3 ms·

I just can't. Watching from Europe, what's happening in the US is what is jokingly referred as "clown world" on the internet, except this time there are real cl

I just can't. Watching from Europe, what's happening in the US is what is jokingly referred as "clown world" on the internet, except this time there are real clowns everywhere. Like, how did it end up like this? You have Trump as president who campaigned on reducing the US trade deficit and government deficit. It turns out there is a lot of fraud and to such an extent that it essentially makes the anti-immigrant sentiment look justified. The US left cares about optics in a seemingly backwards way. They think exposing the fraud will justify racism and discrimination, so they deny that there ever was any fraud to begin with. This tacit approval makes them look like co-conspirators, which has worse optics than the bad optics they desperately were trying to get away from. And yet despite these "heroic" attempts at cutting government spending and the mass scale fraud suddenly falling into the lap of republicans so that they can crack down on it, Trump has contributed absolutely nothing towards reducing the deficit. Instead, the deficit is growing so quickly Trump will be overtaking Biden when it comes to driving the country into debt.

ZeroGravitas 9mo ago
I was confused by your mention of "clown world" as I'm more familiar with it being used by far right people who support Trump to undermine basic government competence and encourage anti-democratic nihilism. Your whole middle section reinforced that, as it sounds like the kind of things that Trump voters believe. So there's your answer, people who consume similar information sources as yourself voted themselves into danger and poverty by electing an angry bullshitter. Maybe there's a lesson there.
- defrost 9mo ago
  They may well be using the term much as it has been used in Australia to refer to the visible public actions of the Trump Administration as a clown show. By which we refer to the frequent mentions of Finland instead of Greenland, the Mixed and ALL CAPS rants on twitter, contradiction riddled statements, waffling, 10 years of Trump sounding very much like a drunken brother in law, etc. We do concede it may well be part of some deeper multi dimensional chess strategy to confound, confuse, unbalance and grift and applaud such genius... but it does veer toward what one expects from a gerontocracy.
  - ZeroGravitas 9mo ago
    "Clown show" and "clown world" are two different things. The latter has some dark associations so I wouldn't recommend using them interchangeably.
    - defrost 9mo ago
      I'll take that onboard should I ever transit USofA again, thanks for your advice re: contempory US usage of english. Gammon's another phrase that's a function of location: * UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gammon_(insult) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gammon_(insult) * On country (as over analysed by Kartiya): https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/on-gammon-global-noise-and-indigenous-heterogeneity-words-as-thin/ https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/on-gammon-glob... Mots pressés, mots sensés, mots qui disent la vérité, mots maudits, mots mentis, mots qui manquent le fruit d'esprit
    - metalman 9mo ago
      they say in China "Comrad Trump" is the greatest friend they have ever had in the white house
watwut 9mo ago
> It turns out there is a lot of fraud and to such an extent that it essentially makes the anti-immigrant sentiment look justified. Does it? How exactly so? They have a case of fraud that was literally prosecuted by Biden administration. They do not have "more fraud by immigrants then natural born Americans" situation going it. What do they have is "the most corrupt administration in history by white people" situation going on.
burnt-resistor 9mo ago
Putin loves America's useful idiots, greedy morons, and insane liabilities like Tulsi Gabbard. This is the asymmetric part of WW3 because the hot part is in Ukraine. Ukraine is fighting for the free world but isn't being given enough to gain a favorable negotiation position.
salawat 9mo ago
I mean, as a citizen of the U.S., I'm about as confused as you are. Though, if I had to guess, a couple of things really came to a head to make this second term possible: The establishment Democrats really screwed up on presenting a galvanizing candidate and sufficiently distancing themselves from Wall Street/Corporate interests. Trump may have lied his ass off at workers in swing states, but even though he had no intent/means to deliver half of what was promised, the man ended up telling people things were shit, while the Dems were still saying the experts were saying everything is the best it's ever been. Once in Office, Trump has become much more dangerous due to actually having the architects of Project 2025 behind the scenes orchestrating things. He was "contained" by ineptitude in his first term, but a lot of power brokers all got behind getting behind someone sufficiently corrupt so as to make a major facelift of U.S. foreign and domestic policy tenable. And the worst part about it is that it's all been enabled by the cooperation of the Courts, and the Legislature not mustering the will to rein either of the other two Branches back onto some semblance of sanity. I cannot say I have ever felt like I'm a stranger in a foreign land (in my own country of birth!), than I've been over the last two to three years. Don't know if this potential has always been festering under the surface, and I've just now hit the age where I can actually see it or what; but even my parents are flummoxed at the direction things have gone.
- ratrace 9mo ago
  > The establishment Democrats really screwed up on presenting a galvanizing candidate and sufficiently distancing themselves from Wall Street/Corporate interests. And good lord, have you seen Gavin Newsom? 2028 looks dreary.

