This is a hard thing to write. 

I love the USA. We have such an amazing story that attracts and inspires people from around the world. We have a can-do culture that I adore. But, we have failed to turn our potential and American bravado into positive results for our citizens. 

I do not expect miracles and I do not expect us to be perfect. But over the last 20 years, it feels like half the country has been convinced to join a death cult. And, that death cult stands for nothing except telling Americans how exceptional they are with their freedom and big penises. As a nation we are drunk, covered in our own tears and vomit, and singing tiny dancer on the floor of a gas station bathroom. We are sitting in a puddle of our own exceptionalism. It is cold.

I do not want my son to grow up in the USA.
I do not want my son to be an adult in the USA.
I do not want him to be a parent in the USA

I view the USA a lot like I do a war zone. I am the type of person who wants to do a few tours in a war zone. I will flourish in that environment. And, I know plenty of people who are like me. But, I also know that if I spend 15+ years in that environment the war zone will change me and I will start to think it is normal to wear a necklace of ears and drink from a human skull (if THIS is your answer to what is “best in life” it might be time to take a vacation :)).  

Would I want to raise a family or children in that war zone with a war zone mentality? 

No. It creates people who only think about “I” and not enough about “we”. We overdosed on individualism a long time ago and instead of rehab and moderation, we thought it would be smarter to just add it to the water supply and up the dosage by 100x. I do not want the USA to be Europe/UK/Australia with their tall poppy syndrome but we have got to find a balance before we destroy our citizens. 

Do I want people who do not want to be in a war zone to be stuck in a war zone? 

Fuck no. I think maybe 20% of Americans want to be in the war zone and 80% are stuck there. The 80% that are stuck are hard-working and super-smart people that are just not as broken as that 20%. The 80% do not want to work 3 jobs with no paid sick days or time off just to survive in the USA. The 80% do not want to work 60+ hour weeks for so-called “career success”. The 80% do not want to sacrifice being a parent and being part of their children’s lives for their career. The 80% do not want to spend every day at work apart from a two-week vacation until they die. And, so on. 

Do I want people who are like me in that war zone? 

Yes! We need the 20% to do what they do. With the caveat that I want them to have a Geneva Convention so they don’t turn the entire world into a war zone and break everything. The USA is in a weird place where it has created rules that overly-regulate the wrong things. We’ve allowed private interest to create licensing and regulations to create monopolies while removing regulations around EVERYTHING else. Capitalism doesn’t work if you don’t have equal power for the common good and labor. It is like we looked at homebuilding and said we don’t care if you build the houses out of asbestos and napalm as long as the person who installs the doors pays $45,000 to go to these four-door installer schools and pays $3,000 a year to be part of a door installer guild. 

So… why do I not want my son to grow up, be an adult, and be a parent in the USA?

#1 – Health Care

I want my son to be able to focus on just getting better if he gets sick. I do not want him or any other American skipping medical visits because of money. And, I do not want him to declare bankruptcy because of the huge bills. And, I want my son to be able to get affordable health insurance no matter the job he is doing. If he is a cashier at Walmart and gets cancer he should only have to think about treatment and getting better. There are so MANY countries doing healthcare better than us. Go steal their system and implement it. And, stop paying for expensive treatments that extend life by only 6 months – we have to have some honest conversations about the inevitability of death. 

#2 – Paternity/Maternity Leave

I want my son to be able to spend time with his kids when they are born. And, I want his partner to be able to do the same thing. For all the bullshit right-wing politicians say about family values they don’t do a damn thing when it comes to actually help families be families. 

#3 – Daycare

If my son and his partner want to go back to work I don’t want the cost of daycare to crush them financially. For a family of two, this can cost as much as $1,500 to $2,000 USD a month and that is insane. If the government wants future taxpayers it needs to incentivize families to have kids and provide subsidized child care nationally. Make it easier to be a family in the USA. 

