grte

Observing from outside, UK politics looks really grim.

These things had such little impact I had entirely forgotten they were a thing that happened.

"What you end up having is lower quality."

Gosh, who could see such a thing happening? It was totally impossible not to be blindsided by this. Literally nobody, ever, warned that this was likely.

He's still a total dumbass not to have accepted his fate as a one term president from the get-go, dip and give the Democrats the usual amount of time to choose a successor rather than the truncated run Harris made.

He developed a cult of personality around himself of significant size and used it to seize one of two pillars of political power in the USA, which then propelled him to power twice. Not smart as in "good for the world," but pretty successful in the, "empowering and enriching oneself at the cost of the commons" sense.

He's an idiot-savant. A total moron with a special talent for self promotion. Which it turns out gets you very far in life (along with the head start one gets being born wealthy).

Do you remember Judith Miller and the leading role the NYT took lying the US into the war in Iraq? Whatever "good" journalism the NYT does, it's just to buy them the legitimacy they need to spread the lies that matter.

Imagine having a personality disorder, basically. Wealth inequality is bad for the wealthy, too. It either turns them into freaks or it enables their inherent freakishness. Either way, they need their wealth to be redistributed and they personally to be reduced to the median level of wealth for everyone's, including their own, benefit.

Loosening restrictions around foreign ownership has been one of the most insidious and damaging legacies of the Harper governments.

Yep, the goal of this ministry will be to replace public servants.

Is this what it looks like when you hold all the cards, then?