• Serinus@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        Hey, silver lining. I don’t believe this one!

        I think if our president were any dumber, they couldn’t get elected. He’s damn near drooling on himself. There has to be something left to sway that many people. And even most idiots wouldn’t appoint this many fellow idiots.

        It seems really, really hard to have an administration this dumb. I think this is the dumbest possible point.

        Now, things can get worse. See Stalin. See this surveillance tech. But I don’t think the admin itself can get any dumber than this.

            • Odo@lemmy.world
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              4 days ago

              Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is in the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here.

              A different era.

        • clanker_victim_555@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          You don’t have to fear a dumber president. Fear a smarter one. One that’s as fascist as Dumpy. But one who actually knows how things work in Washington and can remember things for more than 5 minutes. They’ll actually achieve what Dumbdumb has failed at.

          • Serinus@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            I don’t know that that’s true. I think anyone smarter would be more invested in the success of the country as a whole.

            • clanker_victim_555@lemmy.world
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              4 days ago

              Oh you sweet summer child.

              So in your world view all the billionaires working people to death and destroying the environment; all the dictators sending their soldiers to die for their ego; and killing their people to silence dissent. All those people are dumber than like charity workers or something?

              • Serinus@lemmy.world
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                4 days ago

                Uh, yeah, I think the people perpetuating climate change are pretty fucking dumb. Yes.

        • Lasherz@lemmy.worldM
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          5 days ago

          I feel like Herchel Walker got too many votes though. He was a CTE riddled bigot, proud of stolen valor, who pressured multiple women into abortions, and he could barely speak.

        • Rothe@piefed.social
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          4 days ago

          Oh it can definitely get a lot dumber. The dumbness is for all the culture war and posturing they are doing for their moronic voters. There is literally no rock bottom for how dumb they can behave towards them in order to gain their support. Because however stupid this administration is, their voters are even more stupid. So they have lots of way to go where they or the next administration can turn up the dumb dial.

          Where the administration is smart is in all the corruption, grifting and pocketing of public money. Which is its only true goal.

        • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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          5 days ago

          Hey now, Stalin did a lot of bad shit (ethnic cleansing, homosexuality bans, executions with no due process, destruction of regional democracy) but he also did a bunch of good shit (rapid industrialization, improving economic equality, improving education, leading the nation to beat the nazis)

          trump is only doing the bad shit. Can things get worse? Sure. But y’all are way below Stalin levels already.

          • Serinus@lemmy.world
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            5 days ago

            I dunno, 20 million deaths really goes a long way to cancelling out any of that good shit.

            • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              4 days ago

              Well those kinds of figures were calculated after the fact (and may or may not include WW2 casualties, of which the USSR had more than every other allied nation combined I believe), so I dunno if I’d be so confident.

              Trump was already arguably responsible for tons of COVID deaths. And then USAID related deaths. And there will be more related to antivax policy. And there will be more once the concentration camps close and we are able to assess the real damage. Etc etc.

            • jtrek@startrek.website
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              5 days ago

              I am concerned about how we don’t have 20 million deaths mostly because trump and his goons are stupid, not because they don’t want to do mass murder.

            • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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              5 days ago

              20 million is a vast overestimation for how many deaths he was responsible for.

              The actual number of executions and other deaths resulting from the purge is about 700000, many of those were probably actual criminals. The number of deaths under GULAG during his leadership is uncertain, but definitely under a million, many also actual criminals. About 4-6 million died due to a mismanaged famine triggered in some part by his idiotic agricultural policies, but this is on the edge of “responsible for”. That’s about it when it comes to peacetime deaths he was involved in.

              Was it bad? Sure, it was fucked up, he’s the second worst leader of USSR after Gorbachev. But he’s not as bad as many western propaganda sources will have you believe, and I’d argue trump is worse overall.

              • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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                5 days ago

                700,000 criminals huh? Guess your life doesn’t matter anymore once you commit a crime. Good to know…

                Random question…Have you ever gone over the speed limit?

                • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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                  5 days ago

                  We’re currently comparing two world leaders, one who oversaw a rapid industrialization of a country and lead it to victory against nazis and did a bunch of awful shit leading to millions of deaths, and another one who did like 1 maybe good thing and will also lead to millions of deaths. Both are bad, one is worse.

                • balsoft@lemmy.ml
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                  5 days ago

                  What is the metric you’re using to claim that trump is better than Stalin? If it’s “human suffering caused” as approximated by total excess deaths caused by the government’s policies during time in office, trump will probably be worse just on account of being the leader of a US empire enforcing worldwide capitalist extraction for 6 years now.

                  • MiddleAgesModem@lemmy.world
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                    4 days ago

                    You’re a fucking dumbass. Not only are downplaying and deliberately underestimating Stalin’s atrocities (700,000 “guilty criminals”) you’re blatantly lying about Trump’s effects, as terrible as he is, it is not even remotely close.

                    Sheer fucking stupidity.

    • jtrek@startrek.website
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      5 days ago

      I think some of them say stupid stuff as a weird power move - “yeah I said bullshit what are you going to do about it? Nothing. Because you’re weak”

      This is a factor in why fascists only really respond to power. It’s all they understand, and even that understanding is limited.

      • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
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        5 days ago

        I have brought up “cruelty signalling” and “vice signalling” a number of times as a conservative counterpart to “virtue signalling”…

        But MAGA seems to have progressed it to “ignorance signalling”, to show your allegiance to Dear Leader, you must project your idiocy in his likeness.

        • Manjushri@piefed.social
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          5 days ago

          Technically it’s still a form of virtue signalling since they really do consider ignorance a virtue.

      • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 days ago

        They can be and indeed ARE both.

        When you’re part of an untethered kakistocracy, being an incompetent moron isn’t the impediment to getting things done that it should be.

      • Serinus@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        They’re malicious towards more than half the country, democrats, skin color, gays, sure.

        But so much of their damage is unintentional and comes from straight up incompetence or stupidity or naivety. This trade war with Canada, uh… how do I say. It’s not intentionally to get Canada. It’s not exactly directly malicious (in the US). I think it largely comes from a splash of each of the above three, with an indeterminate part of it being advise of Russian counsel. Of course that part is malicious, but the maliciousness is external using the naivety and stupidity of this Administration.

        I think it helps to understand it. I don’t know why I think that.

        Also this may be a distinction without a difference.

        • Serinus@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Of any country in history? I’m sure. We could start looking at Nero or the Habsburgs or some small country or something.

          It’d be a search, but there’s probably a few out there.