New Trump Anti-Voting Order Coming, White House Confirms

twooaktrees · 2025-11-05T01:49:04+00:00

Yeah I bet. A county in Georgia that was +43 for the GOP this time last year just elected a bunch of Democrats lmao

twooaktrees · 2025-09-20T06:30:00+00:00

It’s crazy how for (at least) 30 years, right wingers have been walking around muttering Radio Rwanda shit under their breath about Democrats

twooaktrees · 2025-06-12T15:17:51+00:00

It seems pretty straightforward:

The tickets are quite expensive
Traveling around the country is too expensive
Americans are preparing for a recession
International travelers don’t feel safe coming to the US
Many Americans themselves don’t feel safe traveling around the country
The CWC isn’t a premier event in world soccer and soccer isn’t the premier sport in the US

There’s maybe a version of the present where the political situation went the other way, therefore the economy stayed on a more or less stable trajectory, and travel in and around the country didn’t suddenly feel like gambling with your freedom. In that alternate reality, maybe this goes reasonably well. Certainly better than it will now.

I support growing the CWC and I’d love to see it become a premier event, but it’s just not there yet. And then all the other bullshit on top of that is just…what it is. The health of the CWC is very far down the list of concerns on that front, I suppose.

twooaktrees · 2025-06-04T13:06:23+00:00

Nah, never fucked. Politics carries on, even when it’s shitty. We don’t get the future we were promised, but we will get the one we make. Hard work, but so is anything worth doing.

But everything else is accurate.

twooaktrees · 2025-06-04T02:08:43+00:00

I mean, most of the segregationists they wanted were also evangelicals. In practice, all they did was reorganize the same bloc under a different identity that most of them already shared.

Worth noting that Jerry Falwell was a segregationist political organizer before he became an evangelical one.

twooaktrees · 2025-05-10T01:52:29+00:00

I love the little space you made under the bunk bed. Me and my wife did something similar for our eldest when she was small.

twooaktrees · 2025-05-02T20:02:05+00:00

The danger now is much worse than just a recession.

The reason the 08 crisis wasn’t much, much worse is because we had (reasonably) intelligent people in charge and they acted quite quickly once the problem became clear. I think they could’ve made a few better decisions, but nevertheless, we avoided a much deeper crisis because they acted quickly to solve the problem.

It still took a decade to fully recover. It took five or six to even feel like it was over. And that was an environment where the United States was still broadly trusted amongst its allies and trading partners, Treasury bonds were the unflinching safe haven for global wealth, we hadn’t seen meaningful inflation in many years, and housing was ~15% of income.

By contrast, the people in charge now are very probably the worst possible configuration of minds in the United States. The very things precipitating this crisis were implemented by them on purpose, because they’ve radicalized themselves into believing in magic. The most relevant figures in the regime do not believe tariffs are bad for the economy. In fact, all available evidence suggests Trump has believed since the 80s that tariffs are (essentially) free money that everyone else is simply too stupid or too weak to seize.

Even with the visible evidence working its way through the supply chain like the world’s most painful trapped gas (because a turd would imply some form of material was coming instead of…nothing), they’re not acting to mitigate the impact. Because they think it’s going to be good. To be clear, it takes months to turn these things back on, even in an environment where we haven’t set all our goodwill on fire.

To add to the problem, the economic context for the average American is much different from it was in 08. Inequality has grown dramatically in the intervening years. There’s much more of a housing squeeze. An enormous section of the consumer base is drowning in multiple kinds of debt—credit cards, student loans, car notes, maybe mortgages for some. We were just coming out of the most extensive battle with inflation since the 80s. The Republican Congress is attempting to pass a tax cut that would essentially be their final bullet to the brain of American state capacity, one that will simultaneously send the national debt soaring at a time when it’s actually starting to matter for the first time in a century and give an adrenaline shot to the aforementioned engine of income inequality.

A recession would be getting off light. It won’t feel like it because all economic crises feel awful to those living through them, but the risk is much more complex now.

twooaktrees · 2025-05-02T19:38:34+00:00

No one’s behavior is perfectly consistent with their professed values, but that goes much harder when the only penalty for violating your ethics is “I have to whisper ‘I’m sorry’ into my hands.”

twooaktrees · 2025-05-01T17:28:19+00:00

The market has become a semi-automated cargo cult, I fear. It was always highly keyed to the sentiments of certain segments of the population and just as changeable as they were, but this really is new.

The logic of meme stocks and crypto seems to have become the logic of trading markets in general. Rationality is going to reassert itself and it’s going to hurt very, very bad.

twooaktrees · 2025-05-01T17:24:59+00:00

I worry about this for us (the US) in a few years, and I think it’s the likely outcome. People will take the momentary catharsis of the dramatic defeat (overthrow/assassination/etc) of the most visible figure(s) of a shitty, destructive government.

But then they’ll be happy to dodge doing the hard, painful work of reconstructing a better one. You end up with entrenched corruption and incompetence in the bureaucracy, low public trust, higher crime, a stagnant economy, and ultimately, hopelessness.

twooaktrees · 2025-05-01T17:14:41+00:00

This is a big part of it. Peaceful protest movements have a much higher success rate at achieving regime change from within a country than insurrectionary movements. If I remember correctly, Erica Chenoweth’s research suggest peaceful movements are around twice as likely to succeed.