#4 – Paid Vacation

I want my son to have a life outside of work. I have family members with high paying jobs who get ZERO vacation days for their first year. WTF! Even if you are lucky to get two weeks off a year, that is just enough time to de-stress from work but not enough to remember who you are outside of your job. And, I want him to get time off even if he doesn’t work for a high paying tech company. If he ends up working as a cashier for Walmart I want him to get at least 4 to 5 weeks of paid vacation. It is like our society forgot that there is more to life than work and that people are more than cogs in a machine. In Europe, the minimum amount of paid vacation is four-weeks plus 10 holidays. In Mexico and Brazil, you get six weeks of paid vacation. Why are we so far behind the rest of the world? 

#5 – Paid Sick Days

If my son gets sick I want him focused on getting better, not having to choose between getting well and food/rent. Plus it is good for society as the current pandemic is showing. 

#6 – College + Debt

If my son has the desire, drive, and ability to go to university I do not want him to go into life-ending debt to afford that education. Education shouldn’t only be for the rich. I want any American who has the drive to be able to go to a university or technical school (and, at any age). It doesn’t have to be free, it doesn’t have to be fancy, but it should be tied to the cost of a part-time minimum wage job (like when Boomers were in college). 

#7 – Guns

I do not want my son to be killed in a school shooting and I don’t want him to grow up doing active shooter drills. The USA has a problem with guns and it continues to take no action. When 20 children between six and seven years old are gunned down and your country does nothing you know you are broken. We need better gun control policies and they have to affect current gun owners and models. 

#8 – The American Dream Is Dead + No Safty Net

America has been rebuilt for the upper-middle class and rich and Americans have an increasingly small chance of upward mobility. You have a better chance of upward mobility in Canada and these 31 countries (mostly in Europe). I want my son and his friends and other Americans to have the chance of a better life. There is no reason we can’t deliver that. Instead, we’ve built a country that is built on the backs of the poor and lower-middle-class. 

The American safety-net is almost non-existent. I do not want to eliminate risk, but I think we can help more people get on their feet, create jobs, and do better. Right now our safety net is like playing Russia roulette with 6 bullets in a 6 bullet gun. You are going to lose. I’d like to get it down to 1 bullet. And, I don’t necessarily want us to be Scandinavia. But, I feel at some point the USA looked at the huge pit we force people to climb out of and said you know what? We should add lasers and guns and bears because it should be harder so only 1 in 100,000 people can “make it” in this country. Plus that is good business because the ones that do will be so de-humanized and broken it will create great jobs for therapists.

#9 – America’s Kids = My Kids

I want to live in an America where we strive to give every child the chance to succeed no matter the amount of money their parents have, the color of their skin, or equally silly divisions. Right now it feels like we are building a country where we think the only way for our kid to win is at the cost of all the other kids. That mentality utterly disgusts me.

For many reasons, my son is going to have incredible opportunities and experiences. Some of which his classmates could only dream of and that is ok, that is part of the inequality life. But, everyone should have access to things like a great education, free/cheap university or technical schools, great healthcare, paternity/maternity leave, paid vacation and sick days, safe housing and neighborhoods, equal justice and treatment before the law, equal legal access, equal treatment by businesses, and so on and so forth. I do not think the USA is headed this way. The last 20 years have been horrendous.

I would love for change to be achieved without violence or property damage… but how can you not understand the desire to burn this system to the ground that has failed a group of people so badly?

Put yourself in a black person’s shoes. Count the number of people who look like you who have been shot and police let off without any repercussions or change to the system. Then count the daily interactions you have with a society that treats your children, your siblings, and your family as 2nd class citizens.

The vast majority of people protesting are peaceful. That is remarkable. We should listen to them and work to fix a broken system. The property damage you see on TV is amplified 100x because it gets ratings and with right-wing media, it fits a narrative that scares white people (also do not forget cases like this that rarely make the news when the dust settles, it was white nationalist pretending to be protestors that are trying to cause violence).

