So he's calling himself a king now, eh?

"long live the king", in the very country founded on saying fuck you to the last king. what a shameful display.

Fuck congestion charges; ~~your~~ Americas new King just gave himself supreme executive power over every single federal office including the ones meant to regulate him.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensuring-accountability-for-all-agencies/
/edit: didn't realize I was in a local community
- Constitution is terminated (just like he said he would)
  Article I
  
  Section 9 Powers Denied Congress Clause 8 Titles of Nobility and Foreign Emoluments No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.
  https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C8-4/ALDE_00013204/
  
  Trump has been throughly wiping his ass with the constitution since the day he stepped into the whitehouse.
  It's just meaningless paper until someone actually steps up and enforces it.

A country losing its way and straying far off from the ideals it originally strived for, becoming the very thing it fought against without realizing. That describes both the USA and Israel to a T.

wellp, time for guillotines, i suppose.
- I support this.

"Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
~ attributed to Denis Diderot
- It's a lovely dream, but I'm pretty sure we'll just come up with a different title for the people who manipulate us.
  
  We already did, and now they want to be called kings again.

I was reading or watching some news story once and it was about these two blokes getting arrested for fucking farm animals. And it started a train of thought. How do two strangers meet who are into fucking farm animals? It isn't like it is socially acceptable. Its probably not on their dating profile. I get that if you are part of a comparatively common group experiencing social repression you learn ways to communicate. Even pedos. But animal fuckers? Are they that common?
Now call me autistic if you like but suddenly I realized some of the edgy race jokes I had laughed at when I was younger and dumber might have been actual racists looking to connect with other racists. The sexist and homophobic jokes might have been actual bigots. And the guys joking about fucking animals. Well most of those are just jokes because obviously nobody does that. But perhaps some of them are looking for a special friend because how else does that convo even get started without the plausible deniability of "a joke".
So now when I see a fascist dog fucker "joking" about their not meant to be serious fascist memes and symbols the illusion is broken for me. And when I see Presidents joking about being Kings or invading neighbors, it isn't my type of humor any more I guess.
- When someone tells you who they are, believe them.
- I'm an ADHD person and I had this exact same realization when I was younger.
  I think maybe this isn't something neurotypicals ever figure out? Because they seem to be accepting of those "jokes" and it blows my mind.
  
  They're well evolved to survive in social groups. Even if they suspect someone is recruiting for something terrible, the loss of social status and allies isn't worth confronting the recruiter. Even visibly suspecting it will harm social status. This is a feature, not a bug.
  Historically, the kid who called out the emperor's new clothes was executed. Every time you started shit in your tribe, you risked being shunned, which meant death. If the whole tribe was crazy, you were better off being crazy too.
- Who jokes about these things? Plausible deniability my ass. I ever hear someone joke about fucking animals I'm gonna slowly, no actually, rapidly back away
  
  Who jokes about these things?
  Exactly. Have you ever heard an elected president joke about being King or invading their peaceful neighbor? Ever? Anyone? Animal fuckers. Its the only thing that makes sense.
  
  At work we say "there's many ways to fuck a cat" implying you can do something different ways.
  We also say "it's not my dog to fuck" when it's not your job
  Or "I'm fucking the dog" or "they're fucking the dog" when someone is taking a stupid amount of time to do things.
- Best thing I read on internet today, thanks
- Congrats on writing one of two comments I've ever starred.
- Pretty sure it was just really dumb, low IQ dudes, the no one else really liked, who got along and one decided to share or got caught fucking an animal, and since they newcomer was also a virgin, this didn't bother him as much as we would hope wh n he took his turn.
  But dumb people get caught, so now we all know.
  
  Yeah, but if those low IQ dudes wanted to overthrow democracy and they wanted to tell other low IQ dudes about it they could just shout it out real loud. The media will ignore it. Law enforcement will do nothing. The courts will do nothing. The public will do nothing.
  How people have reacted doesnt make sense to me. Like the only reason people would "joke" about such shit is because they are really fucking serious about it. Its a declaration of intent being broadcast to like minded people.
  When the president of the US "jokes" about being a king my reading is a constitutional crisis is more of a when than an if.

…holy fuck - that’s a real tweet.
- No, it's not. Because it's not a tweet at all. Trump posted that on his own little unfederated modified Mastodon instance he calls Truth Social (seriously, it's built on Mastodon). Note the red check instead of blue and them being called "retruths" because he calls posts on his instance "truths."
  It's an important distinction if ever you need to find the original source for any reason.
  
  Thanks! I was already aware of that, but others might not be.
  I used tweet in the generic sense because like hell I would ever say “Holy crap, that’s a real truth!”
- 1/3 of the population is freaking out and screaming, 1/3 is saying "hell yeah, brother", and a 1/3 is like "I thought egg prices were supposed to go down."
- I guess you haven’t seen what the White House account posted then…
  
  I'm going to regret asking but...
  For example?
  
  I’m going to be sick..

Absolute monarchies tend to come to a very sticky end, as happened in England in the 17th century and France in the 18th.
- Unfortunately, last time the people revolted, the gov only had muskets and heavy canons. This time around, the gov can assassinate you from high altitude with drones, missiles....and the gov forces have firepower that far exceeds what the population could fight against.
  
