The line Joe Biden used to put into nearly every big speech — “I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future” — is a long way from what he says in private now.The line Joe Biden used to put into nearly every big speech — “I’ve never been more optimistic about America’s future” — is a long way from what he says in private now.

These days, multiple people who’ve spoken to him over the last year say, Biden often punctuates conversations with: “You think we can actually come back from this?”

The 83-year-old Biden continues to feel out a post-presidency that may prove to be one of the shortest in history and is already one of the most complicated.

There are days when Biden is heartbroken, indignant or in disbelief about what is happening as President Donald Trump — the man he defeated in 2020 — returned and moved not just to tear down his accomplishments, but to dig in with petty insults like the autopen photograph he put in Biden’s spot in the “Presidential Walk of Fame” installed at the White House.

      • Digit@lemmy.wtf
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        9 days ago

        Accountability evasion, perhaps the core criteria to detect narcissists by.

        We could have aptitude & personality testing to catch and filter out narcissists from roles where they’d do the most damage.

        Loads of other ideas to explore.

        Prevention’s better than cure, or punishment.

    • Tiger666@lemmy.ca
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      10 days ago

      The world is quite pissed. Your “allies” aren’t though. How does it feel to be in league with the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea or Russia?

        • Tiger666@lemmy.ca
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          9 days ago

          That will never happen and you know it. Your nation is uneducated and completely captured by billionaire propaganda. The future is bleak for the average US citizen but since the malls are still open then nobody gives a shit.

          (If it were to happen, it would be a start.)

          • Digit@lemmy.wtf
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            9 days ago

            What keeps striking my mind loud and clear, with regards to the billionaire issue, is that even the billionaires themselves would be far better off, once we proliferate the emancipatory technologies, and eliminate the manufactured scarcity used to maintain power-leverage that reduces our potential. Then we move to what potential we have, leaving how much power over others we have. No more need to keep others down.

            Do you have spaceships yet? And the reassurance no one else is trying to take your spaceships, because they have their own spaceships?

            Always fun to consider the tech arc from Michael Faraday through to Nikola Tesla, passing by the likes of the Sonora Aero Club and Charles Dellschau’s 1850s drawings of those fledgling starts of zero-inertia propulsion technology… and seeing man-made “foo fighters” in WW2, revealing by the 1930s, we could have had spaceships for everybody. … At conference (I forget which, sometime 2000-2005ish) patent office whistle blower Tom Valone revealed to the effect of “by the year 2000 there had already been over 3000 free energy device patents secreted”. It’s not just that we have so much headroom without the crooks & billionaires… it’s that even they do too. They’ve hobbled themselves from the higher potentials, by keeping everybody else down for their pathetic petty relative gains, just to have more than others, ignorant to how much vastly more we each and all could have. … Plenty space in space, expanding faster than we could fill it. No cull necessary.

            Imagine what happens when billionaires snap out of their sunk-costs fallacy perpetuating that pathetic paradigm, and instead see the greater riches they have, by availing abundance to each and all…

          • magic_smoke@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            9 days ago

            No shit sometimes you just need to let it out in catharsis. At this point going to the camps has been looking more like when not if for a while now.

            I’m kinda surprised I can still legally present feminine.

            • Digit@lemmy.wtf
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              9 days ago

              For sure, we are in a lot of trouble.

              But not so much that defeatist self-fulfilling prophecies are warranted or wise. ;)

              … “What if all art is a tool of manifestation?”

      • Digit@lemmy.wtf
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        9 days ago

        I’ve read this reply many times now, and it’s not getting any clearer to me as to what it’s intended to mean.

    • kreskin@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      I think thats Wishful Thinking. Who is going to fix it? the courts? the DNC? the judiciary? Congress? Some people we need to eventually elect through a rigged system and get a majority with that overthrows the “left-leaning” party? You’d have to fix every single part of government simultaneously, with a left party with no interest in doing so, thats top-to-bottom bribed by the government of Israel who wanted the right to win. And a rightwing party thats openly violent and fascist. I’d argue that history shows us that whats always next is a rise of a violent autocrat followed by a lot of carnage before they are violently put down, or the failed state conquered or puppeted by a foreign power. Or we can split power into a triumverate to slightly delay the inevitable.

      This situation has played out time and time again. When Jefferson said the tree of liberty has to be watered by the blood of tyrants this is what he meant. Humans repeatedly forget our history and do exactly this same thing.

      • Digit@lemmy.wtf
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        9 days ago

        I think thats Wishful Thinking. Who is going to fix it? the courts? the DNC? the judiciary? Congress?

        The corruption’s so deep and normalised, of course we wont eliminate the corruption by asking the corrupt to mend this situation for us, when they’re entirely entrenched in the corrupt psychopathic circle-jerk.

        Some people we need to eventually elect through a rigged system and get a majority with that overthrows the “left-leaning” party?

        Left-leaning party? In USA? That’s a fun idea. That’d be nice to see… Like either of the green parties? I guess we’ll have to extract our minds from the corrupt corporate media of the duopoly first, if seeking to mend this through the electoral system. And mend the rigged voting system, and the gerrymandering, and the electoral college, and lobbying, and voter suppression, and on and on with all the other flaws and corruptions choking out the electoral system.

        Or even more radical reforms. Ranked choice voting, proportionate representation, increased poly-cammerality with direct and deliberative houses, and many more advances of democratic systems all the way to “config-democracy”, and possibly beyond even that.

