You can honestly probably try to justify either take well enough, at the end of the day, the guys actions are not what you want out of a POTUS, the self promotion, leaving your staff hanging like that. I don't think those are good qualities in a leader. To be fair he's exhibited a lot of bad qualities, outside those, those are just yesterdays events.

I get that this candidate was the only guy you could vote to give the middle finger to Washington at the time and it was peoples only ability to scream their unhappiness that Washington is self serving or serving other special interest groups over the average American but as much as I do not like IceMage's posts 99% of the time, don't think he's wrong on this one. Trump is not a good person, enjoys indulgence of his own ego before any American and we will have to live with the chaos that comes with that for a little while. He might still be your middle finger guy, but I think he's happy to give it right back to his own voters. This is what happens when we have the candidates we have I suppose. Canada isn't looking a whole lot better.

I see some +3/-3% days happening far more frequently to come with the Chaos.

all true, and tbh we haven't head a good leader president in my entire lifetime. its been a mix of weak cowards and charlatans. every potus likes to pretend they're Lincoln or Washington, but they're all either Jackson or Buchanan.

I am probably just looking back with rose-tinted goggles but it would seem as a whole, societies role-models or hero's and values they embody has shifted a bit. There's a vainness or something that's very apparent, but I guess what politician wasn't.

This is irrelevant to me. I place very little emphasis on decor. To me what's more concerning is the unsustainable path we are on.

We're on track to have a deficit of 2 trillion this year. We have debt levels that will crowd all discretionary spend due to IR expense, that will force us to either massively increase taxes or increase retirements to 70+. Not some time in the long future, but literally in the next 8-10 years. We have a hollowed out our economy and the whole thing is service based, barely making anything. We have huge home affordability issues.

I spit on the status quo of not doing shit about it because it's politically damaging, i rather have someone that's all over the place like Trump vs the status quo of piling on the debt, announcing huge spending bills while everyone pretends every thing is fine because stocks went up. We need radical change or my kids will have an objectively harder life than i do. I rather someone like him fail trying and look stupid doing it vs what we had before.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Apr 10 2025 08:15am

While I can understand the sentiment, the guy was in office already, pushed a tax cut for the rich and increased the national debt a ton, so why would you think voting for him again is a good idea?

yeah to me its more of a mask off moment. trump is in public what most of the presidents ive had in my life were in private.

Biden: uncle bernie
Obama: corporate shill
Bush 2: Manchurian candidate for his dad's neocon middle east rebuild project
Clinton: absolute sociopath faux populist self enricher
Bush 1: absolute sociopath neocon deepstater
Reagan: i was 1 year old, but big business shill
Carter: cool dude, but too weak to lead

As opposed to Biden? That spent trillions in peace time post Covid on things like the green new deal, inflation reduction act, and other stuff?

Most of Trumps spending was forced due to Covid. Remember the democrats saying republicans want to kill old people for prioritizing the economy? Spend trillions, close the economy and if you don't you're literally killing people. Some of us didn't forget the rhetoric.

If you look at the graph, Trump was spending a lot even before COVID. Biden also spent a lot, but he also didn't run on "I will reduce spending" and instead you had the best COVID recovery of all western countries.

Also the other candidate was Harris, not Biden. Not that it really matters anymore.

For the bold part: I mean yes, that's just how it was globally. You can sacrifice some old people (like e.g. Sweden did) or sacrifice part of your economy and some of your and your childrens wellbeing - there was a tradeoff, the rhetoric is right. The decision arguably wasn't, although I personally am happy to still have three living grandparents.

Example of spending under Trump below. Republicans: we want to pass $300BN Covid aid. Democrats: no spend 2 trillion or you are killing people. Now dishonest hacks today want to pretend is was all Trump. I could find dozens of articles lionizing Democrats for wanting higher and higher spend under Trump.

Stop arguing with strawmen, look at the time from 2016 to the time COVID happened and tell me Trump was great at saving money for the US