No no no, you see, we showed the democrats by not showing up to vote! /s
uuugh... I made myself sick quoting those jackass fucktards. (I did vote, and screamed until I was blue in the face to get people to vote. About every year.)
Damn, you're an optimist.
I pay $70 a month for google fiber and it's legit a thing that keeps me in the city I'm in because better is absolutely fucking rare.
This isn't me trying to flex, this is me crying because I'd rather be in Scotland.
Our state regularly pulls this nonsense. Vote to keep right to work from happening, then vote in republicans. Vote to expand Medicare, vote in the people who prevent it even though we voted it in.
I work as a biomed, our hospital had to buy completely new sets of a type of ultrasound machine we have. Why?
Because in order to do the yearly preventative maintenance you have to go through the manufacturers program to test calibration. They stopped supporting it this year and shut it down. Legit these machines were working just fine, but now in order to keep up with verifying accuracy they're essentially bricked. They did it on the exact day they hit the year mark that they legally were required to support in order to sell medical grade equipment passed.
This is only going to get worse, not better.
Boy howdy I'm just imagining HIPAA with this.
Hooooooooooooooooooboy. Mainly, he got lucky in time. WARNING, WALL OF TEXT
This is a continuation of the build up to the original civil war in America, when post reconstruction under a President who was sympathetic to the confederates after Lincoln was assassinated. You've had generations still calling for civil war (spend 30 minutes around a group of Texans and see if you can get out without hearing them declaring Texas never signed to become part of the union again). With the "war of northern aggression" myths that are pervasive you've got people believing that it was DC that invaded the south instead of the south attacking first, as well as "states rights" making it seem like big government is picking on the states.
Into the racism territory, the original civil war was about slavery. Full stop. If you have questions, please refer to declarations of causes of secession from Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas (which its formation was specifically stealing it from Mexico to become a slaveholding state), Virginia, then look at the Constitution of the CSA Article I, Sec. 9(4), Article IV, Sec 2(1)(3), Sec 3(3). States rights indeed.
This may seem odd to dredge up all of that but living in the South this has been the drum I grew up around my entire life and spoken of as gospel. Am a descendant of a Confederate officer and people tell my family that we should be proud... I'm proud of my parents for responding that he's a traitorous piece of shit and deserved to be hung. This offends the locals in modern era. Now with jobs that had me traveling, you find the Virginia battle standard (that's not the Confederate flag, the actual Confederate flag is mostly white, then they changed it to the "blood dipped banner" with a red strip at the end because the actual flag looked too much like a flag of surrender... ironically changed the month they surrendered. Whoops) all over the country in small communities. It's weird to see "It's heritage, not hate" in Ohio. So the ghosts of the Civil War are not yet gone.
But lets get out of the Civil War and move to more modern wounds the country still has festering. The Civil Rights act when taught in schools is almost treated like it was ancient history... my dad's high school cancelled prom because the principal would not have the first integrated prom in the state, people are still alive from that era and anyone thinks hatred was overblown, Eisenhower had to send the 101st Airborne and federalize the Arkansas National Guard to protect 9 students because the Governor mobilized the National Guard to bar their way into the school. Following Ike, you had JFK a Democrat who ran with LBJ, the running mate was chosen because LBJ was your old school southern Democrat, wildly racist, which spoke the language of the very angry South. JFK was pushing integration, but as VP, LBJ actually seemed to spearhead it harder than JFK, and when he became President after JFKs assassination made it a point to continue integration full steam ahead (not a saint, his words to people still racist... he was a complicated figure in history). He signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and 1968, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and changed politics in the country for the foreseeable future, the Southern "Dixiecrats" felt betrayed by the Democratic party. This was added on by the Southern Strategy pushed by Nixon and his political strategist Kevin Philips.
The words of Phillips himself in 1970, warning: language of the era
From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don't need any more than that... but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That's where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.