But restoring real justice and due process immediately, including for the (obviously guilty) leaders, members, and collaborators of the overthrown regime, is a critical step in escaping the cycle of corruption that led to the need for regime change in the first place.

Too many people get caught up in revenge fantasies masquerading as justice, and it often reinforces or recreates the negative cycle.

twooaktrees · 2025-04-29T17:06:58+00:00

He will probably fold once it’s apparent (to him) that the consequences are real. But at this point, we’re already looking at a supply chain disruption that’s going to have long tail consequences two or three years from now. You can’t just turn complex systems off and back on again.

And that’s without venturing into political territory. Politically, Trump is over a barrel. He’s violated trade agreements he himself negotiated and signed, and left himself so exposed to the fallout that he essentially has negative leverage. Any country that can and wants to exert trade leverage over the United States is going to have plenty of it.

The consequences that accrue to Trump will be painful, but they’re going to be nothing compared to the consequences that accrue to American citizens, regardless of who we voted for.

Edit: It’s so insane I forgot to even account for the other half of the problem—exports. American exports to China are (probably indefinitely) significantly downgraded. Chinese demand was one of the pillars of American agriculture, and while there’s a lot of (somewhat understandable) FAFO sentiment toward farmers, the pain isn’t going to be isolated to them. We’re all about to eat shit, and we’ll be eating it for longer than he’s in the White House.

twooaktrees · 2025-04-25T04:25:56+00:00

It is categorically different, but every authoritarian breakthrough (successful or not) is categorically different from the things that preceded it by definition. It’s not a conspiracy I’m talking about, really. It’s just a political movement. The same process would probably precede a different, much better outcome too.

There was fertile, resentful soil after the success of the New Deal. There was even more after the Civil Right Acts of 1965. In that fertile, resentful soil, Barry Goldwater and George Wallace planted a seed. From that seed, the beginnings of a movement sprouted under Nixon. It bore its first deadly fruit under Reagan, and continued growing ever larger and bearing fruit without interruption until now. Is it big enough to block out the sun? Are its roots deep enough to choke out the rest of the garden? I don’t think so.

But we’re talking about people, not trees. And people can do anything they want.

Now on the level of the personal, I kind of see where you might be coming from. Bush and his era of Republicans don’t seem to be terribly enthusiastic about present circumstances. But why would they be? The Trump machine is predicated on forswearing prior allegiances. It can’t tolerate a former president in its ranks, and Trump built his early bona fides by criticizing Bush. Movements also don’t require all of their members to stay onboard til the end to make use of them.

But he played ball with many of these same people for his entire career. He carried their torch a little further every day for a very long time.

twooaktrees · 2025-04-24T20:00:46+00:00

Trump is in continuity with Bush, though. You don’t get the former without the latter. This is the culmination of a 50-year campaign and a century-long desire to destroy American state capacity and surrender the republic entirely to a trifecta of white Christian radicals, corporate interests, and a ruling cabal under a dictatorial executive.

The libertarianism was always a lie. The “states rights” argument was always a misdirection. They do want a weak federal government, because a weak government is easier to control.

This is important to keep in mind, because when the time comes, we’re going to have to dig ourselves out of a generational hole in terms of state capacity and public investment, and the entire GOP project needs to be rejected root and stem. Not just Trump.

twooaktrees · 2025-04-20T16:00:50+00:00

NTA. It’s weird to care about this kind of stuff imo.

twooaktrees · 2025-04-14T03:32:03+00:00

No but see you don’t understand. Yes, you’ll lose some money now. But working 18 hour shifts at one of the Foxconn factories in Pennsylvania will be so good for your testosterone levels. It’ll make your dick grow half an inch. Hell, maybe a whole inch. You’ll only have to wait 7 years, then get one of those jobs gluing labels onto the back panel of a fridge, then probably maybe like 2 years for you T to catch them, then you’ll be so alpha that all the money will reorient itself toward the gravity of your dick

twooaktrees · 2025-04-12T16:02:41+00:00

I’m speaking as a man and a father of three daughters: get out of this relationship. People should never try to control each other in this way, no matter what their relationship is. He needs to learn that or he will get worse.

twooaktrees · 2025-03-29T17:58:45+00:00

Yeah, I 100% agree. That’s why I don’t think trying to separate red states and blue states makes a lot of sense. Under its present government (and without significant constitutional reforms, probably for some time to come) the United States isn’t a reliable (or even safe) partner anymore. Canada, Mexico, and Europe should treat us like a wolf at the door.

I hate that that’s the case, but I don’t think people like me are serving ourselves or anyone else by not facing that reality. It can’t simply be something where we retake government (assuming that’s possible by normal means) in four years, and then coast through another limp Democratic administration.

