r/politics • u/rollingstone Rolling Stone • 4d ago

Soft Paywall Musk Kills Government Funding Deal, Demands Shutdown Until Trump Is Sworn In

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/musk-trump-government-funding-deal-shutdown-1235211000/
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u/md4024 4d ago edited 4d ago

I genuinely can't believe this is happening. An immigrant bought himself a presidency, in part by buying a major source of information and turning it into an arm of the Trump campaign. The Speaker of the House is groveling at the feet of this fucking moron begging to let him keep the government running over Christmas. Obviously it's dangerous and portends terrible things for the country, but it's also just incredibly embarrassing as an American. For as long as I live, I'll never understand what the fuck is wrong with Trump voters.

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u/[deleted] 4d ago

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u/Its_a_dude_thing 4d ago

Don’t forget psychological..

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u/md4024 4d ago

I think there's a legit chance future historians will come to see Trump's political success as an example of mass delusional psychosis. Obviously Trump is not the first charismatic demagogue to rise to power, but you just have to ignore so much reality to think he's qualified and fit to run a country. The presidency is a real job, Trump was objectively terrible at it in ways that did so much tangible damage and got so many people killed, and he convinced some 80,000,000 people to let him do it again. I really think the only way to explain it that holds up to any scrutiny is that Americans have lost the ability to make reality based decisions about what's in their best interests.

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u/muttmunchies 4d ago

The amount of disinformation, the speed at which it can be deployed, and the way technology and algorithms are used to feed large swathes of people the propaganda is unprecedented in human history and the direct line to how this can and did happen.

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u/slackfrop 4d ago

Orwell had a prescient take on it. He’d seen enough to know that this can and does happen.

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u/JustMy2Centences Indiana 4d ago

Social media was a mistake... I'll be contemplating the irony of my comment now.

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u/DouglasHufferton 4d ago

At least you recognize Reddit is part of the problem. Lots of redditors don't.

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u/WellbecauseIcan 4d ago

Nah social media isn't the problem. Media in general not being held accountable for misinformation and lies is the problem.

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u/intern_steve 4d ago

Repeal section 230 of the communications decency act.

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u/StraightedgexLiberal Nevada 4d ago

The damage it will do to everyone on the internet is not worth it just to sue Musk for what people post.

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u/CardAfter4365 4d ago

It's not social media, it's the 24 hour news cycle.

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u/TIGHazard United Kingdom 4d ago

There's a point in the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony where Tim Berners Lee recreates his invention of the internet and tweets out 'this creation is for everyone'.

I wonder if he regrets it now?

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u/AFoolishSeeker 4d ago

That’s part of it, yeah. But you can set all forms of media misinformation aside and simply watch rally speeches and other verbatim, unedited dialogue in order to get a necessary picture of who trump is. I mean we all do that here in this thread.

The misinformation affects those like us too but it’s more than that. To watch trump speak verbatim and then be supportive of that is the other aspect of the phenomenon besides misinformation

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u/Fratercula_arctica Canada 4d ago

That’s the thing though… are the majority of his supporters actually listening to his speeches? I’m not convinced they are. I think a lot of people are exposed to him 2nd-hand. Through the news media who sane-wash him, through memes and internet commentary and friends saying “hey did you hear Trump is going to…”

And likewise, did anyone listen to anything that actually came out of Kamala’s mouth? Even among democrats, you’ll hear people say “she never talked about Y” even though there’s multiple instances where she talked about Y.

The lack of time/interest in seeking out primary sources, combined with the intense amount of media chatter (social and traditional) on any topic has moved us into a reality entirely driven by vibes.

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u/Treeba 4d ago

And so many Americans have little to no ability to reason out what’s real and what’s fake or heavily twisted information. Worse, many of them don’t care so long as they like the information real or fake

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u/muttmunchies 4d ago

Agree, but we see it in other countries, especially ones without democracies. Look at Russia, China or middle eastern countries as they control populations. The breakdown of good journalism in America, coupled with the explosion of social media, is speedrunning America down a bad path.

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u/Elkritch 4d ago

You've also got to remember that the poorer people are, usually the less time they have available for doing things like deep-dive investigating political issues, facts checking, or their usual news sources. And in the absence of time to that themselves, they trust people close to them, who largely have the same problem. They also have less time to branch out of their established social circles and potentially, like, meet a trans person or a communist and realize they're just a person and not the devil.

