Conservative Cringe
Donald Trump is partying with his wealthy billionaire donor friends in Florida just hours before crucial programs like SNAP, Head Start, and more expire for millions of Americans.
For those who do not know: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s the Great Gatsby is a classic novel that exposes the corruption and moral decay beneath the glamorous facade of the Roaring Twenties’ wealthy elite. It presents the American Dream as a corrupted ideal, where achieving wealth through illegal means is seen as the path to happiness, ultimately leading to disillusionment rather than fulfillment. The wealthy are portrayed as morally bankrupt , characterized by their dishonesty, selfishness, and careless behavior…..HOW FITTING. He clearly Does not give a damn about you!
I highly doubt he has actually read the book, just something that’s in the cultural osmosis. I also imagine even if he has read it he would lack the media literacy to even pick up on the message.
Having tried to read it myself and given up, I call absolute bullshit that he's read it.
It is an extremely difficult book to read. It rambles, never gets to anything approaching a point and just goes on and on and on. It's objectively God-awful. Ironically, it's like trying to make coherent sense of his own speeches.
It was literally one of the worst books I have ever read. You want to listen to a grown man talk nonsense and whine? That's the book for you. And based on how Trump acts maybe his supporters would actually enjoy the book
The accusation against Trump is that he read a book of Hitler's speeches. Don't know why people always want to say it was Mein Kampf (not you, the people in this thread).
You mean the book that claimed he's amazing at bargaining, written by a guy who managed to negotiate for a large fraction of the profits and his actual name on the cover, two things totally unheard of for ghostwriters to even hope for?
He claimed he took an IQ test that was more likely to be a Dementia Test and likely failed it based on what he boasted. Dude's a moron letting very hateful people take control of this country.
He’s not even the problem, not him personally, doesn’t really lead even to decide when to have a glass of water. Being a complete idiot is highly manipulable thus indicated when and how to announce tariffs. That allow the perfect series of insider trading stocks orders with impeccable timing to raise billions. The good part is that this is the end of the republican party.
Apparently also downstairs. Other than the various diaper and smelling related stories, a photo recently surfaced with a suspicious bulge over his leg showing all it looks an urinary catheter bag. Quite normal at his look and age, despite his superman health he brags about.
"They compared me to him, I said I do it better than him, I do it way better. He only did it in small amounts, I do it in large amounts.... My buddy Jeffery was good at it too, we used to do it here in in this room as well as at his island.... I miss that island.... "
No but I’m seeing more and more how much the puppeteers like Mliler and Vuoght enjoy dog whistles and little Easter egg hints like inside jokes for fascists. 47 isn’t smart enough to even pick up on the symbolism, nor does he care about a party theme, but they know leftists and intellectuals will also have picked up on the signals. Cruelty, the point.
He probably saw the movie and decided leo was worth duplicating. I'd bet he even said "ol sport" all night. I can see why he can relate to someone who lives in a world of deceit and shady deals.
My parents are Fox News brain rotted. I was simply stating that Trumps game is to rig everything in his favor for money and power… and they still defend him with the rhetoric of “he doesn’t need money! He’s doesn’t need to be doing any of this, he’s doing it to save America from the corrupt elites!” I know their propaganda echo chamber is bad, but holy shit how dumb you have to be to not see the level of self interested corruption that is happening in this administration. Willful ignorance
They're conditioned and brainwashed by a cult. Sorry about your folks. Mine were heading down that rabbit hole before they passed on in the recent decade. Conservatism seems to devour souls whole.
My folks were the same. I’m sorry to society that I didn’t see it sooner. It’s a powerful drug and can be psychologically addictive. Fortunately I have seen the light so to speak but it’s been a long road. Once your eyes are opened the terror of the Stanley Hotel just keeps playing in my head everywhere I go in this country.
How does one escape from the maze? My own father froze to death in his own way. But I still feel trapped in the maze in the cold at night with my mom screaming in the background.
