oxjox

I think I've figured this out.

The idea that individual Americans should "do their research" about their health care and medicine is preposterous. Government exists, in part, to do this work for us. However, the Trump / GOP agenda is to strip these agencies from the federal government and replace them with private corporations.

So, who do we then get our medical advice from if not a medical professional at a government agency? The corporations who manufacture the drugs. And how do hear about them? "Sponsored posts" and "influencers" like Joe Rogan on platforms that we subscribe to. Privatization of government run agencies makes the wealthier more wealthy on the backs of clueless Americans still touting "trickle down economics" and "the free market".

Americans, if they don't die first, are about to go bankrupt in record numbers.

The problem I have is that Trump's entire agenda to make Americans poorer and corporations richer is right out there in the open. He's going to dismantle the federal agencies, make the states do it themselves, or make them into corporate enterprise. At the same time, he's increasing the costs of imports from China. There's no way this ends well for Americans' wallets.

Could you tell me one or two of these policies Harris' contributors support?

My personal reaction to reading this is that I want to pick up the book just to better understand what he believes these conservatives values are. Then I realized this is like trying to understand why Hitler wanted to gas the Jews.

What's more important is why the fuck Americans are democratically voting for this. I'm going to venture to guess (and hope) that the majority of people who voted for Trump have no clue what they voted for. I'd like to hope that teachers are going to use this moment in time to perfectly frame it along with the rise of Nazi Germany but I know that Trump also intends on burning down the DoE. Teachers will be prevented from using history to educate students.

Incidentally, I'm already exhausted by all the "news" being made about why the Dems lost and Trump prevailed. We have to be discussing why our media and our existing elected officials are all ignoring the plight of middle class Americans while failing, as they have always done, to educate people.

I remember as a kid hearing presidential debates and getting aggravated that the politicians weren't answering questions. And then in interviews and news reports a topic will be discussed but the contexts and ramifications of that topic are often left out (time constraints, etc). Quick example; why Biden sent arms to Israel has as much, if not more, to do with Iran as it does Gaza. WHY is never explained in political discourse and the media never pressures or holds officials accountable. I am terrified of what Trump will do to our already squeamish journalism community.

I still blame the media for Trump's 2016 win and I'm blaming them again today. People are clueless. Not to say they're unintelligent, they are uneducated regarding politics and history.

People are all in their own bubbles living their day to day lives and occasionally see headlines on their mobile apps. They're subtly influenced, sometimes by the news media but I'd venture to guess equality often by the efforts of Russian, Iranian, and Chinese disinformation armies.

Moreover, this far from a new issue. I was just reading and commented on a story about Musk being the most powerful unelected citizen in America. This reminded me a bit of the guy Citizen Cane was based off of. William Randolph Hearst owned a sprawling media company and used his influence to publish articles that were favorable to Nazis.

How are we not only allowing this but voting in favor of it?

Something is broken. It's not the political parties. It's evidently not the electoral college. Schools have always taught about WWII so it's not our education system. It could be the two party first-past-the post voting system. It could be how election campaigns are financed.

I think we're distracted. I think there's too much going on in modern lives. Too many Americans are struggling to get by while also using every moment of free time to disengage. There's basic government and economic policies and norms that people are clueless about. Take drilling for oil: most Americans think that if we drill for more oil our gas prices will go down. That's not at all true. This will only increase profits for the oil companies because, while the US actually produces more oil than any other country, we lack the infrastructure to refine the oil we have. Honestly, I only learned about that this week. Not to mention the whole tariff thing that republicans are clueless about. Above all else, I'm terrified that Trump's presidency is going to bankrupt Americans.

As this article alludes to, Americans should know that the GOP agenda is to dismantle federal agencies and replace them with private corporations. Some agencies and services will go to the states while others will become Wall Street funded corporations. Theoretically, federal taxes should decrease but state and homeowner taxes are going to sky rocket. The costs of goods and services is going to sky rocket while the quality plummets over time. This has been in the playbook since before Reagan got into office. Now they have the momentum, the votes, and the stooge in the White House to make it happen.

Don't be distracted as the stock market goes to the moon. This is their agenda – to make themselves richer on the backs of clueless Americans.

lighter/heavier oil (I can’t remember which)

So... you didn't even read the first sentence.

“The need is infrastructure,” he said. “You may produce all this light sweet crude oil in Texas. But if you don’t have pipelines to the nation’s refineries to deliver it, how are you going to be able to utilize it?”

Yes, the type of oil is certainly an important part of it and if people were more aware of this I think it would be helpful. But it's the combination of the type, the refining process, and trade that makes it more clear that "drill baby drill" is not the panacea Americans think it is.

Drilling for more oil is for the benefit of the oil producers, not for American wallets.

the most powerful unelected American ever

Other than the "unelected American" part, it reminds me a bit of William Randolph Hearst (who is widely considered as the inspiration for Fox's Murdoch - not to mention Citizen Kane).

William Randolph Hearst Sr. was an American newspaper publisher and politician who developed the nation's largest newspaper chain and media company, Hearst Communications. His flamboyant methods of yellow journalism in violation of ethics and standards influenced the nation's popular media by emphasizing sensationalism and human-interest stories.

