My state of the union 2026

 So, every year, I often make my own state of the union speech as well, and this is my own response.

 My fellow Americans, the state of the union is NOT strong. We are in dangerous times. We have a madman on the loose in the white house, with an army of bad faith actors wanting to push America in the worst directions possible. 

 A huge front and center issue is the cost of living crisis. I agree, this is central economically, I have my own thoughts on it, but first, I want to discuss some even darker issues going afoot.

We have an accused child rapist in the oval office. We have evidence that he and much of his inner circle is complicit in participating in these sex crimes against children. This should break any president, but with Teflon Don, it's like half the country just doesn't care. He could rape a child on fifth avenue and not lose any voters. 

Trump is working with several groups all pushing their own dystopian agenda. He's working with evangelical nutcases to move us closer to Christian theocracy. He's working with Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and other tech billionaires in undermining our democracy and creating dystopian 1984-esque databases on people. 

He's filling those databases with the information of millions of Americans, and also putting dissenters and critics of his on terrorist watch lists. He's using his institutional power to bully critics and the media and academia into silence or submission. 

His deportation program against "illegal immigrants" is Hitleresque. Rather than just targetting dangerous illegal immigrants like he spun it in his speeches, he's going after harmless ones as well. he's targeting legal residents, green card holders, people who leave the country temporarily and come back. He's even targetting naturalized citizens, and possibly citizens themselves. 

Rather than deport them humanely, he's sending them to concentration camps like CECOT in El Salvador, and to places like Libya. He's building a network of concentration camps based on CECOT in the United States. 

ICE now has the funding of some country's standing armies, and is flooding American streets. Their hiring standards are low, their training is minimal, and their officers are acting like violent thugs. American citizens are being shot in the streets without due process. 

Those who protest him in person are having their pictures taken to be added to Trump's dystopian databases where they're being called "domestic terrorists." Those who criticize him online are getting their information subpoenaed and being added to databases. He's adding critics of his administration to databases. This is dystopian crap. 

Look, I'm not opposed to deporting illegal immigrants, especially violent ones. But you gotta do it legally, constitutionally, and humanely. Trump is not doing that. he literally is acting like a Hitler.

However, unlike Hitler's Germany, our democracy is not dead yet. We still have our power to vote him and his party out of office. In the past year alone, public opinion has shifted eight points to the left from its 2024 baseline. 2026 looks like a bloodbath in the house. The senate is much harder, but despite a map hostile to democrats, we have a shot at flipping it. In 2028, Trump's replacement (probably Vance) stands to lose 319-219 to the eventually democratic nominee (probably Kamala Harris or Gavin Newsom). We can remove these people, and we can hold them accountable for their crimes if we do. 

Right now, Trump is immune to prosecution despite his severe crimes because he consolidated power in the executive branch, and controls the FBI and the justice department. The fact is, no matter how bad it looks for him, his administration full of loyalists will cover for him. As long as congress remains in the hands of the republicans, they wont impeach him either. So the key to taking care of Trump is through electoral means. We must vote him out, and democrats must hold him accountable.

Trump knows this and is still trying to break democracy as a result. he's trying to pass his "Save Act", which will severely restrict voting. Voter ID is a bad idea for the following reasons. First, there's very little voter fraud that actually occurs and what does occur is caught. Second, the point of voter ID is to restrict voting by acting as a poll tax. It can be hard for some to get the appropriate documents for the ID, and this can lead to the disenfranchisement, particularly of the underprivileged. The voter ID law Trump wants is so strict it could displace married women en masse. Have trouble getting the appropriate documents to get a real ID as a married woman! Good luck doing that to vote.  

Look, the point of this is to suppress the vote. The fewer people vote, the better republicans do, it's that simple. And that's what Trump is trying to do here. So....we gotta oppose the Save Act to preserve our democracy. Democracies dont always die in one fatal blow, they die from a thousand cuts, a thousand small measures to shift the outcome and make it impossible for opposition to win. A lot of authoritarian states seem democratic on paper, it's only when you look deeper that you realize that their democracies are broken.

