[The Weeping Angel]

Anyone would think the midterms were really important, and by cutting ads, they mean to run ads in key battleground states highlighting how, under Trump, your food isn't safe anymore.

[The Weeping Angel]

Also, can anyone name one Democrat who spends their time whining on YouTube?

[Abernathy]

I dunno. The more I see of Trump appearing in clips on news bulletins, the more he seems to me to be just … well, incompetent. He basically doesn’t really understand just about everything he is trying to do, but covers it up - not very successfully - with bombastic hyperbole and blatant lies.

I’ve more or less stopped being bewildered about how so many Americans could have decided to vote for him as their president, but the thought of it still creeps into my brain box every now and again.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Given American history and culture Trump was inevitable. Which makes everything getting better when he has gone very unlikely. The Democrats are as much prisoners of that culture as the Republicans.

[davidjay]

It beggars belief that the most powerful nation on earth is run by a man who.is at best is a collosal egomaniac and at worst is suffering from mental illness. Just to give the most obvious example - the Capitol Riots were the closest America has come to insurrection since the civil war. The President believes no crimes were committed and no-one has in his administration has said different. Every day he says and does things that would get him either sacked or sectioned in any other job. How did we get to this and why is he still getting away with it?

[The Weeping Angel]

Because he was enabled every step of the way by the Republican Party and the wider conservative movement.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

By the whole American experiment.

The historical imperative (the 'experiment') guiding United States development is rooted in the interplay between ideological exceptionalism (allied to 'rugged individualism' and the 'frontier spirit'), continuous geographic and economic expansion (internal and external, vide Venezuela, Greenland, Hormuz), and the consolidation of institutional power (the destruction of checks and balances, the seeding of the Supreme Court, courtier politics). From its founding through its rise as a global superpower, US growth has not been accidental; it has been driven by a deeply ingrained belief in a unique national mission combined with material imperatives. Trump is just the reductio of those imperatives.

That also applies to the American press and media which plays to those stereotypes.

I know that Matt and Samanfur, like me, belong to Facebook pages which highlight American comics. Look at the misogynistic and normative values from the 50s and 60s they display - the indoctrination of youth. TV and movies the same.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

This goes back to the earliest Puritan settlers. Described as Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny
They spoke of the "City upon a Hill": Early Puritan settlers introduced the concept that America was a divinely sanctioned moral experiment. This evolved into a secularised national belief that the US has a unique duty to spread freedom and democracy.

In the 19th century, this ideological mission justified continental expansion. The belief that the US was pre-ordained to dominate North America legitimised the displacement of Indigenous populations and wars for territory, such as the Mexican-American War.

Historian Frederick Jackson Turner’s "Frontier Thesis" argued that the continuous availability of unsettled land shaped the American character, promoting individualism, egalitarianism, and democracy.
Vast geographic territory provided the raw materials and agricultural capacity (initially powered by the brutal system of chattel slavery) necessary to build a self-sustaining economy independent of European powers.
The 19th-century "Market Revolution" mandated the construction of massive infrastructure—canals, steamships, and transcontinental railroads—to connect Western resources with Eastern factories and ports.

The post-Civil War Gilded Age established a legal and political environment hyper-focused on capital accumulation, deregulation, and technological innovation, transforming the US from an agrarian society into the world's leading industrial power.

And exceptionalism and a bastardised, abysmal education system suited only to indoctrination.

Which leads us to modern Republicanism (and to a great extent the Democrats) and, of course, Trump.

[The Weeping Angel]

I know that Matt and Samanfur, like me, belong to Facebook pages which highlight American comics. Look at the misogynistic and normative values from the 50s and 60s they display - the indoctrination of youth. TV and movies the same.

Ok, but you can find examples of misogynistic and normative values that were made here in Britain.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Which is true but utterly beside the point...