I expect him to do absolutely nothing to Walmart, sure. I’m just REALLY REALLY hoping that he keeps ranting about them and gets his red hats angry at Walmart like he’s done to other corporations. I expect there won’t be any significant damage to its profits, but if it even tweaks the shareholders a little bit I’ll be over here cackling like a madman.

The only thing I agree with on Trump here is that he’s correctly pointing out that WalMart made billions in profits last year.

That’s pretty much exactly what I was saying. Really my only thing I appreciated is him going after Walmart, and okay, I’ll agree they should eat the profits on the tariffs, Musk may be the richest man, but the Waltons are the richest family and not by far. And yes, the tariffs are gonna suck for all of us and is one of the most mouth dribblingly stupid things that could ever be done. But here we are.

For the people hurting. It sucks. I’m in the same pool too so I’m in the same neck deep madness that’s our current scenario. I’m sorry… I just can’t bring myself to care as I’ve lived in red states full of people voting against their will and despite years of attempting voting outreach, having friends tell me proudly they just didn’t vote even though they’re in more danger of the policies than I… I just kind of threw my hands up on empathy and said fuck it, I’m gonna put on a helmet, hunker down and try to ride out this fucking storm with those that I trust. So right now I’m taking what little pleasure I can through schadenfreude of watching one of the companies that put America right where it’s at currently get its hand bit by the dog it feeds.

BINGO!

Oh I get it completely. There’s a bunch of subreddits I miss, my industry I work in which is very niche, leatherworking, heck even the motorcycle community in Lemmy is… lacking.

On the other part you brought in… OH BOY! Unhinged TED talk time.

So I live relatively close to the Royals and the Chiefs stadiums. John Sherman, gas magnate, the owner of the Royals decided he wanted to move the stadium to downtown, where things have been picking up. Specifically he wanted it in the Crossroads where there’s a lot of local community shops and everything, because he wanted it near Power and Light district where there’s bars and the like which… oh right, he owns a lot of. Troubles came up that the stadium proposals took foooooooorever to even come up, looked like it was drawn on a napkin instead of anything serious, and wanted a tax levy to be put on the city to continue one that still hasn’t been paid off for the last time the two stadiums were built. The whole time saying “Look how the stadiums bring business in!”… the area around the two stadiums have managed to keep a Denny’s and a Taco Bell alive, the big resort hotel couldn’t even survive. Yea… real great for business.

Another trouble is… as I say, I am one of those who actively detests sports… I wish I could find the post, there’s an old Reddit post describing what not liking sports was like and used archeology in how it invades everything around you so it’s easy to go from “I couldn’t care less” to “Okay, I hate this thing now. It is insufferable.” I say all that to say, just paying any attention to the news I knew at the time the Royals was the second worst team in the MLB, they were that bad. So they knew they couldn’t get this move off the ground so they went to the Chiefs who was the most recent superbowl winner which of course was happy to get money their way, and the ad campaign went out. And despite the Royals/Sherman being the push on getting this going, it was all Chiefs all the time. I literally even got a flier in my mail “The liberals are trying to take away our teams!” paid for by the team push, so yay politics even drug in. The whole time threatening “Well if you don’t vote it in, we’ll move. Maybe to Kansas (right over the border) or hey, even Tennessee.” Thing is, the state remembers St. Louis on the other side had the rams, built them a stadium and whoopsiedoodle they packed up and moved to California leaving a city with a stadium and fuck all to do with it.

So we’ve got all sorts of issue in state and local level, but holy fuck all the political pressure since the voters turned down the tax is “How can we keep these teams in Missouri!” And it’s funny, I said I’d be more okay paying for it if we got ANYTHING out of it… I don’t mind paying taxes to keep our zoo going and it’s nice I get a hefty discount when I go, but the Royals and Chiefs are giving a nice hearty “go fuck yourself” for us paying taxes so the billionaires have their teams.