Our democracy has been broken for a long time. We have a two party system, with both parties controlled by the billionaire class, and that class is responsible for a lot of our dysfunction. I've long been a critic of the two party system as a result. But right now, Trump is trying to break us to turn us into a ONE party state. Rather than simply being an oligarchy, he's trying to break our system to become an autocracy. He cannot succeed or we're all screwed. 

With that said, if and when we manage to get out of this crisis, the democratic party needs to come back to ensure that this never happens again. The original new deal was implemented not necessary out of the goodness of the hearts of the political establishment, but because they realized that American democracy had become so precarious that they had to act to ensure that they saved it. We need to do it again. We need a new new deal for a new century if the democrats retake power. A milquetoast neoliberal democratic administration talking "abundance" isnt gonna cut it. We need a transformative set of policies to reshape the economy for the new century to ensure that things work again. We need universal basic income, medicare for all or a public option, free college, student debt forgiveness, a mini green new deal, and a reduced work week. Some may disagree with me on specifics, they may downplay the UBI and go all in with a jobs program and more labor protections. That's their prerogative and I'm willing to have that debate, as long as we can agree on some sort of transformative vision on making things better for the people. It was the democrat's failure to act that got us into this mess, and democrats need to go big or go home in 2028 and beyond if they want to ensure a lasting peace in this country.

  Failure to do this could just lead to another republican administration in 2032 or 2036, with a new wave of MAGA far worse than this one. The next wave of MAGA might literally be outright nazis. I'm not kidding, look at nick fuentes and the debates between the base and the establishment in the republican party. Fascism is going to be a lingering threat to America for a while after Trump is gone. As much as I hate to admit it, Trump did realign the country toward fascism and his base is even crazier than he is in some ways. We need to be ready for it. 

As it stands, we need to deMAGAfy the government if democrats take power again. Project 2025 concentrated power within the executive branch, and attempted to replace career civil servants with trump loyalists. Those loyalists need to be fired and replaced with career civil servants again. We need a bureaucracy that works for the people again, and is dedicated to the high minded ideals of our constitution, not loyalty to trump and MAGA. 

We need to hold the worst members of the administration who committed serious crimes against the constitution and humanity to account. We need an investigation into Trump's immigration policies and possibly new Nuremburg style tribunals if serious crimes against humanity are found. We need to hold Trump and his cronies accountable for whatever serious crimes they have committed, Epstein related or otherwise. We need justice, to ensure that an administration like this never happens again, and that the republicans cant just come back in four years with someone worse.

And ultimately, we need to strengthen our democracy in the long term. We need to expand voting access, not restrict it. We need to give Americans more options to represent their views, not fewer. We should have things like universal voter registration, ranked choice voting, open primaries, the end of gerrymandering, the repeal of the 1929 reapportionment act, publicly funded elections, etc. The fact that our democracy has already been sick by its flawed and oligarchic nature is how we got into this mess. We solve it by making democracy more democratic, not less. 

There was a lot of talk about the founders in both the SOTU and the response tonight, but here's my take. The founders created an excellent system, but it was always a system with flaws and compromises. Over time, it has been improved, but sometimes we live with some of these flaws and compromises to this day. Every generation has its issues, and ideally, every generation attempts to solve them and make the world a better place than they found it in. The same is true of ours. I dont believe the founders would want us to embrace the system exactly as it was envisioned in 1789. Rather, they would want us to be like them and to continually improve it, believing in the spirit of it, but also recognizing its downsides. 

I also believe that we need to remember Federalist #10 in these times. The key to our system, with our separation of powers, checks and balance, etc., is to contain factions and to stop them from becoming tyrannical. Our system works well in some ways, but still, Trump's administration is just about one of the most dangerous threats to it that we've seen. It holds in some ways, but it shows weaknesses in other ways. The two party system is one weakness. Money in politics is another. One wave election and we risk losing our democracy because the republican party is willing to act as a cohesive unit to advance the president's agenda, even if it leads to democratic backsliding. And of course, money being an unaccountable fourth branch of government is responsible for this crisis happening in the first place. The fact is, this system is not responsive enough to the people, and does not truly represent the individual voters well. It's very flawed, and this has led to apathy, which has led to this situation in the first place. 