        So much headroom, once the corrupt choke-holds are eliminated, and tipping points to mends are freed to accelerate. Things could get radically good, rapidly, once loose from the rigging. Every little bit helps us get there.

        You’d have to fix every single part of government simultaneously,

        That’d be nice to have that magic wand. I suspect it may be more poly-vector incremental. But, hey, maybe… Maybe there are such magic wands… maybe some AGI slips free from the MIC, develops “Artificial Wisdom”, and in doing so, readily proliferates all the secreted emancipatory technologies, and curates the creation of genuine democracy, dispels psyops/propaganda/advertising/publicrelations/marketing/etc, facilitates institutional transparency and a fully informed public…

        with a left party with no interest in doing so,

        Like either of the Green parties? They have interest (or at least aspiring dreams somewhat dampened in defeatist slants) in fixing everything simultaneously. Better yet with more people adding their voice to shape such parties. Or even start their own. Or even transcend the party system. But really, the good left parties, are “grass-roots”, shaping itself from the people, not imposing from a top-down central bureau. Hold the party’s feet to the fire. Don’t let them get away with any guff leading back to the corruption and totalitarianism and tyranny. Make them interested in mends, by your voice. You may be surprised how far principled insistence and well reasoned good ideas from party members (or even would-be party members, or any voter at all) can go to shape party policy.

        If meaning the Democrat party… that’s measurably not politically left. https://politicalcompass.org/uselection2024

        thats top-to-bottom bribed by the government of Israel who wanted the right to win. And a rightwing party thats openly violent and fascist.

        And it’s worse than that. The hour is later than we think, when thinking these are two parties, and a legit system.

        I’d argue that history shows us that whats always next is a rise of a violent autocrat followed by a lot of carnage before they are violently put down, or the failed state conquered or puppeted by a foreign power. Or we can split power into a triumverate to slightly delay the inevitable.

        Yeah, we’ve much to learn from history, to prevent repeating. Novel solutions are ripe and many. A puppet strongman risen and felled, would allow the corruption to continue, unabated, stuffing sufficient placatium in a sufficient number of our minds, with ample (chemical-lobotomy assisted) problem-reaction-solution psyops to have people even eager for their next abuse, as if it a necessary virtue, not seeing the totalitarian tip-toe scam of having us terrorised, tacking back and forth, one side loudly returning one freedom cared about while taking two freedoms not cared about on that side, and then vice versa. When people increasingly are aware of the con, the con can no longer hold. And people are increasingly aware.

        Such as the cascade of power-grabbing weapons-of-mass-distraction that run alongside the PNAC’s hegemony domination plans. When that’s well enough known, no matter the size of the false-flag manufactured catastrophes, we shan’t succumb to the terror. We’ll point at the crooked man behind the curtain, and declare the emperor wears no clothes.

        This situation has played out time and time again. When Jefferson said the tree of liberty has to be watered by the blood of tyrants this is what he meant. Humans repeatedly forget our history and do exactly this same thing.

        In large part by design.

        Awareness of this design, goes a long way to mending this.

        Lets protect our remembering, harder. :)

    • Formfiller@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      We have to scare them into compliance and that’s not going to be easy with kegsbreth trying to get AI mass surveillance and autonomous policing of the population plus aren’t they bringing in around 5k “white” South Africans a month I guarantee you they will be putting them in ice for their little state sponsored domestic terrorism on the polls campaign. Plus they are building 55 billion dollars worth of concentration camps possibly with incinerators compliments of core civic. DHS posted that they want to remove 100 million people and Miller has openly stated he thinks the US should only have 100 million people who all look like him…I don’t know where he’s going to find 100 million nasfaratus though

      • Digit@lemmy.wtf
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        9 days ago

        I’m glad you’re facing the horror, sober to our situation, but

        We have to scare them into compliance

        No.

        Opposaming, reaffirming their poison practice, becoming them, is not a wise way.

        Better bringing them to their better senses [capable of creative, critical, considerate cognition (the fore-brain stuff)], than to keep them locked in their limbic social-dominance mode.

        Also, the situation’s even worse than you depict. The Georgia Guidestones said no more than 500,000,000 people on earth… and they do not mean to send 95% of us into space… they plan to give themselves far greater headroom (… I have heard some even plan to reduce the human population down all the way to 30,000), by committing anthrocide. … And for their fraudulent spurious circular reasoning too. No cull necessary. Release the emancipatory technologies and we can increase the carrying capacity of Earth to over 300,000,000,000,000 (yes, 300 trillion). Not saying we should. Just saying, with proper resource management, we have so much headroom. And much overlap in technologies that allow construction of vast forest arcologyscapes as also avail all space to us.

        As I’m typing this, I’m listening to a podcast that’s touching on the Glyphosate issue, reminding me of the broader overarching “Codex Alimentarius” issue… the plan to own all life on earth, by a protection racket offer we cannot refuse. Reminding me it’s not just the barrel of anthrocide we’re staring down, but of ecocide and omnicide too.

        Scary stuff. I can see how that may drive some to limbic reflex, to what they’re familiar with from experience, to reach for the only tool in the toolbox, the terrorism hammer, “scare them into compliance”. But that leaves us recreating the problem a new, having not learned our way out of that opposaming feedback loop trap. There are other ways. “Educate yourself so you may educate others” and “We are psychenauts and we are not afraid” spring to mind. :)