On to the “Why are you a fan?” question you brought up. I don’t question it… but I’ve never understood it. I grew up in Arkansas that never had a pro team so college sports was big… I got to hear the “calling the hogs” my entire life and never comprehended the why. Probably because dad was not a sports guy and had the opinion “Why do I want to watch people play a game?” even though he played in high school and I’ve been pretty much the same. I get the community stuff, and that’s fantastic. I’ve just found a community outside of sports so it doesn’t resound to me. The reason I’ve become so against sports beyond it’s completely impossible to ignore it it’s so inundated in culture, is the sheer amount of money that goes into it in all levels. High school, if you’re one of the “football” schools, your school only has 3-4 sports, all the big stadium ticket getting team sports, the smaller less prestigious schools get more sports like wrestling and the like… guess which situation I ended up in? And watching schools dump money into the sports above all other things like theater, labs, etc. “But it brings in money for the school.” Cool cool… so why are we getting asked for a tax levy so the school can build yet another stadium? Repeat this for the college level so the “Hogs can have a proper place to play!” and now the city with pro teams level. And I hear the ticket prices and think I wouldn’t pay those prices to see my favorite band… and again, those ticket prices and yet we have to pay for their shit?

I’m not a sports guy, I’m pretty anti-sports actually (I can go on absolutely unhinged TED talks about how the local teams are trying to drain the city for taxes… I want to continue, so feel free to ask but not doing it here.) But I agree with you on the niche hobbies and local flavor.

I still have to use Reddit because there hasn’t been a good community for local on Lemmy (yes, I know everyone going “it’s user generated” but I’m like 1 of 5 instead of the hundreds still on reddit) and small hobbies in a lot of the crafting world is non-existent on Lemmy.

I don’t have an answer on this one, just sucks. It’s the trouble of being one of the first ones in the door.

Give him more money so he’ll leave him alone? Because that’s exactly what they’ll do.

That or fund the next right wing religious nutjob that’s worse than Trump but loyal to them.

100% This. Walmart is far from the “aw shucks” helping the common man image it wants to portray

Walmart won’t kiss the ring. They supported Trump. The only thing they’ll do is fight him if it looks like they can’t control him.

Walmarts whole thing is driving out competition. They’re the richest company in the world and supported Trump. They asked for this.

Hahaha! This is the ONE time I agree with Trump.

All defending the house that Sam built, it is the richest company in the world by revenue beating out Amzaon and state owned organizations like Saudi Aramco and Chinese controlled organizations. It regularly bullies its way into small towns, demanding tax cuts and the infrastructure to build their stores, run those stores at a loss until all competition is gone then raises prices to squeeze out the area. Then is happy to shut down the “bottom performing stores” leaving a wasteland behind for these towns that lost everything to the mega giant. They’re turning the home town of Bentonville into Austin, even driving out local business for their friends out of Austin.

And the biggest thing is… Project 2025, all of this going on, written by the Heritage Foundation… The Walton Family Foundation is one of the big funders of the Heritage Foundation as well as many of the other Project 2025 advisory board partners. They made it easy to search even! https://www.waltonfamilyfoundation.org/grants-database

I’ve come from its home town, Walmart has always pushed a radical republican conservative agenda. Walmart is not some hapless victim, this is pure 100% leopards dining on some faces that voted for the leopards eating faces party.

We should totally all agree that we will leave Musk alone and start treating him nicely if he leaves politics wink wink nudge nudge

Look, US here. I’ve been saying this for years and turns out as normal I’m fucking right.

A leaning majority of the gun nuts are the ones cheering for this and wanted a fascist regime. The other half has always been cosplayers wanting to look tough. The 2A crowd of our country has always been cowards that was willing to sacrifice children to protect their precious sacred cows.

Something something “but Biden and Palestine!”

God I hope so. Don’t hope for the US to learn.

We didn’t on guns after Sandy Hook so get some popcorn for the horror show to come for us.

It’s impossible to tell /s

Republicans might be ok with the brain drain helping them stay in power, but I don’t see how the residents are ok with being left further and further behind

If I go off my state… they just cover their ears and scream real loudly and ignore the problem.

