At what point do we become responsible for talking against leaders like Trump?

Not yet...
If you live in an area prone to hurricanes or wildfires, what will you do without FEMA?
One rural hospital about 90 miles away from us has already closed. What will you do when yours closes?
What will you do when the next pandemic comes (10% chance in the next five years) and our medical research and hospitals are 5 years behind the times with medical technology?
What will you do when tariffs raise your prices--or if things become unavailable?
Yeah, all those bad things, but what bothers me most is the erosion of our freedoms and rights--particularly for minorities, LGBTQ, trans, women of childbearing age? Oh, and all the people with darker complexions--the state troopers and local police have been "deputized" to serve as ICE agents, getting ICE training, so if you are walking while brown-skinned, driving while brown-skinned, watching your child's ball game while brown-skinned, your local police can question you, apprehend you, even deport you?
Six months and our dying democracy resembles a totalitarian police state more every day.

1Tonne said:

I'd love to hear your thoughts on where this responsibility begins and how we can guard our hearts and words in this area.

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Listen to Jesus.
Never trust politics.

1Tonne said:

This misses the point a little. If the tariffs are raised, then more things are going to have to be produced in America. Then, if many things are produced in a country, there becomes a shortage of employees, and employers will be willing to pay higher wages just to get an employee. So, if things do go up a little, then so be it. Short term, there may be some pain for people. Eventually, wages will catch up and surpass inflation, creating greater wealth for the lower and middle classes.

You have a lot of extremism in your speech. What channels of news do you watch?

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I'm not Pollyanna but I am far from an extremist. My information about immigrants, for example, comes from an immigrant advocacy group in my town who are looking for notaries to certify temporary power of attorney forms because parents are so fearful they will be kidnapped while their children are in school and their children will be put in foster care.

Trans Air Force members with 15-18 years of experience will be deprived of pensions they earned--even though the Army paid for their transitions, therefore being both supportive and complicit in their transitions.

The Dobbs decision has resulted in the craziest extremism--inviting Texans to spy on their neighbors for $10,000 bounties, limiting the activities of women outside their jurisdiction, making doctors so fearful of treating ectopic pregnancies, etc. that women have died in hospital parking lots.

Colleges are being fined outrageous amounts of money because the dictator in the White House (certainly not a stellar student at Fordham or Penn State according to most reports) wants to interfere in the operation of the colleges. NPR and PBS defunded.

I know Fox News is not a Pollyanna station (not that I would spend a moment watching it), but it certainly is not truthful. More like the Judge Jeannine station...

There are many industries that won't come back--apparel, for one. And China is forming strong trading alliances with India, Brazil, S. Africa, and other countries. Their trade preferences will be countries who treat them fairly--and we'll get the leftovers, if any.

Estimates are that it will take a country operating in China ten years to make a profit on a newly built factory in the U.S.--and they think, God willing, that the American people will come to their senses by 2028, hopefully 2026, and that their nightmares will end. In the meantime, they are more likely to build new factories in Vietnam than China.

If you believe that the Republican Party cares one bit about the lower and middle classes, there's a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to show you, just a few miles from where I was born.

What an extremist response. Hispanic American citizens trying to help their friends and families are compassionate and courageous, something the callous and corrupt in Homeland Security lack completely.
And new factories here will have more robots than workers.
But I won't argue with you. I prefer to focus on the good in this world

Fantine said:

Not yet...
If you live in an area prone to hurricanes or wildfires, what will you do without FEMA?

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Pretty much the same thing my brethren in east TN and western NC are doing, "Root hog or die". Prolly too many MAGA folks there.

Fantine said:

One rural hospital about 90 miles away from us has already closed.

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Like "Well, Trump got elected, turn off the lights."?

Fantine said:

What will you do when yours closes?

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Fortunately Middle Tennesee is chocablock with hospitals.

Fantine said:

What will you do when the next pandemic comes (10% chance in the next five years) and our medical research and hospitals are 5 years behind the times with medical technology?

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Probably the same thing I did with Covid 19, put on the mask and about my business. No specific treatment, or prophylaxis, until Trump's "Warp Speed" project ground out a workable vaccine. (Which, comically enough, big name Dems assured us it would never work, and that they've never take a vaccine that was produced by a Trump initiative, The original Vaccine Resistors, aka Nincompoops.

Fantine said:

What will you do when tariffs raise your prices--or if things become unavailable?

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Same thing I did when Biden's inflation raised prices (and they still haven't returned to pre-Biden levels). When toilet paper became unavailable during the pandemic, I bought a couple of bidet toilet seats and thought no more about it.

