Discussion Thread: 2025 US Government Shutdown, Day 33

19 comments

1. DAY 33.

   GIVE IT UP FOR DAY 33.

2. I’m just gonna say, if my computer shut itself down and then wouldn’t turn on for 33 days… I would have bought a new computer twenty six days ago.

   So where’s the nearest new government store?

3. No way the shutdown ends before passing the 35 day mark.

4. I am hypothesising this is going to last until the end of the year. All because the GOP won’t release the Epstein files.

5. The Democrats aren’t doing enough to counter the Republican messages regarding the shutdown. My Facebook feed is flooded with posts from Republican senators and representatives that I do not even follow pushing the narrative that the Democrats are the sole cause of the shutdown. Democrats need to be blasting their message on social media platforms to counter this. They also need to be on Fox News and Newsmax arguing their case. As long as the Republicans have their base convinced that the Democrats are closing the government for healthcare for illegals, they are going to keep the government shut down.

6. I mean we all think this is bad, but it will get significantly worse once 1 in 9 Americans are without food, Heating assistance ending, airports closing, starting a war in Venezuela or Nigeria won’t do anything but anger the general public.

   Seriously the Epstein files must be so catastrophic that it would end the Republican Party Otherwise keeping the government shut when you run all three branches is insane.

7. **Other democratic nations to America:**
   “Hello, we’ve been trying to reach you about your government’s extended shutdown.”

8. A simple message is all that needs to be said: why did Trump remove the language to keep SNAP benefits in case of a government shutdown?

9. That clip of Trump saying the president is responsible for a shutdown… why isn’t that being played on repeat?

10. Let’s have a great gatsby party!

11. Another day starving the children out of spite that some people still have basic decency.

    Republicans are guilty of crimes against humanity.

12. The Mike Johnson Lockout on the US House of Representatives enters week 7.

13. Any conservative want to justify this? What is your gain to starving people?

14. Going to fly next week, anything catchy I can put on a custom shirt?

    “Sorry Trump and republicans don’t care about you” seems long and not catchy.

    I need ideas.

15. It took only 10 ATC employees to call in sick last time to end the last shutdown. 10. Out of a total of over 11 thousand employees. Just 10.

    Good news is [it’s starting to happen.](https://abcnews.go.com/US/delays-safety-concerns-shortages-air-traffic-controllers/story?id=127055961) I predict this shutdown will be over sometime this coming week when Congress gets a phone call or two from Richie rich on why their private jet is grounded and they can’t get to their sex island

16. The demolitionist president. Make America weak again. Putin’s buddy.

17. >**Shannon Bream – Fox News Host:**
    With these numbers in mind, do you think [Democrats] will be willing to come back to the table and negotiate at some point? They think that they’re winning the optics of [the shutdown]?

    >**Mike Johnson – Speaker of the House:**
    Well, I don’t know how they can believe they’re winning, if it were indeed a game to them, and I think it is, because you have the unions now coming out against them, the major airlines in the country, you have every segment of the population and hard-working Americans who will be going without.

    >You have 42 million recipients of SNAP in jeopardy right now – you have women, infants and children – because the nutrition program that President Trump and the White House have heroically funded thus far is running out of money, and of course the troops – we’ve gotten them paid now for two cycles, but that money is not inexhaustible and it’s running out.

    >And so, increasingly the American people will be feeling the pain, and after we pass that threshold of the first of this month, it gets very real for more and more people.

    In a word – yuck.

18. Republicans could end this shutdown AND steal healthcare from poor people if they just destroyed the filibuster. *Cowards*

19. The 1920s-style party Trump had on Halloween is just another case of him being nostalgic for a time he was not in, under the assumption that he would be even more rich had he been around during that time. He loves the pomp and circumstance, but also the exclusivity, of late 19th and early 20th century pageants and parties. He wants to build a ballroom bigger than the White House for the same reason Jay Leno has a garage bigger than his house: it’s what he’s most passionate about.

