Yes, he spent the equivalent of ~$105 if you make $100,000/year. If you make $100,000, spending $100 to buy the government? You’d be dumb not to.

It takes a truly bureaucratic mind—someone with a sensibility for relentless, daily tedium—to dismantle bureaucracy.

Democracy, by contrast, is far easier to unravel than state bureaucracy. Bureaucratic systems often outlast governments, as seen with the colonial administrations in Africa and South Asia. Bureaucracy is designed to be “portable” across different regimes and transfers of power.

Elon is likely facing a long and tiresome road ahead—one he’ll almost certainly abandon in some spectacularly embarrassing fashion within two months. Bureaucracy endures because it’s so deeply embedded in the everyday, utterly quotidian and entwined with, like, everything.

Yes, parents obviously still pay an important role. But we regulate many things for people under the age of 18 to generally good effect.

Just a single dollar bill, and everyone gets it for one day and can only spend it on another influencer. Reminds me of those dudes in college that are convinced it is ok that they are failing, because eventually people are going to pay millions to watch a stream of them playing video games in their filthy rooms. 🤣

Or maybe Z knows something about inflation that everyone else doesn’t lol

That might be minimum wage in two decades who knows

Gen Z’s financial ambitions, and the dissonance between their dreams and reality, honestly highlight a troubling cultural shift that I’m sure, if we’re honest, we all recognize. This poll, while maybe not bulletproof in methodology, lines up with other findings from Credit Karma, other Morning Consult surveys, and academic sources like PLOS and Collabra: Psychology. The term “money dysphoria,” used by financial therapists, gets to the heart of the issue, which is a mismatch between the paychecks, fame, and wealth many envision and the actual economic terrain we’re navigating. The fact that more than half of Gen Z reportedly wants to be influencers points to a broader trend where social media distorts not only career goals but also broader ideas about value and success.

Researchers see Gen Z as unique—sometimes in ways worth celebrating, but more often in ways that are troubling. Every generation wrestles with the pressures of its time, but Gen Z is the only generation that spent critical childhood-development years under a spotlight powered by social algorithms, constantly fed by curated images and endless comparisons. It seems obvious this environment is going to shape approaches to work, wealth, and purpose, often in ways that are kind of adrift from reality. What stands out here isn’t just misplaced optimism; it’s the fallout of growing up in an ecosystem designed to blur the lines between aspiration and delusion.

This isn’t to pin dysfunction entirely on Z; after all, no one chooses the world they inherit. But the extent to which our formative years were shaped by this digital distortion makes the challenges uniquely sharp. Gen Z was effectively raised in a hall of mirrors. That’s going to have an effect. And honestly, when I’m talking with from Gen Z about it, we tend to either completely agree and are pretty worried about it, or some people absolutely deny it and get pretty angry about it.

I think if you’re honest with yourself and are in college, you can kind of look around your classrooms and see who is going to feel which way.

It’s theoretically possible but extremely unlikely for a number of reasons. There’s a difference between bending constitutional intent by flouting democratic norms on the one hand, and outright ignoring what most people consider to be an explicit and core constitutional principle on the other. And, again, I’m not someone that believes Trump is ultimately heading for a lich-king transformation, so basic biology makes it even more unlikely.

Oh zing!! What a sick burn! Do more!

This is like watching someone have an existential crisis in real time. It really is quite amusing. Do more!

🤣

I can’t argue with that lol

🙄

The Republicans are paradoxically incredibly strong and pitifully weak. 🤣

Hitler was literally like 30 years younger. You are so scared that you’ve somehow convinced yourself Trump is immortal.

Yes, I know fretful democrats have created in Trump such a fearsome boogeyman that they seem confident he’s either going to upload his consciousness into a computer mainframe or assume his final lich-form and rule a totalitarian America for the next thousand years, but here in the real world that’s not actually a possibility. It does make for good fear-mongering among the mopey left however.

His mental decline over the last two years is sufficient to assure that even in the incredibly unlikely case we remove presidential term limits, which requires an amendment to the constitution requiring 2/3rds majorities in both the house and senate and ratification by 3/4ths of state legislatures, he will be in no physical or mental condition to do so. I’m doubtful he’ll even be able to actually complete his full term.

It’s not a law, and it was created in 1963 and augmented in 2010. He gains presidential power regardless of if he signs them or not.

They have no effect on whether he assumes power.

He doesn’t have to. It’s not a legal obligation, it’s a “norm.” Elizabeth Warren is incorrect. She may have helped write it, but she seems to not understand it. I imagine that’s why her accusation is so vague. It violates no laws to refuse to sign, and that’s the legal interpretation before factoring in the new presidential immunity decision. He is vested with the full power of the executive when he is sworn in whether he signs the transfer agreements or not.

They won’t even try prosecuting him for his alleged treasonous behavior at this point. The idea they’re going to try to make a legal case out of a paperwork violation is pure fantasy for, like, six different reasons.

There’s some things to be hopeful about. Trump cannot run again, so the republican party has no choice but to be thinking about what’s next. Additionally, aside from the slim majority in the house, mid-term elections are only two years away. That means the Republicans need to thread a needle here by sufficiently pacifying the MAGA diehards and Trump, but not so much that they have complete reign over the direction of the economy.

Many in the republican party have become full-on cultists. But many of them also just play-act because it’s where the power is right now. And many of them aren’t in the cult, but they simply ignore it because it benefits the party. If the Magats are given no leash, their policies will almost inevitably turn the electorate against them. So many of Trump’s proposals are good “tough guy” vengeance talking points that speak to aggrieved white people, but the election was closer than they are pretending.

If Trump goes on a full vengeance tour and his Project 2025 crew enacts their policies, the consequences of all that rhetoric will be devastating to poor white people. I know we like to think it happened during his first term and they didn’t care, but it’s not true. He was a fairly ineffective president. But now that he’s got people around him that want to actually act not talk, there’s a huge downside risk that they’ll start losing power during the mid-term elections. If that happens, the last two years for Trump will be miserable as everyone jumps ship from the senile guy in his mid-80s that can’t run again and is bleeding out the republican party of support.

Political pragmatics will force the republican party to turn on him. He’s simply unable to wield much influence after his last term. He will be too old and have no political future. And that will be recognized and cause some political realignment far before his presidency comes to an end.

It’s just posturing. Putin knows he’s in the driver’s seat now. He can do basically whatever he wants, so he can actually amplify his brio for the next six weeks, and then he can actually act on some of the threats after Trump is in office. As I’ve argued elsewhere, his goal at this point is likely to give an excuse and cover for Trump to exit NATO, which would dramatically open up his options and leverage in Europe more broadly.