But, who are you to condemn protestors who are burning property and causing economic damage? People are angry, they are tired, they have been trying to get change and nothing is happening. Maybe burning down a business or a building will get your attention, what do they have to lose at this point?

It reminds me of the Boston Tea riot. When Americans “violently” rioted and destroyed businesses that were part of the system oppressing them. They “violently” destroyed millions of dollars worth of tea, ran ships aground, burned warehouses, broke into shops and stole their goods, and other violent actions. As an American do you think that was justified?

Samuel Adams argued that the Boston Tea Party was not the act of a lawless mob, but was instead a principled protest and the only remaining option the people had to defend their constitutional rights.

Are you ready to support this principled protest as the only remaining option the people have to defend their constitutional rights?

P.S. Also to the people on Twitter posting “all lives matter” please STOP saying that BS. “All lives” are not the ones getting shot by police and they are not the ones who have to teach their children entirely different rules for any interaction with the police. Saying Black lives matter is saying please value us as much as white lives, please help us stop a system that is killing us without repercussion, and please help us fix this system so that our country is stronger together.

P.S. 2. If you want to see the difference between how police treat white people and black people just imagine this… a white man shoots 3 people with an AR-15 rifle at a protest, he walks with his hands up down the road toward 3 police cars, police just let him go past despite people screaming that he just shot people. The man walks to his car and drives home. The next day they arrest him for murder. Do you see how that could be a problem when 3 days previous an unarmed black man surrounded by 3 cops is shot in the back 7 times while walking to a car with his 3 sons in it? Do you see the difference there?

P.S. 3. Defund the police is a bad slogan… what it means is let’s rethink what the police do. Do we need armed police to do traffic stops or respond to accidents? Do we need police responding to mentally unwell people who need help? Do we need police interacting with the homeless? Do police need to be the first responders to domestic incidents? In no way does defund the police means no police, it means let’s chop down what isn’t working and start anew. That might mean police need to reapply for their jobs and they need training that teaches them to de-escalate. Plus police should focus on solving crime because they are currently doing a shit job (Approximately 38% of murders, 66% of rapes, 70% of robberies, and 47% of aggravated assaults go uncleared every year – source FBI)

I hate putting money toward Politicians, but it is how the game is played in the USA and until we get it out of the system…

Now that we are ~80 days out I gave money to any of the Senate campaigns I think there is a chance to win. Especially to unseat Mitch. Who got money? Amy McGrath, Barbara Bollier, Alan Gross, Doug Jones, Mark Kelly, John Hickenlooper, Jon Ossoff, Theresa Greenfield, Sara Gideon, Cal Cunningham, Jaime Marrison, and MJ Hegar.

So stupid that this is how we vote in the USA. I basically view this money as a lottery ticket, that maybe something will change compared to the dark path the USA has been going down for 25 years.

I posted in 2019 about my struggle to vote for Biden.

So, why should I vote for him now?

He is a bland centrist, he is too old, and * most importantly * I think he lacks the knowledge and will to use the Republican’s own methods against them. My biggest complaint about the Democratic party is their resistance to using Republican tactics against Republicans. They like to stick to informal rules that haven’t existed for 25 years and they need to recognize that the Republican party is no longer the Republican party of old. It is a cult run on fear and Fox news. If the Democrats do not start playing by the new rules they will lose the war to determine the soul of this country.

By not playing the new rules they have already allowed the Republicans to play the game without offering real solutions to the American people. The Republicans only have fear mantras that their supports recite, have you ever seen a Republican plan to improve anything we face? Health care? Climate change? Growing inequality? Clean water?

I should note, I am not a Democrat, I switched from being an Independent to a Democrat after Trump. I felt I had no choice and wanted to register how utterly disgusted I am by the modern Republican party. The Democratic party and I have many differences, but the Republican party’s war on data, good governance, science, education, clean water, clean energy, good capitalism, and minorities is insanity.

But back to Biden/Harris…

I will suck it up and vote for them.

Why?