Hearst acquired the New York Journal and fought a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. Hearst sold papers by printing giant headlines over lurid stories featuring crime, corruption, sex, and innuendos. Hearst acquired more newspapers and created a chain that numbered nearly 30 papers in major American cities at its peak. He later expanded to magazines, creating the largest newspaper and magazine business in the world. Hearst controlled the editorial positions and coverage of political news in all his papers and magazines, and thereby often published his personal views. He sensationalized Spanish atrocities in Cuba while calling for war in 1898 against Spain.

During his political career, he espoused views generally associated with the left wing of the Progressive Movement, claiming to speak on behalf of the working class.

Hearst gradually began adopting more conservative views and started promoting an isolationist foreign policy to avoid any more entanglement in what he regarded as corrupt European affairs. He was at once a militant nationalist, a staunch anti-communist after the Russian Revolution, and deeply suspicious of the League of Nations and of the British, French, Japanese, and Russians. Following Hitler's rise to power, Hearst became a supporter of the Nazi Party, ordering his journalists to publish favorable coverage of Nazi Germany, and allowing leading Nazis to publish articles in his newspapers. He was a leading supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932–1934, but then broke with FDR and became his most prominent enemy on the right. Hearst's publication reached a peak circulation of 20 million readers a day in the mid-1930s.

His life story was the main inspiration for Charles Foster Kane, the lead character in Orson Welles' film Citizen Kane (1941)

12 Monkeys 2: Dozens of Monkeys!

lawyer, doctor, teacher - one of these things is not like the other.

We liked the way things were four years ago,

Apparently I am the one who has been living in an alternative reality for the past eight years.

All the headlines today are about how the democrats screwed up. What I have not seen discussed is how in the everlivingingfuck any person could possibly vote for Trump. There was nothing good about his presidency. By all measures, he was one of the worst presidents in American history (while Biden was one of the best in modern times).

We all, myself included, need an education about what the president does and how they can impact kitchen table economics. I mean, I find it hard to grasp that people would vote for Trump just because the cost of bread is up while ignoring the pages of lies, indictments, convictions, rapes, bankruptcies, coup attempts, impeachments, not to mention hate speech. I hope people still don't have the belief that the US president has any substantial impact on gas prices. The economic efforts of the Biden administration have fixed everything that Trump screwed up.

I still don't think people know what inflation is. And while we all have the world's information in our pockets, no-one cares enough to look it up. Inflation goes up because the demand for goods is higher than the supply - meaning either we were buying too much crap and/or there were environmental variables decreasing supply. Inflation happened because of the government stimulus checks, supply chain issues, and disease spread across livestock - it's a feature, not a bug. I get that all they care about is their grocery store bill but a basic understanding of economic policy would go a really long way. The Democratic policies, past and proposed, put consumer (and livestock) protections in place to prevent or minimize price gouging and monopolies and supply chain disruptions. The Republicans fight these bills because it would cut profits for corporations. Voting for a Republican is a vote for less regulation - it's the regulations that keep prices down. Unfortunately, government moves slow AF so a lot of times these regulations don't have an impact until the next president's term.

By all accounts, Trump is going to drain our wallets. I am terrified. I haven't had a raise in over ten years. I don't really have a skill set that can transfer well to other companies. I'm a renter with an amazing landlord (relatively cheap rent) but I was hoping to buy a house sometime in my lifetime. What Trump has proposed is going to substantially raise the prices of good and services. The Republican agenda is to strip the country of public services and make them private enterprises - raising the cost of living for everyone. I really don't know what I'm going to do for the next four years.

It's not the faulty of Democrats. It's the fault of the media and capitalism. It's the fault of crumbling journalism as people choose hot take emotional rage bait over educating themselves to understand why we are where we are. It's the fault of the DNC and RNC being too powerful and their fight against reasonable elections such as RCV or STAR voting. It's the fault of corporations controlling congress. The conspiracy that no one wants to acknowledge is that we're moving towards a country that is privately owned by a handful of billionaires.

You've neglected to include the part about having already been through a Trump presidency and that everyone has forgotten, in just four years, how his presidency was worse than we had anticipated.

Trump is going into office wholly unopposed. There is nothing, no one, to stop him from doing what he wants. We will be feeling the outcome of this election for generations, if not the lifespan of this country. Not to mention the lives and countries lost on the other side of the world as he allows Netanyahu and Putin and Xi to do whatever they want.

There is no pendulum. It's a broken ass apple cart being pushed and pulled by a donkey and elephant grasping at the last straw of life.

Tell me how you believe it's "good news" that someone who has no education in health care is best suited to tell people they should do whatever they want when it comes to their health care needs? Tell me how it's "good news" that someone with no understanding of science is the best person to tell parents with no health care education that they should do whatever they want for the health of their children? How is it "good news" that the person being considered to run our nation's health system believes "good science" is the stuff that has been scientifically proven false?

Remember your words when Netanyahu bombs Gaza and people want to ask the community about it.

Just because YOU don't want to hear about something doesn't mean en entire community should BAN discussion of it. It's absolutely bonkers that anyone can rationalize this position.