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[Politics] So, how's 2025 going?
6 months ago
It's not great. Better than I expected in some ways, and worse in others. I wanted to post an update to show that I am still updating that 2025 Survival Guide.
I'm starting off with the economy because that's ostensibly why we pivoted to fascism. "What about the price of eggs?!?" Well, let's see how it's going.
• Stock Market: The S&P 500 (one of the most direct indicators of the economy) is down about 6% since Trump took office. It was up 15% in 2024 under Biden. So Trump has erased 4 months worth of gains in 2 months. Twice as efficient!
• Tariffs: These are a tax on you. Thanks for the embarrassing billboards, Canada, hopefully it will educate some people. I am seeing the tariff impacts at my job, as we lose business to overseas competitors that don't need to add the 25% tariff into their prices. This, combined with the uncertainty of what is affected and what is rolling out is absolutely going to stifle business. Businesses don't invest billions in a policy that could be reversed tomorrow.
• Unemployment: Currently sitting at 4.1%. It's been 2 months, it takes time for the impacts of the cuts, tariffs, and layoffs to show in the numbers. My baseless speculation is 20% by the end of the year, because I think, like Covid, this is going to snowball fast once it gets rolling.
• But what about my eegggggggssssss?!?: Higher than they've ever been.
Not lookin' so great either. The United States is losing its classification as a democracy, former allies are issuing travel warnings against visiting the United States, and... We gotta talk about the Signal leak.
The Signal leak is catastrophic for so many reasons.
• Signal is not an approved messaging app certified by the US government. The reason for this is that all government action is required to be recorded. All emails, all text messages, all formal communication. If you've heard about the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), this is the record that FOIA is petitioning for release. The Signal chat was set to auto-delete after 4 weeks. These ghouls are purposefully trying to avoid leaving a paper trail. Why would they not want to leave a paper trail if they're not doing anything illegal?
• The gross incompetence of adding a journalist to an illegal military action discussion and no one bothered to verify everyone in the chat?!?
• Tulsi Gabbard (director of National Intelligence) lying under oath and then backtracking the next day was pretty funny.
• Just to be clear, if anyone outside of this regime had done this, they would have had their security clearance stripped and probably be under arrest for releasing military secrets. How can these people cheer arresting whistleblowers and then be fine with this bullshit?
Everyone can read what was in the leak. It's obvious that it included times, targets, and weapons packages, shared prior to the event. Don't fall for the Ministry of Truth, follow the evidence of your eyes and ears and see these morons just got caught colossally fucking up. Do you really believe that Tulsi "Doesn't recall" the conversation she had in writing on her phone? Or do you think that they are lying to cover up a fuck-up?
All of this has gone a lot faster than I expected. The billionaires spent millions on a plan to capture the government: Project 2025. Now more than ever, the grifters are coordinated.
But coordinated grifters are still grifters. When push comes to shove and they have to choose between coordination and grifting, they're choosing the grifting. That white house Tesla ad read by Trump cost Musk $100 million. Big tech had to bend the knee with $1 million donations to Trump's inauguration fund. TSMC, the world leader in Semiconductor, had to promise $100 billion to Trump. Maybe that has something to do with the US being the only thing stopping China from invading Taiwan and this is protection money? The Trump regime wants mineral deals in exchange for not giving Ukraine to Russia, is selling $5 million US citizenships to oligarchs, is launching cryptocurrency to disguise bribe money, etc.
The backlash against Tesla, reciprocal tariffs, boycott movements in other countries: It's working. They're feeling it in their pocketbooks, and that's the place they truly care about. Here is whiny nazi bitch Elon Musk crying as he contemplates losing billions of dollars from Tesla stock price drops. The billionaires that funded this movement are getting targeted by tariffs and court cases in other countries, so their products get hurt more than the general public. It's not much, but it's something, and we need to have some glimmer of hope in all this. If they can't hold it together for more than 3 months, how are they going to handle 4 years?
I'm not going to say things are going to get better. They are definitely going to get worse. We haven't hit public knowledge of concentration camps yet, all the people disappeared so far by secret police have been foreigners on a visa, so there's still plausible deniability. But the resistance (not the democrats, they're a bunch of useless corporatists besides AOC and Bernie) is starting to hurt the regime. How many billions can Musk lose before he gets desperate? What happens when Trump is no longer viewed as the path to more riches by the elite? Keep your chips in the game, because there's a chance that this house of credit cards falls apart.
The Economy
I'm starting off with the economy because that's ostensibly why we pivoted to fascism. "What about the price of eggs?!?" Well, let's see how it's going.