Because at the very least they are competent. Joe Biden is too old to be President but Kamala Harris is uber competent. We need competent people at the helm during this crisis. I am also hopeful that out of this crisis we can reboot significant parts of our society and economy to make them more resilient. It might be too early, but my hope is this is the right time for FDR level change. And, I have hope that Kamala recognizes the new rules.

I won’t lie, a big part of me thinks this country needs 4 more years of Republicans and Trump. Why?

Because only then will enough people be in REAL PAIN to drive REAL change. We are too rich and too stupid. Too many poor white people are voting Republican and too many rich white people are stuck in their bubble, unable to see past the Republican fear mantras.

P.S. Republicans of old used to have many good ideas. We need to move to a personal and corporate territorial tax system like the rest of the world. We need to safeguard the USD as a tool internationally. We don’t need to balance the federal budget, but we need to get it under control and build some better planning around how and when we flex it (see the prior point about safeguarding global USD dominance), we need to increase taxes or lower military spending, we need to bring in economist and data and experiments into government programs to make sure they are effective, we need to reduce and streamline rules, we need to de-license some of the license economies that have grown up, we need to look at the pros/cons of the monopolies we have created in a globalized world, etc, etc.

There are lots of great people who vote Republican. It is easy to see why. Simplistic solutions are easy to sell and easy to fit into your world narrative. We live in an uber complex world and it isn’t easy to sell the complexity. For example, keeping our water safe for consumption is HARD, we are failing at that in many parts of the USA yet the EPA gets railed on for overreach and hurting business by the Republican party. I want to live to see a future where the Republican party cares about giving people clean water to drink instead of pretending the EPA is some anti-business boogeyman.

P.S. 2. I think Joe Biden is a superb human being. And, someone who has dedicated his life to public service. I just don’t think he is the leader we need right now. I hope I am wrong :).

Jobs data is out… 3.28 million people filed for unemployment in the week ending on March 21st. The next week is going to be higher I would imagine. It is a good thing the Democrats got help for labor in the bill that should pass tomorrow. That buys us time to get this under control, flatten the curve, start testing people, build out red/green zones, and get back to work. I am curious to see if recovery is as fast and my guess is it depends on how well this bill supports SMB. Getting money to those businesses is going to be hard if there are too many steps.

We are doing well here. Spain is waiting to see the curve flatten. Grocery stores are well stocked and apart from wishing I could go on a long bike ride I am well. They extended the lockdown to 30 days which was expected. It isn’t the best news but it has to happen. Now we are wondering what happens at 30 days and I guess a big part of that is what the numbers look like then.

I was thinking today… what comes after this during the presidential election in the USA? I would imagine Trump goes into a full anti-China campaign, they did this, they gave us this, how do you stop someone running on fear and nationalism and racism? I don’t have much hope that Biden can counter that.

Do you want to see how an external financial shock becomes a depression?

Just take a look at the Trump team’s plan and their communication thus far.

This silly plan to give $1,000 dollars to people is a terrible idea.  People are not spending money because they don’t have money, they are not spending money because there is a virus and they are staying home.

That aid should be targetted to people affected, either boost unemployment to 100% of your salary/1099 or make a new program that guarantees every business their people cost if they are affected. You have to stop the panic and get people less worried about money. You have to create time to tackle the virus so that you can reopen in 60 days.

We could easily see 1 million PLUS people laid off in March. Restaurants and retail are shutting down for 1 to 2 months and if you don’t give the people laid off support this is going to keep rolling downhill.

And, you need to help businesses, you could push all rent/mortgage payments for 2 months to start. At least their bailouts are looking decent. They need to keep industries afloat so there are jobs when we get back to work.

My biggest worry is not the virus, nor the fundamental economics underlying our economy, it is the inability of Trump and his team to respond and communicate a response. If this thing is going to really IMPLODE it is because his team isn’t listening to economists and targetting aid where it is needed. These plans take time to implement, but you can announce them now, and start opening up credit lines to the big businesses to staunch the flow. Then work on helping the smaller organizations that are going to be harder to scale a response too. And, I like modifying unemployment because it is already in place and states just need money to bump up minimum payments ASAP.