ZeroGravitas 9mo ago

I was confused by your mention of "clown world" as I'm more familiar with it being used by far right people who support Trump to undermine basic government competence and encourage anti-democratic nihilism. Your whole middle section reinforced that, as it sounds like the kind of things that Trump voters believe. So there's your answer, people who consume similar information sources as yourself voted themselves into danger and poverty by electing an angry bullshitter. Maybe there's a lesson there.

defrost 9mo ago
They may well be using the term much as it has been used in Australia to refer to the visible public actions of the Trump Administration as a clown show. By which we refer to the frequent mentions of Finland instead of Greenland, the Mixed and ALL CAPS rants on twitter, contradiction riddled statements, waffling, 10 years of Trump sounding very much like a drunken brother in law, etc. We do concede it may well be part of some deeper multi dimensional chess strategy to confound, confuse, unbalance and grift and applaud such genius... but it does veer toward what one expects from a gerontocracy.
- ZeroGravitas 9mo ago
  "Clown show" and "clown world" are two different things. The latter has some dark associations so I wouldn't recommend using them interchangeably.
  - defrost 9mo ago
    I'll take that onboard should I ever transit USofA again, thanks for your advice re: contempory US usage of english. Gammon's another phrase that's a function of location: * UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gammon_(insult) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gammon_(insult) * On country (as over analysed by Kartiya): https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/on-gammon-global-noise-and-indigenous-heterogeneity-words-as-thin/ https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/publications/on-gammon-glob... Mots pressés, mots sensés, mots qui disent la vérité, mots maudits, mots mentis, mots qui manquent le fruit d'esprit
  - metalman 9mo ago
    they say in China "Comrad Trump" is the greatest friend they have ever had in the white house

watwut 9mo ago

> It turns out there is a lot of fraud and to such an extent that it essentially makes the anti-immigrant sentiment look justified. Does it? How exactly so? They have a case of fraud that was literally prosecuted by Biden administration. They do not have "more fraud by immigrants then natural born Americans" situation going it. What do they have is "the most corrupt administration in history by white people" situation going on.

burnt-resistor 9mo ago

Putin loves America's useful idiots, greedy morons, and insane liabilities like Tulsi Gabbard. This is the asymmetric part of WW3 because the hot part is in Ukraine. Ukraine is fighting for the free world but isn't being given enough to gain a favorable negotiation position.

salawat 9mo ago

I mean, as a citizen of the U.S., I'm about as confused as you are. Though, if I had to guess, a couple of things really came to a head to make this second term possible: The establishment Democrats really screwed up on presenting a galvanizing candidate and sufficiently distancing themselves from Wall Street/Corporate interests. Trump may have lied his ass off at workers in swing states, but even though he had no intent/means to deliver half of what was promised, the man ended up telling people things were shit, while the Dems were still saying the experts were saying everything is the best it's ever been. Once in Office, Trump has become much more dangerous due to actually having the architects of Project 2025 behind the scenes orchestrating things. He was "contained" by ineptitude in his first term, but a lot of power brokers all got behind getting behind someone sufficiently corrupt so as to make a major facelift of U.S. foreign and domestic policy tenable. And the worst part about it is that it's all been enabled by the cooperation of the Courts, and the Legislature not mustering the will to rein either of the other two Branches back onto some semblance of sanity. I cannot say I have ever felt like I'm a stranger in a foreign land (in my own country of birth!), than I've been over the last two to three years. Don't know if this potential has always been festering under the surface, and I've just now hit the age where I can actually see it or what; but even my parents are flummoxed at the direction things have gone.

ratrace 9mo ago
> The establishment Democrats really screwed up on presenting a galvanizing candidate and sufficiently distancing themselves from Wall Street/Corporate interests. And good lord, have you seen Gavin Newsom? 2028 looks dreary.