It is interesting that to them it was an allegory of their own trangenderism, but at this point the situation has so flipped that they actually walked themselves into a Matrix of their own culture and environment.
To a degree, they tried to explain this in the last Matrix movie they did, where the Matrix... was the Matrix.
I can't think of any reason they would have waited this long.
This actually makes me nervous. Is she stupid enough to try something she has no political capital for? Does she really believe she's going to win when even her own internal polls are shit?
Then again, maybe she thinks that even if Trump does win, the rioting from the Antifa Left will be so violent they'll attack her place.
As a Libertarian and Austrian School guy, tariffs hurt the economy and hurt the tariff enactor more than the person whom you enact tariffs against
... assuming a free market otherwise exists on both sides
If you listen to what Trump's actually complaining about, he's basically saying he will use tariffs as a diplomatic weapon to remove the tariffs that have already been intentionally placed on us. Which would actually be a good thing if he can pull it off. That's not in the framing of this question.
Secondly, he's saying that he'd like to basically move back to a Gilded Age economic and tax system (which means massive de-regulation and de-taxation, replaced with tariffs for income). This would be a huge boon to the economy, as we currently exist in a Keynesian Socialist monetary system which is why the government is such a large share of the GDP. Trump's obsession with President McKinley suggests he wants that to be closer to 1% of the economy. The tariffs won't hurt us if we have a massive free market economy to balance against any problem they create, when our opponents will have massive command economy that won't be able to take advantage of our market.
Third, he is using to push back colonization. A foreign company operating in your borders is not a problem to most of the Chicago School because it comes with implicit assumptions like, "they will hire locals", and "they will be an independent entrepreneur". But these assumptions are false when dealing with Communists and Socialists. What we have seen so far, especially from China's Belt & Road Initiative in Africa is that all Chinese companies are in service to the Chinese Communist Party (no different from any other Socialists ever). The purpose of the corporation is not to make money, but to extend the power of the CCP. They will operate at a loss so long as the CCP can weaponize the lives of 1 billion people to extract all available wealth from and subsidize the corporation and it's operations in foreign territories. They can always out-compete to the detriment of their own economy so that they gain political power. They will hire predominantly chinese foreigners, settle them in the country, then use that colonial population as a political power base in the local government. If they do it a few more times, then they will do it in the state/provincial government. Unfortunately, China aren't the only ones doing this. You'll notice that the government is settling mass migrants in blocs of ethnic group. It's not random distributions, it's 20,000 Haitians in Springfield, OH; not a random aggregate. Having giant blocs of well placed colonies in the US not only guarantees extracted income from welfare that gets turned into remittances, but also political blocs of power within the US. Despite being a failed state, Somalia has a colony in Minnesota and a congresswoman who explicitly stated that her president is the president of Somalia. The point of some of these tariffs will be to stop colonization in the US which are using both American and foreign companies to create political revolution. Again, these are not hypotheses, it's already happened.
I'll put it like this: Thomas Sowell is a Chicago School economist who bitterly complained about Trump proposing tariffs before he was elected in 2016, and explicitly changed his mind on Trump because of how he actually did use tariffs. He changed his mind because he saw what Trump was actually doing. He wasn't having tariffs for the sake of having them because 'foreign product bad'. He was countering monetary aggression and building a gilded age economy. It might not be the perfect Chicago School style that he wanted, or the Austrian School style that I want, but it's a hell of a lot better than the SOCIALIST economy we currently have.
I don't understand how he's pulling this off, but he seems to be pulling off both the jewish/israeli and muslim/arab vote.
Richard Barris mentioned today that the israeli-jews that support Trump do so because they either support Israel in it's war with Gaza, or because they are Orthodox Jews attacked by the Left under Covid and after October 7th. But, interestingly, the Arab-Muslims seem to approve of the Abraham Accords, and expect that with Trump, the war in Gaza will end, and so will the 'genocide' they see from their perspective.
Meanwhile, Harris managed to piss off everyone.
I'm really pretty surprised.
Only if they are actually starting to lose a war. Something they haven't done for 50 years. The quality of their enemies has not improved since then. I'd actually say that the US is the only country looking for a nuclear exchange at the moment, but needs a justification for it. I think the Pentagon would be happy with 150 million American dead at this point. BUT, I don't think they'll get their way, and Putin is not going to bite on the opportunity.
Other than that, I would be much more nervous about Pakistan launching nukes because they are probably the most unstable, violent, and vengeful. They've started multiple significant wars with India, even though they lost. In multiple cases, their wars have killed hundreds of thousands of people, and their population is extremely radical. So, given that the US military just gave 1.8 trillion dollars of military equipment partly to the Pakistani Taliban and the Pakistani ISI, I could easily see the Pakistani government having a nuclear exchange with India, and even having the political capital to deal with the literal fallout, over a ridiculous border dispute.
Nah, he's a used car salesman kind of sleezy. The problem is that he's got money, drugs, allies, and blackmail. He's also got zero fucking conscience. He'd actually probably be a good mafioso; but he's not a physical fighter. He will absolutely shoot your kid, just so he can stab you in the back, though.
I actually think they will. I think we've been seeing a lot of fake polls, but it seems like Trump is on his way to sweep basically most if not all of the battleground states.
Put it like this: if Trump wins North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada; to win the election all he needs is Maine 2. With those, he could lose Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania.
There's a lot of easy paths to win for him. I don't think Harris has the political capital to try and pull out some crazy congressional or electoral shenanigans.
Well, if you remember correctly, 400,000 Trump supporters showed up on January 6th 2020, and only 2,000 were at least tacitly involved in a small riot which ended with 1 killed protestor and at least a handful of injured protestors and police.
But back during the inauguration of Trump in 2017 several thousand Antifa rioters caused over 500 injuries among law enforcement, created over 200 arrests, and caused wide-spread rioting and burning.
Then there was the May 29th Insurrection in which over 750 police officers were injured in weeks of rioting, a historic church was burned down, a White House guard house was firebombed, and the president had to be evacuated.
They haven't been preparing any of the Left for losing the election, so it's not unreasonable for them to suspect mass and extreme levels of violence from their clientele.