• Stock Market: The S&P 500 (one of the most direct indicators of the economy) is down about 6% since Trump took office. It was up 15% in 2024 under Biden. So Trump has erased 4 months worth of gains in 2 months. Twice as efficient!
• Tariffs: These are a tax on you. Thanks for the embarrassing billboards, Canada, hopefully it will educate some people. I am seeing the tariff impacts at my job, as we lose business to overseas competitors that don't need to add the 25% tariff into their prices. This, combined with the uncertainty of what is affected and what is rolling out is absolutely going to stifle business. Businesses don't invest billions in a policy that could be reversed tomorrow.
• Unemployment: Currently sitting at 4.1%. It's been 2 months, it takes time for the impacts of the cuts, tariffs, and layoffs to show in the numbers. My baseless speculation is 20% by the end of the year, because I think, like Covid, this is going to snowball fast once it gets rolling.
• But what about my eegggggggssssss?!?: Higher than they've ever been.
The Government
Not lookin' so great either. The United States is losing its classification as a democracy, former allies are issuing travel warnings against visiting the United States, and... We gotta talk about the Signal leak.
The Signal leak is catastrophic for so many reasons.
• Signal is not an approved messaging app certified by the US government. The reason for this is that all government action is required to be recorded. All emails, all text messages, all formal communication. If you've heard about the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), this is the record that FOIA is petitioning for release. The Signal chat was set to auto-delete after 4 weeks. These ghouls are purposefully trying to avoid leaving a paper trail. Why would they not want to leave a paper trail if they're not doing anything illegal?
• The gross incompetence of adding a journalist to an illegal military action discussion and no one bothered to verify everyone in the chat?!?
• Tulsi Gabbard (director of National Intelligence) lying under oath and then backtracking the next day was pretty funny.
• Just to be clear, if anyone outside of this regime had done this, they would have had their security clearance stripped and probably be under arrest for releasing military secrets. How can these people cheer arresting whistleblowers and then be fine with this bullshit?
Everyone can read what was in the leak. It's obvious that it included times, targets, and weapons packages, shared prior to the event. Don't fall for the Ministry of Truth, follow the evidence of your eyes and ears and see these morons just got caught colossally fucking up. Do you really believe that Tulsi "Doesn't recall" the conversation she had in writing on her phone? Or do you think that they are lying to cover up a fuck-up?
But there's a little hope...
All of this has gone a lot faster than I expected. The billionaires spent millions on a plan to capture the government: Project 2025. Now more than ever, the grifters are coordinated.
But coordinated grifters are still grifters. When push comes to shove and they have to choose between coordination and grifting, they're choosing the grifting. That white house Tesla ad read by Trump cost Musk $100 million. Big tech had to bend the knee with $1 million donations to Trump's inauguration fund. TSMC, the world leader in Semiconductor, had to promise $100 billion to Trump. Maybe that has something to do with the US being the only thing stopping China from invading Taiwan and this is protection money? The Trump regime wants mineral deals in exchange for not giving Ukraine to Russia, is selling $5 million US citizenships to oligarchs, is launching cryptocurrency to disguise bribe money, etc.
The backlash against Tesla, reciprocal tariffs, boycott movements in other countries: It's working. They're feeling it in their pocketbooks, and that's the place they truly care about. Here is whiny nazi bitch Elon Musk crying as he contemplates losing billions of dollars from Tesla stock price drops. The billionaires that funded this movement are getting targeted by tariffs and court cases in other countries, so their products get hurt more than the general public. It's not much, but it's something, and we need to have some glimmer of hope in all this. If they can't hold it together for more than 3 months, how are they going to handle 4 years?
Hang in there
I'm not going to say things are going to get better. They are definitely going to get worse. We haven't hit public knowledge of concentration camps yet, all the people disappeared so far by secret police have been foreigners on a visa, so there's still plausible deniability. But the resistance (not the democrats, they're a bunch of useless corporatists besides AOC and Bernie) is starting to hurt the regime. How many billions can Musk lose before he gets desperate? What happens when Trump is no longer viewed as the path to more riches by the elite? Keep your chips in the game, because there's a chance that this house of credit cards falls apart.
Of course, the really frustrating thing is that the US has already burned all its soft power in the global community. Nobody's going to trust us anymore, and for good reason. The damage to the country, both internally and abroad, is already going to take decades to recover from, and that's assuming that future politicians actually try to fix the issues instead of just campaigning on them and then ignoring them.
We have to endure. It's all we can do. Gotta do so together.
Here’s hoping things start getting better sooner rather than later.