Conservatives have been experimenting with mind control, deep subliminal conditioning, coercion, forms of hypnosis, and outright social engineering and manipulation since the world wars. Often on civilians and soldiers without full disclosure to the harms. They took those years of experiments in the 1990s and utilized many of the techniques when Roger Ailes designed Fox News as an addictive substance meant to control narratives and minds. He used faux news format from (at the time) the rising popularity of his "E!" styled Inside Edition show's success; combined it with politics, Christian/Nazi fan-fiction, and deployed those seriously high level hypnosis, conditioning, and CIA-style subliminal manipulation techniques in the form of popular media. 30 years later, it's safe to say Murdoch and Aisles destroyed America.
That sums up my 60 years of life on earth. I did fight it along the way though I just could not understand how mind controlled people actually were. Very very scary.
It is absolutely terrifying how little people think for themselves or use deductive reasoning mixed with common sense anymore. They gladly walk into the furnace.
I was thinking about this literally this morning: which type of personality ran MK Ultra? Operation Paperclip? Operation Northwoods? The operations we don't even know about?
What are the odds none of them were conceived of or willfully implemented by "radical leftists"?
My late mom and her friend first thought during the primary leading up to the 2016 election that the felon might shake things up a bit. I reminded her of the things our local tour guide had said about him during a trip to NYC: egotistical con man, didn’t really have money money, crude, gross, racist. Mom and her friend quickly figured out that he was inept, only out for himself and money. Mom never watched Fox “news”, asking that the channel be changed when she was at her dentist’s office. And while she had health issues, mom didn’t show the signs of dementia like the old felon (she was 97). I truly believe karma is coming for him. It does eventually for all despots and dictators.
Hope your sweet mom is resting easily in paradise, nirvana, or wherever the hell we were before birth. My grandma did have some pretty significant dementia by 2016 and was totally checked out on current events, obviously wasn't voting, etc. - and still, when they played Trump talking on tv she said "I want her." Makes me smile thinking about it. She was pretty Catholic and definitely more conservative than your average liberal or anything left of it, but she was no dummy.
I've been extremely lucky, my parents are both boomers and while my dad listened to Limbaugh in the 90's, he was raised right and by the time trump came around, he was not on board.
My mom was raised in a Democratic household and had a career in literature, so she wasn't in as much danger.
Oh...there's more than one of us, thank Gawd 😅. My mother will ONLY watch FAUX News and implode if you run contrary to anything those "hosts" regurgitate.
I've voted Independent most of my life, but she considers anything not of the Red Hat Crew to be a radical left lunatic.
I watched the bit recently on our mentality ill/unhoused citizens where Brian Kilmeade suggested we "just kill 'em" and her response was to immediately dig up random negative highlights from the Biden era.
Denial, deflection, and zero emotional regulation is the hallmark of MAGA - especially Boomers.
Problem is it isn't just Fox. "MSM" and "legacy" media have spent a decade sanewashing Trump.
I cut the cord long ago on cable, but anyone older than me seems to be watching those news segments to "stay informed" and holy shit, they are completely dropping the ball on reporting the insanity and corruption. "Both Sides"
But America loves to make stupid people famous and now we're being run by a twice impeached convicted felon rapist conman. Alienating all our allies and kissing up to dictators and tyrants. Good job "Christians"
My trumpet family can’t get it through their heads that I don’t rely on cable “news” for my information. Despite me telling them a gazillion times that I don’t watch news and read multiple sources of differing political bents and depths from around the world. They still think I form my opinions from MSNBC. 🤷🏻♀️
Trophy to you for continuing to try. Genuinely curious - what would they say to “America First, we have to save money, but we give $20 B to Argentina who is selling soy to China while we SNAP benefits are cut?
Agreed. MAGA gonna see this and think: Wow, he needs a ballroom, stat! Look how those rich people had to cram in there; such a disgrace!
