I think it’s less about politics and more about the way the US handles things in general.

We don’t take preventative steps, even to problems we can see coming a mile away. We don’t discuss alternatives. We pretend the issues don’t exist until we can’t pretend the issues don’t exist any more. Then, after a few rounds of running around like our hair was on fire while trying to convince people “Nobody could have seen this coming!”, we react. And by “react”, I mean grossly over-react and enact the first knee-jerk reaction we can think of regardless of whether it actually solves the problem, and even if it just ends up making the problem worse. And then it’s all about keeping up the security theater.

It’s the American way.

Honestly, if it takes the Trump administration to get rid of pointless security theater policies like this that have never actually accomplished anything or stopped an actual attack, I’ll take it as a win. Silver linings and all that. Even a broken clock is occasionally correct, even if only for a second.

To be fair, this is generally the result whenever a company allows its AI to be trained on unfiltered data from the general public. This is far, FAR from the first time an AI went full racist in record time once it was allowed to start interacting with people.

It reminds me of a conversation I had with another user the other day. If a reservoir contains 99% water and 1% shit, the entire reservoir is still undrinkable. These companies keep allowing people to spill far more than 1% shit into the reservoir and wonder how we still end up with nothing but 100% undrinkable shitwater.

With that said, this result is only exacerbated by the fact that the people who would be interacting with Grok on X are themselves more likely to be anti-semitic due to the political leanings of the site and the ideology that is allowed to openly spread since Musk took over.

After this administration, good luck getting the undocumented to cooperate with law enforcement on anything ever again.

At this point, these aren’t even protests any more. They’re glorified parades. All they’ll accomplish is making people feel good about themselves for mildly going out of their way on their day off from work to attend a protest that will barely get any news coverage at all and will be all-but-forgotten by breakfast in the morning. They’re nice-and-neatly scheduled, at pre-approved places, held on the weekends, where they can easily be ignored by the very politicians that these people are protesting against in the first place.

Wanna actually protest? I’m not saying pitchforks and torches and guns and stuff. Protest at the offices of these representatives. Make it impossible for those office workers to conduct business or even get into their office. Demand that your representative get on a god damned plane even if they’re in the middle of DC to fly home and address their concerns. Prepare to stay for days if you have to. Do not move even if the authorities tell you. Stay and camp. Block traffic. Prevent local businesses from conducting business until they also pressure the representatives to show up. If they do force you to disburse, show up the next morning. Let them waste resources driving you out every single day.

Protest their houses too. Every single one they own, if they own multiple. Don’t let them sleep comfortably in their own beds. If they’re renting those homes to others, don’t let them sleep comfortably until they call their landlords and demand they show up. One way or another, make these representatives fear being pulled out of office by the short-and-curlies, if not outright fear for their lives.

I mean, you can continue to pull your government-approved permits to hold government-approved protests at government-approved locations on a day that is most convenient for you, between the hours of 9 and 5 while making sure to not so much as mildly inconvenience the very people you’re protesting against, and then keep wondering why nothing ever changes. But if you can organize 10,000 people to show up at what amounts to a glorified Kumbaya session, you can have those people show up in front of their homes or offices just as easily and at least have a chance of putting real pressure on these people.

Let it be known, now and forevermore, that Nougat is the sworn enemy of SatansMaggotyCumFart.

Let it also be known that multiple things can be inferred from the previous statement, each ickier than the last.

Do with this information as you wish.

Let it be known, now and forevermore, that floo is not an enemy of SatansMaggotyCumFart. Spread the news far and wide.

Do with this information as you wish.

Did you just interrupt him while he was making a mistake?!?!?

To be fair to them, they’re in the superminority right now so all they’d be able to do is feelgood grandstanding.

What pisses me off is that only 5-6 of them could actually have been bothered to try. All 43 of them should have been showing up there in unison and demanding entry. At least show a united front, for the love of God. But they can’t even be bothered to do the bare minimum grandstanding, let alone actual action.

I’m sure that Ron DeSantis will take the opinions of the half a dozen or so Democrat lawmakers out of 43 in Florida’s state government that could be bothered to show up very seriously, and it will be a top priority of the DeSantis and Trump administrations to address those concerns along with the other numerous legal and Constitutional issues surrounding the compound.

Until the crisis is over. Then they go right back to supporting Trump.

And after this ordeal is over, I’m sure that just like all of the other families that have been through this, they’ll see the error of their way anlololololoololololol, sorry, i couldn’t even finish saying that with a straight face.

Of course they’ll go right back to supporting Trump, just like all the others. Trump could fuck their wives and they’d sit there watching like a cuck with a MAGA hat on.

Centrists as in centrists. People who are center-right aren’t going to join a party that intends to go far left.