That said, I don’t know shit, but I do know we have a TON of people already unemployed in restaurants and retail. And, they are not all going to instantly get jobs with Amazon or pizza delivery. And, you need them to come back to the restaurants that had to let them go as soon as we get the virus under control.

This is a hard one to say, but I do not think I can vote for Joe Biden if he is the candidate.

Joe Biden is a symbol of everything that led us to the current situation. One where not enough was down to make sure there is a real safety net and that everyone in this country benefits from the prosperity we enjoy. I am tired of a Democratic party that does not provide real solutions to the problems the middle class and poor face in this country. A dark part of me would rather Trump get another 4 years and for it to get even worse so that people wake up and start realizing we need real solutions to the deep structural issues we have created in this country.

I am struggling to bring myself to vote for such a bland centrist whose only idea on how to fix the country is to put him in power so he can go back to how things were. I do not want to go back to how things were, I am tired of ignoring the many structural problems we have in this country. IMO… Biden sees Trump as the disease, but I think he is the symptom. His supporters, as well as Democrats, have been fucked over for years. Trump is a symptom of a broken American dream. Replacing Trump will do nothing to staunch the bleeding if you don’t fix the wound. Biden can’t fix that wound. He will put a little bandaid on it and we risk it become a massive infection…

/rant

Live shot of the democratic party right now:

On Wednesday…

Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested nearly 700 workers at several Mississippi food processing plants in a series of coordinated raids that were described as “the largest single-state workplace enforcement action in U.S. history.”

What about their kids?

Keep in mind these kids are American citizens and who were in school while this was going on…

“These children were relying on neighbors and even strangers to pick them up outside their homes after school and drive them to a community fitness center where people tried to keep them calm. But many kids could not stop crying for mom and dad.“

““Babies and toddlers remained at daycare with no guardian to pick them up. A child vainly searched a workplace parking lot for missing parents.”“

How fucked up is it that we are arresting people who are doing incredibly hard work and paying taxes in the hope of building a better life for their family. That is the definition of being American.

Imagine you are one of these kids, waiting outside of your school, full of fear and anxiety on if your parents are still there and not knowing where to go or what to do. Maybe you are 9 and you start thinking about how you will even get food, or how to feed your younger sister.

Now imagine the larger community of kids in schools across the state and country who are filled with the constant fear of wondering if they will have parents when they get out of school tomorrow or next week or next month.

We have to figure out a way to grant citizenship to people who are here in the USA and who are for all effective purposes “American”. Plus we need to figure out a new path forward for sustainable immigration.

I’d love to see blanket amnesty and for Congress to grant everyone in the USA right now citizenship. These are great people who are working hard, paying taxes, and trying to raise great kids. They are just like everyone else in the USA except they were not lucky enough to enter this country when a “visa” was just a ticket on a ship to get here. We need more people for jobs right now, for the next generation of an educated workforce, and because we can provide a lot of people a better life. There is no reason we can’t take in more people who want to become American.

And, to people who say things like “oh they broke the law and came here illegally”, we shouldn’t reward them… that is silly. Your families did the same thing back in the day to get away from debtor prison or religious persecution or because you were accused of sorcery or just because you wanted a better life for your family.

In terms of immigration going forward… fuck if know what do as that is why I supposedly vote for competent politicians to research, learn, and make good decisions… :)

But I do know I’d like to see it be a lot easier for skilled and/or educated people from around the world to get a visa easily and for people studying here to get a 10-year visa easily. We want to attract, build, and retain the most driven and educated people in the world.

But, we are also Americans and that means a lot of our ancestors left their homes and everything they knew to try to make something better for themselves and their family. We’ve created something great here and to keep that going we need to have an honest conversation if we still want to be that “shining city upon a hill”. Because if we do want to be a shining city upon a hill we need to find a way to admit people who are so brave and courageous to leave their countries to find a better life. We need to give them a path to citizenship and give them the chance to build a better life and become Americans.

