booth.
• throwmeaway222 1y ago
  yeah it's what publicans had to deal with for years when they were seeing their jobs vaporize and we just said ' well globalization ' but they didn't stop associating with crats.
  • miltonlost 1y ago
    ??? Republicans were also a huge driver of offshoring manufacturing, not just the neoliberal Democrats. What are you talking about?
    • Yeul 1y ago
      Americans now hate capitalism. If you predicted this 40 years ago people would have called you crazy.
      • deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      • timr 1y ago
        That's silly. What's actually happening is far more nuanced and interesting: the parties have flipped. For years, Democrats were generally aligned with labor, and broadly opposed to trade agreements -- remember that Hillary Clinton campaigned on rejecting the TPP [1], and it was unusual that Trump agreed with her, taking the issue away. Now, suddenly, the left is on the other side of the issue, because the current executive wants to restrict trade. It's nothing but realpolitik. Also, not that long ago, it was the left that was advocating tariffs. For example, Obama in 2009 [2]. Admittedly nothing as sweeping or rushed as what is going on now, but still far from the party of free trade. [1] https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/hillary-clinton-trade-deal-229381 https://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/hillary-clinton-trade... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna32808731 https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna32808731
        • dfxm12 1y ago
          No, the parties haven't flipped. Republicans and lobbyists just keep dragging the Overton window to the right and mainstream dems just follow along for most of the ride. Biden, who actually walked a picket line, is probably among the most proworker presidents in American history (certainly in my lifetime) and that's sad because the bar is so low. Trump, and his litany of judges, are all very much anti-worker and pro big business. He is trying to dismantle the NLRB at their behest!
• daseiner1 1y ago
  speak up, we can barely hear you in the top rows of the grandstands voters have essentially zero influence over policy and overwhelmingly vote on "vibes". also most people don't care about policy at any level of detail until it directly affects them. is this good? no. true nonetheless. much of why i'm not much of a fan of democracy and i think it's a sham. i don't think contributing to increased polarization, especially at the level of your neighbors, is something to be proud of.
  • intended 1y ago
    The Republican media-political machine is by far the most competitive, and they have been punishing bipartisan behavior since the 60s. Such actions are imitation, and therefore the best flattery. The Repub model is being replicated globally too. It just works.
  • dfxm12 1y ago
    Maybe you could have hid behind the "vibes" line the first time around, but not anymore. We're way past where we could realistically give people the benefit of the doubt.
  • tstrimple 1y ago
    > voters have essentially zero influence over policy and overwhelmingly vote on "vibes" The "vibes" that attract conservative voters are fucking disgusting.
• seviu 1y ago
  I live in Switzerland and Swiss post, which is the state owned postal service, does not ship to the US anymore. Here is the official link: https://www.post.ch/en/about-us/media/press-releases/2025/us-customs-regulations-hamper-the-shipping-of-goods-to-the-usa https://www.post.ch/en/about-us/media/press-releases/2025/us... Pretty crazy if you ask me
  • timr 1y ago
    > I live in Switzerland and Swiss post, which is the state owned postal service, does not ship to the US anymore. That is not what the link says. It says that goods consignments are not accepted -- which is not at all the same thing as "does not ship to the US anymore". The link explicitly says that they're continuing to ship letters, will continue to ship goods via another service, and (I can only presume) will continue to accept personal packages, since those aren't affected at all by these tariff changes. The discussion on this topic on HN is far more heat than light.
    • pj_mukh 1y ago
      Wait, ARE “personal packages” exempt? Doesn’t say that in the press release. If I buy a Swiss watch (<$800) I’ll have to use DHL or UPS (though AFAIK, they also use national post in places) so I’m SOL. But if my Swiss friend mails me a watch they can use Swiss Post still? Unclear.
