Agent 00Soul

It feels like it’s usually Republican presidents that have these giant ruptures with Europe. Dem presidents have squabbles but it never seems to get as bad as with the Trump/Bush Jr/Cheney/Vances of the world. I’m not totally sure why this is but I do know they wear it like a badge of honour and use it as an example of Democrats being weak and effeminate. The funny thing is that it’s always the GOP who go on about protecting European heritage and Judeo-Christian/Western values. Pete Hegseth even has a crusaders tattoo. https://www.timesofisrael.com/trumps-nominee-to-lead-pentagon-has-multiple-christian-and-crusader-inspired-tattoos/ I wonder if they see things like the EU as the “wrong” kind of Europe and they want to starve the beast or something.

The majority of Elon's current alt-right fans probably have never owned a Tesla and never will. Ironic.

I wouldn’t do it myself, but I’m not surprised. As I mentioned in a previous post, I lived in the US for decades and since around 2000, I would say the standard of living has dropped a little bit every year. It’s really noticeable now. Even the middle-class NYC suburb I lived in as a teenager now has roads that haven’t been repaved in years (I imagine it’s like driving on the moon.) and street lamps haven’t had their bulbs replaced. Visiting the US now is like when I visited Mexico or Brazil when I was a kid. It’s no wonder people have been radicalised. They were ready for a strongman to step in and say only he can fix things. Textbook.

that will probably take a generational shift. Basically the road that took us to this point but in reverse. Although it’s harder to displace authoritarians due to their police apparatus. But the overthrow of the Latin American dictatorships in the 1990s and 2000s shows it can be done when a tipping point is reached. But that takes decades usually.

That hasn’t been the case for a while. Haven’t you seen the photos of the guys at the MAGA rally in the first term wearing T-shirts that say something like “I’d rather be ruled by Russia than the Democrats!”.

It didn't happen last time. His response to Covid-19 was awful and the USA wracked up a massive bodycount. His followers dug in and doubled-down rather than turn against him. They also made common cause with the New Age health community and the anti-vaxxers which tended to be on the left until this point but became massively MAGA and still are. So he actually got a new base for the future. Canadian political analyst Naomi Klein refers to that kind of shift as "diagonalism."

They are blaming it on Biden. Just this morning I was reading an article on PlanetF1.com about racing and the first person who left a comment in the have your say section at the bottom was someone who said they looked the article's author up on Wikipedia, found out she is a Democrat, and then essentially tried to shame her by saying her vote for Kamala helped perpetuate the egg price crisis. I just went to look it up, but the moderators of PlanetF1 have taken the comment down.

He’s in his honeymoon period after the election and his voters are delirious with joy. The same way Obama supporters were after he got elected the first time. Either that or it really is the Beatlemania I mentioned a few days ago here. No matter; they’ll learn… https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/18/trump-birthday-holiday-republican-bill

How did you do that? Ebay/Reverb/Facebook, consignment/sale to a shop, private sale?

Good point - the generations who were really into gear are in the downsizing era of their lives now, or soon will be. And the younger ones don’t fetishise gear as much (a good thing IMHO) and could never afford this stuff anyway so never developed as strong an attachment maybe. Either way, it sounds like the numbers of market value are hugely inflated. And they don’t tell you how long an item was for sale before some person with money showed up.

Sounds like market value means much less than it did.

To be fair, insurance companies do that to gainfully employed middle-class people these days too. Luigi Mangione came from an elite background.

In an instance like that, do you think it would be better to find a vintage guitar shop that takes commission and suck up the lower price just to get it into as many more serious eyes/testing hands as possible?