This is the America I want to see.

P.S. I also think we should be working to support all of Latin/South America economically and encourage the rule of law (not something we have done in the past + our drug policies). It is in our best long term interest to have an economically strong and free Mexico, Latin America, and Central America.

P.S.2 Reference articles on this here:
Jackson Free Press, Common Dreams and BuzzFeed. Among many others…

Sure this is a big DUH given everything he says and stands for, but to see him say that 4 Americans should go back to their countries because of the color of their skin is so repulsive and so disgusting it sets a new low… and then to see him double down just utterly disgusts me. How can anyone support this piece of shit?

Even worse… to watch Republicans “leaders” not speak up and call him out on this blatant racism and the un-American remark is maddening. We are a nation of immigrants. My family are immigrants…. just subtract a few generations and who isn’t. I can’t wait for the 2020 elections to arrive. I am optimistic that this is a dark period in our history can be made right. And, I hope we can make some real progress on the problems we have failed to address over the last 35 years that induced a group of people so economically and mentally insecure they voted for this piece of shit human being.

So is “fucknuts” one word, two words or hyphenated?

I am so fucking tired of people who talk about the government taking “their” money and how government should be run like a business. I hope this last shutdown has shown them some of the value of government so they can stop being such fucknuts.

Taxes are civilization.

They are you paying your debt to society for the framework it provides that creates the environment we all want.

Do you like drinking clean water?
Do you like driving on bridges that don’t collapse?
Do you like roads?
Do you like buying “olive oil” and it actually being olive oil?
Do you like ads that don’t make false claims?
Do you like cars that don’t randomly explode?
Do you like knowing if someone commits a crime they go to jail?

Civilization doesn’t magically happen. It takes money, skilled people to keep it running, and a society that RESPECTS the people who serve this country. The level of debate we are having in this country is so remedial it is sad.

Second, Government is not business, it CAN be very efficient but it many cases it should not be because it is providing a service to all of society in a way that private business would never do. Private business would watch your injured ass bleed to death if you don’t have money. That isn’t what we want as a society. Government is a platform, it is a platform that is meant to deliver results for its members. I wish we would stop having a debate over this and start respecting the people who work in OUR Government and the amazing work they do.

Wow, what an interesting time to be alive!

China might be in a recession, but we won’t know because of stats. Major slow down at least.

The EU might be in a recession, we will find out soon.

Trump has shut down the government over a symbolic border wall.

In a trade war with China, for good reasons, but I don’t really trust Trump and his staff of stupid to do this right.

Brexit with a hard exit fast approaches.

Plus…

Populism is growing around the world due to politicians ignoring the economics of inequality for the last 25 years.

Global warming is fast approaching some scary lines.

The USA is being crushed by student loans & an insanely broken health care costs.

Get a drink and sit back! This is going to be a fun one…

EIG.org just posted this fascinating report on how America has recovered community by community since the big recession. They divide the zip codes into categories, those being prosperous, comfortable, mid-tier, at risk, and distressed. Here is how that works out population wise:

Interesting things in the report…

Prosperous zip codes added 6.5 million jobs on net between 2000 and 2015. Factoring in the losses from lower quintiles, total employment increased by only 6.8 million across all zip codes over the same period.

That blows my mind, that means only 300,000 jobs were net added in zip codes other than prosperous… so 80 million people lived in areas that added 6.5 million new jobs, while the other ~228 million people got 300,000 new jobs.

Prosperous communities were the only group to contain more places of business in 2015 than they did prior to the recession.

So they are also the only areas that are creating new businesses which have an outsized effect in creating new jobs…

Distressed and at-risk communities, which contain 108 million people, have had no recovery in terms of jobs from the great recession. At risk communities are unchanged, and distressed communities have lost 2.2 million jobs.