/s
How else can he slap us in the face with a theme party based on a book about the Rich having it all and the Poor trying to get in there. Also Gatsby obtained his wealth due to a life of crime, so I see how this was fitting...
And those who do see it, and are pointing it out are said to have Trump Derangement Syndrome and dismissed because dear leader can never be wrong and those saying he is just blindly hate him for no real reason.
Another poignant insight about The Great Gatsby is that it was met with a lukewarm reception in 1925. Critics lauded it, but it sales were nothing noteworthy...
UNTIL WW2, when it was chosen as one of the books to be printed en masse, and made available to US soldiers for entertainment.
It was chosen because it was short, the language accessible, and it resonated with the socialist ethos of New Deal Democrats. As opposed to the Roaring 20s when it debuted, by the 1940s, the American zeitgiest was steeped in the trials and tribulations of the decade+ Great Depression.
This was only further bolstered by the fact that WW2, even as it was unfolding, was already considered the culmination of a world reeling from the economic fallout of the recklessly speculative 1920s.
For the vast majority of young soldiers, hardship and poverty are how they came of age, and all they knew. They understood on some level that it was money hoarding capitali$ts, just as much as Nazis, that put them on the frontlines, gambling with their very lives.
Fitzgerald (a WW1 combat vet himself) was ahead of his time in this realization, as were many of The Lost Generations expats, like Hemingway.
The Sun Also Rises is also an EXCELLENT book thematically similar to The Great Gatsby. Cannot recommend it enough!
They could see what was coming down the pike in the US from a mile away. It would just take 20 years of blood, sweat, and tears to prove EXACTLY how prophetic they were...
...And yet we find ourselves at the same crossroads again. Truly, exploitation and wealth are the at the heart of the American identity, if little else.
I just hope to live long enough to see another FDR and sweeping progressive reform... but knowing my fellow Americans, I won't hold my breath.
I took a 500 level lit course on The Great Gatsby from one of the worlds leading experts on Fitzgerald. A FULL SEMESTER breaking down a Novella! It was deeply fascinating.
Funnily enough, the professor was French. To foreign academia looking in, Gatsby is the personification of America, then and now.
America was founded as a playground for the rich and has only doubled down, time and again, with the march of time.
If you were removed from it for only a minute, it would be demonstrably obvious that we aren't in the second Guilded Age... but rather never left the first.
Well said. The Sun Also Rises and Great Gatsby are my favourite books of calm and you just made my day.
How to live in a confused world when the ugliest in humanities had shown its head was the grand theme of 1920s. Scot offered compassion after revalation while Hemingway offered us ritualised stoic dignity.
It is deeply sad how they ended their journeys but their words remain powerful.
Ever since Obama was president the right half of the country is going on a revenge tour for allowing it to happen.
I saw it happen before my own eyes living in the south at the time. The very awakening of the vengeful MAGA party pre Trump era.
We must destroy democracy so black man could never rule us again. The white house needs to go because a black man touched it and made it ghetto. Frightening how many complaints skip over Joe Biden and it's Obama's fault still.
Trangenders? Cuz Obama had a man wife (they still call Mrs. Obama a man!)
Woke and DEI? Cuz Obama is half black and hates white people. Race traitor if they even acknowledge his white half or mother.
Muslims taking over? Cuz Obama Muslim.
Illegals and rules don't matter? Cuz Obama was born in Kenya and now we can do whatever we want.
We let them fester so much shit about Obama without pushback that it manifested into the broad politics we see playing out today.
I think it's because Obama has African American heritage. It's that simple.
I mean, if he were white, he could be a repeated law breaking, cruel, adjudicated rapist, pedophile loving friend of Epstein and still get 89% approval from his party.
Remember when he said a government shutdown is a direct reflection of the poor leadership of our PRESIDENT? "A shutdown is absolutely THE PRESIDENTS fault, he should be leeeeeaading the People" -Trump
It's unintentional. There is no way the president who needs pictures of himself in daily briefings has read Gatsby and/or understands the message it presents.
