My theory is that Covid killed everyone and this is purgatory. (TikTok screencap)

  • socsa@piefed.social
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    12 hours ago

    It was 2014. That was the final year of that Obama high where things really felt like they were turning a corner before we were slowly confronted with a world where Donald Trump might actually be president, and the only one standing in his way was somehow Hillary Clinton, a woman that Republicans had been preparing to beat for literally 20 years.

    • hansolo@lemmy.today
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      10 hours ago

      This is actually the right answer. Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, and we’re all still in the middle of what is essentially a no-declared-sides WWIII now. 2015 was good, but things had shifted in the world a bit. Countering China was starting to become a huge deal suddenly for the US, and China moved into the South China Sea and did some currency revaluation that was all aimed at their 2029 and 2049 CCP anniversary goals.

      Also, I was in fucking phenomenal shape.

    • PlaidBaron@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      Its whatever best year you remember. From my perspective, its been sharply downhill since 2000.

      Those older than me often say it went to shit during the Reagan years. Its been slowly getting worse for a long time.

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      12 hours ago

      You may not have been paying close attention. Obama was astoundingly better than Trump, but invasive spying on citizens was allpwed to remain legal under his watch, and he extended what was allowed. Drone striking questionable targets started under him as well. There’s more, but those two are the highlights usually brought up.

      • socsa@piefed.social
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        3 hours ago

        Right, Obama didn’t snap his fingers and fix every problem in the world or country, but it really felt like we were finally getting to a point where we had a new liberal voting coalition which would start to push US politics left, so that we could finally unwind a lot of those underlying legacy issues.

        Fixing the core issues which created this “obligate imperialism” in the first place were never going to be fixed in the span of one decade, but Obama arguably set us up to grind out more progress in the next administration.

        That’s why this whole thing is so frustrating. We were on the path to a supreme court majority and burying a lot of old school conservative ideas in the coming decades, and now we are farther away than ever, because so many people can’t see the long game.

        • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          53 minutes ago

          I think part of the issue is that after winning on the platform of “change”, Democrats veered hard into “establishment status quo”. They won so hard that most people don’t even recall the few bad parts of the Obama presidency at all (the point of my last comment, that it wasn’t all sunshine and roses), and then threw that lead in the trash.

          They had a chance with Sanders, but threw away an absurd amount of public goodwill by very openly pushing him out of the running in favor of Clinton. That effectively left Trump as the only candidate carrying the “change” flag, and a lot of people were too dumb to see he was full of shit.

          When Democrats had a chance again, they went with another “establishment safe” choice and only won with Biden due to an immense outcry against Trump. Then they lost again because they wouldn’t platform someone people were willing to get out to vote for.

          If we get out of this shitshow, I’ll be very interested in what history says about the last few presidential races.

      • ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online
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        9 hours ago

        Trump did more drone strikes in his first term than Obama did in both his terms. And that is only of the strikes we know. At one point trump declared that strikes dont need to be reported and they didn’t count the number of strikes afterward.

        Biden actually fully ended drone strikes… and he did it quietly without much fanfare.

      • Skullgrid@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        Drone striking questionable targets

        if you want to bring up warcrimes, the world has never been normal, especially not the US, they’ve been up to some heinious shit since before we were born

        • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          9 hours ago

          they’ve been up to some heinious shit since before we were born

          Yeah since they invaded and genocided the americas. Always has been.

        • ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online
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          8 hours ago

          I think in 2010 or so someone said that if you were US Marine and were involved in every single action that the USMC took part in, you would take part in around 2 events every year.

      • nexguy@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        The worst the obama administration got was a typical couple of weeks of the Trump administration. It is so much worse now it’s unthinkable it could have gotten this bad when looking from the perspective of 2015.

        • technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          9 hours ago

          Your mistake is viewing trump not as the obvious fash continuation of the state/capitalism but as some kind of unique magical monster.

          That’s how we got here.

          • nexguy@lemmy.world
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            7 hours ago

            Trump is a unique magical monster. There isn’t anyone else that can act the way he does. He has a personality disorder that cannot be copied by any average intelligent person. There isn’t anyone else with near that type of wealth and social immaturity. No other adult has ever acted like he does that didn’t have a mental disorder.

            Others try to copy him but are easy to see through as they cannot bring themselves to act like he would. Ramaswamy tried but is just too mature and of normal intelligence. You need a child(with a disorder) in an adult body with 100% total and complete confidence in itself. A complete narcissist.

            There has never been anyone like him before as anyone with his type of childlike behavior would have been dismissed.

            • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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              3 hours ago

              There has never been anyone like him before as anyone with his type of childlike behavior would have been dismissed.

              I’d like to introduce you to Andrew Jackson…

              • nexguy@lemmy.world
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                2 hours ago

                An orphan with limited education became a successful military leader who spoke intelligently. About the opposite of Trump. Both are clearly evil yet one is childlike while the other is not.

                • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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                  2 hours ago

                  Andrew Jackson was a literal psychopath, and came up with the ideology of just ignoring court rulings.

                  • nexguy@lemmy.world
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                    2 hours ago

                    Yet his personality is nothing at all like Trump. Jackson would not be able to lower himself to say the idiotic types of immature things Trump would say. Jackson truly believed in his horrid views. Trump takes whatever view he sees gets him the most attention/power/money regardless of the view and will change it as needed.

      • HugeNerd@lemmy.ca
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        12 hours ago

        But he spoke well and smiled a lot, especially when fake-drinking that Flint water. What a hero.

      • blarth@thelemmy.club
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        11 hours ago

        Steve Bannon gave birth to GamerGate through WoW guilds.

        Insert small to large dominos meme where the small domino is some disheveled guy playing WoW at 3 AM talking about how women suck and the large one is Donald Trump recreating concentration camps, J6, or whatever dystopian bullshit else that has happened in the last few years.