That’s what the Boeing CEO keeps saying.

(Seriously, though, I’m done with the dad jokes, thanks for the ops!:)) )

It really is mind boggling, to say “just give it to them” to a nation that’s being invaded by Stalin’s fucking ghost in the XXIst Century…

Good point… god damn it…

Think the problem is they don’t much boing, either…

I just can’t get these people… Do they seriously believe the nonsense they’re spouting, or do they believe that we believe it?

My brain wanted to ask what Lego set that was…

Oh, how the true vermin emerge again…

You may be right. I was basing my initial hunch on the fact that he seems to be almost impressively vulnerable for a bona fide narcissist, “The Orange Man” would still highlight him as significant.

My past relationships make sense now, the Universe was Mr. Miyagi-ing me into a machine for punching Nazis!

I’m starting to be convinced this is one of the many intrinsic flaws to the way we’re governing ourselves. It’s an inevitable slippery slope, we’ll keep ending up having to deal with it periodically as long as we don’t change stuff in significant ways.

Edit: I think we need to approach them as our body would a splinter, or a zit. Just squeeze’em out. As I see it, Fascism is fundamentally inimical to life itself, could even compare it to a viral infection. Sure, some infection is inevitable even when squeezing out the splinter, but chances are good that it won’t develop beyond anything superficial if we provide an appropriate immune response and treatment afterwards.

I’ll still call him The Orange Man, would do it to his face. I get the feeling it’s one of those insults which he plays off like a cool guy because he can’t afford an honest reaction, but is eating him up deep inside. I can’t miss out on that possibility.

Merkel was a plant. I get the feeling most of Merkel’s phone is spam, ads, and poorly focused photos. Fitting sacrifice to keep the spies thinking they were winning.

Exactly, we need to act with the future in mind, we gotta reinforce the barricades, as it were. At the very least, and at most for the time being. And we really gotta agree upon a system. Like, any humane and empathy-driven system, it doesn’t all have to be perfect in the first try. It has to be at least functional enough to buy ourselves more time for the detailing.

And we’ll also have to keep in mind to pull double-duty on handling the almost literal dumpster fire heading our way, although a saner climate may be aligned with a generally sane direction from the start.

That’s such a middling long game, though… My personal fear is that any potential long game just gives them the space to solidify their grip on the population, I think everyone needs to do/see something pretty much soon-ish to make them want to believe in the rational alternative.

We’re entering tumultuous times in terms of emotional load, everyone is nearing desperation at an alarming rate. That’s a dangerous playground to reach.

Edit: not that I have the faintest about what could be done, I’ve been wracking my brain with this question for a while.

Something has to give, though… I feel we’re stuck between two fronts moving in opposite directions, one being the continued degradation of our social world, and the other being the accumulated and now snowballing fatigue brought about by said degradation, and they’re just grinding us down while we’re trying to get a grip.

We’ve reached the point where hiding away in the backyard for a bit is too little to regain a significant enough portion of that energy debt, and to add to that, our backyards have now kinda’ been flooded with that bullshit which was still relatively manageable a decade ago. That applies even to those who are actively in denial, maybe even more than to those who at least look it in the eye, because mirror neurons are still a thing - this fatigue is a resonant frequency and we inevitably pick the stress up from everyone else around us, whether we want to or not. I’ve lived through a recession and I don’t remember people being this run down back then (no, we weren’t particularly rich, that belt was tightened up something fierce).

We’re cascading, everything’s cascading, and it’ll take all of us with it if we just let it happen. Something has to give.

Nope, you’re very much on target. The best one I can remember, Constantinescu, was good because he literally didn’t do anything, either bad or good. He even said at the end of his presidency that the system had defeated him.

Our government and political scene in general is now essentially a web of nepotism and private business interests, which runs on corruption. I swear, it’s like nobody does shit to you as long as you don’t steal from the big ones. Otherwise, nobody really gives a crap…

Or you get straight-up weirdos, instead! Vadim Tudor deserved to be seen globally, we could’ve sold him as The Local Nutjob!

By ““discreetly”” starting to kiss Trump’s ass a little while after he’d win. Yes. We know. Let’s stick with Europe, though, please? Like, seriously?

Maybe they’ll have faith in our highway system and speed right through the dead end! Nobody tell’em we only have bits, show them the 20km Milestone party pics!

No, thanks! You can keep him!

Let me put it this way: nobody skipped classes when the teachers knew how to actually explain and teach and didn’t just shovel decontextualised information down our gullets for us to rote and then regurgitate on paper. Yes, we’ve had plenty of Trumps…

Edit: as for your last addition, yep. The context was not the issue, the issue is that I forgot that not everyone went through the Romanian educational system.

First thing which popped into my mind. That kind of experience taught me that sometimes solidarity is more important than anything else.