“What was he convicted of?” someone asked.
“He had tattoos on his body,” she replied triumphantly.
“Hey, smartass!” shouted a woman in her sixties, jumping to her feet. “You want to see my tattoo?”
“Lady,” the Trump supporter said. “You don’t know what a tattoo is.”
“Yes I do, I’ve got one!” the woman shouted, tapping her chest.
The Trump supporter dismissed her with a wave of one hand. “I’ve had enough of you Democrats,” she said.
The US is overdue for balkanization. I think the USA will split some time before 2060.
balkanization is one of the better scenarios in my opinion.
Not fully, but in practice to benefit from no trade barriers. And it’ll be done by 2040.
I think what we’ll get is no more singular head of state because the Unitary Executive model is a flawed premise that highlights the fragility of having only one person as the chief executive. It’s a poison pill. Suggesting it is to suggest inevitable death of the Republic.
What we’ll end up with our scaled up Switzerland. An Executive Council of 5/7/9 regionally elected members, with a rotation of who is the ceremonial head of state for functions. I like 7, with more of the East Coast and Midwest consolidated.
But whew…the constitution will need a major overhaul for that to work.
Unitary executive model is a bullshit right wing theory that ignores the entire basis of how our system was designed.
The problem is that is much worse than bullshit, it’s a death sentence.
He had tattoos on his body? I keep mine in a drawer in the shed.
Ok, hear me out.
David Beckham has tattoos on his body AND is an immigrant. Therefore he must be a part of the ms13 gang and should be deported. It’s the only thing that makes sense!!!I’ve also heard Dolly Parton has tattoos…
I’ve also heard Dolly Parton has tattoos…
Tattoos or ta-tas?
Why not both?
Nobody better fuck with my girl Dolly. That’s how you get the metalheads all riled up.
I heard Beckham was part of Bend de Aragua
They stopped liking Dolly Parton after they found out that she’s gives books to kids.
She also sang a song about getting the COVID vaccine iirc.
How many cops have gang tattoos in 'murica? The internet tells me a good deal of them do.
Yes, they often take the form of shields, seven pointed stars, and Punisher skulls. These things identify them as street-roaming gang bangers and armed thugs.
i found some of the quotes interesting with regards to the pieces that people in different areas pick up on, what they care about and what they think is happening. Like the farmer guy who is being harmed by the tariffs but thinks Trump must be “asking for a lot to hopefully get half”
i don’t think these people are stupid, just propagandized and situated in cultural echochambers just like libs are (all of us are). They (we) all have blind spots and denial. how do we reach them? if it’s possible at all, the only way is through genuine authentic connection with people who may very well hold ideas we find abhorrent.
i had a really interesting experience this weekend. i stopped at a Diner in Queens on my way home from the airport and overheard a conversation about Trump and the tariffs between two older gentlemen. I think they were both white but one might not have been idk. It was clear they frequent this place and are neighborly acquaintances. The one guy came over and started out saying “you know l don’t like to talk about politics” (honestly i doubt that lol)
it was not clear to me the whole time which “side” either of them were on. when the first guy got up to leave, i caught eyes with the one still sitting and he started to apologize for the subject matter and i said i appreciated their conversation bc i feel like the biggest problem in this country is we don’t talk to each other and that’s why everything is so out of whack.
they both appreciated that and we briefly talked about how “They” want us divided etc. I said i thought we all had a lot more in common than we would think, and they both agreed.
After the first guy left, i continued to chat with the seated man who was a 75yo Jewish man who grew up in that neighborhood and taught political science for his career. He identified as a centrist, taking things from Republicans and Democrats, and gets his news from a variety of sources mostly mainstream tv but also newspapers and magazines- he was reading the economist and said it was a conservative magazine but they don’t agree with trump on the tarriffs.
we had a really amazing conversation because i was very polite and phrased my disagreements carefully, he was not agitated at all by anything i said, he was calm and confident in his knowledge.
he had some seriously wrong information.
whenever i tried to push back on something he said, i would generally say that i can never tell what to trust anymore but that the information I’ve seen said xyz. i acknowledged living in an echo chamber because i can’t read or listen to republican news, and i was vulnerable about how upset i am all the time and we transitioned out of politics talk and into hobbies and maintaining mental health.
honestly, i can’t stop thinking about the experience and want to go back there and talk with him more. it was a hugely positive experience for me and I would love to have more of those. Perhaps he was a rare bird able to talk without getting upset, that’s why i was able to remain emotionally regulated (i did almost start to cry lmao just acknowledging how upset I am generally, I’m just a hair trigger these days)
The leopard’s are gonna be obese by the summer.
