4.5 billion years without him up 'til 2016, I think we'll be just fine.

Well, what else was he going to do with it, leave it alone?

I love the Mussolini pic, that's funny.

The 'greatest country on Earth' and they routinely fail to keep their government running. I have a question: if your government fails to govern, why does it exist? The whole point of these people is to manage things. They are failing to do the only thing they exist to do. There is obviously a fundamental flaw in this system.

Nobody specified which axis he was divided along. It could be the vertical axis, which wouldn't change his height.

Great news, you don't have to bother, just switch to Linux. I did, and I don't have to spend a single moment worrying about what Microsoft is doing to their garbage.

I have no idea what any of that means, and I'm happy with that.

He really does just scream 'I'm trash!'

You know it's bad when rednecks stop acting like rednecks.

Why? Why are they stunned by anything this idiot does? It's like being shocked when a toddler shits in a diaper. He's been doing it for years, he's never done anything but that, it's just more of the same idiocy. There's nothing stunning about it.

It's very simple: human emotion. When something upsets the status quo, people get scared, angry and desperate. They turn to whatever solution they think will fix things.

In the case of nations, that becomes right-wing politics. Many factors in the recent past have caused distress and fear. People are afraid of losing what they have, they don't like the uncertainty. They lack the education and critical-thinking skills to choose the best course of action, instead they choose the most reassuring course of action.

In 1930s Germany, support for extremist political parties (not just the NSDAP) surged due to the desperate times they were experiencing. Germany underwent a period of hyperinflation, which was followed shortly after by the stock market crash of 1929. They were already in poor shape, both economically and emotionally, due to the punishments meted out by the Versailles treaty.

Things became very bad for the Germans, and they turned to the looneys who offered a solution. A similar scenario is playing out in several countries around the world, especially the US. COVID really upset a lot of people, none more so than the overly emotional and uneducated. They felt attacked and vulnerable, and they were already deluded by years of misinformation. They turn to politicians like Trump, because he appeals directly to their emotions. He makes them feel safe, largely by scapegoating groups who aren't actually a threat (sound familiar?).

People don't check if what they're hearing is true, they care most about having their fears assuaged. This is why we've seen a resurgence of right-wing extremism globally.

I can't leave. I see the sheer stupidity, I want to distance myself from it, but I'm stuck on this planet. No matter how hard I want to live on Mars, I can't, and it's not fair.