As someone in the "rest of the world", I can tell you: it's not funny.

It's not really funny to me, either, but the tying in of Trumpism vs anti-Trumpism with history makes a bunch of sense. You could probably figure out how someone voted based on how they would respond to the question "why was the civil war fought?"

Or based on whether they thought that dress was white and gold. IT'S BLUE, PEOPLE. COME BACK TO REALITY.

The early history of capitalism was based on a slightly upgraded form of slavery. Where capitalists had no fear of government — or were in fact the government themselves as kings, oligarchies, or dictators — many forms of abusive behavior prevailed, including child labor, company stores, beatings and actual slavery. All human labor was grounded in despair.

Somehow, by the grace of God, the Founders of America — though many were themselves slaveowners — allowed the ideals of hope to shine brightly in the documents and organizations of the new Nation. Nowhere else in human history to that time had a national constitution been adopted which recognized the fundamental rights of all people “endowed by their Creator” (not by the State or the Church or the King) to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. That bias against big government pervades all the American foundation documents. The accompanying bias in favor of personal freedoms was a necessary byproduct of this view, which fit well with the frontier and the agricultural life of most early Americans.

Those early ideals were so firmly imbedded in the American character that we have spent the next 241 years trying to realize in practice the goals set forth by our founders, even to the fighting a war over these ideals, a war which cost 650,000 lives, an entire generation of young men. We have come a long way, but we have still far to go. Our only claim has to be that we never, ever stop striving to achieve for all our citizens life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the midst of our ever more complicated national life.

omg he goes on:



https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/apr/30/what-democratic-capitalism-anyway/

Don't blame me, I'm just a high school student who wanted to understand what democratic capitalism is and clicked on the second Google search result for the phrase (teacher said I couldn't use Wikipedia as a source).

Don't blame me, I'm just a high school student who wanted to understand what democratic capitalism is and clicked on the second Google search result for the phrase (teacher said I couldn't use Wikipedia as a source).

Literally everything conservatives say can be responded to with "government is not the only locus of power". It's really just that simple.

The Trump administration wants the right to opt out of the binding dispute resolution panels, because it views them as an invasion of sovereignty and an incentive for companies to outsource to Mexico by guaranteeing them a forum to sue for unfair treatment.

"We basically said to them, 'If you want to opt out, that's fine — you're gone,'" said an official with knowledge of the talks who described the American reaction. "You can imagine that the U.S. negotiators didn't like it."

On two of three contentious issues, Lighthizer slammed Canada’s “presumed compromises” — that is those on the rules around content for North American cars, regulations that determine whether they qualify for duty-free sale.

Lighthizer said Canada’s idea to broaden the list of parts, including intellectual property for the computerized sensors of a modern automobile, would lead to less North American content and fewer jobs. He suggested much of the work would go to China. He called it the “opposite” of what negotiators are trying to do here.

Lighthizer criticized Canada’s proposal on dispute settlement, and blasted Canada’s WTO complaint last month about U.S. trade remedy practices, which was aimed at U.S. softwood lumber tariffs on Canadian wood exports.

“This litigation, essentially, claims that 24 years ago, the U.S. gave away its entire trade regime.” He called it “frivolous” and said it “makes one wonder if all parties are truly committed to mutually beneficial trade.”

starting at around 34min, thought this was interesting. TL;DR, there's a silver lining to vertical integration in healthcare: https://art19.com/shows/the-weeds/episodes/f5dd5f46-b80b-4677-ac71-d9543647cb10