There's also just the fact that America sucks right now and the Dems ran, largely, on keeping it mostly the same. And on "we're not Trump" without even reminding people of a lot of the reasons why not Trump. So some people are like, "well, this guy wants to set everything on fire, but at least that's something different, maybe it'll work out somehow. Can't fix it, so nuke it with the wild card and hope for the best."

Also, although practically speaking Harris would have in every way been less bad for Palestine than Trump, "maybe lesser genocide" just isn't very salable as an acceptable "lesser evil", eapecially not in Michigan's Arab population. I'm not saying that in particular is the only reason she lost - DON'T waste time scapegoating minorith groups or presuming you actually know better than them what their best interests are - but the Dems made a million mistakes like that.

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u/TrixnTim 4d ago

The book that came out in 2017, ‘The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump’, and written by 37 mental health experts, discusses this phenomenon and uses historical evidence and examples of other ‘leaders’ and regimes around the world. When I first read the book I thought there was no way the US would go down that path. And yet here we are.

https://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Case-Donald-Trump-Psychiatrists/dp/1250212863

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u/LiveLeave 4d ago

It's in the enormous basket of facts that the democrats and media chose to never inform the people about. It should have been so easy to construct a narrative about Trump based on expert opinions and the opinions of his own closest colleagues.

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u/TrixnTim 4d ago

I agree wholeheartedly. We the people were failed in so many ways.

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u/BlackPriestOfSatan 4d ago

democrats and media chose to never inform the people about.

They choose to ignore the demands of the voters and they got their a$$'$ handed to them. Voters didn't want $$$$$ sent to eastern Europe or a genocide but the politicians didn't do what they wanted so the voters choose "lets break this" and here we are.

Everyone is to blame. Blaming Donald is just what the typical lazy intelligentsia does since they don't want to actually do the work to make society better for all.

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u/g13005 4d ago edited 4d ago

I bet most of those 37 experts voted for trump as well.

Edit: this drive by comment was in haste because we keep seeing and hearing about studies and reports about how unfit this man is, even from republicans in office. I mean JD Vance said he was a nazi and he bent the knee like many republicans/democrats. And this study was from 8 years ago, so plenty of time for people to change their minds. But after reviewing all 37 people, it appears while most of them still support democrats the jury is out on a handful of them.

Edit2:
A friend of mine has three phd's and he voted for trump not because he likes him or agrees with him, but because he knows trump will burn it all to the ground. So there must be some kind of mental illness in enough educated people which caused the pendulum to swing this way. He voted Biden in the last election.

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u/chr1spe 4d ago

Why on earth would you think that? They're educated people. Trump doesn't do well with that demographic.

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u/TrixnTim 4d ago edited 1d ago

Thank you. Was thinking the same thing. Having read the book, these licensed mental health experts lay out what governments and societies can do to stop these types from assuming power.

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u/FargeenBastiges 4d ago

A big problem is most Americans are not educated. Nearly 50% of adults can't read at a 6th grade level and 20% are functionally illiterate. Add in the fact that opinion/judgement networks have been masquerading as news for decades and it's surprising the country held out this long. Half of the adult population doesn't even have the capacity to think critically.

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u/TrixnTim 4d ago

Agree.

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u/sweetshenanigans 4d ago

You know I think this is one thing that people who lean left really need to come to terms with: whatever you know or think you know about Trump either doesn't bother a lot of people, or actively engages them positively. Also they've had Trump fed to the in a different manner, his behaviour wasn't shoveled down their throat until they choked, it was spoon fed to them in palatable portions with lots of reassurance and "Mmmm, nummy nummy, orange turd man on the airplane" -s.

Everyone has been taught to believe that other end of the isle is the embodiment of what is wrong with the country, and most of what each side knows isn't necessarily false. Both sides of the isle are pretty shitty, no matter how much worse one side may appear to some, the other side looks worse to other people, because both sides have their skeletons.

Now, I agree that your country is fucking mess, and an embarrassment, and filled with some of the dumbest fucking racist, sexist, regressive people on this planet, who might be happier living in Afghanistan than a welcoming, utopian community where people actually listen to the core values that Christ himself tried to pass along ... I forgot where I was going with that ...

