Trump cheats at golf - the ONE and ONLY politics thread

That's all true, but some other things, important things, have gotten way more expensive in that time. Higher education, which has gone from luxury to necessity, is the leading example, but health care and housing are in there, too. Since I live in Boston, I admit the last one is kid of skewed for me.

 

I also think a ton of Republicans who were probably planning to vote for Gary Johnson for months decided to vote Trump as Election Day neared, as, first, he hadn't done anything stupid in a while and, second, the election seemed reasonably close.

 

Because he likes to be liked. Look at how Obama went from "alien monster" to "great guy" in Trump's mind based on one meeting where Obama was gracious to him.

 

But big-ticket and far more necessary items -- a house, healthcare and college education -- cost a zillion percent more, though.

ETA: I guess I am Michael Gee's ghostwriter.

 

It is precisely because I'm not ignorant of history that I'm so internet angry

 

And those are just the relatively small-ticket items.

I owned two American-made cars (built in 1976 and 1980) and didn't get 100,000 miles out of either.

Today, anything less than 300,000 is a disappointment. And the car is safer, too.

When there is true competition, value goes up. Which is why health care and higher education do not cooperate.

I think housing --- for the most part --- is very affordable (thanks in part to interest rates that people in the 70s and 80s would die for). People are just more mobile today and want to move to the "best" places. Well, they cost a zillion, because everybody wants to live there. Not because "housing prices" are a nationwide problem.

 

That won't last a month -- a week if they give him back his Twitter access.

 

Trump spent a few years, all the way through the Republican primaries, living inside a far-right/alt-right bubble. He was like a teen-ager who fell in with the wrong crowd for a while. So he felt loved as he won state after state. My hope, and I don't think it's crazy, is that the general election forced him to confront the fact that a lot of Americans were very unhappy with his prior campaign tactics. Because he wants so badly to be all things to all people, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see him bend over backward to be conciliatory toward minorities. Probably not women, though. Fucking pigs.

 

That's another thing. He's a different guy on Twitter than he is when he actually has to confront someone. He didn't go nearly both barrels with Hillary like he always pledged to once she was actually on the debate stage with him.

God damn, I can't believe he won. That fucking guy.

 

Oh, it plays out across a lot of facets of our lives. In my formative years my father worked about a job and a half -- a full-time job at Plant A and then a part-time job at Plant B -- but we were, I suppose, middle class. I don't recall any deprivation, but I recall plenty of angst over mis-placed coats and worn-out tires. It was a huge deal in our family when we got a clothes dryer (which actually facilitated my mother getting to go to college). Someone with air conditioning -- of any sort -- was the shit. A restaurant meal out was a HUGE treat. Every couple of years we might take a three- or four-day jaunt down to Myrtle Beach, but you could tell it made my parents nervous.

Nowadays in that same place, similarly situated people are certainly farther behind the higher echelons in strictly financial terms. But they live lives of far greater abundance than we ever dreamed of.

 

Another thing you have in common with Trump!