Touching a Hot Stove
Sometimes kids have to learn for themselves. You know the type – the child who defies your warning to be careful or not do something that could be painful, like touching a hot stove or tasting Tabasco. Some kids listen, and some…have to learn for themselves. I think we’re there. Trump has bent reality to the point that alleged rapists, liars, haters, racists, security risks, and the clearly unqualified are tapped to lead gigantic federal agencies with millions of people. Prolific lying is normalized. Political pressure from oligarchs’ money, along with the caving of tech bros has created a tsunami of bad judgement and acquiescence that’s going to get precisely what Trump wants – chaos and destruction.
You know what? Sometimes you just have to let them touch the hot stove. I predict that in the next 24 months millions of Trump voters who have supported mass deportation, privatization of the Post Office and Medicare are going to be shocked when they lose benefits and friends disappear. They’ll be pissed when the price of eggs and other groceries skyrockets and when it costs more to fill up their cars. They’ll be shocked when their iPhone and television prices double, and when there are shortages of products they’ve come to expect on the shelf. They’ve believed the bullshit and touched the stove – let’s see how long it takes for them to recognize that doing that really hurts. The problem is that others who didn’t touch the stove will also get burned and healing will be a really long time coming.
There’s not much else normal people can do now. Delusion has taken over at all levels of government, business, and society, and the only way out now is to let happen what’s going to happen. Hopefully when the suffering gets hard enough, people will wake up from their coma. I just hope they do.
Amen, Jefe! Like you, I grieve for the many, many very real and permanent harms that will result from the Trump administration. May MAGA realize quickly what a disaster their votes have brought on ALL of us (and the environment, the global emergency, and so much more).
1I think it was Will Rogers that said, ” Some people have to pee on the electric fence them self’s to learn its a bad idea”
2Or, the ever popular “Don’t Whiz on the Electric Fence” from Ren and Stimpy:
When nature’s callin’
Don’t be stallin’
Use your common sense
Before you let it flow
Find a place to go
Just don’t whiz on the electric fence
If you’re gonna explode
You can use the commode
Of igloos, cave dwellings or tents
No need to explain when you gotta drain
Just don’t whiz on the electric fence
You can swizzle on the sofa
Piddle in the air
Tinkle in the toilet
That’s why it is there
(Toilet flushing)
You can let it rain
3In the breakdown lane
While waving at ladies and gents
Just don’t whiz on…
Don’t whiz on
Don’t whiz on the electric fence
I would be nice if they ever actually learned but they don’t. They had a whole Trump term to learn, clearly it didn’t work.
4If they want sympathy from me my response will be, “You can find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”
5I don’t know. Voters kept Reagan and then Bush I despite their disastrous policies.
6The Orange Menace will blame Biden and the Dems for it all…..and the sheeple will believe them.
7People waking up won’t change anything except perhaps their opinions. They can’t undo what they stupidly did—to all of us. I believe they’ll generally suffer more pain than many of us, but I’ll be skipping the thoughts and the prayers.
8Mango head will blame everyone else but himself for everything,just like he did with the fiasco withdrawal from Afghanistan. He pulled all the strength out prematurely and then tied our hands diplomatically and then started pointing fingers and throwing hand granades blames. Just like the second worst president in my lifetime, RMN and his phony Paris Peace Agreement. May they both rot together.
9If no good for nothing McConnell wants to show some balls, he should lead a movement to nix all of the orange moron’s dangerous appointments. All of them. Sorry he had polio but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
10Jefe, I’m hoping you’re right, but I’m convinced that what got us into this had little or nothing to do with what the Dems did or didn’t do and everything to do with the barrage of lies and garbage coming out of the right wing hate machine. That machine isn’t going to be silenced just because the Orange Doofus won the election; I suspect it will be busy cranking out even worse lies to cover for pain its followers will be suffering.
I moved out of Texas about 4 years ago, and I’m hoping my left coast digs will insulate me from some of it, but I agree that we’re all going to suffer, many mightily.
Unlike the other Texas Expat out here, I’m hoping some of what’s good about our country can be reinstated after he’s gone. I’m just hoping that comes right on time–no “cancelling elections,’ and please, no JD Vance!
11RE: 11 ” lies and garbage coming out of the right wing hate machine.”
See “The One Big Reason Why Dems Are Losing the Information War” by Ron Filipkowski.
He provides a lot of the granular details about the Rs very effective 24/7 propaganda efforts while the Ds twiddle their thumbs and wait for the mainstream press to report the D positions. Meanwhile, a huge number of Americans don’t read any mass media or watch any national TV news.
His recommendation is that the Ds to do similar as Rs by proactively getting the truth-based D message out to where the people are receiving “news” via podcasts and social media, (like here).
https://www.meidasplus.com/p/the-one-big-reason-why-dems-are-losing
12Even you, whose heart is in the right place, write here with the complete, blithe disregard of collateral damage that today has become universal, and which is at least as great a concrete threat as any of the oppositional-defiant posturing of the people whom you are talking about.
13We may have lost the information war, but on the bright side – a whole bunch of relatives and friends of the Dem elected officials got filthy rich off the debacle.
A billion dollars spent to lose everything, and no one asks where “we” spent the money?
2024 paid off for the Dem election industry better than insider trading.
14We finally have it, unlimited campaign money gets us a president that received zero votes, and he’s already in charge.
15Rhetorical question because: lies.
Why would the Muumps (MUsk, trUMP) trash the proposed budget because it’s full of wasteful spending, then in the same breath ask for the removal of spending caps?
16So president un elected musk apparently wins the day for the budget deal and some in the gop cult are pushing him to be elected speaker. He’ll be president and speaker of the house. What’s next, he also becomes a supreme? WTF?
17And poof, It’s gone. Takes 2/3 to tango and bill was rejected. Of course dems will be blamed.
18OT: One of the best Texass Congress critters (cough cough), Rep. Chip Roy (TX-21), S Central TX between north San Antonio and west Austin (a pretty red district), one of the true RWNJs, found hisself crosswise with the Mango Mussolini today.
It’s going to be interesting to watch how this plays out. Good ol’ Chip will either get ostracized by the GQPee’ers, and get primaries, which DiJioT promised him.
Or Chip will immediately grovel so low that Comrade Donnei will let him kiss his ass again, and manage to hang on to his Congressional potty chair.
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/12/19/2292861/-Trump-trashes-weak-and-ineffective-GOP-congressman-over-spending-bill
19Here’s my prediction: the mass deportations will be selective, even within a single industry like agriculture. Although T**** is simple-minded enough to yell “ship them all back”, when it comes to implementation Republican farmers will find they aren’t being targeted as much as Democrat ones. Same for the tech industry: Musk et al love those H1B Indian programmers because they are cheap to hire and easy to fire. The few liberal or Democrat-leaning software companies will be selectively targeted.
As others have pointed out, when the USPO and Medicare are privatized, the dumb voters will blame those organizations, not the Republicans. They have been trained to think all government is bad, and will simply regard the increased costs and degraded benefits as evidence of that. Harry Eagar is right; they continued to back Reagan and Bush II in the face of blatant incompetence and blown budgets.
20Tomorrow should be a big shit show in congress. As it is every day.
21I’m thinking about how tough it will be for Fran to find humor tomorrow. She deserves a medal!
Neil Stevenson’s “Fall: or Dodge in Hell” has a billionaire tech bro break the internet by propagating a massive hoax. Perhaps The Don will do the same.
22