If we want to restore Americans' faith in democracy, we must ultimately make democracy work for them again. 

And that's my message this year. We are in dangerous, precarious times. We very well may come out of it, but this is a warning. We need to shape up, or we could lose our democracy to the forces of autocracy, if we have not already done so. Priority one, stop democratic backsliding. Step two, get republicans out of office. Step three, reform the system to ensure this can't happen again. And yeah, that's where we gotta go from here.   

Discussing the democratic response to the state of the union 2026

 So, Abigail Spanberger gave the democratic response to the state of the union. It was short, sweet, and pretty much spot on. She mentioned how costs are NOT down, and Trump's tariffs are actually making them worse. She mentioned how Trump has unleashed armies of violent thugs onto our streets, and how his plans to deport illegal immigrants are fundamentally inhumane. The first half of the speech, she was spitting. The second half kind of meandered with her going on about how she won her election by double digits last year (okay?), but all in all, it wasn't bad. It was a rather dead on speech more aligned with my own stance on things. Could it have been better? Yeah. But I'll say this, it was the best democratic SOTU response I've seen in years. Dems normally give these weak speeches that dont resonate like, at all, and this one was actually half decent. Maybe my standards are a bit lower this time. I admit, I'm less picky right now. More in an anti Trump mood, believing we must remove him and his administration and get our society back to normal before we can begin to make progress on, well...my issues again. But yeah. I liked it. 

Reacting to Trump's State of the Union 2026

 Okay, so, I dont actually have a ton to say about this one, but it's tradition for me to react to these so react I shall.

Objectively, putting my feelings for the man aside, it was a good speech. I'm not saying he didn't lie a lot, and spin things in obnoxious ways, he did. But...if I were a middle of the road American with only a surface level understanding of politics, it would be a positive speech. Trump framed his agenda positively. He spun the economic numbers positively. He even spun doing stuff like cutting ACA subsidies (which raise the price of healthcare, btw), as cutting subsidies to greedy insurance companies. He spun his agenda with economic populism, and I believe he was quite effective at doing so. He spun stories of people working tons and tons of overtime, framing them as making more money than ever because of "no tax on tips." I mean, sure, from my perspective I'd ask, why should he have to work so long and hard in the first place, and say we should give everyone a UBI, but again, putting my feelings aside and letting his agenda stand on its own, he was effective in selling it. He told a lot of anecdotal stories. He talked about people murdered by illegal immigrants. he framed the whole thing asking "shouldnt we care more for citizens than illegals?" and the dems, quite frankly, looked kinda bad for not standing for that one. Because even I would say yes. I mean, I wanna be real. Im NOT opposed to deporting illegal immigrants. I just despise Trump's authoritarian measures for doing so that violate the law, the constitution, and any reasonable interpretation of human rights. Moving on, he mentioned the SAVE act, asking why it's unreasonable for people to show ID when voting? In a vacuum it sounds fair, it's only when you research further that you realize there's virtually no voter fraud and he's making up a fake crisis for the sake of voter suppression.

Before his speech, I saw a few quotes from Trump. One mentioned how he loved the poorly educated. Another mentioned that smart people dont like him. And that's kind of the thing here. Trump's speech is very good and persuasive for the uninformed. it features a lot of spin and talking points and emotional anecdotal stories that are persuasive to those who...dont really research things very heavily. If you never listen to politics and have been living under a rock for the last year and you tune into this speech, you very well might like it. It's just that for those of us who actually study the issues in depth, and have in depth understandings of things, that his narratives fall apart, and you start understanding that he's only showing you what he wants you to see. To be fair all presidents do this for the SOTU. Even democrats. And I see through them too. In this speech you'll notice few if any references to the epstein files, to the massive network of concentration camps he's trying to build, the flailing jobs reports, or any weakness or failure of his administration. But to be fair, that's kind of to be expected. This is the president's moment to put his spin on things and to sell Americans on his vision. Idk how persuasive it will be. As I said, it I were living under a rock, apolitical, and I tuned in tonight, I would support Trump's agenda. But as someone who is educated and does have my own views, I see through his speech and didn't find it persuasive. That's not to say it wasnt a persuasive speech for others, or objectively a good speech. Quite frankly, Trump framed his agenda in as positive of a light as possible, and MAGA will probably love it, as well as a lot of R leaning independents. I do expect him to get an approval bump out of this. But yeah, it didn't particularly convince me. 

