I stumbled across this with perfect timing. A buddy of mine had just texted me that this week was rough and was a “test week”. Just sent it to him, which might not help his situation, but certainly made me feel better.
Why does he always hold his arms straight down with his palms turned in and his fingers slightly spread like that? There’s no way that’s a natural posture, but he looks like that all the time. Did someone coach his posture to try to mimic Trump? Because it looks awful.
Damn I had almost forgotten about that. You’d see a top comment that was funny and witty, only for the next comment to point out that it was a bot stealing the comment from the last time the post was made. That place is such a shit hole it’s amazing we put up for it as long as we did.
The idea of installing Linux on a grandparent’s computer is just asking for trouble. I convinced my father in law to give a Chromebook a try since he mostly just uses his computer to get online and boy, was that tricky. The average person has no idea what an Operating System is and will call you the minute they can’t install a new program for some reason.
Does Texas have something in place preventing people from getting solar? I don’t live in Texas, but my solar loan payment is a flat $200/month for 10 years then goes to $0. My buddy in Texas complains about getting $700 electrical bills, but when I recommend solar he acts like I’m recommending he cut off his left ball.
I’m close to that too, but I think mine was 13 years. The weird thing that I’ve noticed is that most of the time I was on Reddit, almost no one I talked to in real life used Reddit. I struggled for years to try to get people to check the site out. Now that I left, I swear I hear someone I know mention Reddit exponentially more often. The average person doesn’t give a damn about how shitty the platform has become, because they weren’t around to see what it used to be. The average person WANTS to see ads interspersed with their cookie cutter content with stupid ass features like chat and followers. Good riddance.
I live in a very conservative neighborhood and can say that stubbornness seems to play a huge, huge part of it. But I also wouldn’t discount the insecurity that plays into a lot of conservative men as well. The kind that buys huge trucks, just to commute to an office job. The kind that tries overly hard to impress you in weird “manly” ways, like always having a beer in their hand when they know you’re coming over for something.
Basically half the guys around here are either stubborn dickheads who do things like refuse to tell their wives when they’re going out of town for work - and the other half are dudes constantly trying to validate their manhood by projecting a flimsy aura of toughness. Frankly, it’s exhausting.
The problem is Trump is both the cause and the symptom of a very broken Republican party. He definitely brings out the worst in his supporters, but they also bring out the worst in him. You saw when he tried to encourage vaccines and his supporters turned on him instantly, so he had to quickly back track.
I think, like you said, the only way he can attempt to steer the MAGA-ship at this point is to offer solutions that blatantly look like he’s doing it to own the libs. He can’t say “get the vaccine because it’ll prevent you from dying.” He’d have to say, “Biden is trying to take away the beautiful vaccine I created. He wants to give it to illegal immigrants instead of hard working people like you! The deep state is trying to trick you to believe that the vaccine is poison so they can give it to their pedophile leaders so they can be safe, while you good, Christian patriots are dying.”
Unfortunately, I think you’re probably right. We keep seeing it over and over again. The judicial system continues to move slowly with as many delays and roadblocks as possible. When judgements are made, they are stayed during an appeal so they have no teeth. The farce of the Supreme Court will never let anything bad happen to their dear leader. They will delay, delay, delay until Trump is either reelected - in which case he’ll pardon himself. Or until a new president is elected in 2028. If it’s a Republican, they’ll pardon Trump on day 1. If it’s a Democrat, the Republicans in Congress will find some way to force a presidential pardon in order to keep the government funded or some other bullshit.
I think there’s a 0% chance Trump ever sees a single day in prison. Even if none of what I said above happens, he’d get a slap on the wrist at worst. I would LOVE to be proven wrong. But I’m not holding my breath.