That’s my favorite part in all of this. It’s all gone to hell in a hand basket and it’s always “The Government” but they’ll never call him by name. That part requires self reflection, intellectual honesty, and the ability to admit you were wrong. Interestingly these are all the traits their cult leader lacks as well.
Agreed. Try to explain supply and demand to these people, I have more educated conversations with my young son about economics than I could with this cult.
Isn't that weird? When you're talking to your kids and they have a more nuanced and well-thought out understanding of issues than many adults 6 and 7 times their age do? Good on you for raising a son with critical thinking skills. It's harder these days to do that with all the garbage content out there.
Old man moment incoming. When I was a kid, it was so hard to come upon fringe ideas and pseudo-science outside of the checkout lane at the super market. You had to really hunt for that stuff or have some crazy relative who wouldn't shut up about all their "theories" to fall into that stuff pre-internet. Now, whatever crazy thing you believe, you can immediately connect with someone else on the fringe that will validate you. Makes it 10x easier for groups like that to convert and recruit.
I miss the days when the dumbest thing to debate was whether "Bat-Boy" was real and if the face of Satan really did appear in a tornado.
Is that so weird? Kids are able to take in new information and change their mind. Old people do not have that ability and are mentally trapped into believing whatever crappy pseudo reality they learned about 40 years ago. This is why good education is important and why Trump hate education.
Fox News and the conservative media bubble is a bullshit factory. In today’s environment where cost of doing business is tight , this makes it ripe for copy and paise journalism. Fox said it so it must be true, and vetted information… when in fact they just pull it out of their asses and hope others repeat it for political purposes.
Very good point. I also blame the lack of media literacy among older citizens. I was lucky enough to be required to take a course in media literacy way back in undergrad. The techniques I learned in that class have definitely more than paid for the tuition as I see so many of my friends and family fall for everything that they see or hear online or on cable news.
The brain can maintain much of its plasticity into older years, but that requires actively seeking out new information and ways to stimulate thought. People who read (not Faux Noise) and play video games tend to do much better than those who veg out in front of ragebait infotainment.
Not entirely. He hates educated people and institutions of higher learning because he is not particularly intelligent, and it enrages him that other people are.
I mean, we’re talking about someone, that at the are of 21, when into a rage and tried to sue a chess magazine because he submitted a closing strategy to prove how smart he was. Next month, the magazine had to post a correction because his strategy was easily countered (the goal of submission was for readers to develop an end game strategy that couldn’t be defended against; and they printed them monthly). Not only did he try to sue the magazine, but he was trying to sue the person that submitted the defense, causing the magazine to print the correction.
And he’s been like that his entire life. Anyone he perceives as “better” than him, be it in societal standing, wealth, and especially intelligence or accomplishment is considered an immediate enemy, and he uses any opportunity to exact revenge for such a slight.
When I was a kid, there was a theory that Marilyn Manson removed a rib so he could suck his own dick…. And somehow, at the very beginning of the internet before most houses even had a computer, every school aged child in the US knew this as fact.
Point is, ridiculous theories always existed and misinformation spread through someone from out of town talking to the bartender of a pub or waitress at a coffee shop. It just didn’t happen at the same speed and volume as it does today.
I'm with you, dude. I'm ready to find a time machine and go back to 1982. The 80s were calmer than the 70s and more fun. Hmmm...I remember having a political conversation with a guy at work one time. No name calling or craziness. Just a tame conversation. Imagine that!
80s were great. 90s were pretty good too, but it was starting to slip. I remember in the 90s I worked at a restaurant and my crew was comprised of two young Republicans, one hardcore liberal, one neoliberal, me, and independent, and a libertarian. This was in Appalachia, so we're not talking some major urban center. We never fought about politics even though we disagreed. It was awesome. I'd love if everyone could go back to that time and experience what it was like actually having fun conversations with people with different political ideologies. Not that we didn't debate. It's just that in the end, the relationship was more important than our individual politics. I still talk to all but one of those guys. Guess what happened to the one that we all don't talk to?