That is hard to word, but basically, if you live in one of those areas things look the same as during the great recession or worse. I am curious what average pay looks like before and after as there have been a lot of articles about how the jobs that returned after the recession pay a lot less too.

Summary
You are fucked if you don’t live in a prosperous zip code.

Everything good economically is happening in those areas. Comfortable zip codes are holding their own, but I was amazed how fast they are being outpaced by the prosperous zip codes (winner takes all?). There should be some inequality, but this just looks more and more like someone is going to start getting the guillotine out.

“The social ramifications are profound. Growing up in areas of concentrated distress often has long-lasting negative effects on an all aspects of residents’ lives, from physical and mental health to earnings to family and financial stability. Even setting the moral implications aside, the financial costs of having the economy fail thousands of communities and tens of millions of people falls on everyone in the forms of lower growth and increased social outlays.”

What the hell do I like reading this stuff?
Beyond finding it fascinating I am really scared of another rise of populism and fascism. And, I think they can emerge when a country is failing a huge swath of its citizens economically. Plus we are already seeing the damage right wing propaganda is doing to our democracy and our institutions. The lack of education and economic opportunities is fanning that. Hitler’s rise to power had a lot of nuance, but I think it would have been a lot harder if the economy had been good for the vast majority of Germans. I think people like to close their eyes and vote for someone who makes outrageous problems if they think it will fix theirs. Especially if that story has a scapegoat they can blame their woes on.

What really frustrates me is that the Republican party is hell-bent on making it even worse, their policies create more inequality and remove more of the meager support network we have to help people get back on the ladder. It is almost like they want to revert back to medieval times where you had a lord and his castle surrounded by poor indebted peasants. They seem blind to the fact they may be leading this country toward a violent revolution because of their blind allegiance to ideology.

Man what an awesome time to be alive in this world :)

And scary… but that is also kinda fun. I just want to see if Trump is going to start a trade war and how that affects this new globalized world we all live in. Will it cause a true depression? Recession? War even? Or maybe even help despite every economist you can find saying it is a terrible idea? Or not even make it to implementation due to incompetence? Or just be a blip that gets rolled back in 2 to 4 years?

I find it odd that Republicans want to help the country through trade protection but don’t want to protect the labor that creates those goods inside this country. Minimum wage increases or even match inflation? Nope… Increase the social safety net? Nope, they want to tear it down. Fixing health care so people can afford it? Nope…

Fun times :)

I feel so sad for our country and for the people that voted for this guy. I hope they learn something. The Republican leadership has consistently pulled their entire organization toward crazy town. Real conservatives who have good ideas and want to build a better country are crying in the corner while the rest of their party screams about who is using what bathroom :(. It is super frustrating.

What is the silver lining of Trump?

I think it will be good for this country to lose the narrative that we are the greatest country on earth. I think it will be fantastic for Americans to get a kick in the face and realize that we have lost the lead in so many areas compared to other countries (so fucking many). I think we will be much better as a people/nation if we feel we are the underdogs and have to actually fight for what and who WE are. We like competition, we just forgot we had to be competitive…

Trump is the epitome of everything I hate about this country. A narcissistic selfish individual who thinks he is self-made but is not in anyway self-made. Someone who believes his opinions = science. Someone who loves gaudy shitty stuff. And, he is the worst type of leader who plays to our fears. This is a terrifying time as the current world order is built on American leadership and American security guarantees. When you lack leadership in a country that is the backdrop of security in the world, historically conflict has followed.

It makes me think of this hilarious Louis CK skit about white people and how the future is going to treat us :).

“I don’t want to go into the future to find out what happens to white people, we are going to pay hard for this shit. We are not going to just fall from #1 to #2, they are going to hold us down and fuck us in the ass forever, and we totally deserve it. But for now, weeeeeeeeeee!”

Seems kinda similar for Americans, especially depending on if we get our shit together and fight global warming before WE destroy the planet for humans.