[toss1]

No. It is so inaccurate that you either have serious problems with reading comprehension or are being deliberately disingenuous in order to destroy the conversation as if your Red Team is right.

The GP comment was about both the specific "Flood The Zone" strategy promoted by an advisor to the current administration and the overall and absolutely unprecedented assault by this administration on democracy and the rule of law itself.

Yes, I made a reference to the historical fact that the ideals of American democracy have always been aspirational. That is NOT license to whataboutism or claims that "everyone does it".

In a democracy, all the branches of govt (exec, ligislative, judicial) and the institutions of society (press, industry, academy, finance, religion, sport, charity, orgs, etc.) are ALL independent, balance power throughout society, and work for its advancement as best they can.

Under authoritarianism or fascism, all those branches and institutions are coerced or corrupted to concentrate power and serve the executive.

Never in the history of this country has any administration even come within orders of magnitude of this regime's attempt to cut off democracy. They are abusing the power of the state to coerce an corrupt every single branch and institution they can, starting with the judiciary, lawyers, press, and academia.

If you have actually "won young", you should take your gift of time and freedom to learn some history. Particularly relevant are how democracies are converted to autocracies, and it did not just happen in Germany in the 1930s, it happened today in Russia (ya, short weak democracy, but it didn't have to go that way), Venezuela, Hungary, and more; and the current party in power is abdicating it's legislative responsibilities to try to make it happen here. You might think you are safe because of your privilege of wealth, but if they succeed in their efforts to kill the 14th amendment and Habeas Corpus, you are not. Again, history is a guide, and the bog-standard authoritarian playbook is being run in broad daylight and secret Signal chat groups.

[gosub100]

> attempt to cut off democracy

You must have misspelled government waste. All of this was exposed by doge and trump and the first thing you did was start minimizing the damage, saying we waste way more in other places, and telling me that the world will end if these lazy wasteful socialist institutions get their fat lips yanked off the teat. I didn't believe your lies then and no matter how much you squeal I don't believe them now. Your whole party has perfected it's use of language control, redefining words, and catastrophizing everything. These aren't MSM viewers in here, you're not fooling anyone. Fix your party by delivering social improvements not just fantasizing and warning about the "end of democracy", and minimizing waste. Fear mongering is not helping your situation if you have any hope of your candidates ever winning again.

[toss1]

And, just this morning's headlines:

The President makes a direct threat to Apple, that specifically their products will be made in the US or he will put a 25% tariff on them

This is nothing resembling policy or democracy. This is straight-up autocracy — an autocratic leader with zero input, specifically ordering a single company to take specific actions or he will personally set penalties.

This is not language trickery. This is reality.

[toss1]

So, which version of "government waste" propaganda do you believe? The $2Trillion, $1 Trillion, $150 Billion (7/1000 of the initial claim), or any of the other mostly disproven by their own documents claims in the few $10b range?

Do you believe the Musk's line that "40% of all calls to Social Security are fraudulent", or what he actually found after creating massive IN-efficiencies, both drastically worsening service AND costing more, that only 2 in 110,000 calls might have fraudulent indicators. [0]

The examples would go on for many pages.

And what institutions do you think are actually wasteful? All the scientific research that creates most of the advances that employ most people in this forum, medical research that saves lives every day, disaster recovery programs that restore distaster-hit economies to productivity more rapidly, initiatives to re-shore manufacturing to the US and build infrastructure for the next-generation economy, or just programs to ensure everyone actually has healthcare, or predict the weather so people can get severe storm warnings in real time instead of the next morning after their family got killed?

>>delivering social improvements OK, do you not consider workers' rights, 40-hour workweek standard, overtime pay, ending child labor (remember, 5-year-olds working was common) and building education programs and requirements kids stay in school, requiring a level of workplace safety actual social improvements? Because those were NOT brought by "conservatives", but by "liberals".

Without liberals fighting, and often dying, your life would 99% likely be born poor, to a mother who bore a dozen other siblings, you get no real education, start work in a factory by age 5, and you are lucky to survive to adulthood, as only 1-2 of your brothers and sisters make it. That was life 120 years ago before work standards, education, public health, and many other "liberal" innovations happened. Just got look at an old graveyard and notice the ages on the tombstones - they are overwhelmingly infants and children. And those are the ones wealthy enough to have marked graves.

But evidently, you think it is less "wasteful" to just let 85% of the humans born work from the age of 5, have nearly no education, and die before adulthood.

All this is reality, not some linguistic trick, and if all you have to deny reality is a claim that reality is some linguistic trick, you have a very weak argument.

>>aren't MSM viewers in here I'm no MSM viewer either, and if you think the MSM is "liberal" you are at least several decades out of date. Just look at the ownership, where 90% of the MSM and all local media outlets are owned by just six major corporations, who are all-in on promoting oligarchy.

[0] https://www.yahoo.com/news/doge-fraud-tracker-social-securit...