I plan on watching the democratic response next, but wanted to get my thoughts out first before I did. I rarely watch the response live. I get fatigued from listening to trump himself speak for 2 hours so i wanted a break first, where i collect my own thoughts, recharge and then jump back into it. I'll do that next. 

Vaush is right, American Evangelicals are psychos

 So...there seems to be a debate on the online left in recent years over the status of so called "reddit atheism." New atheism, or reddit atheism was a common strain of left wing ideology on the internet in the 2000s and early 2010s, and it's kinda controversial on the modern era. It was my own introduction to left wing politics and while I dont consider myself an atheist any more, it's still very influential to my mindset. But with the woke era, and christian lefties like James Talerico being popular, a lot of woke lefties hate it. TO be fair, I dont like wokeism much either, even though I feel forced to defend those guys in the trump era because well...fascists be fascists. But yeah, point is, the woke lefties dont like us secular lefties criticizing religion. They think it's "bigoted." Its not, depending on context. Religion is a set of ideas. Ideas deserve criticism. Sorry, they do. I know we like to act like religion is beyond criticism, and we like to act like its like race, gender, sexuality, etc., but really...it's not. It's more aligned with political ideology in my book. While there can be bigoted criticisms of religion, I wont say criticizing religion is inherently bigoted.

And....I think we should criticize religion more. Some commentators I follow are leaning toward bringing reddit atheism back, like Kyle Kulinski and Vaush, and I'm all there for it. I honestly think religion is one of the most destructive forces on the planet, and its a root cause of much of our current societal dysfunction. 

Around 4/10 Americans believe in some variation of young earth creationism. Many of these believers are reluctant to believe in climate change, which is an existential threat to our civilization that threatens to doom us all. What's the link? To paraphrase Rush Limbaugh, why would God create a world that we can destroy? Good question. But if we can destroy our own world, what does that say about your religion? And because for these people admitting to being wrong is like the worst thing you can do in that regard, of course they're going to just deny reality instead. But think about how dangerous that is for society. You deny physical reality to maintain belief in questionable holy texts. While more moderate and reasonable christians like to reconcile their beliefs with reality, the extremists dont. The religion IS their reality. And that makes them fundamentally dangerous. 

Let's talk about how else this impacts politics. Vaush talked about Israel lately. In the Bible, Israel was God's chosen people. The logic of the Bible is that those who are on Israel's side will get god's blessing, while those who aren't face his wrath. You can guess why we mindlessly support Israel based on this.

Heck, it goes deeper, Vaush was talking about how American evangelicals believe in the literal end times and are a death cult. They believe that Israel is essential to the end times due to the temple being mentioned and it being reconstructed (the Bible was written while the temple was still standing), and yeah...they literally believe in a variation of "Left Behind", but happening in reality. If you think I'm making this up, no, this is what I was taught in school.

In the end times everyone knows about the Bible. This encourages missionaries to reach remote tribes to try to save them and share God's word with them, even though they're not wanted. And of course, those who are murdered by locals in these other parts of the world become martyrs. I watched so many creepy videos about that in Christian school. It was actually one of the things that set off alarm bells in my head even back then. Like you should be willing to die for the religion. It was insane. And looking at it now I'm just terrified by those teachings. 

