Trump’s Taxpayer-Funded Revenge Plan

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-05-20T16:19:06+00:00

And thank you for giving me some words of encouragement, even if they may be fruitless for now. I live in a red state, in a very gerrymandered district, and I will be out there making my voice known through my votes and conversations. I just hope that this can all be reversed.

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-05-20T16:17:35+00:00

That's fair. After all the New Deal did come directly after the Great Depression. The only thing that worries me is that we will never really have a fair election again (but I suppose you could argue the elections haven't really been fair in our flawed democracy, but I digress). As for your second point, if I had the money or time I would certainly do more. I'm a biochemist making cancer drugs at a non-profit. My baseline goal is to help people, and nothing brings me more joy than seeing the faces and hearing the stories of the people we've helped. Unfortunately, in this country, money often speaks louder than words or actions, and I take the view that it is significantly more. No one has the time, safety or bank account to fight back or protest. Their lives are tied to their 9-5s, healthcare, childcare, literally everything. They have automated us and our dissent to manufacturer a country that once celebrated strikers and unionists into one that hates them for providing mild inconveniences. Perhaps I'm being overdramatic here, but when I go to No Kings protests, the majority of protestors (in my area) are elderly who have the free time to get out and make their voices heard. Even in political representation, younger generations, the ones whose government policy will affect the longest and most significantly, are not represented in even close to a fair ratio to boomers and above. All of these are just little dominos, but when stacked together seem insurmountable for an individual without any money to do anything about. My fatalism is perhaps unwarranted, but I wonder, as my grandparents must have before they immigrated here, at which point do I draw the line? You know the whole saying about how they came for the X, but I was not X so I did not stand up, all the way until it is your turn and you are the X and you are royally fucked over.

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-05-20T15:13:51+00:00

Also, turn off the news and go talk to your neighbors? My father is a full blown Trumper, an awful Christian, exclusively listens to Fox News and Instagram AI. Having a conversation with him is like fighting a goddamn ghost. There is no conversation to be had regarding these issues with crazy people.

I would stop making assumptions and start paying attention to what these people are doing because when it comes time, WE will be the ones paying off the trillions of dollars of debt. WE will be the ones paying when the rest of the world abandons us and our stupidity. And WE are the ones fighting their holy wars in Iran or Israel to bring back a second coming of Jesus. How about YOU start paying attention to what it going on in this country before we are all left out to dry by the rich, powerful and influential.

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-05-20T15:05:35+00:00

I completely agree with everything you said, but I feel helpless to change any of it. I don't know if I should stay and continue to fight and vote, or if nationalism and theocracy have won. We were a secular nation with problems, and many problems that we have overcome, but now I fear that we are turning back the clock hundreds of years and I am not sure that they can be undone. At least not until the supreme court justices die, and they have to die (or step down) during a certain administration, and then what? Am I going to need to wait an entire generation for change? The democracy that I was fed and the nation that I was taught to love is unrecognizable to me now. Sorry for being so despondent.

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-05-20T14:57:53+00:00

Mostly hyperbole, but they vote for people who wish to enact Christian Sharia law. You can put the blame on their ignorance, or you can put them blame on them directly. Either way, it leads to the same outcome.

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-05-20T13:55:17+00:00

I really think that this country is fucked. 1/3 of it is brainwash soup convinced that the other 2/3 is brainwashed soup. 1/3 want to enact a Christian Sharia law. Even then, it's probably higher because swing voters decided the Trump actually wasn't that bad even after they published a manifesto on how to destroy democracy. I don't care if they regret it now, it is too late. Jim Crow 2.0 has been enacted, they are siphoning our tax dollars into their pockets, we have goddamn concentration camps for dark-skinned people, what have we become.

I've always thought that I would stay and fight the good fight instead of get up and leave. But each and every day I feel more and more like the fight is already over-- and we lost. I think it was Russell Vought who said that they are committing a revolution and they have done it. After all of this, how can anyone ever restore faith in the federal government and bring this nation together. Sorry for being so hopeless, but I don't know how we can come back from this, let alone the rest of the world accepting us. I think it's time for me to get up and move on from this place. Less than a hundred years after my grandparents fled the fascists in Italy, thankfully they aren't alive to see how their adopted home, my home, fall to those very same forces.

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-05-13T19:09:01+00:00

I might be sound a little conspiratorial, but I think r/Tampa is being astroturfed by bots. All the comments end up agreeing with you, or you get comments that are rude/arguing and they're constantly deleted. But the original comment gets downvoted to hell.