During the Nixon era, the War on Drugs started up. Former Nixon Domestic Policy Chief John Ehrlichman told outright the war on drugs was made because you couldn't arrest people for being against the war or black, so tie weed with hippies and blacks with heroin and now they had a ready made excuse to disrupt communities, arrest leaders, raid homes, and vilify them on the news. Another one of those talking points of the Republicans you hear about today was a Nixon favorite "the Silent Majority". We all know about the Watergate Scandal, and if you don't good lord a writeup of it would take up more than I've written now, but an overreach of Nixons power and lead to his impeachment trials. So Nixon is a shamed president, we don't need to look at him anymore... Except many of his policies are quietly still used by the Republicans, which shouldn't be a surprise, one of President Trump's political consultants, Roger Stone, has a tattoo of Nixon on his back.
Against the war... RIGHT, another boogeyman of the US: Communism. Understand Fascism, Socialism (often attributed to Communism, since we're talking US politics, the words are interchangeable even though in reality they are not), and Anarchy were political theories that butted heads about the same time. During WWII it was even in the US "we gotta stop the communists" and of course the Cold War made it worse. Containment, the US doctrine to prevent the spread of Communism started roughly with Truman, as put in by Nixon on the trying to go against hippies, the attitude continued and still Communism is a bad word today. Good lord that discussion is its own article, but good to remember that we have situations like McArthyism, a second Hooverism where persecution against left wing individuals under the guise of "weeding out communists" has happened and getting called for now where people were encouraged to turn in people suspected of communist sympathies, happened a lot in Hollywood, so a distrust of the conservative crowd of the liberals and such like the "Hollywood Elite" is ingrained in our society for nearly a century.
THE MODERN REPUBLICAN PARTY, good lord we finally got here. It can really be chalked up to their patron saint Ronald Reagan. Old Ronald pushed a lot of the economics that are still worshiped by the right wing today, as well as much of the political control. He was an odd duck, not a politician, but an actor who got a cult of personality going and a massive following that felt he could do no wrong. Wonder who that sounds like? No idea. Again, another point where I could go a long time how his administration shaped the country but there's a really important one that explains how we got here. The 11th commandment
Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.
Look at the Republicans for decades after that. They softballed each other while holding Democrats to a higher standard. Republican does something distatetful the Republicans would protect, but a Democrat do something and hang them out to dry. This became the main doctrine of the Republicans, lockstep together and do not faulter. Clinton sleeps with someone, Impeachment trial, W starts wars with countries not involved in 9/11 nada, Obama and Biden impeachment inquiries for.... reasons? The republicans started their "win at all costs" move, a lot spearheaded by Mitch McConnell (yet another... good lord long article)
This is going to seem like an aside, but is important, during this, 9/11 happened and the real advent of 24/7 news cycles showed up. This will be important because this beast lives on advertising, it's a for profit business, and so keeping butts in chairs and eyes glued to the screen is very important.
So in comes the turd in the punchbowl, Donald Trump. He doesn't believe in rules. He is more intimate with guys in drag than the truth. He's ran as a democrat to get president, failed miserably. Ran as republican, failed miserably. But the perfect storm happened. A black guy is in the White House! 24/7 news is blasting anything they can. Trump has been able to stay in media and keep crowds entertained, honestly his true talent is working crowds. So he finds that "birther" conspiracy and ran with it, all the major news networks were happy to parade Trump on and give him free publicity, Fox because he's helping spread hate against the Democrats, CNN and MSNBC happy to show him off because "haha, look at the dumb conspiracy nut" and gave him ALL of the press. Then the primaries came after Obama, and a pile of Republicans, all following the 11th commandment are together, being nice, cordial, while jockying for who's in charge. And Trump ignored the rules, tore each and every one of them apart, so the divisions of a pile of candidates who softballed and he threw elbows landed him the nomination.
