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naraburns  nihil supernum  16d ago (text post)   26875 thread views

U.S. Election (Day?) 2024 Megathread

With apologies to our many friends and posters outside the United States... it's time for another one of these! Culture war thread rules apply, and you are permitted to openly advocate for or against an issue or candidate on the ballot (if you clearly identify which ballot, and can do so without knocking down any strawmen along the way). "Small-scale" questions and answers are also permitted if you refrain from shitposting or being otherwise insulting to others here. Please keep the spirit of the law--this is a discussion forum!--carefully in mind.

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I don't think people realize how much worse not implementing those inflationary COVID policies would be.

I mean if you shut down most workplaces in the country by government decree, yeah, you kind of have to dish out some cash -- but you could also, like -- not do that?

For every anti-lockdowner, there was someone just as rabidly clamoring for more restrictions. We could easily be sitting here with Trump hammering Biden on killing grandma while he was the one who made the vaccine, and people here talking about how stupid Biden was for splitting his coalition on COVID. I mean, Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings tried it, and it's not like that ended in a celebratory parade.

Sure, being resolute in not screwing the economic pooch might have resulted in Bad Things happening for the politician responsible -- I'm not really sure; America was much more divided on this than other countries, and the anti-lockdown contingent was substantial. The Swedish approach of "I'm sorry Dave, the Constitution says we can't do that" might have played OK.

But the fact is, if Congress rose up and impeached over insufficient tyranny, and the next guy came in and trashed the economy -- that would be on the next guy. On this timeline, Biden did it, and it's on him.

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