The great 2020 election thread....

[Antiboyscout]

Supposedly the empty stadium featured at the Trump rally was due to students on Tik Tok buying up all the tickets lol. Personally I think Covid has seriously dented Teflon Trump - not necessarily because of his handling of the crisis but because he has been unable to hold his millions of campaign rallies.

Very interesting election coming.

You sure it doesn't have something to do with Antifa physically blocking the entrance like they always do?

[clearspira]

Supposedly the empty stadium featured at the Trump rally was due to students on Tik Tok buying up all the tickets lol. Personally I think Covid has seriously dented Teflon Trump - not necessarily because of his handling of the crisis but because he has been unable to hold his millions of campaign rallies.

Very interesting election coming.

You sure it doesn't have something to do with Antifa physically blocking the entrance like they always do?

As you said, ''like they always do''. So why were they so unbelievably successful this time?

[J!!]

[GreyICE]

OK, my friends, its time for the ultimate question: Its been four years since Donald Trump pledged to ''Make America Great Again''.

How as he fared?

I still don't know when/how we were 'Great' the first time.

1980s. Europe had been recovering from a war that tore apart the continent and killed tens of millions of people, destroyed infrastructure, homes, cities, factories, lives. 40 years... you can rebuild, but you take a while to build momentum. You can open universities, but there's limited scientific community when everything has been bombed to shit. Throw in the soviet occupation, and boy.

China? In a similar situation, they lost tens of millions of people in the war, Japan razed huge sections of the country. Then the "great leap forward" (off a cliff) went just fucking swimmingly. They were desperately trying to rebuild.

The USSR? Collapsed. Failed state. The wall fell. Their leader was in our supermarkets marveling at how much food we had. Africa? Recovering from the ravages of colonialism and imperialism. South America, the same, just with more American imperialism.

Who were the major economies in the world? America and... Japan? Japan is smaller than the state of California. That was it. We were the undeniable country who was the best off in the world, we were the best. No one could challenge us. We were number fucking one. It's never going to happen again, for obvious reasons.

[ProfessorDetective]

OK, my friends, its time for the ultimate question: Its been four years since Donald Trump pledged to ''Make America Great Again''.

How as he fared?

I still don't know when/how we were 'Great' the first time.

1980s. Europe had been recovering from a war that tore apart the continent and killed tens of millions of people, destroyed infrastructure, homes, cities, factories, lives. 40 years... you can rebuild, but you take a while to build momentum. You can open universities, but there's limited scientific community when everything has been bombed to shit. Throw in the soviet occupation, and boy.

China? In a similar situation, they lost tens of millions of people in the war, Japan razed huge sections of the country. Then the "great leap forward" (off a cliff) went just fucking swimmingly. They were desperately trying to rebuild.

The USSR? Collapsed. Failed state. The wall fell. Their leader was in our supermarkets marveling at how much food we had. Africa? Recovering from the ravages of colonialism and imperialism. South America, the same, just with more American imperialism.

Who were the major economies in the world? America and... Japan? Japan is smaller than the state of California. That was it. We were the undeniable country who was the best off in the world, we were the best. No one could challenge us. We were number fucking one. It's never going to happen again, for obvious reasons.

But much of the country was in turmoil. The inner cities were devolving into gangland wastelands, Reaganomics was slowly dismantling every social program or utilities they could while brainwashing everyone into thinking anything that benefited the people was a commie power grab, and the AIDS crisis was tearing through the non-cishet communities while those at the top simply let the fires burn! Also, Iran-Contra, The Satanic Panic, Cable Oligopolies, all of this having negative ripples still being felt today.

Oh, the REST OF THE WORLD had to be leveled to give us an opening and we STILL couldn't do right. Says a lot, eh?

[Antiboyscout]

The US had the largest economy BEFORE WW1 not after and not after 2. Those wars only heightened the disparity.

[GreyICE]

But much of the country was in turmoil. The inner cities were devolving into gangland wastelands, Reaganomics was slowly dismantling every social program or utilities they could while brainwashing everyone into thinking anything that benefited the people was a commie power grab, and the AIDS crisis was tearing through the non-cishet communities while those at the top simply let the fires burn! Also, Iran-Contra, The Satanic Panic, Cable Oligopolies, all of this having negative ripples still being felt today.

