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This is a bit profound but human nature is in full view these days. It's only going to get worse for now, until the slow moving gears finally start pushing back. Some of it already is. A federal judge has ruled that ending the birther right is unconstitutional. Now we wait to see what Trump's government does with that. Meanwhile, Ken Klippenstein has written that DEI has been abolished across the board for all federal agencies and departments. I wonder how that is going to affect disabled veterans, among other disabled federal workers? More sad days are coming as Trump sets out to try and carry out his agenda.

It really is too bad that we all can't learn to get along with each other.

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Trump seems to shoot in all directions, hoping to hit something. And he will, as no society is prepared for a behavior like his. No society is 100% bulletproof.

But his approach can make everybody around him want to run. They may not manage to run first, before he fires them, but there will be a growing amount of people who used to support him, and then it ended. Luckily, he cannot send everybody he doesn't like to Siberia, but he may think of something similar along the way.

Whatever results he reached, they will hurt. Trump doesn't do anything to make people happy. He wants the exact opposite. And money. Greedy and corrupted, he is. Empathetic? No.

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I agree Jorgen. The economic impacts of this are going to be felt everywhere. How are you coping in your neck of the woods?

After the proposed ban of TikTok in the US, people quickly went to a Chinese app called Red Note. I don't know if you're familiar with all this but, on Red Note, Americans found out that much of the propaganda around China was false. That destroyed decades of fake narratives in a few weeks.

Trump has his work cut out for him more than ever, now that Americans can see how much we're being squeezed while places like China for example, now have life expectancies greater than ours with a per capita income 4 times less.

It's going to be hard for Trump to keep things together. Add in climate change, supply chain disruptions, economic instability and rising dissatisfaction and he'll need to be a president cast in the mold of one of our great Presidents - FDR. I don't think Trump is up to the task much to my dismay.

I hope there are competent people around Mr. Trump. He'll need them.

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Trump is spreading chaos and confusion everywhere he goes. In my corner of the world, politicians are upset about the threats connected with his wish to own Greenland. Tariffs seems to be his favorite word, and big business here is worried about that, caring less about the ownership of Greenland, while the politicians are mostly concerned about the latter. The point is, we do not have the strength to say no to the USA – there is a very uneven power balance between the USA and any other country. For the politicians, saying no will also mean reduced chances to advance their careers into international organizations, which are often directed by the USA.

It is, btw., worth considering that the USA has been threatening its way to effectively ruling the Greenland airspace ever since the second world way, and also demanded (or just done without permission) whatever they liked during those years. The USA has been a bully as much as a protector.

Apart from these local problems, I am hopeful in regard to the situation in Ukraine. The people I love and I myself have a direct benefit from an end of that war (or more precisely, big problems from it going on), so even though the whole rhetorical setup is clearly staged between Trump and Putin, and would be considered ridiculous in more normal times, it could all mean that there is an end of the conflict coming up. A thin hope, of course, by that's all I have, and it's better than nothing.

I am not surprised that people see a different reality in a new app. The current situation with news media and social media alike is that they provide a very skewed image of the world. I would be a bit careful, though, with believing that the new app then is more correct – probably the truth lies somewhere in between the different images provided.

Trump is bulldozing his way forward, and that usually works for him. People are too polite or too slow to stop him before it's too late. He will destroy many things for many people before reaching his end. Now it has been proposed that he should be allowed to run for a third term, and as the USA politics work (or don't work) right now, it could end up happening. One way or another. On the other hand, he is not getting younger, so even though he has the energy now, it may not last. However, then a different kind of idiot is ready to take over.

Trump is unique for now, but may be symptomatic for future top politicians: Almost every single outrage he is creating would have costed the political career just a few years ago, but now he can make dozens of them a day without consequences.

People know that he is being paid for politics, and they accept it. It is illegal, but nobody cares. He created his new virtual currency, earning billions on it, which is a scandal in itself when a president is doing it, and it has hardly even been mentioned by the press. He promotes his business partners to be the preferred partners of the USA, etc., no doubt getting a kick-back from them.

And people do not care. The few who do, seem to have decided to just sit and wait for the four years to end, believing that life will become normal again after that. Which it probably won't.

I don't think his followers care much about whether he delivers what he promised. He is known as a pathological liar, so as long as he keeps promising, everything is as they would expect, without ever fulfilling any promises. They love his lies more than his acts, I suspect. They also love how he is breaking all conventions and constantly bullying others, and this they will no doubt see more of.

