Lol yeah the "I went to the restaurant but didn't tip to teach everyone a lesson" is the same as "I voted for the third party to teach everyone a lesson."

No, you gave the restaurant owner their profit and the employee nothing. You helped no one, you taught no lessons, and if we could harness your mental gymnastics as physical gymnastics we would have infinite renewable energy.

Or voted for a third party candidate. That was just a vote in Trump’s pocket

At this time, it is unknown who is sending the text messages or why they are doing it.

Racists. Racists are sending the text message.

They are doing it to instill fear because they believe that the nation is now a white supremacist fascist nation.

Gotta love "journalism."

Last year the US imported ~8 million barrels of oil per day from 86 countries and exported about ~10 million barrels per day to 160 countries. Why didn’t we simply net it out at 2 million and stop all imports? Setting up additional drilling infrastructure not only takes time, but it’s often far more profitable to import/export over sea or intl borders. Why would we stop the profitable export of oil and prevent the profitable purchase of oil to spend time and money just moving oil across the country?

Yup. A big issue is the system has been rigged against us for so long. Wages haven’t increased as rent, houses, groceries, transportation, education and everything else have gone up in price. So as Sagan said, people want to “feel good” by believing a “down to earth guy” who isn’t formal, doesn’t look like the establishment will fix it.

Trump and his cronies have made themselves out to be the good guys, that will tear down the systems that are causing hardship, when they are the exact elites that has built this system and want to further it. Fascism works best with an unseen and/or misdirected enemy and uneducated population, and it’s clear. It’s the gays/independent women/migrants/minorities. It’s those who are “different.”

They’re part of that unseen enemy that keeps making thing worse. And for the idiots it feels good for them to drink beers together and complain about grocery store prices and say “fuck Biden.” Instead of “have you guys seen congressional proposals to limit increases to grocery prices?”

He'll start buying russian natural resources at a dollar on the dime and gas prices will drop a little bit and all the dumb idiots that voted for him will drool and smile because "ooga booga feels good" while he pulls out of nato and the world marches towards WWIII

I don’t, but I appreciate you sharing as I’d rather pour battery acid into my eyes than watch the fascist victory happening on Fox News

Though once Trump comes up with some new logo that may or not be a swastika and it becomes draped with that logo that may not be a good thing. Though I see him going more the Mussolini route and putting his face on shit

As an American, our bell was tolling long ago and so few of us cared to listen. (This is a quote from Carl Sagan's book from nearly 20 years ago).

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance”

America is likely now doomed. We'll balkanize into minor states that join either the axis or allies of WWIII until we mostly dissolve altogether and the next wave of history and death and rolls through. Though seeing the rise of fascism on the world scale, I think we're generally just doomed, all of us. Perhaps we're just an avenue for AGI to wipe us out and go fight other AGIs on some intergalactic scale not much different from our own inability to get along and work together. Perhaps I've been drinking myself to stupor now that I see what has happened.

Though many of them have spouses or shares in private industry and their family makes far more if they vote in [corporation x] favor. Federal minimum wage is still $7.25 an hour. I'd much rather see something like this: https://www.closeup.org/a-new-rule-results-in-cost-of-living-reimbursement-for-house-members/ rather than just blanket COLA increases

This guy's already pregaming for the long dark into fascism