    [Trump has made it very clear that his tariff policy comes directly from that era](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-has-touted-gilded-age-tariffs-an-era-which-saw-industrial-growth-together-with-poverty). The reasons the U.S. thrived during that era with tariffs was because of an explosion in immigration, that saw an increase in the workforce and led to a tripling of the population between 1870 and 1920, and westward expansion that saw massive amounts of new resources to acquire and land to develop. Tariffs didn’t immediately harm the country because so much of the country’s wealth came domestically. These new tariffs are paired with no such workforce increase, and the only explosion in domestic resources is from a market that is still speculative and potentially a bubble.

    So it makes it all the more baffling that he has support from the middle and lower class workers of America, because that era is best defined by two things: rampant economic growth and extreme income inequality. The country was more wealthy, but the vast majority of that wealth was held by the owners of a handful of companies, who saw the vast majority of the profits they made because employee protections of that era were functionally nonexistent. The fancy galas and pageantry associated with that era were held by the wealthiest people in the country, at the expense of a workforce that would live, work, and die in poverty. It’s referred to as “The Gilded Age” because it was a thin layer of displays of wealth covering the cost of amassing it, which would partially lead to the Great Depression. The richest people of that time are referred to as “robber barons” because of their repeated unethical practices as businesses, both as companies and towards their own employees. That’s why I say the following *theory* with no hyperbole:

    **Donald Trump *wishes* he was a robber baron.**

    He, like the business owners of that era, simply don’t care how they make their money as long as they have the most of it. He wishes he owned such extreme wealth that he could hold constant massive and extravagant parties to display said wealth to everyone around him. He is *obsessed* with projecting an image of being the wealthiest man to ever live. It’s why he demolished a century-old part of the White House to make way for a testament to his own money. It’s why he wants [everything he owns to be golden](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d7/President_Donald_J._Trump_and_Japanese_Prime_Minister_Abe_Shinzo_%2844834623812%29.jpg). It’s why [the one contractually mandated rule for his Comedy Central roast](https://www.the-independent.com/news/people/donald-trump-comedy-central-roast-jokes-wealth-money-a7171351.html) was that no one could joke that he doesn’t have as much money as he claims he does. He simply does not care about anyone but himself and his image as an extremely rich man, and will use and abuse anyone he needs to to get closer to that image.

    The only reason such an obvious wannabe elitist was able to become a populist was by appealing to the fear and hate driving the conservative social policy. The people who supposedly hate “the elite” were driven to Trump because he dug up all the conservative talking points that were seen as “too controversial” by the 90s, and delivered them in plain language on stage for all to hear. “Mexico is bringing in drugs and crime”, “cities are overrun with gangs and violence”, “the people you don’t like are mooching off the government”, “the democrats want to replace you”, and so on and so forth. It’s [Lee Atwater’s explanation of the Southern Strategy](https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/exclusive-lee-atwaters-infamous-1981-interview-southern-strategy/): Talk about things you know people associate *with* minorities, without calling them slurs, so that you can appeal to their biases while giving them deniability. Combine that with the hyperbole of making it sound apocalyptic, the highlighting of inconsequential but divisive pop culture topics, and Trump’s natural talent as a con man that can unflinchingly lie, and that’s how you get a billionaire becoming a “man of the people”. The people he’s robbing are handing him their money because the validation he gives them is seen as priceless.

    Trump is leading the charge of the wealthiest people in the country robbing everyone else blind, by distracting them with hateful and validating rhetoric. He sees the potential poverty, suffering, and starvation of a new Great Depression as not a big deal because *he’ll* be richer than ever. He has convinced enough people that their suffering is either their own fault, inevitable, not actually happening, or because of people they already hate. Millions of people have hitched their political identity to him because he normalized never admitting to being wrong or taking fault for anything, while being sold the false hope that they can one day be in his position. The country is slowly walking back into the same situation that it was in a century ago, because no one wants to believe that they can be tricked by a con man into forfeiting their money and rights away, and it’s fucking depressing.

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