Your ideas of learning to love each other are really needed for this to end up well after Trump. Otherwise, he will either be followed by another jerk, as mentioned, or he would be ousted by an even stronger bully. None of that would be beneficial to anyone wanting the world to function.

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HI my friend, I’ve been writing about this as a way to make sense of it for myself as well. Enough people want to be led that they happily glom onto anyone that promises them a pie and a little bit of peace. Sadly it’s usually at the expense of their freedoms and rights but this is who we are as a species.

I suspect if we are able to show a better way of being in life — one that demonstrates how we can care about each other and the planet, people would make their way to us.

Politics are downstream to culture and my view is that we can shape the politics once we get the culture right.

In America more than anywhere else, we atomize our relationships. It’s about the rugged individual, the leader, the captain of industry types that are worshipped.

It’s a dead end, our civilization cannot survive it. And as it destabilizes we will discover again, our strength comes from each other, not from those that would lead us into despair as they line their own pockets.

Our politics are broken precisely because our relationships between ourselves are broken. And we fix that by thinking about each other instead of ourselves. That’s my hope anyhow.

Smiling. Just some thoughts from an old fart on a cold winter day. I hope all is well in your world my friend.

Mitch.

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Yes, partly a treat of humanity, partly culture. Partly possible to change, partly not. I can't help thinking that we have become so many people on Earth and in each segment of it (country, region, whatever), that the level of tension between us is too big now for us as a species to handle.

We are not geared to be surrounded by a flood of problems and enemies. We are constructed to work together in flocks at a size that we can overview. Everything beyond that will cause friction and fighting.

So, I share your pessimism. Only, how the end will be like and how long it will take, how long in Limbo, that is the unknown. And also, what could possibly come after?

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You’re onto something, I’ve read about Dunbar’s number as the upper limit of people with whom we can remember and form relationships. Our limit may well be around 150 people.

We create laws and norms to keep ourselves in line but when we see people breaking the laws/norms without consequence, we chafe. It’s not fair for some to be bound by the law and others to be protected by and from it (to paraphrase Wilhoit’s law).

Our civilizations are dangerously unstable and if we don’t figure out how to come together, we will come apart. Trump is leading the way sadly yet we know all these things as a species. We’re at an inflection point. We either level up our get left behind in the dustbin of history. There is no middle path left, one where we can muddle along and get by.

We either evolve or collapse. That’s how I see it anyhow. I’d love for us to find that path out of the misery we’re creating.

Fingers crossed we will. Mitch.

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HI Terry, I suspect this will be a matter of survival before long - the need to form communities within which we help each other. The current paradigm is failing and compounded with climate change and supply chain disruptions - exacerbated by Trump tariffs and Edolph Shitler's fascism, we're going down. I venture to say it's unstoppable at this point. A collapse is heading our way.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-1ELKB35As

Bob Marley sang it true! One love.

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Your way of thinking is the way of thinking of many great minds. I believe we do change the world, we constantly push it toward good, or else we would have stopped existing long time ago...

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This is beautiful. I can't say I am where you are in your spiritual evolution, but your ideals resonate deeply.

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Thanks, Mitch. You are right – we are doing this to each other (and ourselves), we are not just victims of whatever evil "the others" have thought out.

People do find together around the oddest things, such as football, drinking, or xenophobia. They like to feel heard and see someone speak their cause, no matter if it really isn't their cause, but then it can become that. They just like to be embraced by someone.

Your point that we can be the light is right. Showing an example is better than pointing fingers and speaking down the people we do not resonate with. Whenever Trump does something silly, we do not need to be there immediately with a fact-check article, or a list of all his other stupid things, we could instead talk about how this really should be done, to be good.

Also, helping people out of the darkness into the light, as you describe it, requires going there, to the darkness, to meet them where they are. And being there, we should be prepared to learn something ourselves. Going there as missionaries or correcting school teachers will not win much respect, in that we this way are doing the opposite of what we are asking them to do.

I see good perspectives in your way of thinking! And, certainly, we must all start by believing it.

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I would also like to point at some specific problems that have led to a situation like the current, even though your point that "even some Dems" are bad is also valid. It is not so much a matter of politic connection as of a stance as to who we are with. I wrote about it a while ago (in an article nobody seems to like) – easier to just point to it: https://turn.inidox.com/p/maga-neo-nazism-and-friends

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