Bankrolled what? Community gardens? Art centers? What are you specifically claiming and why is it relevant to this man’s obvious public decline?

Ignore the reality all you want. The change is real, pronounced and the people around him are sounding the alarm

“In May 2024, Fetterman chief of staff Adam Jentleson wrote Walter Reed Hospital director David Williamson a letter expressing concern over Fetterman’s mental health and alleged erratic behavior. Jentleson said that Fetterman engaged in “conspiratorial thinking”, “megalomania”, rambling monologues, reckless driving, and obvious lies, and was avoiding regular checkups with doctors and pushing away people responsible for helping him with his recovery plan.”

Dude was planting community gardens, dedicating his life to children’s programs and telling trump to go fuck himself at every turn in calm clear and cohesive speech and now he’s erratic, laughing about Palestinian children being systemically killed in genocide and is often performatively the only Democratic senate vote on trump core issues.

He wasn’t, that’s the narrative after the fact. That thing fucking changed him fundamentally.

If brain damage wasn’t bad enough… It turns you into a miserable republican fuck.

This is very interesting… because the general saying is that AI is convincing for non experts in the field it’s speaking about. So in your specific case, you are actually saying that you aren’t an expert on yourself, therefore the AI’s assessment is convincing to you. Not trying to upset, it’s genuinely fascinating how that theory is true here as well.

He doesn’t think much of anything himself. He’s a scared little boy, because that’s where he cut his teeth. He has no vision for anything, just reaction and fear.

Luxury is a choice. I’ve never owned a “new” car. I could afford new cars eventually, but the reality is the world meant that I was never going to put myself close enough to a potential edge, that the purchase of a nicer car could lead to future discomfort for me or my family.

You really have no idea how out of touch you are. Your next point is, “Getting a gold foil wrap on a cybertruck is an investment! You don’t get the full value of that investment on resale… Do you expect me to just take that loss?”

You are tone deaf. You doing see it at all, and that’s really the point.

Ate you seriously trying to tell a sad story about imagined poor unfortunate souls that are barely scrapping by on a “tight budget” and drive.

“Maybe some of you have Beluga caviar with every meal, but us working folk can only afford sevruga 3-5 times a week, at best!”

Spontaneous combustion

Are you a white house staffer carrying a heavy stack of top secret documents? Do you desperately need both hands to vape or to text roger stone a progress report? Try DOCDASH!

Just request a docdasher in app and a helpful person like Yvegeny, Dmitri or Boris will show up to the white house on a motorcycle, take your documents from you, not copy and transmit them, and just keep them very safe, like tippy top safe.

“You see,” my colleague went on, "one doesn’t see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.

"Uncertainty is a very important factor, and, instead of decreasing as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the general community, ‘everyone’ is happy. One hears no protest, and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there would be slogans against the government painted on walls and fences; in Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps, there is not even this. In the university community, in your own community, you speak privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as you do; but what do they say? They say, ‘It’s not so bad’ or ‘You’re seeing things’ or ‘You’re an alarmist.’

"And you are an alarmist. You are saying that this must lead to this, and you can’t prove it. These are the beginnings, yes; but how do you know for sure when you don’t know the end, and how do you know, or even surmise, the end? On the one hand, your enemies, the law, the regime, the Party, intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues pooh-pooh you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your close friends, who are, naturally, people who have always thought as you have.

"But your friends are fewer now. Some have drifted off somewhere or submerged themselves in their work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or gatherings. Informal groups become smaller; attendance drops off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves wither. Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence still further and serves as a further deterrent to—to what? It is clearer all the time that, if you are going to do anything, you must make an occasion to do it, and then you are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.

"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.

"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.

​

Copyright notice: Excerpt from pages 166-73 of They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 by Milton Mayer

Not assuming. I just didn’t see you express that disgust, so even the omission says something.

IMO you need a lot more passion in your response, here and IRL to colleagues. These are obviously broken people around you. You smiling and nodding and coming here to quietly discuss away from them helps perpetuate their nonsense. Alternatively, if you had a gut reaction of “Dude, what the fuck are you talking about? How are you supporting your partner if you aren’t taking that full leave? A newborn is 24/7 physical/emotional/mental gauntlet. Are you just leaving them to deal with all that, that’s horrible, man… Do better.” might have knocked some sense into them.

We break these toxic cycles by speaking to our peers with confidence and putting idiots on the spot by holding a mirror up to their childish bullshit. Sounds like you have the right position generally, I’m encouraging you to express it openly and forcefully to be a part of the change you seem to be in support of.

Not sure what this post is about, OP… What are you actually asking?

Paternity leave is obviously vital if you’re a decent parent and partner. If you have it available you take it and you focus on your family. Your mentioned group of coworkers sound like fucking degenerate scumbags stuck on a pointless treadmill. I feel sorry for their partners and their children.

You should take some time to consider why you didn’t have a visceral reaction of outright disgust and had to come here and ask for others to chime in. Tune in, bud. It’s all about your kids now. Don’t look for worthless approval from worthless people.

Your posts give a real “Publicly arguing technicalities for the sake of it in furtherance of the downfall of modern society on behalf of oligarchs with an end game to kill off poor people and refine their bodies into biodiesel” vibe.

You don’t seem to understand that your lack of that stated context of good or bad alongside your defense is very telling. Quit doing work for the bad guys, or if you continue, have the balls to openly count yourself among their ranks.

It’s basic BAD FAITH economics. Your point about “less money going in” is a self fulfilling prophecy by the GOP - They dismantle finding sources for the social safety net programs actively and then loudly complain that those programs are doomed.

In the “America great again” years that the lead poisoned boomers are longing for, we had income tax for the highest earners around 90%. So Reagan, bushes and trump give out huge tax cuts to the wealthy, gut the IRS so that money isn’t coming in and then ignorant and/or deceptive little foot soldiers like yourself rush in to carry water for the lie and try to create fact through repetition. You are wrong, period, end of story. The only Epsom is of you ate being used and are unaware or if you are willingly perpetuating this bullshit in bad faith.

Your bad position is SO played out in fact, that here is a clip that is a decade old explaining how you are wrong and trying to prop up an old, tired lie. https://youtu.be/k3dK-z9F4C0?feature=shared

Shame on you, bud. You seem smart enough to know better.

The point is that it won’t. Your internet could turn off next month if you don’t pay your fucking bill… But you pay your FUCKING bill. There’s no validity in your position. It’s an OLD right wing propaganda talking point - you’re either ignorant of that or complicit in it. Either way, do better.

Search and understand what kompromat is - trump is credibly accused of raping children. Not unreasonable to believe that they have the clearest evidence of something like that, the one thing that might actually bring him down.

Social security is never going to “run out” it’s continuously funded, that’s how it works. America lacks curiosity and an attention span beyond a couple seconds. Conservatives loudly accuse (while projecting), demand detailed explanation and then immediately become disinterested in the explanation they demanded - mostly because they can’t comprehend the basic concepts and their eyes glaze over. For the most part they are unserious, homicidal and suicidal and just looking for an excuse to have an outburst.

Don’t let them leech your energy trying to explain or debate. They don’t know or care what you are talking about.

trump?? Who the fuck is… OH! You mean Krasnov.

Yeah, Krasnov is a fucking bitch