Two party system

You were around for the last seven months or so, right?

What we’re seeing now is not business as usual.

I would say it is business as usual, except that we have entered a new phase where it is harder to maintain the illusion that the point of the business all along wasn’t to impoverish and essentially enslave the majority of the people.
No, it's business as usual. The only difference is that what was typically only done abroad, is now being done domestically. Fascism is colonialism coming home to roost.
It's the same, they're just explicit about it. They're done pretending it's anything but what it's always been.
Edit: I'd reply but they're blocked by me for defending the party that has sanewashed fascism since Dubya. Sorry I called out the party that didn't arrest Trump.
- No it fucking isn't, stop sanewashing fascism

Do you still call the parties same after everything that's happened since Trump took office? Do you think that Kamela would have made the same decisions as trump?

Democrats are the brakes and the republicans are the accelerator. But the steering wheel is stuck turning right and very few has any incentive to turn the wheel. And Trump is like "what if we just remove the brakes?"
- Ratchet effect, except the ratchet broke off
- Sure, I don't say that the Democrats are good, but they're not fascist. Being smug and saying that "Democrats and Republicans are the same" won't save you from the death camps.
The Republican and Democratic establishments are very much the same.
Trump - and his Heritage Foundation minders - isn't business as usual.
The Rs and Ds both opposed tariffs and supported free market capitalism. Trump demanded tariffs because he's a boomer, and he wants to go back to his childhood when the economy was based on manufacturing and coal mining.
The Rs and Ds both gave lip service to free speech. Trump has sued universities for allowing protests, deported students for writing op-eds, and is appointing political commissars to monitor major news networks and veto dissent.
The Rs and Ds both believed that unbiased economic data was important, even if they wanted different economic policies. Trump fires people for reporting data he doesn't like.
The Rs and Ds both believed that soft power was as valuable as hard power, and that USAID and PEPFAR and so on were important, not just on humanitarian grounds, but in building support for the United States around the world. Trump and Musk think soft power is for wimps and are viscerally disgusted by helping black people.
Frankly, if there is any genuine distinction right now between the Republican establishment and the Democratic establishment, it's because Trump bullied the Republicans into it. And if this country survives it'll be interesting - albeit horrifying - to see if the Rs go back to business as usual or continue their slide into an anarcho-capitalist theocracy.
- Both Republicans and Democrats fo fascism abroad, but only Republicans do this kid of blatant fascism domestically.

There you go!

I didn't like Biden or Harris, but neither of them promised to send troops into cities.

Obama put down occupy
- Source? Local police did, but I can't find much on Obama sending troops to break up OWS protesters.
  Most I could find was, he was openly sympathetic, but noncommittal about it. Disappointing, sure, but hardly the same as Trump.

This isn't limited to two party systems, but liberal democracies in general in the entire world. There hasn't really been any change of the status quo for who-knows-how-long anywhere whether it's 2 or 10 parties on the ballot

I mean, at least on the one side, it's a lot easier to get the couch up or down the stairs.

Side note, why build like this. Would be nice with a little lounge chair on the side of the steps there or something. A place for the telephone if we lived 50 years ago 😅

Someone wanted a grand double staircase in their home but due to budgeting constraints this is the end result.
- I was thinking it was built for the Christmas Tree.

We can blame parties or whatever. I just blame the average American for not doing something about it