Zompist Bboard Again

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2026 3:25 pmSomehow only the fascist gets praise from malloc.

You also have to consider the incredible headwinds facing him in that election. Despite the disastrous end of his first term, his attempted coup, the numerous felony convictions and criminal charges, he not only won the election but expanded his coalition with previously left and liberal demographics. Either he was incredibly skilled at political maneuvering and mass appeal or he was fantastically lucky.

Even putting all that aside though, Trump has numerous aces up his sleeves that would turn the tide in his favor. It only take one terrorist attack, whether by Muslims or antifa activists, to turn his entire career around. Then again, successfully preventing such an attack would have the same effect. Passing the SAVE act would guarantee that the GOP wins the midterms and indeed all elections for the foreseeable future. There are just so many opportunities for him to avoid defeat that he would have to make nothing but terrible mistakes from here on out to lose.

malloc wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2026 7:13 pm

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2026 3:25 pmSomehow only the fascist gets praise from malloc.

You also have to consider the incredible headwinds facing him in that election. Despite the disastrous end of his first term, his attempted coup, the numerous felony convictions and criminal charges, he not only won the election but expanded his coalition with previously left and liberal demographics. Either he was incredibly skilled at political maneuvering and mass appeal or he was fantastically lucky.

Even putting all that aside though, Trump has numerous aces up his sleeves that would turn the tide in his favor. It only take one terrorist attack, whether by Muslims or antifa activists, to turn his entire career around. Then again, successfully preventing such an attack would have the same effect. Passing the SAVE act would guarantee that the GOP wins the midterms and indeed all elections for the foreseeable future. There are just so many opportunities for him to avoid defeat that he would have to make nothing but terrible mistakes from here on out to lose.

Trump has squandered through his incompetence his political advantages -- unlike what you claim he has managed to become deeply unpopular with his policies that are completely out of touch with the public, be it driving up prices with his tariffs when the public wants lower prices, causing lawless chaos with his goons when, while the public did want a closed border, they did not want law-abiding long-term immigrants to be dragged off the streets, or starting a new war with no clear endpoint when the public wanted no more wars. It is like you are completely ignorant of the realities of Trump's second term and have deluded yourself into thinking that he is some kind of political chessmaster.

malloc wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2026 7:13 pm

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2026 3:25 pmSomehow only the fascist gets praise from malloc.

You also have to consider the incredible headwinds facing him in that election. Despite the disastrous end of his first term, his attempted coup, the numerous felony convictions and criminal charges, he not only won the election but expanded his coalition with previously left and liberal demographics. Either he was incredibly skilled at political maneuvering and mass appeal or he was fantastically lucky.

Was Joe Biden "incredibly skilled"? Was his election a "remarkable victory"? You throw all this adulation at a fascist who got lower vote totals and has never even got 50% of the vote.

Also, you may not be aware of this, but this remarkable amazing victory was 16 months ago. Please, name five Republican policies enacted this term that are generally popular with independents. Provide evidence of this support, not more "he must be popular because it must be as I say." And while we're at it, why is this amazing unstoppable god of yours down to 40% in the polls?

Even putting all that aside though, Trump has numerous aces up his sleeves that would turn the tide in his favor. It only take one terrorist attack, whether by Muslims or antifa activists, to turn his entire career around.

Oh right, Trump just has to push the "Muslim terrorist attack" button on his desk. Because your god is omnipotent and never fails. Why, O Trump whisperer, hasn't he pressed that button yet?

Passing the SAVE act would guarantee that the GOP wins the midterms and indeed all elections for the foreseeable future.

“There isn’t any strategy,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told reporters. “There’s a 0% [chance] of this succeeding.”

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2026 3:10 pm An eternity ago, Democrats noticed that their candidate was faltering and getting bad at campaigning, due to advanced age. They replaced him. It's evident that Trump is suffering even more, and the Republicans don't have the guts to get rid of him. The dude is not what he once was. He's not cunning, he's just cranky yet coddled.

Republicans don't even have the guts to not wear the mis-sized shoes that Trump gifts them.
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXQMRyQNvc0

Somewhat belated reply to something that's already a few rounds of exchange in the past by now:

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2026 5:31 am
BTW, here's what happened to a few right-wingers and their wars.
Mussolini, WWII: shot by partisans.
Hitler, WWII: shot himself.
Tojo, WWII: hanged by the Allies.
Galtieri, Falklands war: lost power, imprisoned.
Hussein, conquered Kuwait: found hiding in a hole; tried and hanged.
Putin, Ukraine: ongoing, but his attempted walkover turned into a 4-year war with 1.3 million Russian casualties and a global blockade
Pinochet, coup and dirty war: house arrest in Britain, trial in Chile, died before it started.
Assad, Syrian civil war: ousted by rebels, fled to Russia.

