Standing alongside his son’s Ford pickup truck at a central Iowa gas station off Interstate 80, Francisco Castillo was not happy.

He had voted for President Donald Trump in the last election. He believed Trump had strengthened the economy in his first term, and he wanted more of that.

“I thought that he was going to bring some of those things back,” said Castillo, a 43-year-old factory worker. And now? “He said he was going to bring gas down, but the war in Iran is now making everything worse.”

It seems a country divided on so many fronts is finding common ground in pain at the pump, where the cost of the Iran war is hitting Americans squarely in the wallet and aggravating people across the political spectrum.

  • TrollTrollrolllol@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    Every single Republican that has been in office since I was born has started a war in the middle east. Every. Single. One. Anyone who didn’t see this coming is just a fucking moron.

    • Tujio@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Every single republican president in my lifetime has left office to a recession. Yet the average person is so brainwashed by corporate media that almost everybody thinks that conservatives are good for the economy.

      • TrollTrollrolllol@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        The bottom line is they hate the United States and the Constitution. If they had their way back in the 1700’s we’d still be paying taxes to the king of England. I like to remind them that during the revolution the Founding Fathers would have been called radical left lunatics by the conservatives of the day.

        • TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today
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          4 hours ago

          I disagree, it’s just a divergence in belief in what America truly is. The sad fact is that their portrayal of America may be closer to the truth.

          America was primarily built by rum running slave owners who hated paying taxes. It was founded by rich men to protect the interest of rich men, and not a lot has changed over time.

          I like to remind them that during the revolution the Founding Fathers would have been called radical left lunatics by the conservatives of the day.

          Maybe if you only read the popular history about people like Benjamin Franklin or Hamilton. In reality most of the founding fathers would be seen as rabid libertarians by today’s means. Some of their ideas about religion would seem liberal, but you would have to ignore issues like slavery, the brutality towards native populations, women’s suffrage, voting rights for the poor, and taxation to label them as leftist in general.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Yet the average person is so brainwashed by corporate media that almost everybody thinks that conservatives are good for the economy.

        That’s the one that blows my mind. I’ll be talking to reactionary centrists (that are probably voting Republican at least sometimes) and they will often concede a lot, but then say something like, “yeah, but at least Republicans know how to run an economy”?

        It’s like…in what fucking universe? They like to point to Covid as somehow bringing it all down for poor PEDOnald, but cannot really show how he was remarkably better than the economy under Obama prior to Covid? Also, they cannot really point to what policy of Biden’s was so bad for the economy?

      • Skyrmir@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        Nixon didn’t actually get into anything in the middle East. He armed up Israel and put our troops on alert, but didn’t get into any shooting. Granted, that’s because he was busy with atrocities in the far East. So it’s more just a case that he was already busy.

      • TrollTrollrolllol@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        Sure, if you want to be pedantic. Dems never sold a war to the country based on lies, Bush senior might get a pass since Hussein actually invaded Kuwait but again the only reason we would protect Kuwait is because of oil.