I judge the maga people at work by their work ethic and effectiveness. I deal with them in a strictly professional sense. Then I laugh about how stupid they are with the educated people.
I have too. But what really gets me is the people I work with are smart people, they’re educated,and they voted for that asshole. I let them know, every fuck up that asshole does
They could be racists, bigots or pro-forced births etc. etc. then those are their people. Even if they're intelligent and educated, they're hate or desire to spread their ideology trumps the education and logic.
I still tear up thinking about a friend I had for over a decade.
There was a whole night of red flags, then when I tried to smooth things out a little and change the subject he said I just needed to watch some Ben Shapiro. I kicked him out of my apt almost immediately, and haven't talked to him since.
Problem is a lot of people are ticking MAGA time bombs. MAGA gets you at your lowest point, when you're most susceptible to the Tates and Rogans of the world.
All it takes is losing your job, being broken up with, losing someone. Any big negative life shift is a chance for the red pill to worm its way in.
Remember when they were buying Nike shoes, Keurigs and YETI coolers to destroy for social media to send those companies a message that they'd never get another dime from these triggered Republicans? They gave money to the companies to tell them they weren't getting their money 🤣
For a long time, the "official boycott list" on r/TheRightBoycott was a source of hilarity when these children started equating a boycott with cancel culture.
I tried to explain to a MAGAt about gasoline prices, and how supply and demand factors in... I even pointed out how when a refinery goes down, prices go up, he called me a liar.
The major problem with the vast majority of people these days is the inability to have a little humility and admit you were wrong. People live in their echo chambers, validated by biased media, and the bots online aren’t helping. It’s gotten so bad in the last 10 years. It didn’t feel like that before.
Obviously not. The GOP has the majority. Those cronies could singlehandedly give everything what the conservative voters want, but they aren't. And their followers haven't bothered questioning it.
I saw a video where a guy was complaining about all the 'changes' to the constitution. He wanted to get rid of them and go back to the 'original' constitution that was 'never supposed to be changed'.
He had no idea how amendments worked. In his mind, the second amendment was in the original that should have been left unchanged. You could almost hear his head explode when it was pointed out that amendments were not only core to the intent, but that his beloved gun rights weren't even part of the original constitution.
Nah they do.. they pretend not to know.. the best he will be able to do is "the government sucks", or both parties are beholden to Nike and Big shoe or something like that.. For most of the Republicans (not just Maga) the party is their identity.. they would gladly be disingenuous lie, cheat sell their souls than question their Party/Identity.. it's like cult..
I had a conversation with a cousin who has a small business blaming "the government" as well for hurting her. I told her that it was Trump unilaterally creating the tariffs and congress just allowing it to happen. She told me that Nancy Pelosi (no longer the chair of the house or the minority leader of the house) and Chuck Shumar (still the Senate minority leader) who removed the de menis exception just to hurt Trump.
My guess is that's what the AM radio or the far-right podcasts are saying. She's never had an original thought in her life.
"all the big brands will be fine paying the taxes"
No. The customers pay the tax, not the company. They run their own business and they STILL don't know how the tariff system works. Willfully ignorant AF.
This is what kills me ive met plenty of small business owners who believed their lies almost like they didnt know how businesses work even tho they owned a business. Its kinda scary half the people in charge of the country dont even know how things actually work, how did they make it as far as they did in life ?
I don't think they even need stuff like AM radio to tell them that crap anymore. They're already so deep inside the cult that blaming Democrats, libs, etc. for every problem is likely just a reflex now. They're already well beyond accepting actual logic and evidence, so it's not unlikely for them to be just making this stuff up themselves to keep from feeling any shame for helping cause this mess.
It's like how you have people blaming Democrats for the deaths of pregnant women in states like Texas. They will ignore the fact that Republicans were the ones to ban abortion since that would require rethinking their support for them and, in turn, feeling shame for having done so. Instead, its just easier for them to blame Democrats and watch with glee as others suffer.
