Imagine choosing Trump over your own wife, even if you hate her.

This won't do it. The plurality system (often called "first past the post") inherently and inevitably leads to 2 parties. Whenever a third is introduced successfully, it quickly eliminates one of the previous parties.

Breaking up the supply duopoly requires a change in voting method, such as Ranked Choice or Approval methods. Those allow a third party without acting as a spoiler.

It's cringe pretending to be humor.

Elections are a cornerstone of autocracies. All of the most brutal dictators have elections, and they get 90% of the vote.

Free and fair elections, OTOH, are nowhere to be seen. And that's a critical difference - they won't be cancelled, so there won't be the obvious line in the sand. Voter suppression and disenfranchisement, which is already happening, will continue and accelerate. But most of it will have a heavy coat of marketing, to convince people that those groups don't really deserve to vote.

It would be naive to think we aren't conducting large-scale espionage against China. We absolutely are, and against every other country on Earth. And so is every other country, to whatever limits they can.

However, in the name of diplomacy, we (all) pretend that we're upstanding, trustworthy people. That we can be trusted to further each other's goals and good fortunes. And sometimes our goals are even aligned, and a partnership really does benefit everyone involved. But it's all an act.

It's still a bad move on his part, and makes him look bad, but it's not revealing anything we didn't already know.

I'm still never going to buy a Tesla.

FTFA:

a man officials say rammed a federal vehicle during immigration raids last week.

The denial after the fact is a necessary coping mechanism. Otherwise, they will suffer from the guilt of killing their child.

Which they absolutely did.

Bragged about their crimes to specialized cops who had already identified themselves as such, with evidence on hand, and still only $1,000 each.

That means that violating all of these laws really just costs $1,000, and only if you get caught.

That's also pretty damn close to what Trump genuinely wants - for everyone currently doing the work to quit. That way he can install lackeys across the board.

Strikes normally work because the other side wants something - usually the business owner wants labor to create a product. That isn't the case here.

I'm not saying it's pointless, but the classic strategies will need to be rethought.

I want to believe this. I really do. Maybe the surprise will be that it really did happen.

But I'm not confident. I'm expecting it to be razor-thin, with results unclear even days later.

Their claim is that the country has been ruined by the left, and they want to restore it to its former glory. It requires ignoring the fact that the country has taken a hard right shift since the time they are idealizing.

As for the cognitive dissonance, Stephen Colbert (during The Colbert Report) played around with this self-contradiction. His book is titled "America Again: Re-becoming The Greatness We Never Weren't"

Edit: autocorrect