MercuryUprising

Tell us all about it then, colonel

They will never collect. This is like busting a guy selling grams on the corner, releasing him the next day and claiming you've shut down the entire drug running operation.

These aren't some rinky dink operations, these are huge shell companies housed in office buildings with cubicles employing hundreds of scammers. It's part of an organized crime syndicate, and somewhere along the line there's some near-billionaire and a number of politicians behind the entire scheme. That's what they mean by the nebulous statement of it being "transnational."

Latinos subscribe heavily to the machismo personality = good, and that any threat against it is a threat to their existence. They are raised religious with heavy incentive on strong family structures, something that conservatives use as a weapon to curry favor.

Asians tend to be extremely conservative, particularly Chinese immigrants. They grew up in an authoritarian world, and view the progressive policies of the West as antithetical to their own. They don't care if Trump is a racist, or blames them for the Kung Flu, because he represents their views on what a government should be.

Stop calling them conservatives. This level of ultranationalism has fascist written all over it.

The both sides message is particularly insidious because it takes a real criticism and then equates it with something that is potentially much worse. It does nothing but limit options, and breeds nihilistic cynicism and nothing more. The worst part about it is that it is based on an absolute lie: the idea of both sides being the same doesn't make any fucking sense, because in this world nothing is the same. If it was the same, it wouldn't need to have a distinction. It's an argument against progress, and therefore a wholly conservative viewpoint in that it states that rather than choosing the best of the two options to not bother at all. To stay the same, or even revert.

It's totally dystopian and reminds me of Russian propaganda, which is designed to erode faith in everything, so that the people in power can make the decisions while the people feel helpless.

You could have Trump come out and say it to him directly and he wouldn't believe it anyways. Your friend chooses to believe what they believe the way a fanatic believes in their delusions. It only serves to reaffirm their belief structure, and nothing else. If Trump pulled a 180 tomorrow, these people would simply claim that he has been brainwashed or that he's a paid imposter, or anything else.

They are aggressively stupid. They would rather take the whole ship down with them, than admit they might be wrong.

It's true, you get microtransactions for everything these days. I pay a fee (technically I don't get a discount) because I told my cell phone provider to stop sending me spam multiple times a week. I'd rather pay the couple bucks per month extra then have to deal with that bullshit.

You just need to do more drugs