Late Tuesday afternoon, with the subtlety of a wrecking ball and the morality of a foreclosure notice, the Trump administration announced the most devastating attack on the U.S. Forest Service in the agency’s 121-year history. Not a budget cut. Not a policy shift. Not a “reorganization.” An execution.
They’re ripping the headquarters out of Washington and shipping it to Salt Lake City, Utah — the beating heart of the anti-public-lands movement in America. They’re shuttering every single one of the ten regional offices that have governed this agency since Gifford Pinchot built the system over a century ago — and with them, the career professionals who spent entire lifetimes earning the expertise and the authority to push back when politicians came calling with bad ideas and worse motives. They’re destroying more than fifty research facilities across thirty-one states, labs that house decades of irreplaceable long-term science, the kind you literally cannot restart once it’s gone. And they’re replacing all of it — the offices, the scientists, the institutional knowledge, the professional independence — with fifteen political appointees called “state directors,” embedded in state capitals alongside the very governors, legislators, and industry lobbyists who have spent their careers demanding that the Forest Service log more, protect less, and get out of the way.
It’s okay. If I understand right, this doesn’t matter 'cuz some combination of Her Laugh and Gaza trump literally anything and all else, combined or something.
Or wait, are we now on the, “Dems would’ve done this too!1!”?
Edit: I take it tankies from .ml didn’t like that hefty dose of sarcasm.
No, everyone is just sick and tired of hearing you complain about how it’s all the Democrat voters faults for the billionth time every time the Trump administration does yet another terrible thing. At this point it’s not even a question of whether people agree with you or not, it’s been two years, that ship has sailed, the horse is dead, you can stop beating the bloody smear where it used to be.
Who said anything about democrat voters? Kudos to Democrat voters who voted Harris!
These are No-Voting couch sitter and Third-Party voters, after all.
It takes numerous factions acting as blocks to build beyond the finish-line, and those couch-sitters and third-party voters were one missing block contributing to the colossal fuck-up. Time to wise up before November elections, and 2028 – lest the gullible suckers fall for the right-wing wedge-driving kool-aid yet again. This is thus not so re-litigating the past insomuch as learning from past mistakes and evolving moving forward so as not to repeat history in a cycle of insanity.
You agree you’ll support and vote Democrat over this fascist regime then and advocate others who try to sit on the couch or vote third party to do the same given your comment, correct?
I’ll vote Democrat but I won’t support them if they don’t do anything to deserve my support. Half the blame for the last loss is on the non and 3rd party voters (and the Republican voters of course) but the other half of the blame lands squarely on Harris and the DNC. When your own voters are screaming at you to take a position on something, and you take the opposite position it’s little surprise that you lose even if you’re “the lesser evil”. Continuing to run as diet Republicans is not a winning strategy as the last election demonstrated.
The one bit of good news going into the midterms and looking ahead to the next election is that there have been a number of actual progressive Democrat wins recently despite massive campaigns by both Republicans and old guard Democrats to smear them so there’s some hope that we won’t see a Harris or Biden 2.0 in the next couple elections. When the DNC gets out of its own way and lets popular candidates run on actually progressive campaigns they win. When they either refuse to take a stance or worse take the same stance as Republicans in order to not upset the billionaires and corporate donors they lose. You can blame the voters all you want, but the DNC is just as much at fault for failing to win those voters as the ones that sit out the elections in disgust.
Voting is by definition a show of support, arguably the most important show of support.
Yes but also no. There are people (like presumably lennybird) that think supporting a candidate means you aren’t allowed to criticize them. For instance back when everyone was criticizing Harris for sticking with Israel there were a bunch of people attacking those people saying that they need to STFU because Trump was worse. Harris was a terrible candidate, she was just better than Trump (by a lot) or Biden (marginally). The unfortunate reality of the US political system as it exists today is that you don’t vote for a candidate, you vote against the other one, because both the Democrats and the Republicans suck, it’s just a question of degree.