The leopards are already obese. I suspect by summer they’ll die by cardiovascular diseases.
Magas can do one thing right, even saving the leopards is too hard for them
Imagine believing that the best days of the US are ahead of you…
I’m sure improvements will be made, but the United States is dying, thanks in large part due to the cancer that’s rightwing propaganda networks
If I ever get diagnosed with a terminal disease. I know what I’m doing before I go out.
Honestly, I don’t want the United states to be a thing anymore. It is time for the nation to break up, so that people can choose what sort of government they want to live in. In my case, I would like something modeled after European socialism. I am sick of Fascist America dragging down my state with its evil and stupidity.
Uncapping the House would go a long way towards rebalancing.
Good luck with that. Honestly.
That about sums it up. There are no obviously good options for the situation, so we are all left to gamble on a guess and a prayer that things work out.
European Socialism? Come on, we are supposed to be better than “socialism is when health care”.
I know what you want to say, but last time I checked, every EU country had millionaires and beggars, a market economy, most companies were in the hand of private citizens or shareholders, and guaranteed private property (with the usual legal exceptions).
Don’t be like the populists. Words have meanings and meanings matter. It is social market economy at most.
Not sure what you mean by European socialism, but you do NOT want the socialism that was attempted in eastern European countries.
my brother in christ, all western european countries are socialist welfare states with a capitalistic market. Media wants you to believe that, what we have is communism, but socialism is so far off Marxism / Communism, as Turbo-capitalism is off of socialism. Beat the red scare and don’t carry on their dumb talking points. Socialism is the way to go
While I agree that socialism is a good ideology, we are definitely far away from actual socialism in Europe. We have social welfare states, yes. They have socialist elements, and many other elements that contradict it. They are not socialist. Whats the point in pretending they already are?
My point was, when you say things like “European Socialism”, that refers to what countries like Romania, Poland, Czechoslowakia or East Germany were like until around 1990. It was catastrophic.
what do all of these countries you just listed have in common? They were all under the rule of the Soviet Union. This was not european socialism, this was soviet socialism, european socialism means a mixture of both socialist welfare and capitalistic markets, aka social-democracies
The problem with that plan is that you get an outwardly fascist neighbor with no guardrails at all. Yes it will burn itself out eventually but before that it’s going to be just as much of a problem as when it was states.
Better to fight an enemy that is outside, rather than a foe within. We also don’t have sturdy guardrails - just ask federal employees, and the American citizens who have been trafficked to Honduras.
But the foes would always be within. This isn’t just red vs blue, it’s rural vs urban. Oregon goes Blue every time, but you drive 30 minutes out of the city and it’s Trump Central.
Agreed. Even in Minnesota we have the MAGAs in rural areas. Just as bad as any other state.
Feels like the guardrails are falling off regardless.
I’m sick of you democrats and your *checks notes* due process under the law.
I’m sick of you democrats
The utterance of someone so desperately grasping at straws because she can’t make an actual argument about the things she’s parroting from the TV so she relies on logical fallacies to shut down the argument completely.
And tattoos, didn’t forget the tattoos.
And not any tattoos. On his body, of all places!
Someone needs to bring these people a holocaust surviver to show them their tattoo and explain why fascism should never rise again
Someone needs to bring these people to cecot, and do a little swaparoo with the current residents.
Wasn’t there just a video of some “alpha” guy trying to school a holocaust survivor the other day?
Im not surprised but god
I’m afraid it would just give them new ideas.
Next time one your friends insists that Trump voters are regretful, or somebody mentions Trump’s poll numbers, show them this.
“That man is a criminal,” she declared of Garcia.
“What was he convicted of?” someone asked.
“He had tattoos on his body,” she replied triumphantly.
MAGA morons are the bottom of the barrel
Tattoos are basically body mutilation or improvement, depending on who you ask. beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I wonder what she thinks of body mutilation like hair cut, nail cutting, plastic surgery and circumcision.
She probably approves of any gender affirming care her entertainment media tells her to approve.
This is almost exactly word for word what happened at work today.
Do you live in Iowa? If so, I feel for you - I escaped years ago.
No, the people’s republic of Massachusetts. We’re not immune.
Ignorant people in Mass are way more annoying too, because they speak of themselves as above ignorant people in the south or midwest even though they believe the exact same dumb shit
Of all the places Ive lived in the US, the worst ignorance was probably in Mass, because its ignorance with an extra dose of superiority complex
It’s funny seeing other Massholes in here with all too similar experiences. I was literally just describing in another post an experience I had with a coworker the other week ranting in circles for 2 hours straight about how rational and centrist he is while spewing Fox News nonsense about “basic biology” and talking about how liberals never back their arguments up with facts and logic (unlike the Republican grifters he sees online, because they’d clearly never edit their videos to only make themselves look good).
