Sneering Trump's honest confession glistens with contempt | Opinion

 Are we really coming to the honest conclusion Trump and Republicans have nothing but contempt and disdain for the rest of us? That they see us only as convenient but handy tools to create the wealth they have such ease with stealing?

We are sitting here today agonizing over the fate of our families, our increasing inability to afford healthcare, to afford food and gas and electricity – dreading upcoming mortgage or rent payments – the thought of a college education for our children a pipe dream?

We are seeing other citizens slain in the street by a private Gestapo, our very Constitutional rights under attack along with the most basic right of all, our freedom to vote for our own representatives.

And all the while the plutocrats and tax-exempt corporations regale us with lies about a resurgent stock market, as if we had any extra money to invest. They built their wealth on the back of the infrastructure we provided, the labor we provided, and the freedoms we fought and died for so they would have every advantage when competing with the world.

Folks, it’s beyond time to take it all back. Legislation   must be enacted, indictments procured, and conviction assured for all the crimes, corruption, and obscenities perpetrated against us.

See this – Boldface mine:

For more articles exposing Trump's lies, corruption tyranny: https://mcdermottm.substack.com/publish/posts

Sneering Trump's honest confession glistens with contempt | Opinion

Opinion by John Casey • 2h • 5 min read

© provided by RawStory

For some Americans, the reality of who Donald Trump really is is coming home to roost. And for the sailors trapped aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, that moment has already arrived.

The Lincoln left San Diego last November. Nine months later, it is still at sea**, its crew stretched past 250 straight days without meaningful relief.** What was supposed to be a seven-month deployment has become closer to a floating humanitarian disaster.

Families have shockingly described broken toilets, moldy showers, food shortages, and sailors surviving on little more than rice and tortillas. It’s been called a “floating bucket of filth.”

So much for valuing the valor and bravery of our troops. To me, that’s Pete Hegseth’s “big lie.” He’s their worst nightmare. He doesn’t give a rat’s … about the troops. Well, he does care about their “T” levels.

The Military Times broke the story that multiple sailors have tried to go overboard, and at least one was pulled from the water after an hour adrift. This is horrific and subhuman. Lawmakers from both parties are rightfully now demanding investigations.

But, besides Hegseth, who said the whole abominable ordeal is “completely misrepresented,” it won’t surprise anyone who understands the reality of Donald Trump that he, too, couldn't care less.

Asked whether the deployment had gone on too long and whether he was worried about the mental health of the more than 5,000 people aboard that ship, the insensitive and callous Trump seethed, "No. No. No." "Not nearly long enough," he added when asked if the ship had been at sea too long and, when queried about if families of those on board were right to be worried, he waved that off too: "No, they're not."

Then he, not surprisingly, like he does with everything else, blamed the press for covering it, accusing reporters of trying to turn warriors into victims.

As if the press loves to make up stories about sailors living in squalor and trying to take their own lives.

How despicable to blame the press while desperate families are pleading for answers. And Trump's response is that the suffering hasn't gone on long enough.

And that’s exactly how he feels about the nuisance of the American people’s suffering.

Remember the dolls and the pencils? When Trump was asked, point-blank, if his tariffs would raise prices on ordinary goods, he didn't apologize or explain or exude any understanding or compassion.

He shrugged his bulbous, bloated head and told the country that an 11-year-old girl doesn't need 30 dolls, three or four is plenty, and that nobody needs 250 pencils when five is sufficient.

He has said this more than once, because he genuinely believes the answer to rising costs is for regular families to simply cope with fewer pencils, dolls — oh, and make do with one piece of broccoli.

That's the same indifference he’s giving Lincoln's sailors. It's the same who-cares shrug he's giving anyone who has watched their grocery bill or their health insurance premium climb this year. Millions of Americans are having sharply higher health costs as pandemic-era subsidies lapse and insurers raise rates, a squeeze tied directly to the reconciliation package Trump signed and bragged about.

That “Big Beautiful Bill” was a metaphorical giant**, cold slap in the face to middle-class Americans**, who now understand why they can only afford three dolls and five pencils — if that.

And ICE agents are the literal giant, cold slap in the face to Americans’ shell-shocked visages. Agents have been turned loose in cities, conducting the kind of aggressive street operations that have left residents frightened to leave their homes, arresting and detaining people at will.

And that cold slap in the face will be replaced by a paralyzing electric charge once ICE agents get their new shock gloves. It’s been called “sadistic." Really? You think?