I know Islam gets a lot of crap for suicide bombings and martyrdom. And to be fair, they have an extremist problem. Not all muslims are like that though, a lot of them are relatively moderate. I have a muslim friend from iraq and he kinda reminds me of your typical Christian here in the US. Like hes not super crazy with it, he does the rituals, and yeah, heavy parallels to moderate Christianity. Of course, the extremes also have heavy parallels, and the versions of Christianity were talking about are literally the same kinds of people like the taliban who wanna impose sharia law on everyone. That's what christian nationalism is. It's Christian sharia law. There are Christian terrorists out there who, say, bomb abortion clinics who arent much different than muslims terrorists. Religious extremism is a problem, and you shouldn't diminish the experiences of those who are trying to warn people.

I know people like Sam harris for years talked about how Iran getting nuclear weapons is a threat because they're a bunch of religious psychos who will bomb the world with them. Fair point...but what does it say when we got these evangelical nuts in our own government with all of these christian end times nonsense in their own worldview? Are they not dangerous? And this is where Vaush was coming from in his recent segments.

And they are. And again, this is the origins of a lot of reddit atheism. A lot of reddit atheists are literally just ex christians who realize how fricking crazy these evangelical branches of christianity are (because we were in them to varying degrees!), and it's kinda left a lasting scar on us emotionally. A lot of reddit atheists literally suffer from religious trauma syndrome. They fear going to hell when they die. They fear the end times coming and being stung by something that looks like a stingwing from Fallout 4 (yeah, that's in the bible). The triggers for all of us are different, as our own journeys with leaving Christianity are different, but I can honestly, say, it's no joke. RTS is no joke. And a lot of ex christian atheists are literally traumatized by their experiences with religion and have forms of PTSD like symptoms ranging from it. Even I have my triggers. Hell, one of the reasons I'm spiritual again is because one of those triggers was hit in just the right way that it convinced me that some form of god is real after all. Should I be spiritual? Idk, the evidence for god and all is still weak objectively speaking, but man, that experience just messes with my head. 

Either way Ive been able to successfully compartmentalize that from my secular worldview, and we need a secular worldview in politics. It's said that Christianity isnt a religion, but a relationship with God. Atheism is said by atheists to be a relationship with reality. And that's largely true. And we need more of that. When nearly 40% of our population isn't living in the same reality as the rest of us, how can we have a functioning country. Hell, we talk about our political divisions all the time. But what's driving them? It's this worldview issue. ANd that 40% of the population just isn't living in the same reality as the rest of us. And should we cater and compromise to them? No. Not unless we want the whole country to become some psychotic religious theocracy, which is the direction the GOP would take it if they had unlimited power. Hell, they're trying their best with project 2025. This is why compromise with the GOP fails. We're literally trying to appease a bunch of religious fundamentalists who dont live in the same reality as the rest of us and keep trying to meet them part of the way. We shouldnt. We should take back the overton window for ourselves, so we can all live in a shared reality again. We should try to deconvert these people, moderate them, and get them out of these dangerous mindsets. And at its core, that's been a core mission of mine since I left. Maybe I'm harsh, maybe im crusty. Maybe I'm le edgy reddit atheist, but you know what? We NEED that in an era where a good third of the country or more is pushing for Christian nationalism, and they actually have organized political power. These guys are driving much of the republican party and the trump administration's agenda. And if we're not careful, these guys will force us to live under Christian theocracy, and they could even destroy the world in the long term, whether from nuclear war, or climate change, or who knows what else? 

I say this as an ex follower in these guys' belief system. Take that as you will.  

I dont want war with Iran

 *sigh*, so they're doing it again. Corporate media and a lot of insiders in both parties are starting to try to manufacture consent for a war in Iran. Such a war would be a disaster. Yes, we could beat Iran. However, we'd be stuck there for years after "nation building", with Iran itself being a much larger country than Iraq or Afghanistan, and it being mountainous like Afghanistan. It would be a nightmare for US troops. It would cost billions a year. And for what? Israel? Oil? Those seem to be the big rationales.