I want this understood, this is still VERY MUCH an ELI5, truncated and painted with the broadest brush explanation of what's going on. I could go into fuckups of the Democrats, that Bill was the beginning of the end of the actual left wing to corporatism or the running of Hillary being a dumb move, but you asked about what did Trump tap into. The TLDR is "We're still dealing with shit that came up before Lincoln was elected."
From the US and I pay a lot of attention to politics.
Her past is she was a bulldog in the courtroom, absolutely a firebrand and ready to take on anyone. By making her VP, her job was mostly to not make the administration look bad, which is a tough job for a firebrand so for years it felt like she was put in the back and kept quiet.
Roe v Wade decision happened, making the abortion argument on the side of the Republicans getting what they wanted, Biden is a Catholic and male so completely uncomfortable using the fact that abortion is the winning ticket item for the Dems so Harris has been beating that drum hard and getting out. GRANTED the media has been focusing on "Biden too old!" (Legit had to learn a Biden policy from BBC because American news isn't going to talk about that) so she's still feeling a relative unknown to the country at large.
There are people calling for wanting the DNC to do a vote, but we're past that marker, there's people disappointed, and then there's a lot of people excited. Right now this election is going to shape up to be more "interesting" than Bush v Gore or Trump v Hillary.
I'm going to assume this isn't "lottery" ultra-wealthy where you can spend it all and suddenly be back to destitute. So you say you wouldn't live that differently, and immediately begin with "quitting work." That's the first step, because being wildly wealthy does change you incrementally because in this situation you've just bought yourself a commodity that once spent can't be bought back, time.
You now have 40 hours a week that you were giving to someone else. Add on 5-10 hours for commute time (.5 to hour commute) that can get up to 50 hours for whatever the hell you want to do.
Buying a new car just a quick glance at Carmax and you're looking at around $13,000 for a standard sedan. Not many have that pocket change going around, much less to buy the house that at low end houses cost $100,000 so you're done, no worries, no muss, no fuss and you didn't give some company your money in interest because you bought for cash. And on buying houses, as competitive as the market is, buying with cash right now at least in my region is about the only way to do it.
So lets assume you're working from home right now, you gained back 40 hours. Hey, I want to have a party/trip/etc! Well, your buddies are all working, possibly can't afford to go on trip, night out to eat. Offer to pay, but it's still the getting the time off. They've got bills to worry about, the ones you're not even thinking about. Sometimes they'll show up, other times, not so much. So either you're out fishing and working on your hobbies during that 40, or working to a new project job wise which really by this point is how the wealthy keep getting more and more money because build up a new thing, hire someone else to run it, passive income. But you don't have your friends to hang out with, travel and the like, you'll run into the others that don't have those concerns because you can buy your way around inconveniences (airport seats are uncomfortable, but those lounges are nice. Why have to take connecting flights? etc) those are also going to be the ultra wealthy. And they have a standard of living that will look more and more "normal" to you. Little bit of peer pressure, little bit of "take a ride in my Lambo" and finding it fun, it's a frog in the pot situation, you'll go back to your roots and go "How did I live like this?"
Can't be added on with multiple "Once in a generation" natural disasters happening on a yearly basis with temp records breaking yearly, nations with the power to demolish the world rattling sabers over a fight that's been going before we were born, zero chance of moving upwards in the crushing capitalism, all the while the leadership is fighting over identity politics instead of acknowledging any of the problems. Surely none of those are add on factors.
Turbotax, H&R Block, and the other tax companies are massively wealthy companies that actively lobby to push laws to keep them from being simple. There are states that they have managed to bar the same thing from happening in.
Mine is the basic package for the price I'm doing, so your system is still nice.
I'll honestly take the weather being shit. I live where there is no chance in hell government will fund a thing and that was before the current election. And the weather here is humid as fuck with either 100 degrees F to Below 0 with the humidity being the only predictable thing, maybe a week of spring and fall each. Oh, and tornadoes.