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2026 7:13 am A telling anecdote from the convo: Trump likes to buy his cabinet officers shoes. He guesses at the sizes and they're wrong. So there's a photo of Marco Rubio wearing clown shoes, because you can't turn down a gift from the clown-in-chief. These are the 5th-dimensional chess players who are going to somehow turn this into a thousand-year reich.

The shoe story makes me think that the most fitting modern history dictator comparison for Trump would not be anyone on your list, but Idi Amin.

Oh, pedantic language-related note:

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2026 5:31 am
Hussein, conquered Kuwait: found hiding in a hole; tried and hanged.

With Arabic naming conventions working the way they do, does it really make sense to call him "Hussein" if you want to talk about him and use only one of the elements of his name?

Raphael wrote:The shoe story makes me think that the most fitting modern history dictator comparison for Trump would not be anyone on your list, but Idi Amin.

Somehow I missed that Zompist already brought this up on the last page. Sorry!

zompist wrote: ↑Sat Mar 14, 2026 9:32 pmOh right, Trump just has to push the "Muslim terrorist attack" button on his desk. Because your god is omnipotent and never fails. Why, O Trump whisperer, hasn't he pressed that button yet?

Well obviously it's not something under his control, but my point is that such an attack would salvage his popularity. It's just one of many things that could save him.

“There isn’t any strategy,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told reporters. “There’s a 0% [chance] of this succeeding.”

But couldn't the senate just decide to change the rules regarding the filibuster? They already have a Republican majority which would presumably give them the votes to change the procedural rules regarding such things.

Having said that, I must concede that starting WWIII is an objectively terrible move, regardless of what benefits one hopes to accrue from the resulting chaos.

malloc wrote: ↑Sun Mar 15, 2026 8:53 pm

“There isn’t any strategy,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told reporters. “There’s a 0% [chance] of this succeeding.”

But couldn't the senate just decide to change the rules regarding the filibuster? They already have a Republican majority which would presumably give them the votes to change the procedural rules regarding such things.

This is explained many times in news articles. Very briefly: the Senate would have to decide this, not the God-Emperor, and senators are not eager to do it.

What the Republican senators realize, and malloc forgets, is there is a good chance that the current majority party will soon be in opposition, and while scotching the filibuster may help them force through Trump's immediate goals, it enables the Democrats to do the same once they become the majority party, something that the Republican senators obviously do not want. This is why we still have the filibuster in place despite some Democrats wanting to do the same when they were previously in the majority, because other Democrats realized that the filibuster would be useful to themselves as it is now.

Sure but the SAVE act would guarantee that the GOP would hold the senate and indeed the rest of the government for the foreseeable future. That all but eliminates any concerns about the Democrats exploiting the lack of filibuster. Pretty much all the news I've read about the SAVE act portrays it as quite feasible to pass if not already a fait accompli.

malloc wrote: ↑Mon Mar 16, 2026 11:37 am Sure but

It's just been explained to you twice that Republican senators are saying that the bill has no chance. Stop just denying facts you don't like.

Possibly relevant: a post by John Bourscheid on a popular social media app formerly known by a different name, here displayed as a screenshot (scroll down to Mar 16. 7:17 pm).

zompist wrote: ↑Mon Mar 16, 2026 3:16 pmIt's just been explained to you twice that Republican senators are saying that the bill has no chance. Stop just denying facts you don't like.

Except that I keep reading and hearing that the bill is a serious threat. Trump is hammering them to pass the bill and refusing to sign any other bills until they give in. The only thing preventing them from passing the bill is their current commitment to the filibuster. It would take nothing more than agreeing to rewrite the filibuster rules to get around that. Is everyone else worried about this bill passing also denying facts they don't like?

Time and time again, people have insisted that Trump and his followers "wouldn't really do that" only for Trump to defy expectations and do just that. After watching him invade Iran against all good sense and rational expectations, I can no longer accept the notion that he's just bluffing.

alice wrote: ↑Mon Mar 16, 2026 3:35 pm Possibly relevant: a post by John Bourscheid on a popular social media app formerly known by a different name, here displayed as a screenshot (scroll down to Mar 16. 7:17 pm).