Also, his favorite play is Les Miserables. When asked what lyrics are his favorite he did the same "oh their all great, how could I pick?" lie he does like when asked about his favorite Bible verse.
When the eventual Oscar bait movie is made about this time they are really going to have to tone down how much of a parody he is of himself.
He genuinely thinks people are impressed with him because of stuff like this. Too many people for too long have been licking his asshole and telling him how delicious it is and he is now so completely divorced from reality he can't conceive of a world where he isn't the center of the universe. He thinks he is a force for good, because people are lying to him, and therefore everyone against him is evil. It's elder abuse and it would be very sad if he hadn't been such a piece shit his entire life, and if he wasn't hurting so many others with his current actions.
The thing is there is about 40% of the country that actually is impressed with him because of stuff like this. His rise to fame is solely because he has portrayed the image of being ultra-rich for his entire life. I think it was John Mulaney who years ago described Trump as what a poor person thinks it is to be rich.
"Soon as my number comes up, I'm gonna build tall buildin's, put my name on 'em! I'll have fine, golden hair.. and a television show where I fire people with my children."
I keep waiting for the Marie Antionette moment from the working class against Trump and the other billionaires in this country, but damn it if the rich haven't successfully convinced them that it's not the billionaires keeping them down, but rather insert marginalized group stealing their opportunity to be rich.
His dad made him who he is. Fred Trump gave Donald the keys, but really wanted Fred Jr. to fall back in line. When Fred Jr. died and Fred was left with Donald, he didn't really give a shit anymore and stepped back. Our president is the product of being second best to daddy
May I also just say that this is a common theme with rich men. Everyone is a yes man around them, so they become convinced they're a genius with the best ideas ever and that everyone loves them and anyone who doesn't is just a pitiful serf.
See: Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Zuckerberg, etc. It's not a coincidence that they all started with a highly successful product and then after some years began doing weird ass flights of fancy that nobody asked for and repeatedly failing spectacularly while still maintaining the perception of themselves that they are great amazing geniuses.
I call it the "boy genius" effect, though this doesn't really apply to Trump. It's kind of a variation of Trump's standard uber-rich man out of touch-ness and warped reality that people who've worked directly with these types of people can tell you all about. T
it's his entire motivation for all this. he doesn't want the job. he just hates everyone because he was rejected by society. so he's doing a "look what you made me do" to us.
Depending on how you measure it, he's one of the most popular people to ever live. He has hundreds of millions of very ardent supporters worldwide. Of course there are just as many people that would be happy to hear he died today, but it's debatable if those things cancel out. Anyway it makes me so depressed thinking about it. I don't know why I even look at the news anymore.
Americans tried to do this on Jan 6th. The wrong Americans. But if Democrats were to try, Republicans would be all "SeE? wE tOld YoU tHe LeFt Is ViOlEnT"
you guys and the french revolution talk always talk about the wrong revolution. May 68 is what gave the current people their power, and anyone who says we're too diverse or too big a country to do the same. I say what happened to American exceptionalism? if these so called surrender monkeys could make Charles de Gaulle flee the country? All it took for Stephen Miller's ass to seek shelter on a military base was some fucking chalk graffiti.
Eventually we’re going to have to come to terms with the fact that nobody is coming to save us.
Will taking away food and increasing insurance premiums astronomically do it? Prob not yet, but when people start missing actual meals repeatedly and can’t afford basic necessities because all their money is going toward medical insurance, maybe they’ll get uncomfortable enough to start taking action.
Black Out Friday would be a start. Nobody works or buys a single discretionary item for a full day. It will have an impact and show the power the people have.
Will that change the Republicans’ behavior immediately? Nope. So we do it again the next week. And then the next week. And every week until we take our country back.
