There was something off about his obviously intentionally egregious picks, and what you say makes a lot of sense.

In 2016, Trump was an outsider with a few allies. 2016-2020 he bullied anti-Trump republicans like Kinzinger and Cheney, making examples out of them and getting a lot of candidates, governors and House members to kiss the ring. By 2020 on Jan. 6th when it came time to object to certification and stage the coup, the House was deeply infected by MAGA loyalists, but the Senate was mostly immune (with a few exceptions, like perennially spineless Cruz and Hawley).

Now in 2024, the Senate is showing signs of pushback but Trump knows he has momentum from a likely complete House takeover and his election “mandate.” He’s making a statement: “submit.”

The backlash makes more sense when you consider it’s a purely emotional reaction. It’s a backlash against “feeling bad.” Nevermind that feeling bad when seeing someone who was wronged is appropriate.

Rather than even try to reckon with those feelings, the part of the nation that is not being victimized decided it’s too hard to empathize with victims. They didn’t like feeling bad. And happily for them, there were plenty of conmen and women, influencers, and other people more than happy to tell them they shouldn’t feel bad, in exchange for money and power.

I’m not giving up on America. But for now I’ve given up on Americans.

The reason is that we agree on all of the concerns, working class families should be getting attention and support and they’re not. The rich are eating us alive. Mainstream politics isn’t helping.

But it’s clearly substantially more the fault of the right, who are lying through their teeth to the working class while accelerating wealth disparities, anti-worker policies, and removing their upward-mobility as well as democratic, institutional and social protections they actually rely on.

And if Americans are so uninterested in facing reality that they’d rather be lied to than put in a little effort to actually check the candidates’ policies, if they’ll vote against their interests and give in to blatant propaganda and manipulation, when everyone is telling them what well happen… Well, what can we say but, “Ok, face-eating leopards it is. Enjoy. Let us know when you’re tired of that.”

Putin isn’t waiting, he apparently started amassing troops within a day of the election.

Yeah, for sure. But there’s been trends set off without explicit coordination in the past, especially where there’s an unspoken, unacknowledged pressure built up over time.

I suspect many both celebs and normies are ready to leave, and they’re waiting for an excuse, a signal that they won’t be leaving alone and losing those networks. If Taylor Swift does it, and then some movie star follows, and so on, it can organically cascade.

I wish people would have left earlier as well, but it’s not just sunk cost fallacy. Network effects are a rational reason to stay, and that’s the issue. If he has a community, he loses the community. I get it.

That’s why I wish celebrities would coordinate and all leave at once - it’s far more likely their network will follow them in that case, both hurting X more and helping themselves more, and accelerating people leaving as the network effects disappear on X.

The physics metaphor applies pretty directly here: They need to create momentum to counteract inertia.

I look at it as “the beginning of the end.” It’s crossing the event horizon in a black hole.

The GOP has successfully created an alternate fictional reality for the majority of voters, but once free press has been suppressed, there can’t be competing realities. There’s almost certainly no going back because the state propaganda at that point is the only game in town, and no oppositional narrative can take hold.

Yes, kissing the ring for sure. I knew Zuck was gone as soon as he called Trump “badass” and that he “couldn’t vote for a democrat” after the first assassination attempt.

Dude stood there and by his luck the bullet missed. This wasn’t some courageous action, this was “standing there until the secret service tackled me.” What exactly was “badass” about it?

Yeah, I mean, obviously this is not a 4D-chess move. Trump acts instinctively but he’s had a lifetime of narcissistic manipulation informing that instinct. Gaetz would already have been looking for ways to maximize his visibility while skirting the investigation, Stephen Miller probably could have contributed the “trigger the libs and deep state at first, and make it seems like they get a win once they’ve got it out of their system” part.

Everyone around Trump is self-interested evil in their own way and I could see how it works together pretty well.

The best explanation I’ve seen is that this was a calculated pick to distract and lower the bar for Trump’s eventual real nominee (Paxton?), allowing the Senate and public to swallow someone who will still enable the DOJ as Trump’s own personal vengeance law firm. It is also again Trump nonsense taking up all the oxygen, preventing debate over his other extremely problematic picks like Tulsi Gabbard.

It gave Gaetz cover to resign and prevent his ethics probe from being public, and if this theory is correct, he’ll withdraw from consideration before any of that information is made public. Mission(s) accomplished.

At the end of these appointment press releases, I fully expect to see one last press release that just says, “The Aristocrats!”

How many more are going to come out of the clown car? This is quite a performance.

Well, we’re going to see plenty of new crimes in the next 4 years, and Trump is going to be motivated to stay out of jail if it’s even still remotely possible. I think he’s going to do everything he can to stay president until he’s actually dead or incapacitated.

Yeah, the generational divisions aren’t clean any longer. Young men voted for Trump, thanks to social media “alpha” male influencers and recommendation algorithms.

So convenient to have detention centers - camps, really - outside places that have major concentrations of political opponents. Better to be prepared, right?

Nothing at all to worry about that Trump’s nearly highest priority is to install loyal leadership at the military. Nope, nothing concerning about that. Everything is fine.

I really hope someone is keeping a list of all of the saboteur hires, not just the cabinet level posts but stuff like this, in case we have the chance to remove them later.

I know in Mexico and other countries higher on the corruption index, where there are still elections that aren’t pre-decided but a lot of additional corruption and arbitrary politicking, this purge-and-replace cycle happens every election. It’s so unfortunate but may just be the new way of doing things, even if somehow we retain democratic elections.

This is the best “metaphor” I could come up with as well. The voters are abuser enablers who trapped us in a house with our abuser. They don’t see his abuse because they tune it out and don’t pay attention. If you raise the abuse to them, their response is, “Stop being so dramatic, he’s good for you.”

But the thing is, the fact that he’s actually a real narcissistic sociopath who feeds on our attention is not just apt for the metaphor - there is actually no metaphor. He’s simply, actually in an abusive, non-consensual relationship with half the country. And his voters are simply, actually delusional enablers.

Just to say it out loud: in the days after the election and call, Putin is amassing 50,000 troops for a big push. This is propaganda to make his eventual “negotiate peace by letting Russia keep whatever they have at the date of cease-fire” plan more palatable.

Good job - we picked the candidate favored by the KKK, Nazis, the Taliban and Putin.

Where even am I anymore.