Did he really forget that Bush's poll numbers spiked because of 9-11, not because of invading Afghanistan and Iraq?

Also, at least Bush and company had a coherent story, but the story that Trump and his clown show give keeps changing and contradicting itself, because they're incompetent.

jcb wrote: ↑Tue Mar 17, 2026 1:19 pm

alice wrote: ↑Mon Mar 16, 2026 3:35 pm Possibly relevant: a post by John Bourscheid on a popular social media app formerly known by a different name, here displayed as a screenshot (scroll down to Mar 16. 7:17 pm).

Did he really forget that Bush's poll numbers spiked because of 9-11, not because of invading Afghanistan and Iraq?

And might have forgotten that invading Afghanistan and Iraq happened before invading Afghanistan and Iraq had turned out the way it did, while now, we're in the time after that happened?

malloc wrote: ↑Mon Mar 16, 2026 7:13 pm Time and time again, people have insisted that Trump and his followers "wouldn't really do that" only for Trump to defy expectations and do just that. After watching him invade Iran against all good sense and rational expectations, I can no longer accept the notion that he's just bluffing.

TRUMP IS NOT THE SENATE.

Yes, Trump is unhinged, and if you were actually reading for comprehension you would not find any of us saying that Trump will ultimately be rational or wise. Quite the opposite. But Trump, despite his own and your belief in his omnipotence, cannot unilaterally change Senate rules.

I'm not sure if I've asked this before, but: is it reaonable to regard Trump as the apotheosis/fulfilment of what could be euphemistically described as a "right-wing tendency" in US politics, much as J*hns*n and Tr*ss were in the UK, and ultimately the cause of its downfall?

alice wrote: ↑Tue Mar 17, 2026 3:23 pm I'm not sure if I've asked this before, but: is it reaonable to regard Trump as the apotheosis/fulfilment of what could be euphemistically described as a "right-wing tendency" in US politics, much as J*hns*n and Tr*ss were in the UK, and ultimately the cause of its downfall?

I'd say, ask again in November.

Since WWII each Republican president (except Bush I) has been worse than the last: Eisenhower > Nixon > Reagan > Bush II > Trump. It's hard to think what candidate could be worse for next time. Maybe Grok (Elon Musk's racist, porn-creating AI)?

Your Conservatives went into a death spiral but it took 14 years for them to actually lose an election. Looking at polls, your country's right-wingers[/url] hardly disappeared. The Tories have declined even further, but only because Reform is surging. Labour has... not done well.

alice wrote: ↑Tue Mar 17, 2026 3:23 pm I'm not sure if I've asked this before, but: is it reaonable to regard Trump as the apotheosis/fulfilment of what could be euphemistically described as a "right-wing tendency" in US politics, much as J*hns*n and Tr*ss were in the UK, and ultimately the cause of its downfall?

Like zompist, I think you're too optimistic on the "downfall" part, in both countries. As for "fulfilment" - clearly true for Trump, I'd say (and yes, that means I strongly disagree with the people who claim he's some kind of break with the past), but less clear for Johnson.

Johnson seems to be more a US-style Reagan/GWB/Trump type than a Thatcherite. In the USA, the right-wing has traditionally been big on fake anti-elitism - "We stand up for regular people and real Americans against our out-of-touch elitist snob opponents!" Completely the opposite of what they actually do when in power, but still, a very important part of their style.

British right-wingers, on the other hand, traditionally seem to have taken a stance of "Yes, we are elitists, and we're damn proud of it!" You could say that they openly celebrated being the kind of people their friends in the States pretended to fight against.

And if you accept that way of looking at it, then Johnson was kind of a break with traditional British right-wing politics, and an embrace of a more American-style kind of right-wing politics. Which is probably how he conquered a number of Labour strongholds, structurally the kind of places whose counterparts in the USA had often been solidly Republican since the last decades of the 20th century.

zompist wrote: ↑Tue Mar 17, 2026 4:25 pm Since WWII each Republican president (except Bush I) has been worse than the last: Eisenhower > Nixon > Reagan > Bush II > Trump. It's hard to think what candidate could be worse for next time. Maybe Grok (Elon Musk's racist, porn-creating AI)?

I for one think a President that responds with pornographic doodles when asked for policy objectives would be an improvement over Trump.