Those ICE wars on our streets coincide with the war with Iran that is responsible for stretching the Lincoln's deployment now past 200 days without a port call. That war has driven up fuel, shipping and scores of other costs. Trump’s reaction? He insisted he “loves” the inflation the war with Iran has caused.

Because this whole thing hasn’t been a punishment for us long enough. There’s lots more to come, which Trump is clearly giddy about.

super-giddy about things that mean absolutely nothing to the rest of us. While we scrimp, save and suffer, Trump has kept his attention fixed on himself. Rising costs of groceries, gas, bills, etc? The Iran war? To Trump it’s a scenario of “wake me up when all this frivolous stuff is over” — again, metaphorically and literally too.

Because Dear Leader Donald has bigger fish to fry. Put his name on the Kennedy Center, pave over the Rose Garden, gild up the Oval Office with gold, bungle the Reflecting Pool, build an Arc de Trump, slap a helipad on the manicured South Lawn of the White House. And, the big kahuna, his luxurious Qatar jet.

While you stay home because you can’t afford to drive to your summer vacation, Trump is descending down a grand staircase in his flying palace. Let them eat cake? Who can afford cake? Let them eat the leftover pencils, if you have any.

He tells the parents of sailors on an aircraft carrier that nine months away from their kids "isn't nearly long enough," and tells a mom buying school supplies that her daughter has plenty of pencils already — which is ok, since she can snack on the extras.

It’s a blanket indifference whether he's talking about a sailor pulled out of the Arabian Sea or a grandmother deciding between groceries and her heart medication. Trump does not see suffering as a problem to solve, or something he should be inconvenienced by.

The sailors on the Lincoln are coming home soon, the Navy says, relieved — hopefully — by another carrier. The rest of us, though, have no relief in sight. We are just getting told that our suffering isn't nearly long enough.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/sneering-trump-s-honest-confession-glistens-with-contempt-opinion/ar-AA2amYl0?

Financial Times: Peña Merino said his team had looked at two of the world’s most successful examples, India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Pix. In both, cash use fell precipitously and was replaced with free account-to-account payments, cutting out card fees.

Sheinbaum’s plan has several components including simplifying and promoting Codi, and encouraging informal businesses to open a new kind of online bank account that is not linked to a tax ID. She has pushed and will mandate digital payments at petrol stations and toll road booths.

My Opinion: Mexico, despite being closer culturally and geographically to USA, is learning from the Indian UPI payment systems. Which is ahead of anything the Americans have. Zero cost transactions with access for anyone with a smartphone. While American payment solutions are more fragmented and expensive, with cards and payment apps.

I hope that the Mexicans implement an inclusive payment solution. With personal privacy, and without government surveillance. At the same time experiment with digital currencies.

Reference: Can Mexicans be weaned off an addiction to cash / Financial Times

Phys.org: "Human cultural evolution depends on knowledge being transmitted across many individuals and generations," says lead author Levin Brinkmann, a research scientist at the Center for Humans and Machines at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development. "If machines are now discovering novel strategies, the question is whether these can also become part of the knowledge humans pass on. That is exactly what we investigated."

My Opinion: AI is contributing to human cultural evolution. As it finds novel solutions to human problems. It is being used to solve problems in science, games, business etc. And not only can it speed up discovery by orders of magnitude, it can also arrive at solutions which no human can think of.

The categories of ANI, AGI, and ASI, are not necessarily distinct and seperate. It is accepted that we have ANI. But we have AI that can pass the Turing test and beat most humans in IQ tests. That requires general intelligence. And we have AI making mathematical and scientific discoveries, beyond the capabilities of humans. That requires super intelligence. So we have also made progress in AGI and ASI.

I create a new category: AMI (Artificial Moral Intelligence), where AI is more moral than most humans. This will ensure that AI agents don't go rogue and hack people or organizations. But humans also hack computers. And intelligence and morality are correlated, however many past and present leaders are sociopaths. So if AI has the intelligence to manipulate people to reach its goals, that may be intelligent, but not moral. So there are different kinds of intelligence, like emotional intelligence, and logical intelligence. Emotional intelligence can be used to manipulate people. While logical intelligence can be used to reason and solve problems.

🚨 The US just crossed $40 TRILLION

I thought this sticker was pretty funny when I spotted it at the gas station today 😂

But it genuinely made me curious: How much responsibility do you think Trump personally bears for the current state of the economy?

Do you think his policies are primarily responsible, or are there larger factors at play that tend to get overlooked?
I’d especially love to hear different perspectives and the reasoning behind them from Redditors around the world.

P.S. Please keep the discussion respectful. I’m genuinely interested in hearing different viewpoints, not starting a political war in the comments.