So yes, I voted for Harris because she was the least bad option between the two viable candidates, but I sure as hell complained about her and Trump every chance I got. Just once it would be really refreshing to see the DNC run a candidate that I actually want to vote for instead of making me vote against the Republican.
This is just a stupid and ineffective strategy to win the election. You guys lost to Trump of all people due to Dems being ineffective and refusing to listen to their base. Now you’re just trying to do the same thing again. Remind me again about the definition of insanity?
Nah. This is completely incorrect and your boldfaced assumption as to this reason is why we lost. False Equivalence botherism needs to be put to rest. Harris was better in literally every way. The only reason, and I mean the only reason fools fell for it was because of billionaires, and foreign dictators from Bibi to Putin helping to put their thumb on the scale.
What’s so odd and outright fallacious about this line of reasoning is to suggest that the Democratic candidate must be perfect, and not just simply and obviously better than the binary alternative choice.
It’s literally outright fallacious to equate wanting a Democratic candidate that listens to their constituents with saying we want a perfect Democratic candidate. Can you please not lie so openly and brazenly? You’re simply doubling down on doing the insanity thing now. Haven’t you learned anything from 2024?
Decent attempt at gaslighting but not going to work.
Yes or no: no-voters and third-party voters contributed to the situation we’re in, and in the same way these same groups claimed Biden was complicit in genocide, so too are these no-voters and third-party voters complicit on the worsening crisis in Iran, Gaza, Ukraine, the deaths from ICE and BP, and of course OP’s current subject regarding the US Forest Service (leaving aside climate change regression).
It’s okay if the own up to their catastrophic blunder, so long as they don’t repeat it going forward.
What part of showing you misrepresenting what I said is gaslighting? Do you even know what the word means?
Funny how you think voters are complicit in the worsening crisis by demanding Biden and Harris to stop supporting a genocide, but somehow the Biden administration gets a pass despite directly strengthening Israel and vetoing every effort by the UN to rein in Israel’s actions which led to them being emboldened and doing whatever they currently please. Now that’s pure gaslighting if I ever see one.
You can continue defending the Democrats only listening to the elite class and alienating their voters, but it is the responsibility of the party to persuade voters to vote for them. Expecting the majority of voters to be informed enough to vote for the lesser evil of the Democrats without them putting in any effort to court them is hilariously naive considering the continuous gutting of your education system and worker’s rights. That’s the biggest blunder of the whole 2024 election. It also shows how out-of-touch the Democrats have become to even think that was possible.
In order to win, you need to look at reality and stop imagining the existence of the large voter base that is always informed enough to vote for the lesser evil despite being ignored and the moderate Republican that would vote for Democrats if you appeal to them. You also need to stop advocating for the status quo given that it is the current system that created the mess you’re in right now. Any Democratic candidate that is in favour of the status quo in the next presidential election is one that supports the continuous downward spiral of your country.
I agree with you, but, I am curious, what does a departure from the status quo mean to you? Is not supporting Israel enough? I tend to say a lot of the same things you have in conversations, but, then I go “I don’t really have any solutions though…” so I look like an idiot.
You guys need more progressive policies. Examples being:
These are just some examples of things that can help the US catch up with the rest of the world. It might not be possible to achieve all of these within 4 years, but you guys need a politician that are willing to fight for them instead of ones that only flip flops their opinion based on consultant recommendation.
I would add to that list banning at a federal level first past the post elections for any partisan election. That’s just as important as overturning Citizens United. We need to break out of this cycle of constantly being forced into voting against a candidate instead of for one because it allows them to keep ratcheting policy ever rightward.
“I was just joking, guys!”
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Reporting in from not .ml, you’re a pretentious edgelord at best, or a Russo-Asian toe-sucker at worst.
Absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Are you sure you didn’t misunderstand my comment?
Like, what does this mean? That you believe I’m an apologist for them, or… ?
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Putin and Xi along with Bibi can all fuck off; agreed?