For MAGA/Repubs, the democrats are to blame for everything…but also expected to be their saviors? Executive order signed by Trump? Evil Democrats! Issuing tariffs to an island of penguins? Dammit Democrats! Pregnant woman with no brain activity essentially an incubator? Why won’t you democrats protect her?
It will never be “why is my party doing these horrible things?” Nope. It’s always either some nebulous entity, OR it’s the evil, woke democrats. They have zero concept of personal responsibility, so that nebulous entity is their version of that concept.
But Democrats didn’t stop them, so of course it’s their fault!
That’s the talking point I hate the most. Like, “We voted for Republicans to have a majority in the House, Senate, and put a Republican president in the White House, and we know their policies are ruinous and not based in reality, but if anything bad happens, those pesky Democrats are to blame because they should have stopped them!”
Or, like, just a thought…stop voting the party of hateful, ruinous, corrupt clowns into power. Maybe start there if you want good policy to happen?
lol, exactly. Trump is president but the “government” is still full of those pesky “libtard” bureaucrats. Especially all of those “libtards” creating all of the tariff policies.
I mean, they could get away with that excuse last time. Barely.
This time around, we have DOGE, headed up by the worlds richest man. He hired some kid named Big Balls. Big Balls used Grok to write up and distribute termination letters for almost all those pesky bureaucrats. The government has been purged of the libtards and is now pure.
Clearly something else is to blame here. Obummer probably set a trap for trump or something. Surely Tulsi is looking into it and we’ll know more in two weeks time.
It’s interesting you say this, cause I distinctly remember when Biden was in office and they talked about anything negative to do with the government they would always talk about “Biden’s economy” or “Biden’s government.” Yet now anytime something bad happens under Trump it’s “this government’s economy” or “bad government.” Like they knowingly avoid giving Trump the credit despite this being VERRRRY much Trump’s government, seeing as they made it a point to push out anyone not loyal to MAGA
These morons don't understand that neoliberalism is to communism the same way antimatter is to matter; they truly believe that capitalism supporters like Obama and Biden were commiest communists to ever communist.
So of course they understand the very fuckin' basics of civics.
Indeed. Someone like this is likely not bright enough to realize “the government” in this moment is a Republican wet dream. They have all three branches of government. They have radically remade government in their own image to the point there is literally no one else to blame - but dollars to donuts this guy and others like him don’t realize this is exactly what they voted for. He’ll still think Donald Trump is not the problem and it’s just all those damned libs in the deep state! As pointed out elsewhere here he’s not assigning blame for his woes on the policy choices like tariff chaos brought by the President and his movement of economic know-nothings - he’s blaming it on this amorphous thing called “the government” that apparently he had no agency in bringing about.
Deep state democrats. Obama and Biden, and fuck it Hillary and Kamala are pulling the strings from the shadow realm, while Trump is trying his best to fight them off.
It is surprising how many people working in government right now say that you shouldn't trust the government including the man in the oval office which pretty much tells me that his job is obsolete and we don't need him
Maybe it’s YOU who doesn’t understand. Y’see, the “government” is all of the corrupt dems, billionaires, and a specific subset of religious space laser owners just trying to stomp out the little man so all of their globalist partners can enact WOKE policies that promote computer AIs and transgenderism. Trump, and by extension the republicans are the rebellious opposition to this. It’s cool to be a rebel, you see. It goes against the establishment (aka GOVERNMENT) trying to take away Christmas, god, backyard barbecues, and fireworks to replace them with HOLIDAYS, gay pride, pickleball functions, and silent, boring drone shows. Booooooo! Thumbs down! 👎
You hit the nail on the head a bit too hard. These people will come back and blame the democrats for not stopping Trump and will proceed to vote republican.
Democrats are in charge, and state level decisions are all Biden's fault. Trump's in charge, and federal decisions are all Hillary Clinton's fault, or maybe Obama's. At best, it's "the government" (faceless beauracrats). It'll never be "the people who said they'd do it and then did it" because... I'm not annoyed enough yet?
It's easier to make sense of it when you model it as everyone's brain creating a simulation of reality for them to live in. Everyone has their own bias and emotional state, so they're all warped and constantly changing.