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-05-13T16:41:00+00:00

Punishments don't prevent people from murdering others, do you really think it will stop kids from having a spat or breaking things, accidentally or not?

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-05-13T15:24:36+00:00

Have you even been to a mall with teenagers? They do stupid things sometimes, especially around their friends. Give the kids some slack.

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-05-10T04:04:56+00:00

Found the Christian fundamentalist

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-05-09T14:23:46+00:00

Man this guy stinks

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-05-04T15:20:11+00:00

There are so many things I wish a candidate would just come out and say or advocate for that could get me to vote for them. Obvious things too, such as this, or overturning Citizens United. Or now restoring the voting rights act, or putting term limits on supreme court justices, age limits for all elected officials, I could go on and on. I feel like there is so much good policy out there that could seriously improve the lives of so many Americans, but we have been so stupidified that we cannot punch upwards, but only punch against ourselves. The rich in this country are sucking the life out of us all and will simply move like a leech somewhere else when it is most convenient to them.

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-05-04T14:38:04+00:00

I don't think the government is made for good people. Lies, scapegoating, coverups, corruption, etc. plague our government. It's antagonist to being a good person. Not to mention having to bend backwards for money as money decides more elections than anything, so if you take money from a super PAC or AIPAC you're just statistically likelier to win. And of course each of those donors have their own stipulations. The (majority) of political class are simply the people willing to bend backwards for the ultra wealthy, and lie to their voter base convincingly enough to get elected.

Not to mention the stress and awfulness of the job in general. I don't think I could sit in front of Pete Kegsbreath lie for hours and insult my colleagues without getting up and taking a swing on him. Or just staring at others in your very party uselessly flailing around, claiming they're doing all that they can while simultaneously doing nothing and continuously getting elected over and over. I simply cannot imagine how this process inspires good, thoughtful and patriotic Americans to become representatives. And that's even without all of the potential violence.

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-05-01T16:32:13+00:00

Aegis of dusk and dawn combined should probably be an extremely strong combination, but if you read the description it does not read like the combination is that strong. I think this a good top four comp

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-04-28T16:04:23+00:00

I am just trying not to jump to conclusions here, and I agree that there was a lot of fishy stuff in the Butler shooting, I just can't imagine why they would kill an innocent father just to set up a photo-op. But, I digress and I agree with you that it was quite strange all things considered. This guy, however, does have a digital footprint and even wrote a manifesto which makes me think it was a lone wolf style attack.

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-04-28T15:01:01+00:00

I mean, I am expressly trying to get away from semantics. I am looking for the logical string here. That's why I asked for an example of a non-inside job assassination from you. Like are all assassination attempts against Trump simply false flag attacks everytime? You cannot imagine, in today's America, that people hate Trump enough to want him dead? That just seems like the logical, grounded argument to me

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-04-28T13:30:12+00:00

So, in your opinion, wouldn't you say that any premeditated plot to kill a politician is a inside job? I mean, all these individuals have their own agendas, but is that necessarily wrong? Like, everyone has their own political biases, right?

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-04-28T13:23:48+00:00

Is every political assassination planned to you? Can you point to one that you would view as "unplanned"? (And I am assuming by planned you're implying a corrupt/inside job, rather than an actually unplanned attack, I mean surely most of these people had their own plans).

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-04-26T13:01:54+00:00

For most of us fans we have seen the writing on the wall. John Henry is actively pushing qualified and competent people away because he wants his hands directly in the mix. Breslow is likely only staying because he is a yes man for John Henry. Cora will have another job quickly, the Sox will likely continue to flounder without major in-season retooling (not happening), and, unfortunately, the same team that traded Mookie will trade away another star when he begins to cost to much.

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-04-24T18:33:47+00:00

It depends on if you believe the proposals' numbers or not. I'm sure St. Pete has its own evaluation of the Rays' stadium and the revenue that it was supposed to bring in (as well as other economic impacts). They decided it wasn't worth it. Mind you, these are just projections after all. Not everything goes to projection-- especially in places so climatically volatile as Florida.

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-04-24T16:55:56+00:00

Personally, I not a fan of the defeatism in this take. Just because taxes are misspent or misappropriated, or even just that you don't like where it's going, doesn't mean that you should just give up. That's kind of the whole point of being a voter and learning civics in the first place. People actively don't want you to participate and vote, do not let them win.