Oh, the REST OF THE WORLD had to be leveled to give us an opening and we STILL couldn't do right. Says a lot, eh?

Oh I'm not saying we weren't setting up the structural issues of all the problems we're facing nowadays. Crumbling infrastructure, declining social spending leading to long-term mental health and social timebombs a generation in the making, a devotion to magical thinking that was truly insane. Science denial, media manipulation, shooting the messenger for environmental issues. We killed 10,000-26,000 people in Bhopal with our racism and arrogance, and we didn't even say sorry, because we didn't feel we had to. We supported dictators, toppled others, and brazenly looted the country for the rich because there'd always be more where that came from (only there wasn't, and now there isn't, and we're paying for it). We destroyed the idea of America as a federation of states, and we expanded the debt into the stratosphere with Reagan's Star Wars nonsense and tax cuts. Fiscally irresponsible, politically irresponsible, socially irresponsible, racist, chauvinistic, killers with a smile and a wave. We were the police of the world, and you can see how we policed the world in what we turned our police into.

But if you were one of the ones on top of the heap? If you liked imagining that everyone else in the world shit a brick when the words "America" were spoken? If you bought into the great American mystique, the one unique true state in all the world that many would imitate but none surpass? Damn, it was a time. In all of human history, perhaps it was the only time you could look at the globe and say that there was one superpower in all the world. 20 years, 30 years, a generation. A generation of America, across the entire world.

We declined, all empires do. But man, if you asked 25 years ago "how long will America last?" most people would have said America was forever. That the rules of the empires no longer applied to us, that we could no more decline and fall than the planet could leave its orbit. Now? We feel depressingly finite.

[ProfessorDetective]

But much of the country was in turmoil. The inner cities were devolving into gangland wastelands, Reaganomics was slowly dismantling every social program or utilities they could while brainwashing everyone into thinking anything that benefited the people was a commie power grab, and the AIDS crisis was tearing through the non-cishet communities while those at the top simply let the fires burn! Also, Iran-Contra, The Satanic Panic, Cable Oligopolies, all of this having negative ripples still being felt today.

Oh, the REST OF THE WORLD had to be leveled to give us an opening and we STILL couldn't do right. Says a lot, eh?

Oh I'm not saying we weren't setting up the structural issues of all the problems we're facing nowadays. Crumbling infrastructure, declining social spending leading to long-term mental health and social timebombs a generation in the making, a devotion to magical thinking that was truly insane. Science denial, media manipulation, shooting the messenger for environmental issues. We killed 10,000-26,000 people in Bhopal with our racism and arrogance, and we didn't even say sorry, because we didn't feel we had to. We supported dictators, toppled others, and brazenly looted the country for the rich because there'd always be more where that came from (only there wasn't, and now there isn't, and we're paying for it). We destroyed the idea of America as a federation of states, and we expanded the debt into the stratosphere with Reagan's Star Wars nonsense and tax cuts. Fiscally irresponsible, politically irresponsible, socially irresponsible, racist, chauvinistic, killers with a smile and a wave. We were the police of the world, and you can see how we policed the world in what we turned our police into.

But if you were one of the ones on top of the heap? If you liked imagining that everyone else in the world shit a brick when the words "America" were spoken? If you bought into the great American mystique, the one unique true state in all the world that many would imitate but none surpass? Damn, it was a time. In all of human history, perhaps it was the only time you could look at the globe and say that there was one superpower in all the world. 20 years, 30 years, a generation. A generation of America, across the entire world.

We declined, all empires do. But man, if you asked 25 years ago "how long will America last?" most people would have said America was forever. That the rules of the empires no longer applied to us, that we could no more decline and fall than the planet could leave its orbit. Now? We feel depressingly finite.

Certain points of view...

Oh, and we royally scrambled South America for various (usually monetary) reasons. Besides New Wave and the Tech Boom, the Eighties were Hell.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Supposedly the empty stadium featured at the Trump rally was due to students on Tik Tok buying up all the tickets lol.

Actually ticket reservations were unlimited. The tik tok and kpop fans lead to overestimated numbers but did not ultimately affect how many people could sign up.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

I heard that Ivanka and Jared were pissed about that.