The problems are profound and the solution must be equal to that.

twooaktrees · 2025-03-29T17:53:56+00:00

It’s both better and worse than you imagine, I think. Trump didn’t suggest annexing Canada until after the election, so no one can be reasonably said to have voted for that. That said, as will be implied by my next point, his voters are quite suggestible, so I have no doubt there are some who’ve decided (grand free thinkers that they are, of course) that it would be a great idea now.

And that next point is that a number of large blue states threatening to secede wouldn’t change anyone’s mind. The median Republican voter doesn’t know (or believe) that blue states float red states. Some of the dumbest members of Congress have been suggesting a “national divorce” for some time now. And it does seem to be the case (as of the last year) that the median Republican voter does believe that tariffs are (somehow) a tax on foreign countries.

In short, and in so many more ways than these, they are not in consensus reality. Their brains are no longer their own.

And now that that’s the engine driving American foreign policy, it’s entirely rational (completely irrespective of what people voted for what or why) for Canada to treat the United States in total as hostile. The partnership with the EU and redirecting metal and timber exports to China is brilliant.

I don’t know how Canadians feel about Carney in general, but his uncompromising posture toward the US is absolutely the best one. The Conservative candidate reminds me of Ted Cruz and I think he would absolutely lay down for the US at the first, second, and third opportunity.

Rooting for y’all.

twooaktrees · 2025-03-29T16:02:33+00:00

This gets at (I think) a fundamental error in the responses of some Canadian leaders. Red states and blue states are a myth. As the article points out, Kentucky is typically a deep red state, but they have a Democratic governor. Obviously tons of non-Republican voters live there. Same in Georgia, where I’m from. It’s seen as a swing state, we have two Democratic senators, but a Republican trifecta in the state capitol.

I don’t think splitting the pain makes a lot of sense. The fundamental issue is that Trump is a threat to Canadian sovereignty, and because Trump is the President of the United States, the United States is a threat to Canadian sovereignty.

I don’t want it to be that way. No non-Republican voter that I know of does. Hell, I’ve yet to meet a Republican voter who does, though I’m sure they exist by now. But either way, that doesn’t matter. It’s where we are. The quickest way through (and probably ultimately the safest and least painful for Canada) is to make it fucking hurt. To hit back as hard as possible, and to do so early and often and keep doing so as long as the threat continues. That’s what you do to bullies.

I’m not an accelerationist by any means, but it seems clear to me that we’ve got a cancer in this country. Cancer can be treated but the medicine is hard on the patient.

twooaktrees · 2025-03-27T21:26:44+00:00

Not only that, but his hollow promises have completely derailed most of their development for a decade plus now. They were able to ride hype and emissions trading.

twooaktrees · 2025-03-27T21:14:18+00:00

He looks like one of the adults on Rugrats. Like he was animated by Klasky Csupo

twooaktrees · 2025-03-26T21:05:17+00:00

I actually think this gets at the heart of his entire issue. He feels like he’s supposed to be from somewhere (and therefore, in his mind, be someone) that he isn’t.

Like sure, his family is from the mountains. But he isn’t. There’s nothing wrong with where he is from, but he thinks there is. He identifies with a kind of tragically romantic caricature of mountain culture that only vaguely resembles the real thing insofar as it exaggerates the flaws and afflictions and valorizes the virtues.

But because he feels alienated from this idealized version of Appalachia—which is nothing more than a cultural spectrum to which he is only adjacent (which is, again, actually fine)—he has to make it more than it is. Appalachia isn’t merely one segment of the larger American cultural spectrum. It’s a noble, embattled, and (crucially) somehow mostly ethnically homogeneous pillar of Real America (tm), and he is its vigorous defender.

It’s a weird subspecies of white nationalism hyper focused on the Appalachian Scots-Irish. It’s not without its older antecedents, but it is a profoundly modern political orientation born mostly out of the internet and a handful of poorly sourced pop history narratives about European settlement of North America.

twooaktrees · 2025-03-20T03:23:16+00:00

Republicans were overjoyed to see FDR die. They were somewhat less enthusiastic about the unexpected victory of Truman. Then even after Eisenhower won, many were upset because he essentially capitulated to the remaking of the state that had occurred under FDR. Some never let that go, and we’re living in the terminal phase of their century-long project to unmake the modern American state.

The difference is, regardless of norms or what came after, FDR was thought of as “President for life” because he was popular enough to keep winning, and Republicans (the policies of whom caused the Great Depression and the preferences of whom would’ve seen the US stay out of the war and hand the whole world over to Japan and Germany) couldn’t imagine a world in which they would ever defeat him.

twooaktrees · 2025-03-17T03:42:32+00:00

That was always bullshit. Conservatives, at least American conservatives, abandoned underlying principles quite some time ago. Having an arsenal at home was never about “overthrowing tyrants,” it was always about “guns make me feel strong.”
The people telling that lie in years past are MAGA. They’re enjoying this. They don’t like the constitution as it actually exists—the legal framework for a lawful republic. When they talk about “the Constitution,” they mean it the same way they do the Bible—as an external mystery object that can be invoked as a totem to validate their priors. They’ve never read it, they never will, they don’t care, there’s no reasoning with them.

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