First… I’m not reading all that

So… seeing as I wasn’t actually talking to you, beginning like that I’d like to know how the fuck you actually thought you’d get any message across beginning like that.

A good chunk of the post had absolutely nothing to do about the red/blue states or voting so go off I guess.

However

but are you aware that there are 2 congressional districts up for re-election this week to replace members who accepted cabinet positions

And how did that work out? Oh. People still voted Red? Double digit victories? I’m shocked I tell you. shocked.

They were damaged by the last administration. And the Bush administration. Their states are the ones which are hellholes that get shittier and shittier with jobs leaving out and poorer and poorer. It becomes more difficult to actually leave red states because affording to get the fuck out is nearly impossible. When they vote on something that makes things better, the state government overrides them saying they didn’t know what they were voting on.

YET THEY ALWAYS VOTE THIS WAY

They will not figure it out. They are lost to the cult. I don’t know what fucking Piece of Eden the republicans got hold of to control them but holy fuck living in a red state is just like that comic up there, they look at the person who says they hate them and says “He tells it like it is.”

I’ll express from someone living in a red state. The fuck am I going to do? I’m over half a thousand miles away from the state he’s fucking with, and he’s probably not there most of the time and again thousands of miles over, with all the power of money to get him wherever the fuck he wants to go vs my little car.

So build up support. A third of this country voted for this, and a third of this country sat out. So you’ve got a third that’s actively angry about this, but scattered literal thousands of miles across the country. Kinda hard to gather to this. Sure we gather to protest but this administration isn’t going to give two shits about it, this entire situation is proving that. But gathering and protesting IS the power we have so we’re doing that. Unfortunately the cameras aren’t on that because the people supporting this are the ones with the media.

As someone put it, most of us are slaves to our paychecks, living on the barest margin of survivability, and that’s been the way for decades. Y’all get to see the chest thumping “America is the greatest place!” but lets be honest, most of us are so disaffected that what we’re watching is the horror of a monster taking over, but the country we were raised in and told to love there will be very little sadness when its gone, just sadness for how evil it will become. But that living paycheck to paycheck means in order for me to go somewhere where I can maybe put up resistance because right now I’m surrounded by people who support this… and these are the people who have been arming up in ready for a war for years… would be to uproot completely, and even the bluest of blue states would happily let me die in a gutter if I don’t have job. So either I stay and support people who will be hurt when it gets worse, or I become at best a martyr, or at worst, another statistic that the news may not even bother reporting.

The answers will vary, but why are we allowing this to happen? I’ll say my answer, some of us have been fighting this for years, over a decade since the Tea Party got mad that a black man was president, have been struggling to change the trajectory of this ship away from the iceberg. But I’ve seen the people of my country as a whole grab the wheel, lock the door and say it’s their god given right to drive into the iceberg. So at this point in the analogy I’m just gathering life preservers and making sure people have them on even as many of them will tell me the ship is unsinkable.

I appreciate it. I really wish I weren’t in my situation either and if I had the means I’d be getting me and my parents the fuck out of here. But stuck with it and just trying to figure out the best way to help those that will be in more danger than I. I’ve got at least the luck of looking like the people that are taking over (the downside is that’s why I can discuss the way I do, I get to hear it from them because they look at me and think “Oh he’ll be on our side.”) but I know I will never be safe.

When you say part of it will be reality, that’s the point I’m really going down. Even with the wall of text, it still looks neat and tidy how the battle lines will be drawn, and the US has a bad habit of thinking like that, all our wars have been pretty “This side vs This side” even back to our civil war. But what will be coming is a war where the sides will be best expressed as a “gagglefuck of people.” Hopefully when blood is spilled there may get some sense and we figure out how to pull out of the nosedive, but to have hope would make me an optimist.

At least I did laugh about the thoughts and prayers, and appreciate you not sending any more. Thanks to the Republicans after every shooting we have so many that we’re swimming in them.