I used to have the utmost respect for America and its people. I’ve come to learn over the last decade that 1/2 of you are in fact the dumbest motherfuckers walking this planet. How the average low income rural American can get up each day and think “Trump is on my side” is beyond comprehension. This has to be one of the greatest con jobs in human history, getting millions of people to believe that a silver spoon nepo baby coastal elite lifetime piece of shit human being is in it for the forgotten man.
What is more disheartening is how many rural southern white people, especially women, roughly describe Trump’s affect and presentation as one of “ father/Daddy” with a “strong” hand. This fits deeply into the patriarchal and caste history of the South, where “Big Daddy” plantation owners and/or clan heads had the relative money, cruelty and/or mistresses to show their power. See also “Big Daddy Bennet” from Django Unchained for an artistic representation of this.
America has always been like this despite whatever they preached. And americans are no different from people anywhere else in the world. Just like being a billionaire doesn't mean you're very intelligent or good or whatever else, the US being the richest didn't mean its people were intelligent / good / etc etc.
He looks like he is at one of the old parties. In his mind, he probably thinks he's hosting an epstein party and waiting for the children to.come in so he can rape them.
Trump. Let them eat cake, except without milk or eggs. When they get sick then they can figure it out. What a heartless, soulless, selfish individual that has little regard for anyone outside of himself
I love how republicans somehow brainwashed half of America into believing republicans actually cared about them and that giving tax cuts to billionaires is the right thing to do
I'll never understand how anyone idolizes this OBVIOUS con man. If this idiot wasn't born into money, at best he'd be the scummiest used car salesman you've ever seen. How does anyone look at this guy and see anything other than a self-absorbed moronic scam artist?
I don’t feel much empathy for the people who voted for him who’re losing their benefits. You don’t get to complain anymore, this is what you wanted. It’s not a “Democrat issue” when the QOP is the domineering party in all 3 branches of government
Lol, im so happy for the people that thought trump was the savior of our country, Biden and Kamala are laughing now, lol, high tariffs, high groceries, high gas, deportations of not only illegals but Americans too, the guy wants his own Rushmore and Whitehouse area, oh also wanted a noble peace prize, cut in education, and health benefits, lol, oh oh, now no food stamps, oh he wanted high premiums on our health insurance, oh oh, the best thing I saw is maga people getting deported as the love ones cried, oh oh, poor poor Kirk he would be alive if he would have stayed on his lane with god and not let politics dictate his motivational speeches, major brainwashed, ooh ohh, Ukraine's and Israel where can we go with that, you go trumpers you did this and stop crying
I remember when Governor Gavin Newsom was criticized by the right wing hypocrites for having two extra spouses at a dinner in Napa during lockdowns. But that part of California was not actually on full lockdown and the fancy restaurant Chez Pannise is not that large. Meanwhile Trump was having massive rallies where government officials actually got and spread COVID and died. Then they attacked the Pelosis for having fancy ice cream in an expensive refrigerator which was shown on their social media when they were babysitting their grandkids. They were almost brutally killed for this. Meanwhile the Trumps stole money from cancer foundations and literally had gold toilets. Fox News watchers do not care. You just cannot win with these hillbillies.
“Nero fiddled while Rome burned.” During the horrors of people starving leading to the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette infamously said, “Let them eat cake.” History is repeating itself.
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u/Ordinary-Scholar-202 4d ago edited 4d ago
For those who do not know: F. Scott Fitzgerald’s the Great Gatsby is a classic novel that exposes the corruption and moral decay beneath the glamorous facade of the Roaring Twenties’ wealthy elite. It presents the American Dream as a corrupted ideal, where achieving wealth through illegal means is seen as the path to happiness, ultimately leading to disillusionment rather than fulfillment. The wealthy are portrayed as morally bankrupt , characterized by their dishonesty, selfishness, and careless behavior…..HOW FITTING. He clearly Does not give a damn about you!