      • timr 1y ago
        Nothing has changed wrt the personal exemption. Imports under $800 are exempt (i.e. you always had to pay tariffs on an expensive watch). I don't know how many commenters here actually realize it, but the de minimis exemption changes only apply to commercial import, which is how Temu and others could send a $10 piece of crap from China to your doorstep. I don't know if the Swiss post office has realized this, but it's true. Edit: one bit of nuance (see my comment downthread with some of the actual laws and the EO) is that if you buy a watch from Chrono24 or something then it's more like the Temu use-case, and I think the personal exemption probably doesn't apply? But if you go to Switzerland and pick up a $799 watch and post it back or carry it on a plane, then there's no problem.
• ThrowawayR2 1y ago
  And polarization and alienating voters has worked out so well as a strategy for the Democrats for the past 12 years, has it? Obama pointed straight at call-out culture as a losing strategy 5 years ago; NYT article: https://archive.is/Di4uG https://archive.is/Di4uG . The Democrats need to start divorcing themselves from "allies" like the parent poster immediately and loudly if they want to build a voter coalition strong enough to win the midterms.
  • crote 1y ago
    And how well has pandering to the Republican-light voter base been going the last few elections? Zohran Mamdani is doing so well for a reason: a decent part of the voter base is getting increasingly fed up by the center-right politics the Democrats have been selling. Young left-wing voters really don't like the fossils currently leading the Democratic party. If the Democrats don't start selling something better than "we aren't the Republicans", they are at risk of losing yet another generation to the next right-wing populist who claims he's going to "drain the swamp". So no, call-out culture isn't the problem: the complete lack of left-wing values is.
    • stale2002 1y ago
      > pandering to the Republican-light voter base Its not that you have to appeal to them. Feel free to have policy positions and to stand on those. You might even get some people on the other side to agree with you on policy. Instead, the losing strategy is doing what the OP is apparently doing, which is preemptively dismissing half the population, wholesale. Defining yourself as nothing, exempt as a hating half of the country is neither a real policy position, nor does it gain much. > Zohran Mamdani is doing so well He is doing well because he is standing on values. Not because he spends his time saying that he hates half of America. I'm sure he would be happy to get republican voters who move over to his side and agree with his policy positions.
      • anigbrowl 1y ago
        have policy positions and to stand on those As if activist conservatives won't simply lie about them. Yes, in an ideal world everything would be evaluated on the basis of policy by rational actors using objective criteria. In the world we live in bad faith abounds, and voters aren't very attracted to candidates who are long on integrity but allow themselves to used as a punching bag in some sort performative political martyrdom.
• bsimpson 1y ago
  Conflating the people in charge with Republicans as a whole, and writing them collectively off, is a disservice to society and by extension, yourself. The tl;dr of the current conundrum is that we have two corrupt political parties, and a system that's so rigged that it's nearly impossible to elect someone outside of them. Modern society's problems are complex to reason about and nearly intractable to solve. The people in power are not capable of even trying to reason about, let alone solve them. I grew up in Nevada. Most of the people I grew up with are lowercase-L libertatian: they believe the government exists to arbitrate between the conflicting rights of individuals; that it should be as small as possible and let them do what they like unless they're harming someone else. Because of the aforementioned duopoly, these people tend to count as Republicans (in the style of Reagan). (This is true generally - the more geographically isolated a place is, the more it skews libertarian. The more urban, the more it skews liberal.) The national Republican party was weak after Bush and got taken over by the Trump personality cult. The people I grew up with don't believe in instituting tariffs and arresting immigrants; yet if you force them to choose an R or D label, most of them are still going to count as R. The world is a nuanced place. If you ignore that nuance and force everyone you're willing to converse with to pass your litmus test, you end up with two tribes ostriching themselves into bubbles of partisan-approved groupthink. That begets more yelling, less mutual understanding, and makes it even harder to solve problems. All of this empowers the extremists who control the major parties to continue making the world a worse place in service of their own power. Yes, everything about politics sucks, and the people in charge are unfathomably awful. But if you refuse to share ideas with people you might disagree with, you're contributing to making that even more true.
  • orwin 1y ago
    There's a way to show you don't agree with your head of state, it's called protesting.
