Trying to figure out...

[Scooter]

... how taking over Canada, the Panama Canal and Greenland brings down the price of eggs, or stops illegal immigration

[BoSoxGal]

Okay sure we all know he's not going to do anything about the cost of living for us regular Americans because going after corporate price gouging would hurt the only constituency he cares about - multi millionaires and billionaires.

But you have to admit, Wayne Gretzky for PM of Canada is a brilliant idea!

[Scooter]

Actually not, given how far his tongue is jammed up Trump's ass.

[BoSoxGal]

I was being facetious but I have to say as a girl whose first major celebrity crush was on Edmonton Oiler Wayne Gretzky, it’s saddening to know he is MAGA. But after seeing his trashy daughter all over social media in recent years, I guess I’m not all that surprised. Another illusion shattered.

[BoSoxGal]

Trying to figure out . . . has life always been pretty much exactly as shitty as it is now, and I was just young, naive and starry-eyed so my current perspective is an effect of aging and having developed a pessimistic worldview - or are things really going down the shitter at an alarming rate?

[Burning Petard]

Quite Simple. Trump and Musk are products of capitalism. They both feel (emotion, not fact or logic) that they have achieved something, but it is so much less than what they expected it to be. They believe the answer to their longing, is a restoration to a binary society: Serfs and Nobility. This was last utilized in the Russian Empire, so Trump and Musk try to build connection to the person most nearly the Czar of all Russian--Putin. Trump and Musk believe they can leverage their resources to recreate the society which will recognize their inherent superiority and the weakness of all the others--the serfs. The serfs are bound their landed Lord and thus cannot ''immigrate'. To leave would be to become outlaws, subject to immediate death. The serfs would be allowed to keep a few chickens for their own food, and thus could have eggs for no cash outlay. Which would be a good thing, as no serf would have any cash. Cash would be evidence of capital crime for a serf. MAGA, not just for America, but for the whole world. Global warming and climate change would go away, just by the power of Trump and Musk's mighty Word.

For further elucidation of this conclusion, see George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, or Rowan Atkinson as 'Black Adder'

snailgate

[Big RR]

BSG--I think it is pretty much shitty as it is now, but the problem is that we (or at least I) expected more positive change. the backlash to these positive changes (be it things like access to abortion and birth control, gay marriage, ...) is a step backwards to those bad old days. I recall when I was a kid doing Civil Defense drills and cowering under my desk or in the hall or basement of the school because the Russians might attack, having to get condoms directly from the pharmacist (who knew my family so it was a problem) and living in a time when gays could be prosecuted for being gay and beaten with impunity. I even recall a time where the parents boycotted the public school I attended in Brooklyn because of busing to achieve racial equality (my mother and father did not support the boycott, but when i was in second or third grade and my mother took my sister and me through the picket lines, a neighbor yelled "you bitch, I hope they take your bastards first". I even recall a time when a neighbor rented an apartment to a couple who were of mixed race (she didn't know having only met the woman) and started throwing their belongings out the window, and when the police came they didn't arrest her, they arrested the couple. And let's not forget the Vietnam draft we all (at least males) faced. Life wasn't all that great then. sure, we didn't have Trump, but we had Goldwater and Nixon (not to mention Agnew), and we didn't have Musk, but we had Shockley.

What discourages me is that a lot of people seem to have given up; in my state (NJ) Trump almost won, and something like 600,000 sat out the election compared with 2020; I hope this is only temporary, but it does concern me.