President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

I expect California would have a military, were it an independent nation. And it certainly would have a mutual-protection treaty with the USA.

 

Because there are enough nominal Democrats who are really Trumpists in the legislature, I imagine. Three or four of them will probably formally flip parties by Wednesday, and that will be enough to start the ball rolling.

 

trump doesn’t believe in mutual defense pacts. He breaks all agreements. He’s not happy to be in NATO. I’m sure Putin will convince him, in about 3 seconds, to abandon California.

 

Because he’s a Democrat?

 

And because Beer Bong Brett is the epitome of white privilege and Fairfax is, well, not.

 

California, as an independent nation, would have the sixth largest economy in the world. By population, it would rank in the mid-30s. It would have a military.

 

I'm having trouble believing that you'd be so wrong about something. This makes zero sense. You're saying a school that charges a high tuition—and so, I'm assuming, would be private and profit-driven—wouldn't try to "streamline" the educational process?

By that logic, Oxford University (tuition: US $13,000 a year) must be a far worse school than Harvard (tuition: US$45,000). Yet Oxford is considered, rightly, one of the world's great universities! With an incredibly broad range of course selection, taught by leading faculty. And to the contrary, everything I've ever heard about Harvard's system is that so long as you can pay, you graduate. My dad sat on a PhD committee there and ended up quitting because they would pass shit that would fail in a heartbeat up here, in dreaded public schools.

If higher education isn't prohibitively expensive, you:

1) Guarantee merit-based access. (How could anyone begin to argue that's a bad thing?)

2) Once you're in school, you have to work to keep your spot. Otherwise someone else will take it, because you aren't protected by the great insulator that is daddy's money.

I don't think education should be totally free, either. You should have to pay a little bit so you know that it has a value. But when smart people can't go to good schools, and when going to school means you pass just because you can pay the bill, those are two significant societal problems. It keeps poor people poor and devalues a university education.

By the way, other countries shit on America because it constantly claims to be the greatest country on Earth when it's fucking awful in so many ways. To wit: Donald Trump is your president. Do you know how it sounds to the rest of the world when you guys say "We're No. 1!" and you've got him in the White House? Never mind your civil division and your crumbling infrastructure and your craven, sinister healthcare system and your guns and your opioid epidemic and your death penalties and OH YEAH DONALD TRUMP IS YOUR PRESIDENT. Jiminy Christmas, man.

 

California as a nation would need a wall along its eastern border.

 

Seriously. The cost of a home isn't accidental. Generally speaking, expensive places are expensive for a reason. I was looking at homes in Santa Monica recently, and you're looking at $1.5 million just to get something decent. It's nuts. But then you look outside at the ocean and blue skies and you go, Oh, well, yeah, I get it.

 

That's right.