  Good point. The English civil war and the French revolution both went the way they did because the 'rebels' had armies which equalled or exceeded those of the government. Same with the other regicide that comes to mind, Nicholas II of Russia in 1918. So much depends on whether the military remains loyal.
- Unfortunately, there's never a shortage of people that will sign up to for power in exchange for a risk of dying horribly.
  That's not even specific to monarchies, every autocracy runs on that principle.
- Well, if they turn a portion of the population into true believers, deport/incarcerate/execute the CIS White remaining who oppose... Could get messy globally. The American Reich could easily be even more of a problem than Mr Niceguy Imperialist America. And that's saying something.

Any man who must say, 'I am the king' is no true king
- Loosely related topic but in the last few years I've noticed a uptick of people online prefacing a absolute horrible takes with "I'm xyz(entirely unverifiable)" or just some like "I'm very smart" then says something entirely idiotic.
- I think you just came up with rump's new name.
- Well... Except for these kings? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_monarchs_of_sovereign_states
  
  I don't think they need to go around claiming they're the king because their status isn't challenged.

Maybe that's the motivation for invading Canada. Trump the First, by the grace of God, of Canada King, Defender of the Faith.

It is going very poorly here folks. There isn't any other way to say it, except to say it more accurately, which is that it is going about as badly as it has ever gone and seems on a trajectory for going as badly as it is possible to go.
- That's not good enough.

What the hell is congestion pricing?
- Charging cars a toll to incentivize alternative transport during peak hours.
  
  And it fucking works.
  
  Why is it 'dead'?

The government is too big, why are we paying for healthcare, school, welfare and whatever else? It is unfair to those who don't use those services.
...oh, except roads and the military, everyone must pay for those.
It's amazing how many of these policies are posed as a simple fair rule (people should pay for what they want, not have the government decide where spending goes) but in actuality is just a convenient excuse for dismantling institutions that they personally don't like.
- Also corporate and bank bailouts are fine

Very REPUBLICAN, that traitor.
America needs a 1918.
- or an 1814.

I'm no monarchist but in Canada we have an actual king and the idea that HRH would busy himself with such petty quibbles as ...tolls is laughable.
- Also, if the King tried to do anything, it would trigger a constitutional crisis in Canada and we'd collectively tell him to get fucked.

Nothing good is allowed to happen ever again.

No no, you're not reading it in the right tone of voice, it's Long Live the King
- They make it seem like regicide is a bad thing.

I guess Arthur was wrong, you do vote for kings!
- At least it wasn't decided by a strange woman lying in a pond distributing swords. That would be no basis for a system of governance!
  
  Frankly, I would trust a watery tart throwing a sword at someone much more than the American people.
- well.....

Benjamin...get the musket.

To be fair in this case I don't think we have much right to make fun of them until tolls get placed on the DVP.
- More the ~~king~~ fascist dictator issuing decrees from on high. But yeah, under Doug Ford, Ontario transportation revolves around spending as many billions as possible to try to speed up his commute (while actually making it worse).

The hard truth is, this is a direct result from the left doubling down on identity politics.
You can't ignore the majority as you try to help the minority. Have you guys learned yet? I look forward to finding out.
- Harris very explicitly avoided anything to do with identity politics in her campaign.
  
  ...which was done to give her the best odds she could have in the speedrun campaign by a party that avoided having a real primary and instead pushed a candidate that did abysmally in the last primary.
  Biden should have committed to being a single term president and we should have had a real primary in 2024. Or at least just the usual degree of Democrat primary ratfucking.
- Attacking trans people and pushing conspiracy theories was a core part of MAGA, while the Dems were silent. Now look at the DEI crap.
  Republicans are obsessed with identity politics while reasonable people see that there are legitimate, long-standing problems and solutions to systemic racism, sexism, and gender discrimination - which the dems completely ignored.
  The dems and republicans both ignored the majorities and minorities to varying degrees.
- What does congestion pricing have to do with identity politics?
  
  The thought is that the democrats lost the last election because they focused on identity politics rather than more general concerns. Whether that is true or not, the chief point of this post is not congestion fees, it’s that the president called himself “King”.
  
  He just has a wrong nerrative her wants to spew, it doesn't have to be linked.
- This reads like 'be more racist and sexist if you want to win.' That party won, I'm not looking forward to everyone finding out that the only identity that matters right now is who has the most money.
- The wool is being pulled over your eyes. You are wrong. They are doing this to extract even more wealth from you and everyone else like us.
- Great example of how terrible FPTP is tbh. But then Americans pretty much only ever vote for those that support such a system.
- Okay, so I can read this two ways. You could mean everything Trump does is morally the left's fault for provoking him (and his followers), or like people would never have voted Trump in the first place if Democrats had been more homophobic (or whatever).
  Either way, I don't really see it. The first is "look what you made me do", the second sounds more like it would appeal to nobody as an election strategy.
- You mean Republicans were successful at identity politics (i.e. manipulating people through exaggerations, distortions, and outright lies about equality movements). Democrats yet again failed to effectively listen, validate, and address the public's most pressing concerns about how the status quo (with which centrist parties are generally associated globally) isn't working for them.
- Pot meet kettle
- Give 5 examples.
- Buddy, blue collar rural Trump voters in impoverished area are already hurting way worse from this administration than educated middle class liberals. Inflation is heating back up, the people who were already struggling to buy groceries have it worse every day. It's like you're setting yourself on fire so you can burn someone else.
  
  "This is fine"
- Nah they simply lost because nobody likes Harris