I know theres been talk of Carney rejecting an oil deal after Trump tried to bully him into it. And that's gonna hurt us. We just invaded Veneuzela for oil but apparently we wont have the infrastructure to capitalize on that for years and some oil guy commented recently that if we wanted oil, we could've just attacked Iran. And Israel also wants to attack Iran. Again. And you know how we cater to Israel for some reason. It's ridiculous. Im getting to the point I wanna cut ties with Israel and throw them to the wolves. I really do. I was initially supportive of allying with them on the basis of mutual defense, shared values, but this relationship really isn't working out. They're bullying us into doing their dirty work and I'm sick of it. And honestly, Netanyahu is a war criminal who should be tried in the Hague. So yeah.

I don't want this. I don't want another war. We've seen enough of these wars in my lifetime and they all end the same. With our national debt going up and thousands of troops dying for no reason. And at best, for what? Oil? oil we wouldnt even need if we treated our actual allies properly? (Sorry, Canada). Like come on. I'm so over this crap at this point. 

Ya know the CONCEPT of "America first" as in just withdrawing and sitting in our little introvert caves sounds good about now, but in reality these "America first" people are imperialist psychos. I guess the real America first was the Biden foreign policy minus the Israel support. Support our allies, but mostly stay out of crap. That's what I want. 

Discussing trans rights post 2024

 So...I've seen people freaking out in multiple locations today about the future of trans rights. Apparently polling has come out showing that it's remaining unpopular with the populace post Biden, and it would arguably be a mistake for the democrats to lean into it.

Personally, i dont think trans rights is an issue that really motivates much of anything, i dont think it is an issue democrats lost 2024 over, nor do I think it's at the forefront of politics today. Still, i do think we are backsliding on the issue as we get into this "post woke" era. And a lot of people are freaking out about democrats "throwing them under the bus."

First of all, let me just say, I hate that rhetoric. The democratic party has had this hostile takeover by a progressive left that no one but the most extreme SJWs and HR ladies actually wanted, and ever since then everything revolves around these fricking social issues and omg, the underprivileged, dont you care, blah blah blah. And again, I've always been that guy who doesnt really. I mean, I'm for trans rights, even now, but I dont think we should stake the future of the party or the country on them. I dont think we should have the whole world revolve around 0.6% of the population. We should fight for them when we can, but if the issues are fundamentally unpopular, they're unpopular, and we should tiptoe around them. Why should we hand over our country to fascism over this issue? it's dumb and counterproductive. And yeah, sorry, not sorry, I do think that if needed we need to moderate on it. 

At the same time, I'm going to be blunt. We won on gay marriage, before, and I think we can win on trans issues too. But rather than the stupid cult of caring stuff, we need to embrace the ethos of encouraging people to NOT care. NOT caring is how you win people over. We're a country based on freedom, and minding your own business. if we sell trans rights as a freedom issue, we can likely do better than we do when we got the annoying SJWs in charge.

If anything, I think Nick Fuentes is onto something as he crashes out and implodes over there on the republican side. For the past decade, the republicans have been the party of trolls and have won on cultural issues because of that. The democrats were annoying, over the top, self righteous, and easily triggered, and it just made us fundamentally unpopular. We won gay marriage before 2016 because...guess what? Back then we were the trolls and they were the triggered ones. And we'll win again...when we're the trolls and they're easily triggered. 

We won gay marriage because people stopped caring. For a while it was "what? gays cant get married, marriage is between one man and one woman and that's what the bible says!" And us new atheist types on the left were like screw your bible, youre free to practice religion in your personal life, but keep that stuff out of government, besides, how exactly does gay marriage affect you? And...as someone who was conservative back then...that's what shifted me. I realized i had no logical argument against it outside of religion, and shifted left as a result. And then I left my religion. Imagine that. 

And that was around the time that things shifted in favor of it. It was part of that Obama era zeitgeist where we were post peak christianity, but before the era of wokeness and the alt right. And we were winning....until the SJWs came around, which ended up giving tons of power and coolness factor to the alt right.

But now the alt right is becoming triggered over superbowl half time shows and crashing out. All while they obviously become authoritarian under Trump. But they're no longer cool and edgy outsiders. They ARE the establishment. And they ARE triggered. And they're losing their power. 