Fantine said:

Yeah, all those bad things, but what bothers me most is the erosion of our freedoms and rights--particularly for minorities, LGBTQ, trans, women of childbearing age? I

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s this the "Black Folks Can"t Vote Because They Don't Have IDs" baloney again? Kinda like we Asians can't get jobs because we can't speak English. <Laugh>

What rights do LGBTCQDXDEKC4NWD not have that I do as a boring old heterosexual? I'm at a loss on that one.

rans? Are we talking about "the right to join the military"? There is no such "right", there's a long list of things that that will keep you out of uniform. The "right" for biological men to compete in sports against biological Women? Thta's simply a matter of eliminating bio-women from "women's" sport.

The right to mutilate children because they (or, more often, their "parents" ) think they ought to have been born with different physiology than they actually did? I'd make that a hanging offense, but that's just me. I take the sanctity of children to be children, and not to be sacrificed by their "parents", or anyone else to the diabolical god of the zeitgeist.

Women of childbearing age? Abortion? That was never properly a "right", unless you'd like to amend the Constitution to make it one; there's a codified process for doing that, be my guest.

Blue spoke and mirrors, matey

Fantine said:

Oh, and all the people with darker complexions--the state troopers and local police have been "deputized" to serve as ICE agents, getting ICE training,

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IE, 'brown people" are ICE agents too. Imagine that! Did you expect them to be excluded due to their color?

Fantine said:

so if you are walking while brown-skinned, driving while brown-skinned, watching your child's ball game while brown-skinned, your local police can question you, apprehend you, even deport you?

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Questioned? Sure. Anybody can be questioned. As for doing stuff "brown skinned', that includes me, at least in the summertime. Never had it happen; maybe it's my slanty eyes that exclude me from persecution, i need to start wearing sunglasses and see if I get arrested. I'm unlikely to be arrested for being brown in Williamson County TN due to the number of dark South Asians, kinda brown East Asians like me (they'd have to catch me in the summer, though), sure enough Latinos who've been here since dirt, are pillars of the church, who'd laught you scorn if you threatened them with deportation (you can't deport a citizen), and would then sue you, and the county, and the whoever else happened to be standing too close, and probably win. Are there illegals who are at risk of being nabbed? Yep, some of them friends of mine. Th'ey're keeping a low profile, and thus they're not to worried about being bothered, because it isn't just the average Jose who's likely to be picked up, it's the bad guys, and those who hang with them. Eve n in the Racist South, the local coppers aren't interested in arrested some poor geezer who's just trying to keep a roof over his head. They want the Bad Guys, and unfortunately there 's no dearth of them. And the good news, they're not the one's filling the pews in La Iglesia de Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe every Sunday. The Bad Guys are out being Bad Guys. And if you're a Bad Guy, and here illegally, then Adios, muchacho, y no vuelvas!

Fantine said:

Six months and our dying democracy resembles a totalitarian police state more every day.

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Ridiculous politcal posturing of the "Trump is literally Hitler" species. You'll ignore an actual, orchestrated grossly illegal conspiracy at the highest levels of government, to oust the legally and legitimately elected president from 2016 to 2020
but screech about Hit let if Trump wants to raise tariffs. That's simple insanity.

Are you an immigrant yourself? If you left a totalitarian dictatorship you may not realize how far our country has fallen or how horribly abnormal this current administration is.

Fantine said:

I'm not Pollyanna but I am far from an extremist. My information about immigrants, for example, comes from an immigrant advocacy group in my town who are looking for notaries to certify temporary power of attorney forms because parents are so fearful they will be kidnapped while their children are in school and their children will be put in foster care.

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"Kidnapped" is telling, innit? "Arrested" is the usual term, I believe. And yeah, if you're illegal, the potential for being arrested is real. And if you're to deported for having entered the US illegally, I don't know about you, but I'd take my young'uns with me. (We Asians are like that about our children.) THen they wouldn't be in need of foster care.

Fantine said:

Trans Air Force members with 15-18 years of experience will be deprived of pensions they earned-

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I assume they'll be treated as anyone who is "invalided out" of the service before retirement is treated.

Fantine said:

-even though the Army paid for their transitions,

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Which is a problem right there. If Joe Doak tries to sign up for military service, and says "Oh, BTW, I'm gonna need major surgery once I get in", he wouldn't get in. There Is No Right To Be Accepted Into The Military - For Anyone.

Fantine said:

therefore being both supportive and complicit in their transitions.

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Which was stupid.

Fantine said:

The Dobbs decision has resulted in the craziest extremism--inviting Texans to spy on their neighbors for $10,000 bounties,

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Urban legend.

Fantine said:

limiting the activities of women outside their jurisdiction,

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How?

Fantine said:

making doctors so fearful of treating ectopic pregnancies, etc. that women have died in hospital parking lots.

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Simple BS

Fantine said:

Colleges are being fined outrageous amounts of money because the dictator in the White House (certainly not a stellar student at Fordham or Penn State according to most reports) wants to interfere in the operation of the colleges.