If Musk launched a party with large enough base support of clueless morons to destabilize both Rep and Dem parties, that would create space for the creation of a liberal/left party,

Actually, a new party that successfully pulls from both parties would most likely be centrist at best.

That’s context we don’t actually have.

It’s possible that Democrats are simply clueless as you suggest, but we don’t know how many people supported this not because they intend to join Musk’s third party, but because they also know that it’ll split the GOP vote and make Democrat victories easier.

I’m actually very much in favor of Musk starting a political party that effectively splits the Republican vote and makes Democrat victories that much easier. Go Musk!

So you’re only going to read the first half? :P

I’ve been lurking on r/Conservative

There’s problem #1. Don’t lurk on conservative. Excessive exposure to conservative has been shown to make you statistically dumber just from the exposure.

to try and figure out why they back Trump so hard, call it research.

Because it gives bigots a convenient excuse to be bigoted.

They say that prices have gone down in stores; I have not seen that, things have remained the same or gotten more expensive in my experience. Gas prices have remained…the same, I haven’t noticed a difference.

Because they gaslight and outright lie to you.

I’ve noticed that companies that perform services are now using Tarrifs to quote insane prices wether or not they were actually affected by it.

This was always going to happen. Tariffs give companies plenty of excuses to price gouge, and the GOP are perfectly OK with that.

I know the main reason is immigrants, the absolutely terrible things we’re doing to them gets thier rocks off.

Ding Ding Ding.

But if they’re so adamant about prices going down and the economy doing well they’d have to be experiencing that themselves? They wouldn’t be saying that so confidently to each other in an echo chamber unless it was happening.

It’s called keeping up the ruse. There’s a saying. “Say something enough times to enough people, and eventually they will start to believe it.” . Say it first, say it most, say it loudest, and shout any dissenters down. Unfortunately, this is a tactic that works very, very effectively, especially over the mid to long term, and it’s a tactic that Trump has mastered very effectively.

There’s also the fact that they’re pretty much forced to say it regardless of their feelings.

Speaking out against Trump has led to credible death threats against multiple politicians, judges, etc. Speaking out against Trump as an elected politician is also a great way to get yourself primaried, as evidenced by the number of former Republican politicians who have spoken out against Trump and then suddenly decided not to run for re-election. Thom Tillis is the latest, but far from the first example of this. And there are plenty of sycophants willing to get in line to be the next to suck Trump’s dick, just waiting for a Republican to speak out so they can be the ones to issue the primary challenge and get Trump’s (personal and financial) backing.

Confidently speaking the Trump mantra is a job requirement now. No, that’s not an exaggeration. These people have to repeat it, even to each other, if they want to keep their jobs.

So where the fuck are prices going down at?

They’re not. Remember those egg prices from a few months ago? When everybody thought that was the ceiling? That’s about to become the floor.

And remember, prices do not go down. Prices only go up. When the economic pressures that cause prices to rise disappears, prices don’t go back down. The new higher price just becomes the new floor. And the reason for this has been ingrained in corporate America for at least as long as I’ve been alive, probably far longer: Corporations charge a price that the market will bear. It doesn’t have to bear that price willingly. If people buy XYZ at a grossly inflated price because they need XYZ (life saving medication, for example), then that means the market will bear XYZ at that price, and that price becomes the new floor. The fact that the market bears that price under heavy duress is completely irrelevant.

I guess my question is what is actually happening? I want a news source thats going to be honest and not exaggerate for rage bait. Because I now don’t trust either sides news.

Yeah, good luck with that. I’ve actually been lucky enough to talk to a couple of the more prolific Youtube ones, and they’ve confirmed something that most people figured out anyway: The hyperbole, over-exaggeration, and rage-bait is pretty much the only way to get noticed at all in today’s media environment. It’s either that, or not get heard at all. American readers love their tabloid journalism. And for what it’s worth, I agree with you: The more clickbait I see in a headline, the less likely I am to trust it or the reporter using it.

There’s numerous forces in play here. First is that the Trump administration and our court system has essentially decided that Freedom of the Press is no longer a thing. We’ve seen news reporters make the pilgrimage to Mar A Lago in order to appease Trump. We just saw CBS cough up tens of millions to Trump and forcing one of their own reporters to apologize for reporting factually correct information that Trump didn’t like. Most major media companies have opted to be much more Trump-friendly in their reporting rather than deal with retribution in the form of frivolous lawsuits, punitive EOs, legislative retribution, etc., and even a lot of independent media has toned down reporting because they literally cannot financially afford to be the next target of the Trump Hate Machine.

Another thing that has come into play: Some time back, Mitch McConnell started the GOP mantra that still exists to this day. No matter what the Democrats are in favor of, the GOP must be against it at all costs. Up to the point where he has torpedoed his own bills because they got Democrat support. This has ultimately led to both sides digging in their heels and taking the “Whatever they are for, you must be against” to ludicrous extremes.