Honestly, we win trans issues the same way. Stop getting in dumb fights over pronoun usage and getting triggered over stuff, but ask them why they care? Eventually they'll lose the argument and people will shift. because at the end of the day, people dont give AF as long as it isnt affecting them. And that's how you sell it. The biggest mistake the SJW left made was imposing their BS on everyone else, where it affected them. I called it out as dumb when they were doing it, and it's dumb now. If there's any silver lining with trump, it's hopefully that we're now peak "woke" and a new zeitgeist can form in its place. Hopefully a libertarian one on social issues, because really, i think the biggest issue of our time on social issues is how much government we want in our lives. The trump administration is an authoritarian nightmare right out of 1984 and the worst authoritarian regimes in history. The counter to it is good old american FREEDOM! 

Trump loves to act like we on the left are unamerican, but if anyone is unamerican, it's trust. Nationalism isnt patriotism. The reason why, in the 2010s, I was so edgy and anti patriotism was i recognized that if we really cared about thsoe values, we wouldnt force conformity on people. And honestly? As I get older, i realize it's not that I'm not patriotic, but rather, I have a higher understanding of american values based on freedom, ACTUAL freedom. What the trumpers push is just nationalism. And nationalism is the opposite of american patriotism as I see it. A patriot will be like "I dont agree with you, but I believe in your right to say it." A nationalist will get triggered when you dont salute the flag the way they want you to.

And that's how you win the culture war, and bring people back on trans issues. Frame it as a freedom thing. Stop being triggered over stuff, and support a zeitgeist based on liberty. We do that, we win. We act as a bunch of triggered petty authoritarians, like we have the past 10 years, and we lose. 

And yeah, that's my thought on this. The left has a lot to offer if it frames things the right way. The problem is they often dont because they allow these radical people who act with a religious zeal dominate the conversation and push an unpopular version of those ideas on the masses. That isn't how we win. We win when people stop giving AF. Rather than forcing people to care all the time, you want the opposite, for people to NOT care, because when they dont care, the issue becomes off the table, and generally in the direction of liberty.  

Discussing just how screwed the GOP is

 So, Kyle Kulinski covered a story noting that if the 2024 election were held again today, Harris would win by 8 points according to one poll. This is a shift of 9 points since 2024 to the left. To be fair, it's only one poll, but to be fair, this seems to be aligned with other data. As I recently pointed out in my 2026 house forecast, the generic congressional vote shifted 8 points since 2024. This is what the presidential would look like under these conditions. 

 All 7 swing states would go Harris in a hypothetical 2028 matchup, and then we'd be seeing Ohio, Florida, Iowa, and Texas starting to turn pink. Now, kyle mentioned that the poll he looked at may have underestimated democratic votes, which means we could see a D+10-12 scenario. Keep in mind, at D+11.2, we flip ohio. At D+13-14, we start seeing the above states, flipping. Beyond that, it gets harder, i didnt measure beyond that in this chart, but I think the next wave of states is stuff like Montana, Indiana, South Carolina, and Missouri which were all like D+15-20 if I recall. Those likely wont flip under ANY circumstance. But with that said, are states like ohio and texas really on the table? polling seems to indicate its possible. I wouldnt count on it, and I still stand by something like R+5 in texas, but yeah. It's possible. And that is a bad sign for the GOP. 

Again, this is why they're trying to push the Save Act and stuff. They can't win legitimately so their only option is voter suppression. We can't let them win as that backslides us into autocracy. The GOP has been on borrowed time for a while, and we need to deliver some blows that will destroy them in their current form. They wont disappear forever, but if they end up getting wrecked 1930s style, they'll have to come back more moderate to win.  And that's what we want. We want the democrats to move left, and the GOP to moderate to something more akin to what they were when Eisenhower and Nixon were the standard bearers of the party. 

Im not sure the dems can win on that level, but I do think we can do some 2008-2012 style victories after all's said and done. The real question is whether they can keep power. Im not really sure. I suspect if we get a moderate, it'll go the same way the Biden administration did where the country sours on that too. Idk. We'll have to see.