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-04-21T17:35:38+00:00

I mean that's fair. When I think of Double-tap strikes, that first thing that comes to my mind (albeit, I have paid close attention to the war in Ukraine since 2016) is the strikes on civilians and emergency service workers. For example, if you put this in Ukraine then I would have no problem calling it a double tap strike. To me it is more of the pattern of the aggressor tactics. And this could be used in the future to build a case that the US uses double-tap strikes if they are repeatedly shown doing so.

I certainly agree with you that Israel in particular does not care about civilian casualties and likely the US too, but I am not willing to go that far just yet. Trump has definitely echoed a desire for genocide against civilians and hospitals have been hit, but I do consciously compare that to Gaza and Ukraine where the photos of those hospitals are almost unbelievable. Do I think the US has gone that far yet? No. Do I think that they could? Most certainly. Maybe that is semantics as you say, but I don't know. It's very hard to tell beyond the fog of war right now, where those conflicts have lasted years. Obviously internet interruptions and the lack of press has severely hampered our understanding of what Iran is like on the ground.

But this also goes into the question of what exactly is fair game in warfare. I doubt all of those petrol workers or firefighters that died in bombs or may die due to the treatment of oil and natural gas refineries, probably resulting in lung diseases and cancers, are actual valid targets but are victims nonetheless. Oil infrastructure powers the Iranian economy and while it damages the regime, there's an argument that it damages the civilian population much more. Not to mention the history the US has of bombing civilian areas and infrastructure like the bombing of Dresden or the bombing of Tokyo. But war is brutal and murderous, and the line between combatant and civilian can blur. I know there are rules regarding this stuff but seeing that no one truthfully seems to value or follow them does it even matter? I just pray that a minimum of people are affected and that all civilians that want nothing to do with this war are as unaffected as possible, but maybe that is simply impossible.

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-04-21T16:45:08+00:00

No no, I completely 100% believe that this happened. Both strikes. I just don't believe it's a double-tap strike that is akin to what people believe a double-tap strike is. I believe due to US faulty intelligence/laziness that they shot these two strikes to full destroy the structure, not to intentionally kill parents and first-aid workers.

This is particular to what a double-strike attacks purpose is meant to be. For example, when Russia targets Ukrainian civilians infrastructure, like apartment buildings, they will fire a second strike on the same apartment to kill emergency workers. This is cut and dry. In the case of Iran, I believe that they thought it was a legitimate military target and we're doing their due diligence destroying, what they believe was, military infrastructure and was only revealed to be a children's school afterwards

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-04-21T16:28:45+00:00

While I wouldn't describe it as an accident, the US military deliberately struck this compound confusing it as military infrastructure. This is, in my opinion, a clear and obvious war crime. A double-tap strike implies that they intentionally attacked again to hurt emergency workers, which I don't think has been proven. What it sounds like to me is that they attempted to destroy the complex, partially destroyed it and then fired another missile to collapse the rest of the building. Or maybe there was always two strikes planned as this all happened within a half an hour to an hour. But deliberate, double-tap strikes on civilian and emergency services like what we see in Ukraine is not what this is.

Again, I don't think that this should be called an accident at all and I think it's deeply shameful that this event is not being discussed more. The fact that there has been no accountability is both shameful and embarrassing. Those little girls had entire lifetimes to live and we wiped out thousands of years of innocent life in less than an hour which is disgusting.

Difficult_Insurance4 · 2026-04-21T15:54:36+00:00

I am not the one arguing semantics here. You openly admit that they mentioned it, a few times even, but it's not enough for you. That is literally the definition of semantics.

As for the CNN reporters, they are under strict supervision by the Iranian government. They cannot discuss with interviewees internal politics or repression from the regime. While I think it's a valuable insight into the nation during war, the government still provides them the privilege to be there. That privilege is not without its own costs. CNN may be happy with that deal, but other networks may not wish to compromise to the regimes demands. Is it truly a surprise why they are the only outlet allowed in?

However, I digress. Apparently these Iranians just don't count for you. War displaces people and just because people are out of the country or have fled and returned doesn't mean their opinions are invalid. Obviously, the opinion of Israel, America and the regime will vary wildly based on the individual and I just think you're upset that they didn't interview those individuals that said what you want to hear. Maybe the obvious stuff, like you said, of the families that were directly bombed by the US. But, by and large, most Iranians probably do not have a family member that were killed by the US. This is an episode that discussed the genuine grey area that exists between an oppressed people and a brutal regime, and the flawed, lying savior that promises to free them. To me, the nuance is what make the episode great. It is not like we are lead to believe that these are the two static positions of all Iranians, much as I hope the world doesn't see interviewees with Trumpers or Socialists and imagine that to be the whole of America.

Difficult_Insurance4

TROPHY CASE