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The head of the Executive Branch gets to "interfere" with people who accept huge amount of money from the US gov't, which always comes with strings attached. For instance, if you want to keep your Title IX money, you have to follow the Title IX rules. If not, you stand to lose it. If you don't want to be "interfered" with, then you get your money elsewhere.

Fantine said:

NPR and PBS defunded.

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The gummint taketh, and the gummint giveth away. NPR and PBS served no purpose that isn't served better by services that aren't financed by reaching into the taxpayer's pocket. They may have made sense 50 years ago, they make none now, Especially since NPR had become a partisan political organ, whose obvious bias blatantly dismissive of the vast numbers of Americans who considered it rubbish. RIP, tax-sucking Left

Fantine said:

There are many industries that won't come back--apparel, for one. And China is forming strong trading alliances with India, Brazil, S. Africa, and other countries. Their trade preferences will be countries who treat them fairly--and we'll get the leftovers, if any.

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"Fairly", meaning they charge tariffs on American goods, but we don't charge any on theirs.

Fantine said:

Estimates are that it will take a country operating in China ten years to make a profit on a newly built factory in the U.S.

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Then they probably won't build it, and someone else will. Maybe Americans of Asian descent. Look into the economic rise of Korean-Americans in the late 20th and early 21st century. They're not heavy into manufacturing here... yet. But give 'em room to compete against Chinese slave labor (yeah, I know, Lefties don't care about slave labor unless it's far away and you don't have to see it) and stand-back. And take it from one who knows, you never bet against Koreans when when they're presented with an opportunity to do the impossible.

Fantine said:

--and they think, God willing, that the American people will come to their senses by 2028

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And elect a "tax-'em-into-prosperity" dimbulb like Kamala Harris, or a corrupt old dementia sufferer like her former boss. Elect someone else who knows that War is Good For Business, and that what's good for General Dynamics and Raytheon is Good for the Oligarchs. In the meantime, they are more likely to build new factories in Vietnam than China.

Fantine said:

If you believe that the Republican Party cares one bit about the lower and middle classes, there's a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to show you, just a few miles from where I was born.

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Well hey, vote for the Commie, by all means! After all, just look what State Socialism has done to bring prosperity for the people on whom it's been inflicted.

Fantine said:

Are you an immigrant yourself?

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Nope. The son of an immigrant and married to one.

Fantine said:

If you left a totalitarian dictatorship you may not realize how far our country has fallen or how horribly abnormal this current administration is.

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You need to turn off The View, matey. FWIW, I grew up poor working class, in a 700 sq ft house. New knew what a new car was, sweated in the Southern summers because AC was for rich folks. Mom made a goodly portion of our clothes. Travel? Oh hahaha! If you could get there in our whatever old car (only the rich had more then one car) we had then we didn't go. Fly? People who lived in $4500 houses didn't fly. Education? Not bad. School was no-nonsense, and a Korean mom meant if you came in with a B on your card you better have a good excuse. No AC in the school, either. Shut up and sweat. Politics? Whoever my dad thought was best. Lessee... Ike, Kennedy, Johnson, Goldwater, Nixon, dad voted for the man, not the party. Pro integration (JIm Crow in those Good Old Days, right?) , anti-war.

On and on. So don't try to school me on how much better it was back then, EVERYBODY now is orders of magnitude better off now than they were then. Black Folks were still second class citizens then. Poverty was rampant. The poor were very poor (we didn't qualify on that score) and lived in vile slums or tarpaper shacks, or both. Education? Better k-12, no sociological experimentation. Root hog or die college, shape up or ship out, back to the factory. Sp spare me the "things have never been so bad" bravo sierra. Gays were routinely beaten and mistreated. Poor women worked in sweatshop "shirt factories" for a little of nothing.

You may or may not get the drift. Trump is Hitler? What monumental ignorance! See any death camps? Where's the Trump Jugend? Where are the pograms? Where's the elimination (read governmental mandated murder) of the gays and trans people. No worry about trans joining the Werhmacht, they were shipped off to the eextermination camps. Ditto Roma (gypsies), Jews, trade unionists, Any religious or political ground that the Nazis found inconvenient or annoying, and of course, bloody unrestricted war. And yet y'all beat the idiotic tub about "Trump is Hitler". Have none of you ever cracked a book? Are you all completely, abysmally ignorant of the past 100 years of history? There is no excuse for that kind of stupidity.

So Trump isn't your cup of tea; sonuvagun, he isn't mine either. But he's a whole lot less dangerous than the conspirators who spent4 years trying to purge him from office because he didn't fit their program for their own rise to power. Do I like everything he does? Nope, but what have your lot to offer instead? Mutilating children?

Let's face it, the American left has gone completely insane. That's that why their polling is in the tank, where it belongs. They're tried to remake the US in their own insane image, and have been roundly, and properly, told to sod off.