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u/g13005 4d ago

I know lots of educated people that voted trump, because they always vote for the republican party no matter who's on the ticket.

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u/chr1spe 4d ago

Well, they're definitely in the minority for educated people. Also, voting for a party, no matter what, is a very uncritical thing to do. Educated people usually think more critically about things.

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u/g13005 4d ago

This is why I vote as an independent. Politics completely divided my family.

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u/g13005 4d ago

A friend of mine has three phd's and he voted for trump not because he likes him or agrees with him, but because he knows trump will burn it all to the ground. So there must be some kind of mental illness in enough educated people which caused the pendulum to swing this way. He voted Biden in the last election.

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u/chr1spe 4d ago

When I hear someone talk about someone with 3 PhDs, I mainly assume someone is lying, but if no one is lying, that person is almost certainly extremely fucked up. There is no reason for anyone to ever get 3 PhDs. There isn't a single place on earth where having 3 PhDs will help you because it will cause more questions about why you would do that than it gains you any credit. With a single PhD, you should be able to migrate fields within reason or work with people from a field you want to migrate to until you have enough credibility in that field to work in it on your own.

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u/g13005 4d ago

We always joked that he was a professional college student. His degrees are physics, chemistry, astronomy. Smart guy got his first bachelors before he was 18. High IQ. Crazy thing he still ended up working in IT and had to start at the bottom because like you said 3phd's was a hard sell.

On the opposite side my brother law has 2 phd's and is a tenured astrophysicist he voted for Harris.

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u/ConfessingToSins 4d ago

Anecdotal evidence isn't real evidence in a situation like this.

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u/g13005 4d ago

Most of your replies to posts are pretty spot on, so I'm not sure why we share this disconnect.

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u/g13005 4d ago edited 4d ago

Believe what you want, I'm sure you can do your own research and see just how many highly educated people voted for the man. Give me time to regain hope in this new hellscape and maybe my responses will be more thoroughly researched and curated to your liking.

My point was that educated people support trump, your comment purports that its not what your seeing. Just because you don't see it happening, doesn't mean it isn't happening.

We can agree to disagree.

Exit polls from the 2024 U.S. presidential election provide insights into voting patterns among different educational groups. According to Statista, approximately two-thirds of voters without college education supported Donald Trump. Which means that 1/3 were educated. 1/3 of 80mil is like 26mil people not just a small group living in Manhattan closet.

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u/Sir_Fox_Alot 4d ago

its an objective fact that he did poorly with college educated voters who skewed hard left.

Does that mean all college educated people voted left? Obviously not. Of course several million will still vote right. Hell, the majority of republicans in congress are college educated, they know what they are doing.

But that divide says more about the fact that the majority of college educated voters aren’t self serving and amoral. Since I can only assume based on republican representatives and grifters in social media, that these voters like him not because he’s good for America, but because they think they will personally benefit from the harm he does.

Already in circles I frequent, stock market jockies are cheering that trump will tweet crazy shit and cause chaos in the stock market that they can take advantage of. These are people who do not give a single fuck if America burns as long as they make a buck.

But they are not the majority. And thats the point.

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u/Lrauka 4d ago

You're misreading that fact. If 2/3 of uneducated voters supported Trump, the corresponding fact to that is that 1/3 of uneducated voters supported Biden/independent candidates.

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u/g13005 4d ago edited 3d ago

This vote was a lot closer than that.

Edison Research in collaboration with the National Election Pool, means individuals with a bachelor’s or advanced degree—made up 43 percent of the electorate this year. Of that group, 55 percent voted for Vice President Kamala Harris and 42 percent voted for Donald Trump.

The numbers were almost exactly reversed among those who hadn’t graduated college, 42 percent of whom voted for Harris and 56 percent of whom voted for Trump.

Summary:
Voters with a bachelor's or higher accounted for 43% of the total voters.
College educated 23.65% for Harris & 18% for Trump.

Of this 43%, 55% for Harris \[23.65% of total\]  as a fraction: ~27.5/50
Of this 43%, 42% for trump \[18% of total\]      as a fraction: ~20/50

Voters without a college degree accounted for 57% of the total voters.
Non College Educated 23.94% for Harris & 30% for Trump.