Just because Mass benefits from being one of the most liberal states and 80% of Boston has a college degree doesn’t mean that their shit don’t stink.
The spirit of Massachusetts is the spirit of America….
Im trying in my head to make that response of “he had tattoos on his body” less stupid than it us, but cannot come up with a scenario where someone would get tattoos anywhere else.
There are no more dangerous gang tattoos than the ankle dolphin or butterfly tramp stamp
You’re focused on the word, “body”, when the one that makes the difference is “on”.
If he had tattoos in his body, it would be ok.
It’s just a bit more difficult to find a tattoo artist who is willing to work on the inside.
That can’t have been a enjoyable experience getting that done.
Trying to get into magas heads is a bit like entering the Kaiju minds: dangerous with extensive psychological side effects, and to be avoided
Surely he’d be more of a criminal if he had tattoos on someone else’s skin
I thought that was their only form of communication
Hire the folks that did the Russian cope cages in Ukraine parody from a few years ago. That was particularly impressive.
This might be both one of the funniest and saddest things I’ve read since the last time I read about Trump in the news.
Going to the midwest sounds like going to the zoo.
Live here, it is.
Every day you hear someone say the stupidest shit you’ve ever heard in your life. And then the next day someone says something even dumber. It’s absolute hell on earth but the plus side is my mortgage is cheap as dirt I guess.
It’s fucking insane here. I live in a city where people’s opinions seem relatively reality-based, but if you get out into the rural areas, the effects of brain drain and media balkanization are on full display.
I don’t suggest actually doing this, but you would be absolutely fucking shocked by the overwhelming ignorance of the general population if you were to, say, stop at a bar in rural Iowa.
I just don’t recommend going to Iowa, avoid it at all cost.
They can be cold as a frozen thermometer in December if you ask about the weather in July.
“Lady,” the Trump supporter said. “You don’t know what a tattoo is.” ^ That line baffles me
For people like this, Tattoos are only tattoos if they’re on a less than white skin. On a white skin it’s a stulish body decoration, on any other skin type it’s a gang tattoo
The conservative mindset is kind of like a reversed No True Scotsman sometimes. In an inherently hierarchical world where you are OBVIOUSLY at the A, #1, top, “Made in the image of white Jesus” tier, it is a serious insult to question the realness of another. Getting “othered” when you’re one of the Real Americans, one of the Chosen Ones, is a tragedy!
I don’t know what you’re talking about. What does that have to do with a guy who assumes women don’t know what tattoos are?
I thought it was a woman arguing with another woman about the meaning of what a tattoo is…
It’s the exclusionary language. It sticks out to me because it’s something I had to wring out of my brain after a conservative upbringing. My comment was probably an overreaction, lol, but you gave me that little target to pounce on.
“You don’t know what a tattoo is” sounds to me like it’s in line with “you don’t know what a REAL tattoo is” or “you wouldn’t know a decent tattoo if it bit you on the ass.”
It’s just basic immature gatekeeping and “me good, you bad.” So it varies from actual exclusion to generic offhand insult.
I can hear all the variations of it in my head from over the years. You don’t like the same thing as me, or you disagree with me on some unrelated thing, therefore you don’t know a damn thing about tattoos, cars, trucks, guns, fishing, hunting, sports, women, computers, games, and whatever else.
Iowa was improving in the 90s, improving in the 2000s. They were blue then.
Now I hate going back, it’s not the same state I grew up in. Abortion billboards and porn stores, same as the bible belt now.
The state is not improving but they don’t care anymore, long as the right people (like me) get hurt.
^^^
Jesus Died For Your SINS
Right next to…
Cum on down to the Dildo Motel! Behind the truck stop on State 30, we got every kind, color and flavor of fake dicks and porno DVDs.
Disgusting
Also someone or my friend is wondering which truck stop
All of them.
I’m trying to fathom this being an actual conversation and not some horribly, awfully scripted sitcom. How the hell is it this bad good lord.
I guess the creators of Heil Honey decided it was time for a revival. 😒
I like to think it’s because our education has gone really downhill, but I realize some of these people are so old it’s questionable how much they really know and understand. I’m genuinely baffled we don’t have a simple doctor’s check to see if people in retirement are still cognizant enough to vote responsibly- it’s the same issue with driving.
