[fastball]

Wut? I'm mildly concerned I might be taking crazy pills.

Literally look at the graph you posted. The deficit was higher in every year of Obama's first term than any year of Trump's first term. You realize you want the bars to be smaller, right?

I take it back; keep reading the news. At this point I'm not sure much can be done for you.

[nine_zeros]

Thanks for confirming your lack of education. Obama's slope was trending down. It's going up in Trumps. Like I said in my original post, I don't like the direction of this country. And if you removed the blinders in your eyes, you would see it too. But I can see you prefer to be a willing fool.

[fastball]

Oof that projection. What follows is a conversation between nine_zeros and his boss.

---

Boss: nine_zeros, I told you that your budget was $100k per quarter, but over the past 4 quarters you've managed to spend $500k per quarter! We don't have that kind of money!

Nine_zeros: I know, I know, but it's fine, don't worry! My trend line is going down so there is nothing to be concerned about.

Boss: That doesn't matter NZ! You've already gone $1.6M over budget! Your trend line going down doesn't change the fact that you've already spent that money, money which we don't have.

Nine_zeros: It's all the difference in the world. Just look at Stevens, boss. His trend line is going up while mine is going down, that's so much worse than me.

Boss: Except he was only spending $200k in his first quarter and has only just now gotten up to $400k! You were spending more than that every quarter. It doesn't matter if his trend is upward and yours is down if you've spent way more money. It will take him many more quarters to get to what you spent in your first! It's easy to have a downward trend when you spend an unbelievable amount of money in your first quarter, anyone can do that.

Nine_zeros: Wake up sheeple! Pull the wool out of your eyes! Stop being such a fool!

> nine_zeros is fired

Fin.

---

Look, I agree that this country is headed in the wrong direction. But it's clearly not Trump's fault, you've just been led to believe that by the news media. This country has been waning in some areas for decades now. At the same time, some things have been getting better. Crime is way down from where it was 30 years ago, for example. You wouldn't get that from watching the news, but you will from reading the stats. The news isn't gonna tell you that though. If everything gets better, what will they have to report on? They make all their money on outrage at the moment. They don't want things to get better, because then they'll be out of a job.

But yes, there are all sorts of things that need to be fixed. Trump, however, is a symptom of the problem, not the cause. Orange man bad is a misdirection that an unfortunate number of Americans have swallowed – hook, line, and sinker. Things aren't gonna get better under Biden. He's been in Washington for 40 years. Hell, he helped cause some of the problems you mentioned (cough incarceration of blacks cough). He'll just lull far too many Americans back into a sense of complacency by offering a much higher level of decorum than Trump, while at the same time continuing to allow things to fall apart in the background.

If you want to fix this country, stop being such a partisan and calling everyone who disagrees with you a "willing fool".

[nine_zeros]

You still haven't answered why should one be voting for a person whose deficits are only trending up. Start from first principles and break down what 4 more years of this lying, misleading would look like.

I am not willing to justify his actions. His failure has been big and he is not capable of fixing anything. That alone is a great starting point to not vote for him (and I haven't even gone into how destructive his 4 years were).

I know I can't change blind faith but I would encourage you to open your eyes. Take that Red Pill and try to see what has become of our country.

[fastball]

For real my dude, stop being so partisan. I didn't vote for Trump. You seem to be assuming I did.

Biden was VP to Obama. Deficit under Obama/Biden first term was much worse than Trump first term. Not sure why you think Biden wouldn't just immediately shoot the deficit way up (assuming he has that power, which mostly the POTUS does not). Again, doesn't matter if the trend is down if your first year is the all time high.

You still haven't shown empirically what damage Trump has caused. As far as I've seen, there is nothing in the data that is very damning at all once you exclude COVID, which again, I exclude because it's not just the US failing at COVID, it's the vast majority of all countries on earth. There are literally only a handful of countries that have handled COVID very well. Unrelated to the black swan event that is COVID, stats are either the same, better, or no worse than they've been at other times in the past couple decades. Hardly seems like the end times if you actually are looking at the data.