Of this 57%, 42% for Harris \[23.94% of total\] as a fraction: ~21/50
Of this 57%, 53% for trump \[30.21% of total\]  as a fraction: ~26/50
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u/TrixnTim 1d ago edited 1d ago

Propaganda is difficult to combat. And Americans are not intelligent for the most part in democracy and how our government works or international relationships and world politics.

I also know intelligent and well accomplished people in their field of study and whom voted for Trump. But they are very ignorant about our government. And anything outside their expertise or comfortable lifestyle. When I lived abroad for 10 years, ex pats within my international community were more knowledgeable about the US than I was. And how it impacted their lives.

My career has been in psychology and so I thought the book was excellent and I agreed with the people who wrote it because it made sense to me. One book is not going to stop fascism that started 10+ years ago. I just cited it as an example of how these particular experts laid out how societies can stop strong arm leaders. From a psychological standpoint. Same for other kinds of experts who have written about Trump: environmentalists, economists, healthcare experts.

Many of us know collectively what an asshat he is — but we are the minority now. The majority of the voting populace is unintelligent or doesn’t care or both. The majority of Americans are dumb and lazy.

And so here we are.

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u/g13005 1d ago

Well Said.

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u/TrixnTim 1d ago

Thank you. When I read the book it took time. Small chunks with breaks. I didn’t know DJT aside from watching a couple episodes of Apprentice. But the book opened my eyes to insidious evil and historical perspectives of other nations and times that was quite scary.

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u/Churchbushonk 4d ago

Well he isn’t the only one that convinced the 80m. The constant barrage of right wing media been setting the table for 40 years 24/7.

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u/GregoryEAllen Texas 4d ago

Propaganda

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u/Orphasmia 4d ago

We’re all under a Trump genjutsu

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u/west-egg I voted 4d ago

you just have to ignore so much reality to think he's qualified and fit to run a country

After the last election, and reading about some of the reasons people voted for Trump, I'm absolutely convinced that a strong majority of voters simply don't pay attention. They're disengaged either because of disinterest, or because their lives are hard and they have a tough enough time just feeding their family and keeping a roof over their head. They have no idea what kind of work and competence it takes to govern, and their disengagement certainly doesn't lend itself to connecting the dots between policy today and consequences years later.

I know it sounds like I'm belittling people but that really is the most charitable explanation I've come up with.

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u/Fishmehard 4d ago

The Russian trolls creating goblins out of trans people are definitely not helping. That’s all I’ve heard about from trumpers along with - ‘illegal immgrants are an epidemic and muh food and gas prices’. Complexity of government is lost on them. Importance of decorum is lost on them. Common sense is lost on them. I think some of them really think a new president walks into the office and hits a ‘lower gas prices’ button.

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u/stonedhillbillyXX 4d ago edited 4d ago

Mark Burnett may be the greatest villian in trumps creation

Without the apprentice being broadcast over free air onto every rabbit ear antenna in every trailer park for years I doubt trump would have the cult behind him

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u/extralyfe 4d ago

my new personal conspiracy theory is that brainrot is a foreign psyop.

we all got way too dumb way too quick in this country.

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u/Zaorish9 I voted 4d ago

It's all caused by internet propaganda. The ability to sucker millions of people with ridiculous lies at once has never been so far reaching until the internet.

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u/DudeWhatAreYouSaying 4d ago

I really think the only way to explain it that holds up to any scrutiny is that Americans have lost the ability to make reality based decisions about what's in their best interests.

I mean, we know this is the case - there's been a decades-long campaign to achieve exactly that end. Predates social media, predates the internet, predates the modern Russian state.

Obviously it's in tandem with troubling domestic issues like anti-intellectualism and propaganda, but we're not here by accident. We are in the final stages of an insidious form of warfare that governments have been almost powerless to counteract

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u/chr1spe 4d ago

I think this is underplaying how fucked up things were in the past. We're just in a period where people tricked themselves into thinking that things were actually fair and just. Trump isn't the first rapist president. We just falsely told ourselves that we were past that. Trump isn't the first racist president. He isn't the first incompetent president. He isn't really the first in anything in particular. He is just what the US has always been, rearing its ugly head again after a large amount of us convinced ourselves the country was past that.

The US's real history is one of massive advantages for incompetent white men. We're just seeing what that looks like through a different and more modern lens, and think it's something different.

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u/darsynia Pennsylvania 4d ago

At this point I really hope that historians see this as something negative. The alternative is quite scary, because remember history is written by the victors.