It has led to the extreme political polarization of America. The other side is 100% wrong on all things, forever and for always. “Reaching across the aisle” is now seen as a betrayal to the party. Bipartisanism is all but a racial slur. Even admitting that the other side might have a point worthy of discussion is enough to get you labelled as a R/DINO. Compromise and negotiation are seen as capitulation and weakness. Virtually all significant votes are party-line and can be predicted well in advance, almost down to the vote.

People, on both sides, generally don’t look for objective political discussion on the Internet. People generally don’t like being challenged, even if they don’t want to admit it. What they’re looking for are echo chambers that will repeatedly tell them what they want to hear, how right they are, and how evil the other side is for daring to disagree with you. Conservative openly admits it in their side bar: They are not a “safe space”. They are not objective. They are not interested in hearing points of view that are not their own. They know all of the criticism, and their response is “Yeah, we know. And we like it this way. Now get out.”

But the left does the same thing. It holds true on Reddit’s /politics sub, and it holds just as true here. Post anything that favors the right. Anything. Could be an article, opinion, whatever. Even just a reply to someone else. Be neutral, objective, factual, and cite your sources. Watch as you get downvoted to oblivion and openly mocked and ridiculed. Watch as the words “Fuck off” get voted to the top. Watch as replies that are largely copium with absolutely no basis in facts or reality get upvoted and treated as biblical prophecy because people like hearing it. Feels over reals goes both ways. Because people aren’t looking for information. What they want are echo chambers. And people in echo chambers typically don’t take kindly to someone new coming in and hurting their fee-fees with all of those things like objective facts and reality and stuff. As far as they’re concerned, you can fuck all the way off with that.

Why are they saying “abrupt”? Trump was explicitly campaigning on this, and the GOP in general have been climate deniers for years.

I want to point out that this is not unique to the U.S. - farming in Europe and the U.K. suffers from the same problem.

Actually, it’s a worldwide issue that has existed pretty much since the beginning of society. Today it’s undocumented labor. Back then it was just outright slavery. Pretty much every economic system throughout civilization’s history has relied on slave labor to maintain its food supply and infrastructure. There has never been a period of human history where people were paying for goods and services based on the workers who created those goods actually getting paid a fair wage, particularly not in agriculture, construction, or infrastructure.

I wonder what the effect of raising wages for farm labourers would be?

Check my post history. I gave a couple of examples in another thread on the same subject. In a nutshell, if undocumented immigrants were getting paid a living wage + benefits and that cost was passed onto the consumer, it would likely cause the price of food to double, if not more. The wage gap between undocumented workers and even low-paid union workers working above board is fucking enormous, and society at large does not have a grasp of how much impact that has on food prices, and for that matter, goods and services in general. We live in a society where we have become accustomed to high quality goods and services that we think are created by people making a fair wage, without realizing just how much of that work actually is being done by people making barely a fraction of what they deserve. You’d be amazed at how many people think that the fair cost of labor is already baked into the price.

In another example, I discussed the fact that this is common in construction as well. If just one or two undocumented workers were replaced with union construction workers at a competitive wage, it would probably add anywhere from $30-$50,000 in extra labor costs to the cost of a house. A house worth $150,000 today would probably start at $200k+ if it weren’t for undocumented labor.

You’d end up with a whole bunch of people making what we would think would be a “living wage” until you realize that the cost of everything has gone up and you’re right back to being barely able to afford the basics. You started off making $400 a week and having $500 worth of expenses. Then your pay was raised to $500 a week, but that caused the price of goods and services to rise so now you’ve got $700 worth of expenses. So you demand a raise and now make $700, but this causes the price of goods and services to go up to $1000. So you…well, you get the idea. You don’t actually end up making any financial headway. All you do is essentially devalue the buying power of the money you do have while wondering why your financial situation never changes even when your pay does go up.

And then when people stop spending money on tourism and electronics and luxury goods because they can only afford the basics now, that’s when you start seeing job losses. And more people unable to afford things, which causes more job losses. And the ripple effects just keep going on, and on, and on, and on…

And the reason for this unending loop is because our entire economy is built on the idea of cheap, exploited labor. Take cheap, exploited labor out of the mix and the entire system becomes unsustainable and quickly collapses. Why do you think we so heavily rely on shit from China and third world countries that wipe their asses with safety standards and pay their workers less than what a homeless man would make begging on a street corner, if they pay them at all. Because if we tried to make that stuff here while paying our workers a competitive wage, 95% of that stuff would be completely unaffordable to all but the wealthy. There’s a reason why, like I said, every President before Trump has done exactly nothing to address the problem outside of paying it some political lip service when they’re campaigning. Because they know that if you fuck with it, the entire thing comes crashing down.