Schmoozing the super-rich to fund a $300m ballroom while cutting food aid for those on low incomes threw the president’s architectural folly into sharp relief
It was a feast fit for a king – and any billionaire willing to be his subject. From gold-rimmed plates on gold-patterned tablecloths decorated with gold candlestick holders, they gorged on heirloom tomato panzanella salad, beef wellington and a dessert of roasted Anjou pears, cinnamon crumble and butterscotch ice-cream.
On 15 October, Donald Trump welcomed nearly 130 deep-pocketed donors, allies and representatives of major companies for a dinner at the White House to reward them for their pledged contributions to a vast new ballroom now expected to cost $300m. That the federal government had shut down two weeks earlier scarcely seemed to matter.
But two weeks later, the shutdown is starting to bite – and throw Trump’s architectural folly into sharp relief. On Saturday, with Congress still locked in a legislative stalemate, a potential benefit freeze could leave tens of millions of low-income Americans without food aid. Democrats accuse Trump’s Republican party of “weaponising hunger” to pursue an extreme rightwing agenda.
Its called revolt. By the point Americans have reached, many countries would be in full revolt. By the time Americans realize that revolt is their only option the army will be setup in their cities and bought and paid for by the oligarchy. The good soldiers will be removed from the army and they will have no protectors to stand with them.
Ah yes the classic 'why don’t you just go die in a war" argument.
And as always the one suggesting it either doesn’t live in the country or they have some reason they can’t start it themselves. It’s always easier to tell others to go die
Were telling you that because if you don’t do it, we will be the ones dying in ww3 bailing your asses out
No one is coming to bail us out of fascism. The only country with enough military power to oppose us on our own soil is China, and that is diametrically opposed to their historical stance on foreign policy.
You’ll do well to shore up your own Democracies against the tide of foreign-backed propaganda and billionaire oligarchs.
I share a border with you, so no
Yes of course, and the 3rd Reich will reign for 1000 years. The USA is unbeatable!
I think you are misreading my tone. I’m not proud or excited about the changes in the US; I’m just stating a fact about the size and capacity of our existing military.
I don’t know if you’re Canadian or Mexican, but the two countries combined only have a little over a quarter of the number of military personnel of the US. Population-wise, the two countries have about half the population of the US, which, while it’s more competitive than current enlisted numbers, still limits your total military size and more importantly, your industrial production of military equipment (presuming the war drags on long enough for all sides to have time to ramp up).
China has more bodies to throw at us and a vastly deeper reserve of production capacity. They also are one of the few countries to already have their own military industry (equipment wholly divorced from the US supply chain and manufacturers). Demographically, all of Europe acting together might have a chance, but they consistently fail to act as a unit and they are aging faster than the US.
Anyway, all of this is justification for a quip which was not my main point. My main point is that the US will have to get itself out of this. Though, I did issue a plea somewhere else for certain countries to perform extrajudicial renditions of their malevolent billionaires that got exported here. That would help us.
Even then I’m pretty sure China would probably stall out at the West Coast at best. Fact of the matter is most of their shit is purely on paper, they haven’t fought in a war since like Vietnam so they have effectively no institutions when it comes to hands on shit.
If ww3 happens to the tune of the US collapsing, there’s good odds it ends in a nuclear wasteland. There are too many religious nut jobs in power that probably believe nuking new York City means Jesus will come back or something.
Ok, and?
Many countries are smaller than most of our states. Many countries’ governments are not as well physically insulted from their populace. There are multiple bunkers with secret locations for them to hide in. We also have the small problem of the fascists actually having a fairly large following still. They are about to get hungry at the time of year they are accustomed to enjoying a little excess while the man they worship is wallowing in opulence. Maybe it will anger them enough to work with the rest of us, but I don’t know, because their king appeals to their hatefulness, pettiness and greediness.
We have no leaders. Plenty of us are ready to fight. Armed, practiced and willing, but brother I am not a tactician and I certainly don’t have the charisma to rally up the resistance. We are also nearly all less than a paycheck away from joining the people about to lose their welfare in destitution. Mighty hard to start the revolution when work starts at 6:30 and you gotta provide for your family. So for now we wait.
Ah well. That solves it then
The only bottom-up revolts ever in history have been when the masses were literally starving. Anything else was elite driven.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circulation_of_elites?wprov=sfti1
Revolt looks different these days… we’ve had one example… other examples could look like that or different. What they will all have in common is that the grossly unequal will begin to fear that their lifestyle is not so sustainable or tolerable as everyone else suffers.