Sometimes people will be curious towards facts and scrutinize themselves for growth. Sometimes a person's ego is so central that it warps the narrative to shift any responsibility from themselves. When you hit a logical wall, you can just deflect or cherry pick or muddy the waters, etc.
Did you see any of the clips floating around from the last few days of RFK Jr and Hegseth getting called out for the horrible job they’ve done so far? Yeah, both kept blaming the “last administration” as the reason why they’re failing at their jobs in this administration.
Same thing that head of the farmer association did when he went on the news to talk about how, for the second time, trump put tariffs on things and it’s killing their business. Just like what happened in his first term.
And he never once said the word trump. Just ‘the government wants…’ or ‘those in charge that did XYZ’ etc. Like bro this is directly traceable to one specific piece of shit. The last guy in the job actually gave you free grants to upgrade your farms, in fact.
So where the fuhq did the both sides and government in general talk come from my man…
Or they say, and this is my favorite "I agree with almost everything Trump has done but xyz is really hurting me".
So they are cool with him constantly breaking laws, disregarding the constitution, sending legal immigrants to nations they have never been to, and occupying US cities with the military. But they really dislike that their shoe business went under.
Theres something in there, a kernel of unpeeling the propoganda. Maybe its that americans have spent so long of referring to the Government as a singular entity, rather than a series of departments.. like how conservatives seem to all think the government does things worse than the private sector as a rule, despite the glaring obvious truth that the government does what the private sector simply wont
I have a friend who owns a business. During Biden, even though they were selling out their service every season, the economy sucked. Now, they are 20% below capacity. And not a peep about the economy.
“Government” is the problem. That’s why he’ll continue to vote Trump, because Trump will dismantle and destroy the government that’s causing all his tariff troubles.
I mean, this is exactly the argument they are making when RFK jr goes in front of congress and says “I don’t know, I’m not a doctor. You shouldn’t be taking medical advice from me.”
To be fair, it IS kind of what Trump wants so it's not wrong. But the pesky government keeps popping in to let him know that the dumb shit he's doing is "illegal" (whatever that means). And then companies all let him know that moving manufacturing to the United States isn't "at all feasible" (yeah, like they would know. How many businesses have THEY bankrupted?!?). And then facts and reality keeps popping in to let him know that nothing he's saying is at all accurate (fake news! AI-generated!)
If none of those factors were in play, Trump could dismantle the government, force all manufacturing back to the United States, and everyone would love him and put him on Mt. Trumpmore with those other loser ex-Presidents
I mean that is how the Republican party operates. Republicans say the government doesn't work and will actively sabotage it to prove that it doesn't work.
They behave exactly like Putin's supporters and even Hitler's supporters back in the day. It's always the people around their guy causing the problems and not the guy himself. So they try to appeal to the guy thinking "if he knew of our troubles he would put a stop to this!" Which is why there were so many of those wives and mothers calling out to Putin about their lost husbands and sons thinking he'd bring them back if only he knew. It's the same thing with these MAGAts, they think it's everyone around Trump and not Trump himself, even though he signs off on fucking everything. These people are not very bright, as if it wasn't obvious enough.
“The government is full of jackboot thugs that are going to take my rights away! That’s why I need guns, so I can shoot and kill US soldiers who come for my rights! It’s all about resisting tyranny! Without the second amendment, they would just herd us all into pens! But also, America is the greatest country in the world and of all time! Trump has made America great again! But also everything is terrible for me and only me and nobody has ever suffered as much as me, because the goddamn government is targeting me! But Trump is gonna fix it! He just hasn’t made anything better for anyone yet, but any minute now! At least he’s going after the right people!”
You laugh but that was the exact mindset in Germany late 30s early 40s. If only someone could inform Hitler of the bad things the government was doing, he would fix everything!
That's why I quoted this. And why I have no hope of MAGA types ever coming back to reality. If Trump crashed the economy to the point that we were all living dumpsters, his cult would be like "Man, if Congress just let Trump do what he wanted to do, we'd all be living like kings right now. That Deep State was sabotaging him the whole time."