  • cosmicgadget 1y ago
    > Conflating the people in charge with Republicans as a whole, and writing them collectively off Maybe not "as a whole" but the majority of Republicans voted for this so at least those need to be written off. The rest have an opportunity to claim that they oppose the takeover by the personality cult. A great way to do it is to change their voter registration to anything else. At this point, ever Republican has absolutely opted in to the current leader and platform.
• kergonath 1y ago
  The vast majority of republicans caused this. You still need to talk to them and live with them. There will need to be a reckoning and they will need to own their mistakes, but you will need to move on. That’s the point of democracy.
  • mjcohen 1y ago
    They will never own their mistakes. That's the point of lack of democracy.
  • tastyface 1y ago
    Well, no. This is no longer really an option. 47% of Republicans would still support Trump even if he was unequivocally proven to be a vicious pedophile: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fact-check-survey-found-47-110000518.html https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/fact-check-survey-found-... These people have lost all sense. The only remaining option is to make their party electorally impotent. Dominate through any available dirty trick. Redistricting. Impeachment. Ignoring judges. Endless executive orders. Shock and awe. Whatever they've done, return straight back to them. (Except the really grotesque parts like sending innocent people to a foreign torture prison.) It seems that many people still haven't gotten the memo that we're not really living in a democracy anymore.
  • SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
    I do not need to and democracy does not require me to. The price of their mistakes is permanent shunning. I'm not going to go around conducting inquisitions, but I find I've been inspired by the tenacity of old folks carrying grudges against communism from the Cold War, and I'm confident I can carry this grudge until I'm an old folk myself.
    • kergonath 1y ago
      > The price of their mistakes is permanent shunning. This won’t work. Just look at any country that dealt with a fascist regime. The ideology gets shunned, but you don’t just cancel even 30% of a country’s population, otherwise you just create a permanent state of tension. You need a combination of very harsh punishments for the leaders and the most harmful people, but you also need a way to reintegrate most of them into the democratic process.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• worik 1y ago
  > I refuse to associate with Republicans i I understand I urge you to reconsider The purpose of the policies are to create division that can then be exploited. So fight them by building bridges and maintaining relationships It is hard work, but it is the most effective way to fight these people who would sacrifice general peace and prosperity for the sake of their personal greed
  • baggachipz 1y ago
    "When they go low, we go high" hasn't worked for a long time. They always find new ways to go lower and drag everyone with them.
    • worik 1y ago
      It worked for Obama - domestically
      • baggachipz 1y ago
        Did it though? He was constantly stymied, most of his policy goals were thwarted by republicans (specifically McConnell) saying that their only goal was to kill anything Obama wants. Romneycare was completely gimped. They went low, and it worked.
  • anigbrowl 1y ago
    'Fight them by collaborating as best you can' is an absolute losing strategy. The GOP isn't a normal political party any more, where you can appeal to long term interests, the back and forth of the political pendulum, national values and so on.
• sapphicsnail 1y ago
  I think it depends on what kind of Republican someone is. I was raised in a conservative Christian community and later came out as a transgender woman. I've been surprised at how many people have been supportive of me since they got over the initial shock. I think knowing someone who's personally affected by this administration has an effect on people's opinions. There are plenty of people who are reactionary assholes that aren't worth talking to but there are people who still have an open heart. It's tiring, and I couldn't do it if I didn't have a supportive community to retreat to, but I have been able to sway some people. I don't judge anyone that doesn't want to put in the effort though.
  • 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
    I guess that is my core problem: no empathy default. Opinion can be changed only by anecdotal example person (“you are one of the good ones”).
  • habinero 1y ago
    Yeah, I've made friends with a bunch of (mostly ex- at this point) Republicans because we can agree (1) that other people matter and (2) structural inequalities exist and should not. If we have that in common, then I find the difference in politics is mostly implementation and method. I'm happy to debate civic policy on the merits all day at that point. The people who are drawn to the performatively cruel side are not rational actors and can't be reasoned with. I've tried. You have my admiration for trying, especially in this political climate. I've had younger folk straight up not believe me when I say this is exactly the same playbook they ran against gay men in the 90s.
• anon_reaction 1y ago
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