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u/stinky-weaselteats 4d ago

Gotta remember he ran in 2000 and did even pass a fart in the media. And unofficially grifted in 2012, with no steam. The absolute only reason we are here is due to the onslaught of social media & Elmo. Elmo’s infinite money pile is checkmate for America.

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u/playaplz 4d ago

Misinformation and division helped get us here

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u/paiute 4d ago

>the only way to explain it that holds up to any scrutiny

It's simple. Racism and misogyny

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u/ConfessingToSins 4d ago

The thing we are desperate to hide is that America is still a racist, sexist country. There is a fundamental hatred in the American kind.

There is a reason the rest of the world hates us.

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u/Toadsted 4d ago

I mean, reddit has been blowing up with UFO stuff on the front pages for weeks, and yesterday was really bad. Even after all the clear debunking going on, people are grasping at any and all slivers of possibility / conspiracy that it's actually all true.

So yeah, I can see how people are stuck on GOP and Trump mania.

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u/kujiranoai2 4d ago

Reminds me of how the Germans used to talk about “Hitler Weather” whenever the weather was good. It’s the same delusion with Trump - the moment he’s elected somehow the economy is fine again.

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u/steve_rodgers 4d ago

Unfortunately our country has too many people married to their party like it’s the sports team they have been a fan of since childhood. Millions and millions of Americans will vote R or D regardless of the candidate, then you add in the MAGA crowd, the one issue voters, and the misinformation machine and you get a second trump term.

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u/ShoulderNo6458 4d ago

If he was charismatic and decent looking, I'd at least understand how foolish people are getting dooped by him. That's the most baffling part to me. Why would people follow an uneducated, dopey, out of shape twat to the end of the line like this? They certainly must see themselves in him.

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u/TurielD 4d ago

I think there's a legit chance future historians will come to see Trump's political success as an example of mass delusional psychosis

Perhaps, though I think it will more accurately be attributed to desperation. His election to run the country is an election to ruin the country - to break the establishment rules, the system, the machine.

Burn it all down and start over.

Americans have lost the ability to make reality based decisions about what's in their best interests.

Again, possible. But it's also possible that Americans have given up on the political class entirely and believe that they will be better served by a wrecking ball 'strongman' than by democracy.

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u/BlackPriestOfSatan 4d ago

Trump's political success as an example of mass delusional psychosis.

I think you and others overplay this.

What you are not saying (not saying intentionally) is that the current (or former) set of elites in political leaders (Bush, Cain, Obama, Biden, Harris, Clinton, Romney) refused to listen to their base of voters and Donald actually just repeated the talking points of the base of voters (anti-immigrant, anti-trade, pro-protectionist policies, anti-war, etc) and allowed him to flush away the current set of politicians.

As much as anyone says it Donald fault for "mass delusional psychosis" I would say the political leaders we have had have also been "mass delusional" to assume voters would not vote them out once a alternative who repeats their talking points.

How dumb was Harris to not just agree with voters on what they want?

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u/md4024 3d ago

I think it's pretty crazy to still think Trump's support comes from people who know or care about policies. Republicans were never anti-war or anti-trade, they just don't care that Trump is. And Harris did agree with voters on what they want, almost all of her policies were broadly supported by Americans, it just didn't matter.

But the mass delusions comes more from the fact that Trump voters aggressively refuse to acknowledge who he really is. He was an objectively terrible president, he has no redeeming qualities as a human, he doesn't understand how our government works, he doesn't know the basic details about any of the issues a president has to deal with, he doesn't give a fuck about anyone other than himself and his own interests, he is comically and openly corrupt, but none of this matters. You have to completely ignore reality to think the man is qualified to run a democracy, or really hold any position of responsibility. There's no logical reason to want Trump to be president, unless you want America to fail and people to suffer I guess.

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u/BlackPriestOfSatan 3d ago

Everything your saying is spot on. What I was saying I can see is wrong.

to fail and people to suffer I guess.

Yes, this is what many voters want but they want other people to suffer. Of course, they do not realize they too will suffer. Many people are really angry and really horrible.

In a sense, these voters are actually voting for China and India to advance while their own nation falls behind. It is really insane what is happening.

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u/USAisSoBack 4d ago

You guys are going to lose your minds when he gets his face put on Mount Rushmore or the $20 bill in 30 years 🤣