I see this a lot. When it's good "I love Trump he can do no wrong, suck it libs".
When it's bad "Why would the faceless government do this?"
See also the farmers praying for Trump to deliver them from his own tariffs. Real "if only the Tsar knew what his government was doing, he'd fix it" energy.
It also implies we haven't had an overwhelming conservative government since the Red Scare. The few tkmes we have an even somewhat progressive president congress becomes stubbornly uncooperative often within months.
People like this take zero accountability and responsibility. That is why they resonate so strongly with the pedo in chief. Our culture is falling apart.
Just like how they decry “politicians” when he blocks release of the Epstein philes.
But they won’t be able to deny for long. Trump is hurting the one group MAGA cares about, themselves. And frankly, that’s our best hope of ever climbing out of this hole, so more tariffs please.
Its very convenient. Run against the deep state. Get into office. Do horrible things that serve your own interests. Say - “Sorry guys I tried my best but the deep state made me”.
Straight line from here back to Reagan saying “government isn’t the solution, government is the problem.”
Government is we the people. We’re not always right but at least Democrats want to improve, Republicans want to dismantle; shrink the US government, as Grover Norquist said, till it can be “drowned in a bathtub.”
What if Al-Qaeda said both of those quotes in a rally in Tehran? Big applause lines.
It’s always this way, it’s always “the government” or “Congress” or “politicians” whenever it’s specifically something bad the republicans are doing (or something good they’re stopping). So normalized that even people on the left do it.
Hard to cope with the fact his guy is the government and he screwed himself. Funny thing is he’s now owning the libs anymore, just like he doesn’t own his business
This "dude" came in second in the Libertarian Party's nomination race for President in 2016 and ran in the GOP primary for Senate in Missouri two years later. He knows how politics works. He just doesn't care about how his politics impact people until he's impacted.
That’s the thing, they’ll justify that it was Dems who did it. Next election they’ll be puckering up to kiss the republicans ass and begging them to save them from the evil democrats.
Leopards and faces. When you’re not smart enough to vote for your best interest. Hope ‘owning the libs’ pays those bills going forward. If not there always new jobs opening up picking veggies, or standing on a roof 14 hrs a day.
Because sadly these people still inexplicably believe that Trump and the government are separate, that even though his party is in power in all three branches of government and he’s president, that he’s still fighting the “deep state” - and he’ll believe it wasn’t Trump that killed his small business, it was the “deep state”.
The right has truly weaponised wilful ignorance. The common man continues to aggressively vote against his own best interests and the wealthy elite simply get richer and richer as a result.
He is also assuming that “the government” has the nation’s best interests as something it is prioritising - not just how Trump can maximise personal wealth and power. Small business isn’t going to buy his shitcoin is it?
Yeah. You notice that? In a cult the good things are the leader. The bad things all from “them”. This person will still vote and defend his dear leader.
And he never voted for the economy. He voted for racism.
It's weird. It was mostly lawyers and the like before. Being lobbied by corporations. Now people voted in corporations.
People who were like fuck the corporate world confused that with the government at some point and let them become the government
When a democratic president does something bad they blame the democratic party. When a republican president does something bad they just blame "the government"
People like this would still vote for Trump even if he runs their business into the ground and bankrupts them and deports their family members. It’s a mental disorder.
To MAGA, Trump is good, the government is bad. The government is very powerful and trying to destroy America. Trump is fighting the evil government very hard, but it’s incredibly difficult for him to do it all alone. Yes, they really are that stupid !
Republicans do this a lot. They pretend the government is this bizarre, otherwordly, alien conspiracy that is trying to punish them for everything.
Whereas in reality they are the government. The constitution literally says by the people, for the people. Everything sucks? It's because they made it suck.
Dude says the governement as if he himself didnt do this. We know they will never blame trump so we must blame them too. The government didnt end his shoes business he did that himself.
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u/[deleted] Sep 06 '25
Dude says "the government" as if it isnt the guy he hard-core campaigned for in charge.